Random News Stories

[Leo Enticknap]

Our cats are very much creatures of routine, and are resistant to disrupt that, even if mine is unpredictable (my wife's varies less than mine does). On a field job or shop day, I'm usually up between 3 and 5am (depending on when I have to be there), and out of the door about an hour later. If I'm not up by 5am, at least one of them is on the bed, pawing at my face; even if it's a work-at-home day, on which I tend to get up at around 6. All three are active from then until around mid-morning, at which point it's nap time. That lasts until late afternoon, and then they're active until 9-10pm.

They can't distinguish between a weekday and a weekend day. The 5am furry alarm call still happens on Saturdays and Sundays, though they accept it eventually when the meowing has no effect, and we don't get up until 7-8.

[Randy Stankey]

I have no idea how he knows what time it is, especially that precisely, but he does.

That's cool!

I don't believe that animals understand the concept of time but they must pick up time cues from somewhere we don't understand.

Could it be the position of the sun? Could it be from environmental or situational cues?
I know that our cat, Casper, seems to know when we are coming home. We often find him waiting for us by the door when we come in. I think he can tell by the sound of our car, driving into the driveway. He could also be picking up time cues from the sun. His humans always come home about the same time each day when the sun starts to go down.

A bird that seems to know what time it is, down to the minute, sounds incredible! How could a bird pick up time cues so precisely?

Could there be a clock that the bird can see or, maybe, something that happens on a regular schedule like a timer turning on an appliance of some kind?

A time-telling bird sounds amazing! I wonder how he does it?

[Frank Cox]

I don't know if he understands the concept of days, but my bird knows what time it is. Right to the minute, believe it or not. And a regular schedule is important to him.

When it gets to the time that I go to start setting up the night's show he squawks at me and might throw a seed at me if I'm sitting nearby and if I'm not already up and moving out. He doesn't (usually) squawk after dark, but he somehow makes his cage vibrate and buzz when it's time to switch off the light at night and go to bed. His timing for issuing orders and keeping everything on schedule is pretty much exact. His 7pm squawk is at 6:59 or 7:00pm, always. I have no idea how he knows what time it is, especially that precisely, but he does.

During the period that the theatre was closed last spring, he got quite upset with me when he saw that I wasn't going to work on time and it took him several days to accept that the schedule had changed.

It's also important that I hold a piece of millet for him to eat at a certain time each day, but that's never changed of course, and he's sure to start reminding me of that a few minutes before he figures it should be served.

[Randy Stankey]

We don't know when our cat, "Casper's," birthday is because he was rescued after being abandoned outdoors but, since we adopted him a couple of days before Christmas, we treat it as his birthday.

We don't have a birthday celebration for him but we get him a special present as a combination birthday and Christmas gift. We get him a small package of kitty treats. Normally, we keep the "kitty cookies" locked up because he'll get into them at night, while we are sleeping. When it's his "birthday" we just give him the whole bag and let him tear into it.

We do it, mostly, just for our own entertainment and because we want to share our holiday with Casper. I don't think that pets understand the concept of holidays or birthdays. To a cat, it's just that time of year when there's a tree, in the living room, for them to climb.

I think it's nice to have a little fun with your pets but it's silly to have a full-blown party for them. They probably don't even understand what's going on.

Then, to top it all off, silly people doing silly things only serves to spread the virus.

Fifteen people got sick because of a dumb cat? That's just dain bramaged behavior!

[Leo Enticknap]

From BioBioChile:

Cat birthday party caused covid-19 outbreak in Chile

A cat birthday party caused, a few months ago, a covid-19 outbreak in Santo Domingo, a small seaside city in Central Chile. The information was confirmed today by Francisco Álvarez, the representative of the Ministry of Health in the Valparaíso region.

“Even though it sounds unbelievable and almost fiction, these things happen in our country,” he said in an official statement." "There is no doubt people will come up with any excuse to get together,” he added.

“When I knew about this I said… it’s a joke. Probably they said that to conceal something else, but it was exactly that,” Álvarez told Radio Bío Bío this Saturday. Health officials talked to the attendees and six of them confirmed that the party was intended to celebrate a cat’s birthday. In total, the celebration alone left 15 diagnosed patients.

“The cat never had the virus, but the owner did,” Álvarez revealed.

So in this case, it was the humans that used up one of their nine lives.

[Ed Gordon]

Honer among thieves?

Thief in Oregon berated mom for leaving kid in car he stole, police say

The Associated Press

BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) — A car thief who found a toddler in the backseat of a stolen vehicle drove back and chastised the mother for leaving the child unattended before taking off again, police in Oregon said.

