Dad Grounded After Kid Doodles on Passport

Add this to the "Things you just can't do" section of your vacation itinerary. A Chinese family, mother, father and four-year-old son, were on a vacation trip to South Korea. Well, the dear little four-year-old apparently got bored and decided to pass the time by doodling in his coloring book. But, since his mom didn't pack the book with his travel things, he decided to use the next best thing, his father's passport. He drew some really nice pictures of animals and made interesting alterations to his father's passport picture, in ink, with a permanent black pen. A lot of scribbles and some added flair too, by accentuated some features on his dad's face, and he also gave his dad, known only as Chen, a beard and a little more hair.

Well, apparently the uniformed authorities at the Korean passport check-in station weren't at all amused. None of them thought the alterations were as cute as the little boy did, and so the guy is now stuck in South Korea because of "unrecognizable documentation." 

It's not likely he'll be able to travel back home to China, at least not as originally scheduled. Sounds like he might be spending the rest of his holiday on the phone to the Chinese embassy.

30 Percent of World Population Now Fat!

More than 2 billion people on our planet are now considered heavier than they ought to be, and no country has been able to curb obesity rates in the last three decades, according to a new global analysis. The highest rates are in the Middle East and North Africa, where nearly 60 percent of men and 65 percent of women are heavy. The U.S. has about 13 percent of the world's fat population, a greater percentage than any other country. China and India combined have about 15 percent. "It's pretty grim," said Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who led the study. He and colleagues reviewed more than 1,700 studies covering 188 countries from 1980 to 2013. "When we realized that not a single country has had a significant decline in obesity, that tells you how hard a challenge this is."

Murray said there was a strong link between income and obesity; as people get richer, their waistlines also tend to start bulging. He said scientists have noticed accompanying spikes in diabetes and that rates of cancers linked to weight, like pancreatic cancer, are also rising. The new report was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and published online Thursday in the journal, Lancet.

"Our children are getting fatter," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said bluntly during a speech at the agency's annual meeting in Geneva. "Parts of the world are quite literally eating themselves to death." Earlier this year, WHO said that no more than 5 percent of your daily calories should come from sugar. "Modernization has not been good for health," said Syed Shah, an obesity expert at United Arab Emirates University, who found obesity rates have jumped five times in the last 20 years even in a handful of remote Himalayan villages in Pakistan. His research was presented this week at a conference in Bulgaria. "Years ago, people had to walk for hours if they wanted to make a phone call," he said. "Now everyone has a cellphone."

Shah also said the villagers no longer have to rely on their own farms for food. "There are roads to bring in their processed foods and the people don't have to slaughter their own animals for meat and oil," he said. "No one knew about Coke and Pepsi 20 years ago. Now it's everywhere." In Britain, the independent health watchdog issued new advice Wednesday recommending that heavy people be sent to free weight-loss classes to drop about 3 percent of their weight. It reasoned that losing just a few pounds improves health and is more realistic. About two in three adults in the U.K. are overweight, making it the fattest country in Western Europe.

"This is not something where you can just wake up one morning and say, 'I am going to lose 10 pounds,'" said Mike Kelly, the agency's public health director, in a statement. "It takes resolve and it takes encouragement."

Species Going Extinct Far Faster Than Before

The world is on the brink of a great extinction according to a new study by biologists. Numerous species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene. There have been five previous "mass extinctions" dating back to hundreds of millions of years ago, and now biologists are saying the world is on the brink of a sixth one.

The study looks at past and present rates of extinction and finds a lower rate in the past than scientists had thought. Species are now disappearing from Earth about 10 times faster than biologists had believed, said the study's lead author, biologist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. "We are on the verge of the sixth extinction," Pimm said from research at the Dry Tortugas. "Whether we avoid it or not will depend on our actions." The work, published Thursday by the journal Science, was hailed as a landmark study by outside experts.

Pimm's study focused on the rate, not the number, of species disappearing from Earth. It calculated a "death rate" of how many species become extinct each year out of 1 million species. In 1995, Pimm found that the pre-human rate of extinctions on Earth was about 1. But taking into account new research, Pimm and his colleagues refined that background rate to about 0.1.

Numerous factors are combining to make species disappear much faster than before, said Pimm and co-author Clinton Jenkins of the Institute of Ecological Research in Brazil. But the No. 1 issue is habitat loss. Species are finding no place to live as more places are built up and altered by humans. Add to that invasive species crowding out native species, climate change affecting where species can survive and overfishing, Pimm said. 

The buffy-tufted-ear marmoset (pictured above) is a good example, Jenkins said. Its habitat has shrunk because of development in Brazil, and a competing marmoset has taken over where it lives. Now it's on the international vulnerable list. Five times before, a vast majority of the world's life has disappeared in what have been called mass extinctions, often associated with giant meteor strikes. About 66 million years ago, one such extinction killed off the dinosaurs and three out of four species on Earth. Around 252 million years ago, the Great Dying wiped out about 90 percent of the world's species.

Pimm and Jenkins said there is hope. Both said the use of smartphones and applications such as iNaturalist will help ordinary people and biologists find species in trouble, they said. Once biologists know where endangered species are, they can try to save habitats and use captive breeding and other techniques to save the species, they said.

One success story is the golden lion tamarin. Decades ago the tiny primates were thought to be extinct because of habitat loss, but they were then found in remote parts of Brazil and bred in captivity, and biologists helped set aside new forests for them to live in, Jenkins said. "Now there are more tamarins than there are places to put them," he said.

SpaceX Unveils Spacecraft to Ferry Astronauts

SpaceX, the California company that has been flying unmanned capsules to the International Space Station, has unveiled a spacecraft designed to ferry up to seven astronauts to low-Earth orbit and, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the new Dragon V2 spacecraft will lower the cost of going to space. The futuristic, cone-headed craft, dubbed Dragon V2, features landing legs that pop out and a propulsion system designed to land almost anywhere "with the accuracy of a helicopter."

The technology would enable rapid reloading and reusability of the spacecraft, according to Musk. He noted that in the past, many rockets and space craft return to Earth in a fireball, rendering them unusable. "You can just reload, propel it and fly again," Musk said. "This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and space crafts, we will never truly have access to space. It'll always be incredibly expensive."

"If an aircraft is thrown away with each flight, nobody will be able to fly or very few (can)," he said. "The same is true with rockets and spacecraft." The capsule also features a bright, sleek interior with swing-up computer screens at the control station, a two-level seating system to accommodate up to seven astronauts and large windows for them to marvel at Earth's curvature. The cone-shaped cap can open to allow for the manned craft to dock at the Space Station on its own. The spacecraft also has more powerful engines, better heat shields, landing legs and backup parachutes to ensure a soft landing. In a NASA briefing with reporters last year, Musk said Dragon V2 would look futuristic like an "alien spaceship" and promised "it's going to be cool."

