Well once again E TN has serious story that is made funny since no one was hurt, and that is only made funnier by the notions of many throughout the nation. The story is from Sevier Co TN about the accidental discharge of a weapon by a on duty police officer at a closed convience store when two officers (both on duty and in the close the store with permission of the owner) compared weight of their .40 caliber hand guns. Full Knoxville News Sentinel story here The officer is on leave due to the incident.

Summary – A Sevier County Sheriff’s Department officer was recently suspended after his service weapon discharged inside a convenience store and the round lodged itself into a pack of frozen bologna.

First of all, it is never funny to play with guns, and handling a gun should always be done seriously. The police if anyone should know that. The fortunate thing is here is that no one was hurt. The funny thing is that the discharged round lodged in frozen log of Bologna within the convenience store. Prior to becoming lodged in the meat log, the round went though a monitor and a cooler. The following line from the story sums it up –

“(the officers involved)…were required to pay restitution — about $120 — to the owners to replace the computer screen.The owners did not request reimbursement for the cooler or lunchmeat”

The owner are not requesting reimbursement for the luncheon meat…well thank goodness they have their priorities right…..LOL

Bnet has a very interesting story about 10 careers which pay well, but which do NOT benefit society. I agree with most of them, with cavets like the author includes – Chriropractors do give some benefit, some self help books are ok, some health experts can help you, etc. I have a dream that someday #9 will not be true, but I believe it may always be. http://team-swap.com/?p=428

Gizmodo has a very interesting story up today about the sell of a “potential” home of Adolph Hitler in Argentina. The basis of the idea is that Hitler escaped Germany and lived out his days in this remote Argentinian home – leaving two daughters as his legaacy. Interesting story, though I don’t personally believe it. Nice house though, full story here

I recently came across a really cool product, a pencil made out of recycled blue jeans. They act like a standard #2 pencil, i.e. you can sharpen them, and run about .30 to .50 cents a piece. A great thing is that they actually write pretty well. One place to buy them is here, but I am sure you can find other places to buy them as well.

Porsche has a new hybird sports car, the Spyder 918, coming out (story here) . The car gets 78mpg and cost $845,000. Even with gas at $4 a gallon that is a a long payback over cars like Prius’s, Leaf’s, Volt’s, and heck even a Hummer H2 may never cost you $800,000 (assuming you pay $45K (Kelly Blue Book with low mileage) for the a 2008 H2). Makes the 10K Camry getting 30mpg look STRONG!!! LOL

Very interesting video story up at CBS news with a guy asking random people how far in relatively space (using a basketball as the earth and at tennis ball as the moon) the Moon is from the Earth. The recorded people all fail pretty badly. At the end the host shows the “correct” distance. After that, the host points out that drawings which do not show scale can have a dramatic impact on perceived knowledge. This is very true Full Video / Story here

The correct answer is about 239,000 miles and in relation between the basketball and tennis ball about 40 feet or so.

Since Bob Dylan played the Grammy’s a few days ago, I thought I would post the 2009 story about Bob Dylan being mistaken for a homeless man in New Jersey while on tour. ABC News story here

If I had been Dylan I would have responded with “No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe … It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe”.

Today, I logged into Facebook (FB) to only be offered the following -

Understand I don’t play trumpet, I don’t have anything about Trumpet’s on my facebook page, heck I am not even sure I have even said the word trumpet out loud since going to a concert where a friend’s girlfriend played trumpet in college.

If you play trumpet, great, if you love the trumpet, great, heck I like the trumpet, but wearing a shirt like that is a fast track to getting mugged or beat up. Who buy’s shirt’s like this…15 yr old band geeks… I am 40, I never as a band geek. Heck even in high school I was not geeky enough to wear something this geeky, and believe me I was (AM) geeky.

So thanks Facebook for offering myself and the rest of the world products that will utterly suck the will to live out of those that buy them due to what others will do to them once they are used. Great job.

The New York Times has a post up today about 4 nerds, a bit of funding, a dream and possibly the first serious volley against centralized social networks like Facebook. Bottomline, 4 nerds heard a talk about how centralized social networks basically are opt in spy for free services which allow volume’s of private information to be collected, shared, distributed, sold and shopped and decided to create a social network that maintains privacy over marketing and profits. The last line was combination of the central theme of the talk and my personal view. Anyway, if you are interested give >the full story a read here.

I am a student of and big fan of history, but Slate has a interesting story up about a part of US history I knew nothing about. During prohibition the US government had a program designed to taint industrial alcohol where it was lethal if consumed. This was designed to both discourage illegal drinking via the fear of death and also to make it harder for bootleggers to convert the industrial alcohol to “bathtub gin” and alike. Apparently, this program / policy lead to many people dying due to alcohol poisoning when the industrial alcohol was directly consumed or not properly “natured” via reverse chemistry. This is a very interesting story and I encourage everyone to give it a read and learn something about US history that few remember / know about today.

ABC News has a story up about 10 foods that have a high risk to give us food poisoning. The CDC routinely points to beef as the riskiest food, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) list 10 different foods which create health risks. CSPI list the following foods -

#1 Leafy Greens
#2 Eggs
#3 Tuna
#4 Oysters
#5 Potatoes
#6 Cheese
#7 Ice Cream
#8 Tomatoes
#9 Sprouts
#10 Berries

Story here, with details about why each food is risky