The woman went into a grocery store about 15 feet (5 yards) from the car Saturday, leaving her 4-year-old child inside with the engine running and the vehicle unlocked, said Beaverton police spokesman Officer Matt Henderson.

A store employee told authorities the woman was in the market for a few minutes before someone began driving away with the SUV.

Once the thief realized the toddler was in the backseat, he drove back, berated the woman for leaving her child unattended, told the woman to take the child and drove away in the stolen vehicle.

“He actually lectured the mother for leaving the child in the car and threatened to call the police on her,” Henderson said.

Henderson said the woman did nothing wrong and was within sight and sound of the child. He said the incident served as a “good reminder to take extra precaution” with children.

“Obviously, we’re thankful he brought the little one back and had the decency to do that,” Henderson said.

The vehicle was found a few hours later in Portland but police are still searching for the thief. The suspect was said to be in his 20s or 30s with dark brown or black braided hair and a multi-colored face mask...

[Frank Cox]

Just found this picture.

GettyImages-1047043168-e1610486032434.jpg

[Frank Cox]

Dare I admit that I actually played that one?

It was back before I had my own theatre so I was just a lowly projectionist at the time. So it wasn't my fault, right?

[Leo Enticknap]

It's free on Amazon Slime. I'll have to try to resist the temptation...

[Frank Cox]

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095241/

[Leo Enticknap]

And another story involving leashes on humans, this time from England in 2006:

Sex Slave Cult Uncovered in Darlington

Curtains were twitching in a quiet suburban street yesterday after police uncovered a sect whose followers base their lives on science fiction novels advocating the sexual enslavement of women.

Members of the group were interviewed in Darlington after a report that a Canadian woman was being held there against her will. They helped the 29-year-old return home after she told a friend that she wanted to leave but had burnt her passport after joining the sect. However, a police spokesman said no criminal activity was discovered and all those involved were "consenting adults".

They also investigated claims from a father in Essex who was concerned that his 18-year-old son was being trained to be "a master of his own sex slaves". Officers spoke to the teenager and said they were satisfied that he was living voluntarily at the property, a pebble-dashed terrace house. The so-called Kaotian sect is a splinter group of the Goreans, who have about 25,000 followers in Britain. They base their lives on a series of novels written by John Norman, the pen name of the elderly American university professor, John Frederick Lange.

The books describe life on the planet of Gor, where society is divided into castes and women are kept as slaves. The popularity of the books spread on the internet, where there are sites, chatrooms and role-playing games dedicated to the fictional world. Lee Thompson, 31, who lives at the house in Darlington and describes himself as a master who trains slaves, said women members cooked and cleaned as part of their duties, but there was also "an element of sexual domination".

In an interview with the Northern Echo, Mr Thompson, who was banned from a butcher's shop in the town for turning up with a young woman on a leash, said: "I have been called sick but I don't think what I do is bad." He said about 350 followers met regularly in pubs and clubs around the North East, from Berwick-upon-Tweed to York. A follower for 15 years, Mr Thompson said he had been a master to about eight women.

"It works on the system that some women have a desire to serve," he said. "Most people think it is a sexual thing, but it is about every action that they make, they do it for their master. "Saying that, the girls will do everything they are told when it comes to sex, but it is all voluntary and all safe. I use internet chatrooms to meet people. The girls are quite willing. "Lots of girls want to come and find out about it. They think it's exciting, but it's hard work for everyone. Girls leave when they've had enough."

Mr Thompson said he read the novel Tarnsman of Gor when he was 13. By the age of 16 he decided to pursue the lifestyle described. He met Goreans - whom he described as rougher than Kaotians - at a nightclub. He became an "apprentice" at 16 and a "master" at 21. One neighbour said on learning that she was living next to a sex slavery sect: "This is a Christian country and you don't really need that sort of thing here. This country's going down the pan."

A shopkeeper added: "I saw them in the town centre with the man leading her by the chain, I couldn't believe it." A spokesman for Durham Police said: "An investigation by our officers did not disclose any criminal offences."

I was living near there at the time, and the goings on at Thompson's house was the topic of much conversation for weeks afterwards. No-one I knew had even heard of these novels (even sci-fi buffs).

[Frank Cox]

https://in.news.yahoo.com/canadian-c...151100815.html

Canadian Woman Caught Walking Her Husband on a Leash to Evade Curfew Rules
In a bizarre incident, a husband and wife in Canada were fined $1500 each after the woman was found 'walking' the man on a leash.

The incident occurred in Canada's Quebec on Saturday night when the woman was caught walking her husband on a leash like a dog at 9 pm, an hour after coronavirus curfew was imposed.