Since the shuttle fleet retired in 2011, NASA has depended on Russian rockets to transport astronauts to orbit and back, paying nearly $71 million per seat. That agreement is now considered in jeopardy because of the US reaction to the recent crises in Ukraine. NASA has said it wants U.S. companies to fill the void by 2017 and has doled out seed money to spur innovation. SpaceX — short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — has made four cargo runs to the giant orbiting outpost some 200 miles above Earth. Just last month, its Dragon capsule splashed into the Pacific, returning nearly 2 tons of science experiments and old equipment.

Thursday's event included a dramatic unveiling of the new spacecraft, which stands about 15 feet tall, with a rounded, cone-shaped top. At one point, Musk even went inside and sat in one of its four reclined seats. While such an undertaking likely has been in the works for some time, it comes at a pivotal time for the International Space Station and space travel.

White House Reveals Top CIA Spy to Journalists

Our White House has screwed up again. This time, in case you haven't already heard, they accidentally revealed the name of our top CIA spy in Afghanistan to a group of some 6,000 journalists. Well, somebody in the group noticed the error, Scott Wilson of The Washington Post, and he did what any red-blooded American should do, he told them about it. Oops, they said! And then what did they do? They issued the exact same list but with the CIA spy's name deleted. Oh, sure, like wouldn't that have made the error a little obvious? Like one reporter said, it was sort-of like "trying to un-ring the bell."

The official's name, identified as "chief of station," was included in the White House press office's basic list of senior officials President Obama met with during his surprise visit to Afghanistan on Sunday. The list of 15 names apparently came first from the military, and was circulated by the White House press office. 

"There's simply no excuse for it," John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying the blunder left him "speechless. In a White House that is filled with press flacks ... was there no one who understood the significance of what they were doing?" he said. "Somebody's head should roll for this. ... This is utter incompetence." 

Wilson says it appeared that some "very junior people" were just trying to follow an order without realizing the "ramifications." He also said he wishes he had caught the mistake before sending out the list in the pool report. "I wish I had, I regret it," he reportedly said. Oh, by the way, they also did the same thing before, back in 2003, when they exposed another CIA agent.

Mystery Giver Leaves $6000 - More to Come

So there's this mystery guy out in the San Francisco Bay area who apparently made a lot of money in real estate over the years and now wants to have some fun giving at least some of it away. And he's chosen a really cool way to do it. Last Friday he launched what's being called a "scavenger hunt" on Twitter. What he does is to fill up envelopes full of money and hide them in oddball places around town. Then he goes on the Internet and tweets clues and photos of where he stuck the envelopes.

So far, some tens of thousands have been running around looking for the envelopes which are taped to park benches, fire hydrants and even parking meters. The anonymous donor is only known by his Twitter handle of @HiddenCash and hasn't revealed who he is or how much more he's going to distribute. He has, however, revealed to reporters via email that he's between 35 and 45 years old, and that he made his money investing in real estate. He calls the scavenger hunt a social experiment, and says he hopes people will take the money and pay it forward.

So far, nearly $6,000 has been found and the guy says he plans to give away upwards of $1,000 a day for the foreseeable future with additional distributions in Los Angeles this coming weekend and New York soon after. How cool can that be?

Wikipedia 90% Wrong in New Medical Survey

There's a new study out by a rather prestigious medical journal reporting that if you use Wikipedia to check on a costly medical condition, 9 out of 10 times the information is going to be wrong, or at least full of errors and inaccuracies. Campbell University scientists reported in the current issue of The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, that they found “many errors” in Wikipedia articles concerning the 10 costliest medical conditions. 

The report cross-checked Wikipedia entries on coronary disease, lung cancer, hypertension and back pain, among other ailments, against the latest research from peer-reviewed journals. Nine out of 10 entries analyzed on the crowd-sourced encyclopedia contained assertions that were contradicted by the peer-reviewed sources. Only the entry on concussions escaped the review error free. “Health care professionals, trainees, and patients should use caution when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care,” wrote the study’s authors. The basis of the study challenges the quality of content found in Wikipedia and builds on previous studies that have shown widespread use by physicians and medical students of Web tools including Wikipedia, to find information for patient care. 

The authors laid particular stress on medical professionals; a recent study found that 50 percent of physicians admitted using Wikipedia as a reference source. The findings of their study demonstrate that assertions (facts) presented in Wikipedia for these medical conditions were mostly in discordance with peer-reviewed literature. These results cast serious doubt on Wikipedia's authority as a medical reference repository. Overall, the study adds credence to the message librarians have heralded: medical professionals should be educated about and engaged in the critical analysis of online information. In other words, information literacy should provide a basis for evidence-based practice.

Google Unveils Driverless Car

Oh my, and what a beauty it is! Google's driverless car is finally here! Two seats, goes up to 25mph, and with no steering wheel, or pedals! That should make you feel really safe and comfortable as you tool on down the Interstate with everybody pointing and snickering at you. 

Google's prototype electric driverless car has been unveiled at the company's California headquarters in Mountainview. Google has actually demonstrated the car on the open road, a design that does away with all of those complicated and now irrelevant conventional controls, and says it will build 100 of the vehicles for testing with the eventual aim of "bringing this technology to the world safely". 

The company had for several years been testing everyday cars equipped with sensors, navigation equipment and computers to drive themselves but in the meantime it has secretly developed a prototype from scratch that will have no facility for a human to take control, other than an emergency stop button. 

The initial 100 testbed versions will retain manual controls because those controls are needed to comply with the laws in California which along with Nevada and Florida allow autonomous vehicles only if a driver can take charge in the event of something potentially catastrophic, like running over pedestrians or into other non-autonomous cars. 

Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, said the aim was to run extended tests in California where Google is based. Urmson argued driverless cars would improve road safety, calling the development "an important step toward improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people". Google said its testing had suggested it was safer to remove conventional controls altogether because the results of a human having to take over suddenly and unexpectedly were unpredictable and potentially dangerous. “We saw stuff that made us a little nervous,” Urmson says. 

The tiny little toy-like concept vehicle has a screen displaying the route it thinks you're taking and an array of sensors that allow the vehicle's computer to determine its location and surroundings, and it can actually "see" for several hundred yards, according to Google.

Women Making Huge Strides in Pot Business

Apparently there is an unusual trend going on in Colorado's booming marijuana industry. More and more women are running the businesses. And it doesn't make a difference whether it's retail pot shops, manufacturing edible products infused with cannabis or working in testing labs. At the first-ever Colorado Cannabis Summit held last week in Denver, the entire panel of local experts on safety and technology was made up of women. "I like to call them the marijuana mavens," said Brooke Gehring, a former mortgage banker who now owns four pot stores in Colorado. "It blows my mind, the incredible women I've met in this industry," said Genifer Murray, founder and CEO of CannLabs, a state-certified lab that tests the potency and safety of recreational pot products. Murray said so many women have come into the industry that even though they often compete against each other, they're starting a group called Women Grow to mentor the next generation of female cannabis entrepreneurs.

