Archive for April, 2011

Unprotected sex makes women happier, according to the Dr. Lazar Greenfield, the once-upon-a-time incoming president of the American College of Surgeons.

Greenfield, 78,  ”shocked the medical community” by making the suggestion that  ”[semen is] a better gift … than chocolates” in a Valentine’s Day editorial.

This woman is either very happy or has recently fallen out of an airplane.

Less shockingly, he has resigned his position as editor in chief of Surgery News and won’t be getting that prestigious new gig after all.

The entire online issue of the publication in which the article appeared — the official newspaper of the American College of Surgeons — was also withdrawn.

Here’s the offending text:

It’s been known since the 1990s that heterosexual women living together synchronize their menstrual cycles because of pheromones, but when a study of lesbians showed that they do not synchronize, the researchers suspected that semen played a role. In fact, they found …

Continue reading Doctor (but not of love) resigns after saying unprotected sex makes women happier »

I’ve got a bit of advice for young men and old roosters: If you have sex, don’t crow about it.

Someone just got lucky! Or it's morning … or both?

The advice for young men is just basic good manners, but roosters who don’t keep their beaks shut are running a-fowl of a New Jersey city’s law.

The humble burg of Hopewell Township passed an ordinance Monday that limits romantic interactions among chickens in backyard farms, according to The Times of Trenton.

The measure dictates roosters can only visit hens 10 days each year, and roosters caught crowing for an extended period of time after a chicken coop conquest risks being fricasseed, or, even worse, at least a two-year barnyard sex ban on the property.

How will city officials know what the licentious livestock is crowing about — a literal roll in the hay or daybreak?

Good question, but it seems the new ordinance prevents overnight stays. Roosters are only allowed on city property during daytime for “purposes of …

Continue reading N.J. law: Don’t crow about sex »

NASA has put men on the moon and robots on Mars, which proves there’s some pretty good scientists working there.

But there are some wannabe-artists laboring there too it seems.

Going where movie poster designers have boldly gone before.

Unbeknownst to many, a tiny portion of the space agency’s $18 billion budget is used to make cheesy posters to commemorate each mission.

The final flight of the space shuttle Endeavor, scheduled for Friday, is no different.  The final space shuttle mission, the 135th, will be flown by the crew of Atlantis in June.

NASA began the poster tradition with the 96th shuttle mission in 1999, but really ramped up the Velveeta in 2008.

Since then, there’s been posters paying homage to Star Trek, movies, baseball and even The Beatles.

They were paid for with your tax dollars, so feel free to print a few out and slap them on your wall.

Continue reading Space shuttle’s final flights captured in cheese »

Atlanta-based UPS is known for its ability to get any package anywhere.

Once, they delivered giant whale sharks from Taiwan to Atlanta. And some pandas from China.

UPS delivered bamboo-smoking pandas from China to Atlanta in 2009.

Big Brown’s task was not so difficult recently in Upper Darby, Pa., which, as most cartography students know, is just above Lower Darby.

There, the UPS man delivered 5 pounds of marijuana to an “elderly couple,” according to the local CBS station.

The couple opened the package and found what police describe as “high quality” marijuana worth about $22,000.

They called the cops, which was wise. I surmise many recipients of such a package would be morally tested to do the same.

The return addresses on the package were fake, which indicates the person who shipped it is not a complete idiot.

Continue reading UPS delivers 5 pounds of marijuana »

The news gets worse for millions of PlayStation fans: Not only is the network still down, but hackers have stolen your personal info and may have your credit card number.

Sony technicians (not pictured) are doing their best to update the PlayStation Network (also not pictured).

Late Tuesday, Sony issued a press release warning PlayStation Network users, whom they are also trying to email.

There’s still no word on when the PSN will be restored. It has been down since Wednesday.

Here’s the press release:

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19 certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network.