The 8 pm curfew was imposed by Quebec premier Francois Legault, premier of Quebec in Canada, to contain rising cases of COVID-19. On January 9, a woman and her husband were found breaking the curfew.

When asked by cops why she was breaking the curfew, she said that she was within curfew rules to walk outside of her house till 1 km to walk her dog outside of curfew hours.

When cops pointed out that her husband was not a dog, the woman reportedly protested.

Both husband and wife fined $1500 each, even though the woman has reportedly refused to pay the fine.

[Martin McCaffery]

Review of the Film Daily 15th Annual Yearbook. Montgomery Advertiser, April 9, 1993
"Television is still but a theoretical menace with its practical application to the amusement field some years away..."

[Leo Enticknap]

From Popular Mechanics:

5G Truthers Bought Faraday Cages to Protect Their Routers. They're Mad They Worked.

Let's say you hate 5G and genuinely believe it causes cancer or spreads COVID-19, despite there being no evidence to support those wild conspiracies. To shield 5G's myriad evils, then, you put your WiFi router in a metallic box that "blocks about 90 percent" of the signal. There! Now you're instantly protected from those treacherous waves of radiation!

This may sound like a made-up scenario, but 5G truthers really have bought these devices in droves. There's just one small problem with their fool-proof plan: The kinds of containers that truly do block all electromagnetic radiation are called Faraday cages, and they're not the same thing as these so-called "router guards" that look like glorified mesh file organizers. If they were real Faraday cages, none of your home WiFi signal would come through.

There are scores of sketchy companies waiting to cash in on customers who believe in 5G-related conspiracy theories, including the brands "Router Guard" and "EMF Essentials." These scams aren't necessarily new, but the Amazon product listings have gone viral after a December 2 tweet pointed out the irony of the whole ordeal.

Right about now, Michael Faraday is rolling around in his grave.

If the man who invented the namesake technology for blocking electronic fields could read the reviews for Amazon products that promise to act like Faraday cages and shield radiation (while still letting wireless internet into your home), he'd probably just get in a cage, lock it, and throw away the key.

That's because by definition, a Faraday cage is an enclosure that distributes an electrical charge or radiation all around the exterior of the cage, protecting anything inside. Put another way, it's a hollow conductor, and the charge is on the outside surface of the cage. If the various iterations of "router guard" and "router cover" selling on Amazon for well over $60 let any internet access through, they're not Faraday cages at all.

There are some legitimate Faraday pouches and other enclosures you can purchase for your key fob or laptop to keep it protected from hackers at all times (see below), but the shady router covers fit squarely in the "do not recommend" pile.

I'm surprised that the people who bought these things are ranting on social media, though, given that they cut off their own Internet access!

[Leo Enticknap]

A single-engined small commuter airliner on a delivery fight from Santa Rosa, CA, to Hilo, HI, with long range ferry tanks installed, suffered engine failure at almost exactly the halfway point over the Pacific, and had to ditch in the ocean. Miraculously, both pilots were rescued uninjured.

HONOLULU (KHON2) — The U.S. Coast Guard and a pair of good Samaritans responded to a downed aircraft approximately 1,100 miles northeast of Oahu on Nov. 6.

The Coast Guard says there were two crew members in the PC-12 Pilatus aircraft, and no injuries have been reported.

Officials say the Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) received reports of a downed aircraft around 2:30 p.m.

The JRCC then issued an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast (UMIF) and directed air units from Air Station Barbers Point to their location. All vessels over 20 meters in length within U.S. waters are required to monitor UMIF channels.

Two good Samaritans in the area also responded to the UMIF and set a course to the downed aircraft’s location.

The Coast Guard and good Samaritans arrived at the scene around 7:15 p.m.

The PC-12 Pilatus is a single-engine, turbine-driven propeller aircraft that is manufactured in Stans, Switzerland.

Makes me thankful that whenever I've done that flight (or its rough equivalent; usually OAK or SMF to HNL on Southwest to service calls in Hawaii), it's been on a plane with two engines. Even then, I've always felt a slight sense of relief at the sight of Makap'uu Point (westbound) or the Point Bonita Lighthouse (eastbound) near the end of the flight. There is simply nothing but water between them. Despite the statistical unlikelihood of the engine breaking down, it must take serious guts to be willing to make that flight with only one of them. But I'm guessing that there is no other viable way to deliver these single engined small aircraft, of which there appear to be many operating inter-island flights (I've seen many Cessna Grand Caravans at Hawaiian airports, too), from the mainland to the islands.