The reasons that so many women are attracted to the industry are varied - possibly customers feel more comfortable dealing with a woman, especially when the business is trying to shake its shady image. Another reason, says Jaime Lewis, chief operating officer of Good Chemistry, "I think it starts from the compassionate side of medical marijuana. (Women are) able to take care of people and allow them an alternative way to medicate outside of pharmaceuticals and what their doctors were recommending for them."

As vendors begin pitching their services to the marijuana industry, others still shy away—and not even a woman's touch can change that. Murray said it took her 10 phone calls to find a waste management company willing to take her trash, and some scientific companies refuse to sell her lab equipment. "Shame on them," she said. "It's going to be a billion-dollar industry."

Chrysler Boss: Please Don't Buy My Car!

Sergio Marchionne is the president of the company that makes automobiles like Chrysler and Fiat. He's credited with managing Chrysler out of bankruptcy and for turning Fiat around when it was doing rather poorly a few years ago. But now he has a problem. California has this thing about mandating that at least some of the cars you sell must have zero-emissions. And, at least for the moment, electric cars are the easiest way to meet the mandate. 

So Fiat-Chrysler sells their tiny little Fiat 500e electric car, which meets the requirements to a T. And therein lies the problem. It seems that ever time somebody buys one of these little cars, the company loses money. And Marchionne doesn't like losing money - that's not why they hired him in the first place, to make money, not to lose it. So, he told a Washington, D.C., conference last week that he would prefer no one buy the $32,650 Fiat 500e, which is actually considered a beautifully done, and practical electric car. "I hope you don't buy it because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000," he is quoted as having said. It's not the first time that plain-speaking Marchionne has decried the costs of electric cars. Previously, he pegged the losses at $10,000 a car. Lucky for him, electric cars are still generally a tough sell with consumers because of their limited range. Even though, the Fiat 500e goes 87 miles between charges.

It's a strange request from a world in which automotive CEOs are usually doing everything they can to hype their product lines, lure customers to showrooms, and as they say in the trade, "put butts in seats."

Estimated US Shale Oil Reserves Slashed by 96%!

A few years ago everybody figured the US was in deep doo-doo because we were running out of oil. Then somebody figured out how to get the oil out of shale, and all of a sudden everything turned around and we became one of the world's biggest oil producing countries.

Yep, with vast amounts of shale just ready for the oil to be squished and sucked out of it, the US quickly rose almost to the top of the 21st Century oil world. And the biggest reserve of shale oil we have, with about two-thirds of the nation's shale oil reserves, is the Monterey Shale formation in California. What an enormous bonanza! It would reduce the nation's need for foreign oil imports to practically zero through the use of the latest in extraction techniques, including acid treatments, horizontal drilling and fracking. The estimates were based on the amount of recoverable oil everybody expected, and those estimates were made back in 2011 by an independent firm under contract with the government, that broadly assumed the deposits in the Monterey Shale formation were as easily recoverable, just like those that had been found in shale formations elsewhere.

Well, now we have a little problem. There's a new analysis just out from the Energy Information Administration based, in part, on a review of the output from wells where the new techniques were used. "From the information we've been able to gather, we've not seen evidence that oil extraction in this area is very productive using techniques like fracking," said John Staub, a petroleum exploration and production analyst who led the energy agency's research. "Our oil production estimates combined with a dearth of knowledge about geological differences among the oil fields led to erroneous predictions and estimates," Staub said. 

So, federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil from the Monterey Shale deposits. Yep, that 96% figure is correct, deflating Monterey's potential as a national "black gold mine" of petroleum down to about 600 million barrels of oil that can be extracted with existing technology. That is way below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California. 

The new estimate, expected to be released publicly next month, is a blow to the nation's oil future and to projections that an oil boom would bring as many as 2.8 million new jobs to California and boost tax revenue by $24.6 billion annually. Oh well, I guess we're back in deep doo-doo again.

Giant Condom Constructed in Chile

If you happen to be travelling to Santiago, the capital of Chile, be prepared for this -  a giant condom has been constructed right smack dab in the middle of one of the main suburbs. It's fluorescent green, just to make sure you don't miss it, and 12 meters high (that's 40 feet in Englishspeak). Why, you might ask? Well, it seems they have a problem with something like 17% of the gals there under 19 are getting pregnant, and the local mayor, Rodolfo Carter, decided to do something about it by starting a new sex education campaign. The idea is not only to combat the high levels of unwanted teenage pregnancies in his La Florida district, but also to help tackle sexually transmitted diseases. The incidence of teenage pregnancy in La Florida is double the rate in wealthier neighborhoods, according to the mayor.

Previous safe sex campaigns haven't been popular with Carter's socially conservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI). But the mayor insists there's no conflict with traditional values. "This isn't a moral issue or attention seeking," he says, "The condom seeks to shake up people's consciences and get us working on practical solutions." The social media reaction has been generally positive, although one user commented: "What's next, a flying sperm over Santiago?"

Carter's safe sex campaign isn't the only part of his agenda likely to raise eyebrows with conservatives - he's also planning to create a cannabis plantation for La Florida cancer patients. He has asked Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to take marijuana off Chile's list of hard drugs. Yahoo!

First Hydrogen Fueled Car Ready to Lease in Calif.

 

The first mass-produced car running on hydrogen will be delivered within the next several weeks in Southern California. We've heard about Toyota planning to sell a hydrogen fuel cell car sometime in 2015, but Korean automaker Hyundai gets the gold star for being first on the American shores with the same technology, at least in the Los Angeles/Orange County part of California. And you get free refills!

The deal is actually pretty good. You put down $2,999 and get a brand spanking new Hyundai Tucson that runs on a fuel cell instead of gas for a 36-month term at $499 a month. For that money, you also get unlimited free hydrogen refueling and all the same services of the Hyundai Equus "At Your Service" valet program, meaning if your fuel cell CUV requires any service, a Hyundai dealer will pick the car up and provide you with a loaner vehicle, then return the car after service at absolutely no charge whatsoever.

According to Hyundai, hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles represent the "next generation" of zero-emission electric vehicle technology. The range and refueling time of the car apparently compares favorably with gasoline vehicles, Hyundai says the car will be capable of traveling up to 300 miles between fills, a process that the brand assures us will take less than 10 minutes, at least once you've found a hydrogen filling station. According to the California Fuel Cell Partnership, there are currently just eight filling stations in the metropolitan Los Angeles area and one in the San Francisco Bay Area, but the California legislature is scheduled to provide $20 million annually over the next “several years” for the construction of additional locations.

Oops! New French Trains Too Wide For Platforms

The French are famous for their fast and sleek high speed trains, and rightly so. These marvels of engineering provide them with a sense of pride and accomplishment. However, it seems when they separate who builds the trains from who actually operates them, there can be a problem. French train operator SNCF has now discovered that 2,000 new trains that it ordered at a cost of 15 billion euros ($20.5 billion US) are going to be just a bit too wide for many of the French regional platforms. The platform edges are too close to the tracks in some stations which means the trains cannot get in. It also means that on parallel tracks when trains are going in opposite directions, to put it mildly, they are not going to miss each other.

