Monday 2 November 2009

Make it snow; Boston witch hunt; Arrested for washing his hands; Ejecto-Numpty; and Big Balls





Bribble factor 8 during the dark thing, if you are unsure of “Bribble” you can catch up Here and if you want to know what I did yesterday you can find out Here.

I see that David Wilshire, the disgraced Tory MP is comparing the poor old MPs caught with their bank balances in the till to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Fine, lets up the penalties for stealing from the public by elected officials to being starved, gassing and medical experimentation, oh no I forgot, it would be MPs that would have to pass the law.

Wilshire, just bugger off and take all your “it was in the rules” mates with you.

And;

I don’t tend to do a lot of sports on this or any other blog but I feel that a mention is due for the Cycling team at the Track World Cup in Manchester.

British cyclists have racked up 10 gold medals over the three days of the competition in Manchester.

Team GB: Lizzie Armitstead, Steven Burke, Ed Clancy, Matt Crampton, David Daniell, Wendy Houvenaghel, Rebecca James, Jason Kenny, Chris Newton, Joanna Rowsell, Ben Swift, Andy Tennant, Geraint Thomas, Jess Varnish

Good one guys.



First up:





Seedy Snow


The Chinese government covered Beijing in snow on Sunday after meteorologists seeded clouds to bring winter weather to the capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought.

The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from Sunday morning and kept falling for half the day, helped by temperatures as low as minus 2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit) and strong winds from the north, Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides falling in the north-eastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the northern province of Hebei, the eastern port city of Tianjin also got its first snow of the autumn, the report said.

"We won’t miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought," the report quoted Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, as saying.

Chinese meteorologists have for years sought to make rain by injecting special chemicals into clouds.

Although the technique often gets results, a drought in the north of the country has continued for over a decade.

Besides the snow, which the Beijing Evening News said was the earliest to hit the capital in 10 years, the cold weather and strong winds also delayed air travel from Beijing's Capital Airport, while interrupting passenger shipping services off the coast of Shandong province in the east, Xinhua said.

Can you seed the clouds to make them go away-Pleeease!


From the home of the tea party: - Lighted cigarettes are a thing of the past at Pirone Park in Ayer.

Jason Mayo watched as a father pushed his child on a swing, cigarette clenched between his teeth. On every upswing, the child got a face full of exhaled smoke.

“We can’t tell people how to parent,’’ said Mayo, a member of the Ayer parks and recreation committee, which has banned smoking in the town’s recreation areas. “But all the other kids around him were inhaling that cigarette too.’’

As antismoking sentiment sweeps across the country, nonsmokers are taking back bars, restaurants, and workplaces, snuffing smoking out of its indoor havens. And now some of them are turning their sights on the great outdoors.

Holliston and Upton have enacted similar outdoor smoking bans. And in another example of the widespread public crackdown on smoking, Needham has outlawed the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies and Newton and Framingham are trying to do the same.

Ayer’s parks and recreation committee implemented its outdoor ban in August, and the panel may also pursue a bylaw at the spring Town Meeting. In a more sweeping stroke, the town’s Board of Health is pursuing a regulation that would apply the prohibition to all town-owned property and land and impose a $100 fine on offenders. The board has set a public hearing on the subject for January.

The outdoor smoking ban in Ayer, a town of about 3,000, covers public recreation areas, including Sandy Pond Beach and Pirone Park. During the past five years roughly 30
Communities have enacted such bans, according to Joan Hamlett, Ayer’s tobacco agent and director of the North Central-Franklin County Tobacco Control Alliance. Sharon was the first to do so in 1995.

Fags-R.I.P



Scott Wright was fixing the emergency brake on an old Cadillac in a parking lot near Willow Glen last year when the San Jose police rolled up. Within minutes, he had been shot with a Taser and beaten with batons, breaking his arm.

The cause of the trouble? Wright reached into his van to wash his greasy hands.

Police said they feared he was going for a weapon, but no weapon was found. Wright was charged with resisting arrest, but the district attorney dismissed the case before it got to trial.

What happened to Wright is no isolated event. Hundreds of times a year interactions between San Jose police and residents where no serious crime has occurred escalate into violence.

Many times the reason for the encounter is as innocuous as jaywalking, missing bike head lamps, or failing to signal a turn. But often, as the incidents develop, police determine the suspect is uncooperative and potentially violent and strike the first blow.

While many of those incidents raise questions about whether the police response was excessive, the department almost always dismisses such complaints about its behaviour and limits public scrutiny of the cases, moves that tend to heighten distrust of the department, particularly in minority communities.

Police officials say their officers use force only when they must, to protect themselves and others in complex situations that can quickly turn violent. They say that their internal reviews establish that San Jose police act with restraint, and cite the low number of citizen complaints about excessive force. And police captain Gary Kirby told a City Council committee this year that after reviewing more than 100 resisting arrest cases from the past two years, he came to a clear conclusion: There is no problem.

Tell that to the guy who was tasered and had his arm broken.


A civilian passenger in an air force display plane accidentally activated the ejector seat while reaching for something to steady himself during a mid-air manoeuvre.

The novice flier instantly shot through the jet's Perspex canopy and was blasted 100 metres into the sky by the rocket-powered emergency chair.

Experts said the man was lucky to escape unharmed following the bizarre incident, which happened on Wednesday in South Africa.

It is thought he activated the ejector seat after lurching forward during an aerobatic manoeuvre and accidentally pulling on the black and yellow emergency handle between his legs.

The lever is fitted as standard in the Pilatus PC-7 Mk II jets to allow pilots and their passengers to eject from the aircraft in the event of an emergency.

As soon as it was activated, the ejection sequence activated two rockets attached to the back of his chair.

The man, who has not been named, later floated back down to Earth on a parachute which opened automatically.

South African Airforce bosses scrambled a helicopter to pick up the passenger after the blunder near Langebaanweg airfield, 80 miles north of Cape Town.

The incident happened shortly after he took off for a joyride with an experienced pilot from South Africa's Silver Falcons air display team.

Maybe he was trying to grab hold of his veggies in self preservation.



And finally:

From over the whatsit: - CONCORD, N.H. - The bouncing mega-meatball record has landed in the East Coast.

Matthew Mitnitsky, owner of Nonni's Italian Eatery in Concord, said Sunday that a 222.5-pound (101-kilogram) meatball was authenticated as the world's largest after being weighed by state weights and measures officials.

A Guinness Book of World Records official confirmed the big meatball as a record breaker and presented Mitnitsky with a plaque.

The old record of 198.6 pounds (90 kilograms) was set just over a month ago after Los Angeles-based talk show host Jimmy Kimmel vowed to beat a record set in Mexico. That record - 109 pounds (50 kilograms) - was set in August.

Mitnitsky said he got involved "to bring the meatball back to the East Coast because that's where it originated."

5 comments:

James Higham said...

The Snows of Old Peking

Blockbuster movie coming up.

James Higham said...

Angus, what would be really nice is a widget, maybe top left, with your last five post links, so that any comments we might have made can be instantly gone back to to see if there are additions.

I know you run a comments widget a long way down on the right but it's that need for instant access which is the thing.

Angus Dei said...

Your wish is my command:)

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

We could do with some snow seeds here in the summer! Glad to hear about the outdoor smoking ban. I wonder how much the reluctant flier will be able to sue for?

CherryPie said...

It was glorious summer weather in London on Saturday. I see no snow!