In response to this intrusion, we have:

1) Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;

2) Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and

3) Quickly taken steps to …

Continue reading PlayStation Network: Hackers stole users’ personal info »

• An undercover Atlanta police officer reported he was able to buy an $8 mixed drink called a “Gorilla Orgy” from an unlicensed “rave” bar on Permalume Place. Other drinks for sale cannot be named in a family newspaper, but that didn’t stop the officer from spending $78 on them.
• A man told Atlanta police his sister-in-law dropped her three kids off at his house the day after he got married. He thought it was unusual because he never speaks to the woman. Three hours after being dropped off the kids called their mom and asked where she was. She showed back up at the house, began waving a gun around and cursing at her children. She was screaming “[Bleep] ya’ll, I’ll kill all of ya’ll,” at the kids as she drove off.
  

  Undercover work can be taxing on the liver, and the public.

• Flying the friendly skies isn’t cheap, which may explain why an Atlanta woman agreed to give “two strangers” she met near Turner Field $500 for a Delta buddy pass – a highly …

Continue reading Police (Off)Beat | Cop pays $8 for ‘Gorilla Orgy’ »

50 years ago this month, Russia shot the first man into space.

Since Yuri Gagarin traveled solo, we can’t blame him for not hooking up.

But, in the 50 years since, Earthlings appear to have never carnally enjoyed each other’s company while orbiting the Earth. This, despite the fact Russia sent the first woman — Valentina Tereshkova – into orbit in 1963.

He didn't have sex in space, but the first human to return safely to Earth got quite a hug from Fidel Castro.

It seems unbelievable, but Russia today rejected the notion that a cosmonaut ever participated in secret sexual experiments.

“There is no official or unofficial evidence that there were instances of sexual intercourse or the carrying out of sexual experiments in space,” Valery Bogomolov, the deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute of Biomedical Problems, told Interfax news agency. “At least, in the history of Russian or Soviet space exploration, this most certainly was not the case.”

“As for American space …

Continue reading Earthlings: 50 years in space without sex »

[Updated story: Sony admits hackers have stolen user info]

It’s been almost a full week and the PlayStation Network is still down.

The network, which has been down since Wednesday and allows 75 million users to play games with friends over the Internet, went down several times in February and March. The network is also used to deliver downloadable games and other static media. Sony’s Qriocity (pronounced “curiousity”) service, which provides streaming video, music and games, is also down.

Sony has not explained what happened exactly, but hackers are apparently behind the recent outage.

Take that hackers!

Late Friday, Sony said “An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network … .”

External intrusion = Attack by hackers.

When will online gaming resume? Late Monday, a Sony spokesman said “I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time.”

Protecting the network from hackers has been a lot more difficult than Sony first predicted. …

Continue reading Day 6: Sony PlayStation Network down due to hackers »

“Weeds never die,” says insane former cult leader Charles Manson, 76, in his first interview in 20 years.

Manson, whose “family” killed at least eight people in 1969, was recently interviewed in Vanity Fair’s Spanish edition.

Manson, convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in 1971, continues to serve a well-deserved life sentence. He dodged the death penalty via a 1972 decision by the Supreme Court of California to eliminate capital punishment.

"Still crazy after all these years."

He seems to have gone from “a bad man who shoots people” to a tree hugger.

“Everyone’s God and if we don’t wake up to that there’s going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we’re doing bad things to the atmosphere.”

He added, “If we don’t change that as rapidly as I’m speaking to you now, if we don’t put the green back on the planet and put the trees back that we’ve butchered, if we don’t go to war against the problem…”

Here’s a few more quotes that will …

Continue reading Interview: Charles Manson still insane »

Everyone loves their iPhone, and the super-popular device loves secretly tracking your location.

A visualization of the location information captured on an iPhone, the author's trip from DC to New York.

According to an article on the tech site O’Reilly Radar, the new Apple iOS 4 appears to log customer locations and timestamps to a file called “consolidated.db.”

The file exists on iPhones and the 3G iPad and is secretly copied to the owner’s computer when the two are synchronized.

Why? The paranoid probably have some good ideas, but Apple has not responded to the query of authors Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden.

The duo have produced a video and have written an application that lets users see the data the phone has gathered about their travels.

Potentially, the unencrypted information stored on your phone or computer could be subpoenaed and used by law enforcement agencies.

Or, as a commenter said on the O’Reilly site, it’s getting more difficult for criminals to have cool …

Continue reading Report: iPhones track users’ every move »