This appears to be quite an embarrassing blunder that has so far cost the rail operator the equivalent of over 68 million dollars and the cost is likely to rise even further. Construction work has already started to reconfigure a bunch of the station platforms but officials say that there are still about 1,000 more platforms that will have to be adjusted.

The error seems to have happened because the national rail operator RFF gave the wrong dimensions to train company SNCF. Apparently they measured platforms built less than 30 years ago, overlooking the fact that many of France's regional platforms were built more than 50 years ago when trains were just a wee bit slimmer. That wee bit makes the platform edges too close to the tracks in some stations which means the trains cannot get in. A spokesman for the RFF confirmed they had "discovered the problem a bit late".

Your Tax Dollars at Work Again

Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn gets mad about some of the stupid things our government spends money on and releases an annual "Wastebook" naming some of them. This year, in the latest edition, there are stories about supersonic retro-propulsion wind tunnel testing, ancient land use in the Maya Lowlands, and the latest boondoggle he's found dates back to 1950 when Congress created an agency to find that sort of research. That agency, the National Technical Information Service, was told to catalog, warehouse and make available all manner of scientific and academic papers. 

That was 64 years ago, decades before the Internet was even invented. So what's an easy way to find those papers now? Well, at least one of the reports in Senator Coburn's book deals with one about hazardous waste. NTIS sells it on their website: $25 for an electronic file, $73 for a paper copy. Wow, what a deal! The only problem is that you can turn your computer on and go to the EPA website and download the same exact report for free. And that, says the Government Accountability Office, is the problem. A GAO audit found that 74 percent of the more recent NTIS reports it sampled were available from other sources — and 95 percent of those reports were free on the Internet. Valerie Melvin is the audit's author. "We could find a GAO report that was selling for maybe 30-some dollars, that is on our website for free. So we questioned the viability and appropriateness of that fee-based model that they were using." For that problem, Coburn has this solution: "Let me Google that for you."

So, that's the official title of Coburn's new bill he has just introduced — The Let Me Google That For You Act of 2014. It has a pretty simply purpose: To abolish the NTIS. The agency is headquartered across the Potomac River from Washington, in an Alexandria, Va., office park near the Capital Beltway. Judith Russell is the dean of libraries at the University of Florida in Gainesville and an NTIS advisory board member. She says the agency continues to provide value to researchers by creating a standardized catalog for all its reports, for example. She says it has to charge for documents because of the law that requires it to be self-sustaining. "I think they do have a valid and important mission," she says, "but a clumsy piece of governing legislation." Coburn counters that the report-selling business still loses money, and what revenue it does have comes largely from other federal agencies, which are using taxpayer money. As might be expected, his bill is pretty popular, but even popular bills don't get through Congress very often these days. 

The clock may run out on the Let Me Google That For You Act of 2014. Even if that happens, and even with Coburn retiring early next year, there's probably still a good chance of a Let Me Google That For You Act of 2015. Great name, eh?

Robbery Suspect Tracked by GPS in Pill Bottle

Welcome to the 21st Century. The police are now giving pharmacies dummy bottles of OxyContin, a seriously addictive pain reliever, that are instead filled with GPS tracking devices. Seems that a lot of thieves love to break into pharmacies, grab the stuff and then sell it on the black market.  The maker of the drug, Purdue Pharma, decided that it would be a good idea to distribute these dummy bottles to police departments around the country and the police are just tickled to death.

The fake bottles don't just contain a GPS tracking gizmo. The bottles are weighted and rattle when shaken, so a thief does not initially realize they do not contain pills. Each of the decoy bottles sits atop a special base, and when the bottle is lifted from the base, the GPS device is turned on and begins to emit a tracking signal. 

Nationwide, according to Purdue spokesman, James W. Heins, the decoy bottles have “assisted in the arrest of 111 pharmacy robbery suspects across the country, some of whom have been implicated in multiple pharmacy robberies.” He added that the bottle-tracking program had been used in 33 states so far.

Last Friday at about 1:30 p.m., a HealthSource drugstore in New York City was robbed and one of the bottles the thief took was one of the decoy bottles with a GPS tracker inside. It didn't take police long to catch up with  the suspect, Scott Kato, 45, of Mount Vernon, N.Y., who was believed to have also robbed pharmacies in New York City on at least four other occasions since 2011. Kato and the GPS tracker were confronted a few hours later as his 2007 Jeep was stuck in traffic on a service road at East 96th Street. As officers closed in, Kato reportedly pointed a handgun in the direction of at least one of the officers; one or more of the officers opened fire, and he was killed. The episode is the first known case in New York City in which a decoy bottle helped the police identify a suspect after a pharmacy robbery.

Vietnam Veteran Told He's Not American

When Mario Hernandez was 9 years old he came to America with his mother as a Cuban refugee. At that time, Cubans were granted amnesty and were given Social Security numbers. They were not, however, granted U.S. citizenship. Refugees could apply for residency after a year in the U.S., and Hernandez thought his mom did that, but apparently she never got around to filing the necessary paperwork.

Hernandez joined the US Army and served in Vietnam, then worked for the Department of Justice's Bureau of Prisons for 22 years. He got married, had children, and always thought he was a U.S. citizen, voting in every election since Jimmy Carter with never a problem. It was only last fall when he sought a passport to take a cruise with his wife that he discovered the authorities did not list him as a citizen or a permanent resident. Suddenly, he was in limbo and under investigation by the U.S. government.

"I served this country," Hernandez said. "I've always tried to prove I'm a good American citizen. I have always taught my children and grandchildren we need to be good stewards of this country. My parents came for freedom. We owe a lot to this country."

U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services Spokesman Christopher Bentley said Thursday his agency is reviewing the case and will meet with Hernandez and his attorney, Elizabeth Ricci. Ricci said a meeting was scheduled for next week. "When an error is discovered, either through the appeals process or by other means, we work diligently to review the case and take steps to correct the error and prevent similar issues from occurring in the future," he said in a statement.

Ricci said Hernandez's years of service in the military and his work guarding criminals, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, should be rewarded not punished. In recent months, however, she said officials have been asking detailed questions about why Hernandez voted, suggesting they might be interested in filing charges related to voter fraud.

Immigration Services told Hernandez not only is he not a citizen, but he's not even a legal resident. Hernandez and his lawyer argue that Hernandez should have been granted citizenship upon his service in Vietnam. According to the Department of Homeland Security, special provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, such as military service under "periods of hostility," are grounds for immediate citizenship. Plus, employment with the Bureau of Prisons requires citizenship and recurring background checks, yet Hernandez was never told of any issues when he started working for them over two decades ago.

Ricci says Immigration Services is trying to protect itself. "I think they are gravely embarrassed ... and are trying to shift the burden on him now to make him look like a criminal." Now, the veteran is in a grey area. He could even face jail time because of his participation in past elections as a non-citizen.

Hernandez's wife has started a petition to the Secretary of Homeland Security, and so far the page has reached over 80,000 signatures. His wife writes that Hernandez's recent naturalization application was denied. She says he was told to first receive residency through the Cuban Adjustment Act and then try to obtain citizenship again in five years, but they don't want to wait that long. In the meantime, Hernandez plans to fight for his future in the country he loves.

You can join Mrs. Hernandez's petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/jeh-johnson-naturalize-vietnam-era-veteran-mario-hernandez

China Builds Prototype 1,800 mph Train

Scientists at Southwest Jiaotong University in China have built a prototype testing platform for a near-vacuum high-speed maglev train that is capable of reaching speeds up to 2,900 km/h or about 1,800 mph, at least in theory. Currently, the fastest commercially operated maglev reaches just 431 km/h and even the world record is just 581 km/hr. 

According to project lead Dr. Deng Zigang, this huge increase in speed is achieved because they ran the train inside a tunnel and sucked most of the air out of it, creating a near vacuum. According to Dr. Zigang, “If the running speed exceeds 400 kilometers (250 miles) per hour, more than 83 percent of traction energy will wastefully dissipate in air resistance,” he says. Additionally, overcoming that air resistance is loud, making it uncomfortable for passengers.

In his team’s tunnel, they've brought the air pressure to 10 times lower than atmospheric pressure at sea level, drastically reducing the amount of energy needed to overcome air resistance. Pretty much just like the air that planes go through at 40,000 feet or so. 

Currently, the high speed is limited by the size of the testing platform, but with longer straightaways, Deng thinks 2,900 km/h, or nearly three times the speed of a commercial aircraft, could be achieved.

A train like that could take you from, say, New York to Los Angeles in about an hour-and-a-half. You probably wouldn't get much of a decent view of the passing scenery though.

Wonder Cat to Throw Out Game's First Pitch

I'm sure you've seen the story from California about a cat saving a young boy from a vicious dog attack - the story from Bakersfield is about how innocent little 4-year-old Jeremy Triantafilo was riding his bike around in his parents' driveway the other day when a dog sneaked up and grabbed him. The dog wrestles with the boy's leg for just a few moments until Tara, the Triantafilo's HERO CAT, comes flying in ... knocking the dog off the boy before chasing the canine away. Well, the boy's parents say he needed a few stitches after the attack but overall, he's doing fine.

Now that Tara, and her family are famous Internet stars, she's now accepted the honor to toss out the first pitch at the Bakersfield Blaze baseball game on May 20. The team, which is the Class A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds, contacted the boy's family about the possibility of her taking the mound alongside Jeremy. They said yes and the whole family, Tara included, will take the mound for the ceremonial first pitch when the Blaze take on the Lancaster JetHawks.

As an added incentive to get animal lovers to attend, half price tickets are available to any fan that brings unused animal toys or unopened animal food to the game. The food and toys will be given to a local animal charity or shelter. It's unclear exactly how Tara will get the ball to home plate.

Your CD Collection is Dying a Slow Death

Got any CD's that will still play? Better check them, now. Back in the early '90s when the first CD-R disc was introduced manufacturers said the media had a data life in excess of 40 years. They lied. In the late 90's when the first DVDR discs appeared on the scene producers proclaimed a data life of at least 100 years. They lied too. Throughout that time and even today the press will "discover" that the media is susceptible to CD or DVD rot that will eat your information - audio, video or data - in as little as two years after it is written.

All this is in the news today because there's a story going around about the lead scientist and chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress, Ms. Fenella France, is trying to figure out how CD's age so that we can better understand how to save them. But it's a tricky business, in large part because manufacturers have changed their processes over the years and even CD's made by the same company in the same year and wrapped in identical packaging might have totally different lifespans. 'We're trying to predict, in terms of collections, which of the types of CD's are the discs most at risk,' says France. 'The problem is, different manufacturers have different formulations so it's quite complex in trying to figure out what exactly is happening because they've changed the formulation along the way and it's proprietary information.' 

There are all kinds of forces that accelerate CD aging in real time. Eventually, many discs show signs of edge rot, which happens as oxygen seeps through a disc's layers. Some CD's begin a deterioration process called bronzing, which is corrosion that worsens with exposure to various pollutants. The lasers in devices used to burn or even play a CD can also affect its longevity. 'The ubiquity of a once dominant media is again receding. Like most of the technology we leave behind, CD's are are being forgotten slowly,' concludes France. 'We stop using old formats little by little. They stop working. We stop replacing them. And, before long, they're gone.'"

What to do with your treasured collection? The CD's you have that were professionally manufactured are probably OK, at least right now, but you should make digital copies and store them. The best place? In the cloud. There are multiple sites that keep your precious music and data safe for free or a small fee. But if you've got CD's or DVDs that were written on your computer, recordable CD's, get to work copying them now before they stop playing completely, because they're more susceptible to damage.

What to do with the old CD's or DVDs after you've copied everything? You can donate CD's to be tested for aging characteristics by emailing the Center for the Library's Analytical Science Samples.
http://www.loc.gov/preservation/scientists/projects/class.html.

Solar Roads Could Power the World

Here's a cool idea. What if somebody figured out a way to put photocells into highways so that when something isn't running over them, they would generate electricity? Well, somebody did exactly that. There's an electrical engineer by the name of Scott Brusaw, who, for the better part of the last decade, has been working on just such a project at his lab in northwestern Idaho. His idea is to cover all the roadways and parking lots in the US with photovoltaic panels to harvest the power of the sun. And he's got some help, because the idea caught the eye of the US Federal Highway Administration and they've given him and his wife, Julie, some funding to develop the idea called Solar Roadways.

Since they came up the idea some eight years ago, Scott and Julie have been able to create some really cool interlocking tempered glass hexagonal panels, which have been tested as part of a highway for impact, load and traction. Embedded in these panels are photovoltaic panels that harvest the power of the sun, making use of the wide expanses of road and parking lots, many of which can sit empty for long periods of time. These panels, the Brusaws say, can be hooked up to homes and businesses via driveways and parking lots. "A nationwide system could produce more clean renewable energy than a country uses as a whole," Scott writes. "They have many other features as well, including: heating elements to stay snow/ice free, LEDs to make road lines and signage, and attached Cable Corridor to store and treat stormwater and provide a 'home' for power and data cables."

This may sound like an unrealistically lofty goal, but the idea is being taken seriously. It has won awards and nominations from GE, the World Technology Award, Google and the IEEE Ace Awards, and Brusaw has spoken at TEDx, NASA, and Google's Solve for X. In fact, the project is about to enter Phase II testing, and is seeking funding on Indiegogo to produce enough solar panels to build a prototype parking lot -- following which the Brusaws plan to sell the product to individuals before taking it to the roads.

"We need to make a few tweaks to our product and streamline our manufacturing process so that we can make our panels available to the public as quickly as possible," Brusaw writes."With your help, we can move into manufacturing quickly and begin installing sidewalks, parking lots, driveways, playgrounds, patios, etc., and then when we feel we are ready, we'll begin to install roads and highways."

For more information about the project, go to the Solar Roadways campaign page of Indiegogo for more information and to pledge your support.

Columbus’s Santa Maria Found Off Haiti

This is going to be one of the most significant underwater discoveries in history, they're pretty much 100% sure that after more than five centuries, Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria, has been discovered lying at the bottom of the sea off the north coast of Haiti. “All the geographical, underwater topography and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that this wreck is Columbus’ famous flagship, the Santa Maria,” says Barry Clifford, the leader of a recent reconnaissance expedition to the site, one of America’s top underwater archaeological investigators.

So far, Cifford’s team has carried out purely non-invasive survey work at the site – measuring and photographing it. Tentatively identifying the wreck as the Santa Maria has been made possible by quite separate discoveries made by other archaeologists in 2003 suggesting the probable location of Columbus’ fort relatively nearby. Armed with this new information about the location of the fort, Clifford was able to use data in Columbus’ personal diary to work out where the wreck should be. An expedition, mounted by his team a decade ago, had already found and photographed the wreck – but had not, at that stage, realized its probable identity. 

The Santa Maria was built in the second half of the 15 century in northern Spain’s Basque Country. In 1492, Columbus hired the ship and sailed in it from southern Spain’s Atlantic coast via the Canary Islands in search of a new western route to Asia. After 37 days, Columbus reached the Bahamas – but, just over ten weeks later, his flagship, the Santa Maria, with Columbus on board, drifted at night onto a reef off the northern coast of Haiti and had to be abandoned. Then, in a native village nearby, Columbus began building his first fort – and,  a week later, leaving many of his men behind in the fort, he used  his two remaining vessels to sail back to Spain in order to report his discovery of what he perceived as a new westerly route to Asia  to his royal patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.

The investigation into the wreck is being supported by the American TV network, the History channel, which has secured the exclusive rights to produce a major television program on the subject. Stay tuned.

Pregnancy Tied to Car Crash Risk

Canadian researchers have determined that pregnant women face a much higher risk of being in a serious car crash. This is not the sort of stuff they taught you when you were in Driver's Ed at 16. It seems they studied about half a million women who gave birth between 2006 and 2011 and found they were 42 percent more likely to be in a traffic accident when they were expecting. 

Donald Redelmeier, a senior scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto and lead author of the study, says he became concerned about driving safety after talking to pregnant patients. “They often ask me about flying on planes, sitting in hot tubs and scuba diving, but never have I been asked about traffic accidents, despite the possible threat.” Redelmeier said he decided to investigate the risk when he realized no one had before. “Because pregnancy isn’t an illness and road crash isn’t a medical disease, it simply wasn’t in any of the textbooks,” he said.

The study found that nearly one out of fifty women will be involved in a car crash while pregnant – a figure on par with the risk of preeclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure during pregnancy. It is not entirely clear why pregnant women are at increased risk, but the study suggests that a mix of the stress and other pregnancy symptoms like nausea, fatigue, back pain and sleeplessness might make it harder to concentrate on the road.

While the results of this study are interesting, it’s important not to stigmatize pregnant women based on these findings. In other words: being pregnant while driving is a far cry from driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or even texting at the wheel. What should pregnant women understand from the findings? Redelmeier’s advice is to get back to the basics of road safety, “the kind of stuff they taught you in Driver's Education: Full stop at red lights, signal turns, avoid driving when feeling tired, hanging up cellular phones and minimizing distractions." According to Redelmeier, “The everyday sloppiness you can get away with, you may not be able to when you’re off-balance during pregnancy,” he said.

Antarctica Ice Sheet Melting - “Nothing to stop it now"

Two groups of scientists reported Monday that seas across the earth will rise at least 10 feet over the next century or so mostly because of global warming. The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, appears now to be inevitable.

The scientists say that the rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis. “This is really happening,” said Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA’s programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research. “There’s nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow.” 

Two papers scheduled for publication this week, in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters, attempt to make sense of an accelerated flow of glaciers seen in parts of West Antarctica in recent decades. Both papers conclude that warm water upwelling from the ocean depths has most likely triggered an inherent instability that makes the West Antarctic ice sheet vulnerable to a slow-motion collapse. And one paper concludes that factors some scientists had hoped might counteract such a collapse will not do so.

The new finding appears to be the fulfillment of a prediction made in 1978 by eminent glaciologist John H. Mercer of the Ohio State University. He outlined the uniquely vulnerable nature of the West Antarctic ice sheet and warned that the rapid human release of greenhouse gases posed “a threat of disaster.” He was assailed at the time, but in recent years scientists have been watching with growing concern as events have unfolded in much the way Dr. Mercer predicted. (He died in 1987.)

Most scientists in the field see a connection between the stronger winds and human-caused global warming, but they say other factors are likely at work, too. Natural variability of climate may be one of them. Another may be the ozone hole over Antarctica, caused by an entirely different environmental problem, the human release of ozone-destroying gases.

Whatever the mix of causes, they appear to have triggered a retreat of the ice sheet that can no longer be stopped, even if the factors drawing in the warmer water were to reverse suddenly, the scientists said. At this point, a decrease in the melt rate back to earlier levels would be “too little, too late to stabilize the ice sheet,” said Ian Joaquin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington and lead author of the new paper in Science. “There’s no stabilization mechanism.”

Richard B. Alley, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the new research but has studied the polar ice sheets for decades, said he found the new papers compelling. Though he has long feared the possibility of ice-sheet collapse, when he learned of the new findings, “it shook me a little bit,” Dr. Alley said. He added that while a large rise of the sea may now be inevitable from West Antarctica, continued release of greenhouse gases will almost certainly make the situation worse. The heat-trapping gases could destabilize other parts of Antarctica as well as the Greenland ice sheet, causing enough sea-level rise that many of the world’s coastal cities will eventually have to be abandoned.

Dracula's Castle For Sale

Dracula's Castle, or at least the one that Bram Stoker based his novel, Dracula, on, is for sale! Yes, for the right price, you can own this lovely and picturesque practically new - well, that's a lie, it was constructed between 1377 and 1388 - dream home just for you and your loved ones on the Southeastern border of Transylvania and continue to defend it from from the Cumans and the Pechenegs who will undoubtedly come to scale the walls in search of Dracula himself.

Today the castle is known as "Bram's Castle" from the fact that it so closely matches the description of the castle in Stoker's novel. Even though he actually never visited it, they say that he read about it and based the castle in his novel on what he had read about the place. 

If you want to own the castle, it's going to take a bite out of your bank account. While they aren't exactly naming a price, the 57-room manor on 22 acres has been on the market several times in recent years, with investors at one point hoping to get $135 million.

On the other hand, the castle gets 560,000 paying tourists a year so buying it won't necessarily bleed you dry. And you'll have a lot of company to help you defend it from the raging Cumans and the Pechenegs. As a matter of fact, with all those folks coming to see it, they say it already makes a pretty good profit and has the potential to make a lot more.

China Might Build Undersea Train to America

China is planning to build a train line that would, in theory, connect Beijing to the United States. According to a report in the Beijing Times, citing an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese officials are considering a route that would start in the country's northeast, thread through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 125-mile long underwater tunnel into Alaska.

"Right now we're already in discussions. Russia has already been thinking about this for many years," says Wang Mengshu, the engineer cited in the article. The proposed "China-Russia-Canada-America" line would be some 8,000 miles long, 1,800 miles longer than the Trans-Siberian railroad. The tunnel that the Chinese would help bore beneath the icy seas would be four times the length of what traverses the English Channel.

That's reason enough to be skeptical of the project, of which there are few details beyond what was attributed to the one official cited by the state-run Beijing Times. Meanwhile, a report in the state-run China Daily insists the country does have the technology and means to complete a construction project of this scale, including another tunnel that would link the Chinese province of Fujian with nearby Taiwan.

In the past half decade or so, China has embarked on an astonishing rail construction spree, laying down tens of thousands of miles tracks and launching myriad high-speed lines. It has signaled its intent to build a "New Silk Road" -- a heavy-duty freight network through Central Asia that would connect with Europe via rail rather than the old caravans that once bridged West and East.

While some of its neighbors watch China's rise warily, the main plank of Beijing's soft power pitch has always been its stated desire to improve economic ties and trade with virtually everyone. To that end, Beijing has assiduously resurrected the narrative of the ancient Silk Road as well as given prime billing to the tales of China's famed Ming dynasty treasure fleets, which sailed all across the Indian Ocean. Seen in such grand historic perspective, a tunnel to Alaska doesn't seem too far-fetched.

Florida Woman Demolishes Neighbors' Home

There once was an old lady in Florida who didn't like her next door neighbors, so while they were away, she cooked up the bright idea to have their home destroyed. I guess she didn't think they would notice it gone when they returned?

According to the police, Ana Maria Moreta Folch who lives in St. Augustine, Florida, called a heavy equipment operator and said that she owned the trailer next door to her home and wanted it and its septic tank destroyed. St. Johns County Sheriff's deputies were called when the trailer's real owner arrived Monday and found the demolition underway.

The arrest report says Ms. Folch wanted the trailer bulldozed because she thought its occupants were unsavory and she suspected they had broken into her car. She admitted to police that she did not own the property and allegedly said she did the neighborhood a favor by removing the mobile home.

Thomas Masters, the person who was hired to destroy the home, told authorities that Ms. Folch provided him with a key to the property and told him to demolish the mobile home and haul it away.

Ms. Folch was charged with criminal mischief, a third-degree felony. She was released Wednesday on $10,000 bail. Jail records did not show whether she had an attorney.

Pentagon Approves $20 Billion Presidential Choppers

Everett Dirksen was an American politician back in the middle of the 20th Century and he had quite a wit, as evidenced by his quip about a spending bill one time when he said, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about a whole lot of money." 

One might be reminded of that when reading about the Obama administration's plan to spend $20 billion on replacing the president's private fleet of helicopters. The new contract will buy 23 SIkorsky helicopters at an estimated cost of $400 million each, which is about the same cost as the Air Force One 747 jet. That $20 billion includes some $3 billion spent between 2005 and 2009 on a program that was later canceled, so it's not really as expensive as it might seem. Remember, a billion here, a billion there .... And why so many? Well, one of the bright ideas is that they need 23 choppers so there can be a minimum of two decoys – and as many as five – that can fly to Andrews Air Force Base whenever the president hops from the White House to a waiting Air Force One.

Just one company bid on the project, Sikorsky in Connecticut, raising questions about whether the Navy got a fair price. A former senior Pentagon official said that the Department of Defense tried to encourage other aircraft manufacturers to compete for the award, but none were interested. He joked that for what the military is paying, 'Marine One should be able to have a solid gold toilet for the president – except that it would add too much weight.'

The contract will cost an initial $1,244,677,064 'for the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Presidential Helicopter Replacement program.' For that price the U.S. Navy will get six test aircraft and all the necessary research & development. And the aircraft will meet exacting standards, including the capability for encrypted communications and secure videoconferencing with people on the ground. They must also have systems that can defend against missile attacks, and shielding to guard electronic components against energy waves produced by nuclear explosions.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain mocked the boondoggle helicopter upgrade project. 'Your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One,' McCain said. 'I don't think there's any more graphic demonstration of how good ideas have cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money.'

$20 Smartphones Coming Soon

ARM is a British company that licenses those tiny chips that make smartphones work so ... smartly. Prices on the chips have been creeping ever downward in the last few years, and ARM is now saying that the cost of an ultra low cost smartphone will go down to as low as $20 within the next few months. Of course, these things won't be the gee whiz devices that tech enthusiasts love, but they'll still cover most of the basics and provide a decent experience for customers in those ever-important emerging markets where the smartphone has yet to take off.

According to ARM at its Tech Day 2014 conference in Austin, Texas, these cheaper devices will cause the low- and mid-range smartphone and tablet markets to more than double over the next five years, resulting in almost 2.5 billion total mobile device shipments by 2018. And they’ll probably all use ARM chips, because along with power consumption and performance, the other corner of the mobile computing triforce is cost, and ARM scores so highly on all three metrics that it’s no surprise that it has completely dominated the mobile market.

Other players, like Intel, might be able to compete in terms of power or performance, but ARM’s strategy of licensing to any company on the planet regardless of their size appears to be the winning method. For instance, in 2011, cheap-and-cheerful Chinese ARM licensees sold around 15 million tablet chips; in 2013, that figure was 100 million. To complete the picture, four years ago the ARM tablet market didn’t even exist. Technology marches on. Seems there's a good chance that in the not-so-distant future, everyone on Earth is going to be connected by smartphone.

First 4-Minute Mile Was in 1770

Most people familiar with the sport of running remember that the first ever recorded sub-four-minute mile was accomplished by Roger Bannister on May 6, 1954. But somebody started looking things up and discovered that back in the 18th Century a few runners were reported to have got there first.

It was on May 9, 1770 when James Parrott, a street fruit & vegetable seller in London, was bet the grand total of 15 guineas (about $200 today) to run a mile in under four and a half minutes. He took the bet since he probably only earned about 50 guineas a year at the time selling fruits and vegetables.

With money on the line, it's likely that umpires on both sides carefully checked the watches, locked them in a box to prevent tampering, and placed them in a horse-drawn carriage that would make sure they reached the finish line ahead of the runner.

After the signal was given, Parrott was away, turning briefly up the narrow confines of Rotten Row before emerging onto the flat, wide open space of Old Street. Legs pumping, heart pounding, he ran its length almost all the way to the finish, a mile away at the gates of Shoreditch Church. The result was reported in the Sporting Magazine of 1794: "1770 May 9th, James Parrott, a coster-monger, ran the length of Old St, viz. from the Charterhouse- wall in Goswell Street, to Shoreditch Church gates, (which is a measured mile) in four minutes." That is the first known report of anyone running a four-minute mile.

Some 244 years later, Peter Radford of the BBC retraced Parrott's steps and reported that estate agents and kebab shops now line the route and a massive roundabout has been added, but St Leonard's Shoreditch still looks much as it would have back then. Radford says, "All of the new buildings are clustered around the road which is exactly the same as it was then, with the same bends and twists and turns and width."

Radford is a retired professor of sports science, and also bronze medalist in the 100m and 4 x100m sprints at the 1960 Rome Olympics. He has a passion for runners from the past, and it's largely thanks to him that we know of the achievements of James Parrott and others like him. He's collected more than 600 records of running races from the 18th and 19th Centuries, revealing a rich culture of running and athletic achievement. "Women did it, men did it, young men did it, old men did it, fat men did it," Radford says. "Sometimes for a wager someone would say, 'I can run two miles in XYZ time while eating a chicken'."

A sub-four-minute mile was also recorded by Sporting Magazine in 1796. The article reads, "A young man called Weller, one of three brothers, undertook for a wager of three guineas to run one mile on the Banbury road in four minutes, which he performed two seconds within the time." In other words, a mile in three minutes, fifty eight seconds.

From a modern perspective, it's natural to assume that the further back in time we look, the slower people were running. But Radford argues that at the time of Parrott's run, agricultural chains would have been able to measure the distance to within a few inches. And, by the late 18th Century, the best watches were extremely accurate. Even a watch that lost five seconds a day could still time a mile to within a second. But crucially, the culture of wagers gave everyone a strong financial incentive to get it right.

Pilot Douses Fire with Garden Hose After Crash

Brian Veatch works for the South Metro Fire and Rescue District in Colorado but on weekends he pilots a banner airplane for an insurance company. The other day he took off on a job to fly over the crowd at a Colorado Rockies game, but as soon as he left the airfield he reported he was having trouble gaining altitude. He ditched his banner, but that didn't help and he continued to have difficulty climbing. He turned the plane around and headed back to the airport but the engine stopped completely and he crashed into the home of Matthew Richardson and his fiancée. Luckily, they were at work and not at home at the time. Somehow Veatch only had minor injuries from the crash, so he climbed out of the cockpit and since the plane was on fire, he walked over to the side of the house, picked up a garden hose and tried to extinguish the fire before burning fuel forced him away.

Neighbor Shanna Rudd told CNN that she and her husband knew something was wrong because the plane was flying so low. "I saw it go down and then the smoke afterwards," a neighbor said. "It was so scary. I've never seen anything like that before." The plane was totally destroyed. The tail and a shattered wing were sticking out from the roof and wall of what was left of the home in Northglenn, 10 miles north of Denver. 

In a strange twist of fate, Veatch didn't notice that the house he crashed into was actually the house he used to live in a decade earlier. He was probably a little confused since he crashed upside down and was probably a little disoriented. So far the location of Monday's crash looks like a coincidence.

1 In 5 Would Have Sex With A Robot: Poll

The Daily Beast reports that one in five people in the United Kingdom would have sex with a robot, given the chance. Ah, those English! More than 2,000 responded to the poll at Middlesex University. The survey quizzed people on their views about the future of technology and robots. Many expressed fear that they could end up losing their job to a robot, and as many as a third of respondents said that they thought robots might ultimately “spell the end of the human race”. 

The question about "sexbots" generated a particularly unexpected response. Seventeen percent of people said they would consider sleeping with a robot, while 29 per cent said they had no problem with machines being used in this way. 41 per cent of respondents said that they found the idea uncomfortable, and 14 per cent said that in their view robots should not be used for sex.

Martin Smith, Professor of Robotics at the University of Middlesex, who oversaw the survey, said that he doesn't believe robots will have a negative impact on employment. “Though many fear their jobs will be taken over by machines, it is more likely that robots will be used as assistants,” Smith said. “The future workforce could have the benefit of avoiding hazardous and repetitive tasks rather than suffer mass redundancies”. · 

"It seems to have got to the stage where people would rather have sex with something that knows exactly what it’s doing, where we know exactly how it will react, and how long it will take, and how good it will be," said one of the participants. "But this obliterates the excitement of the uncertainty of being with a living person and the risk of it all going wrong, which is big part of having sex with someone in the first place. 

Not only did plenty of people say they'd go all nuts and bolts on a bot, 46 percent of people surveyed also said they wouldn't judge those who want to.

90-Year-Old Vet Gets Prison Term for Trafficking

A World War II veteran from Detroit has been sentenced to three years in federal prison on his 90th birthday for working as a "mule" for a Mexican drug cartel. Leo Sharp was convicted of hauling 104 bricks of cocaine (over 200 pounds) on a highway near Chelsea, Mich., when he was pulled over in 2011 for an illegal lane change. According to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit, he had been running cocaine and other drugs as early as 2009 ( when he was just 86). He also hauled duffle bags stuffed with cash back to the southwest border of the United States for the criminal organization that was part of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, prosecutors said. 

Last week he was ordered to pay a half-million-dollar fine, and apparently the judge in the case decided to show some leniency because of his age. However, U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds said she couldn't justify not putting Sharp behind bars considering the nature of his crime. "This is not a victimless crime," Edmunds said. "This is a very serious offense." Edmunds gave Sharp three years in jail, plus an additional three years of supervised release. Before he was sentenced, Sharp pleaded for mercy, and indicated that he might take his own life. “I’m really heartbroken I did what I did. But it’s done,” Sharp said. “I won’t live in prison, I’m just going to end my life if I end up there.” Afterward, Sharp turned to prosecutors and called the three-year prison term a "death sentence."

Sharp received numerous decorations for valor for his service with the Army's 88th Infantry during its nearly year-long march through Italy to Austria in 1944 and 1945, military records show. “Mr. Sharp is part of a great generation…before we were even born, he was on top of mountains fighting Nazis,” defense attorney Darryl Goldberg, according to the Free Press. “That’s not how we honor our heroes whether they’ve fallen from grace or not.” The defense had asked for supervised release or home confinement, saying Sharp suffers from dementia and other health conditions and needs 24-hour monitoring. But Prosecutors argued that Sharp had managed to avoid detection for a decade in part because of his age and was now trying to use his age to shield himself from punishment. Edmunds said the effort to blame Sharp's actions on age and dementia was "an insult to all the people who struggle with dementia and don't become involved in illegal activity."