Kyle MacDonald, the guy trying to trade a red paperclip for a house, has succeeded in his quest. His recently traded a KISS Snowglobe in exchange for one afternoon with Alice Cooper. He in turn traded the snowglobe to an enthusiastic snowglobe collector, for a role in a movie. Now, the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan in Canada, located about two hours east of Regina with a population of 1,100, has offered MacDonald a farmhouse in exchange for the role in the movie
Recently, the FDA approved Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer in women. The approval wasn’t without a fight, and even now it’s still being fought, primarily by the KKK-linked hate group, the Family
Research Council. Cervical cancer kills 4,000 women a year, and yet these people will still fight a vaccine that stops the virus that causes it. Why, you ask?
Los Angeles, car capital of the country, is notorious for its epic police chases. OJ-style pursuits may make for exciting TV, but the fatality statistics are sobering: Police chases kill, on average, one Californian every week. Now the Virginia-based company StarChase has proposed a safer way to catch fast-moving crooks — shoot GPS homing devices like darts and stick them to the back of fleeing vehicles. Instead of a frantic pursuit, an officer eases off the chase and lets police headquarters track the suspect by computer. Police can then move in for a calmer arrest
Two Florida girls aged 14 and 15 created a bogus profile on MySpace, grabbed a pair of pistols, then robbed an adult man who arranged to meet the lovely but fictitious 18-year-old Natalia
in person — via Boing Boing
A 46-year-old man on a motorcycle was struck by lightning and killed Wednesday evening while riding in rush hour traffic on the Boulder Turnpike. Witnesses said they saw a flash of light just before the yellow motorcycle crashed into the center concrete divider. It is unknown if the man was killed by the lightning strike or by the crash that followed
A black bear picked the wrong New Jersey yard for a jaunt earlier this week, running into Jack, a territorial tabby, who ran the bear up a tree — twice — via RogueSun
German police have arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a woman with a sausage. Authorities said the man had given a patchy account of events, acknowledging that he may have administered
a bockwurst
A man shouting that god would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal’s enclosure — via The Pagan Prattle Online
New Zealand is not for sale, despite somebody in Australia trying to offload the nation of 4 million to the highest online bidder. With a starting offer of just one cent, brisk bidding for the prime chunk of South Pacific real estate quickly boosted the price to AU$3,000 before eBay pulled the plug on the auction this week
14 Pakistan International Airlines passengers awarded themselves an upgrade to the empty first class cabin of a flight from Islamabad to Manchester that was stuck, sweltering on the Islamabad tarmac for four hours. They switched to first class mid-flight and refused to go back to cattle-class. When the flight landed in the UK, they were arrested on suspicion of endangering the aircraft
— via Boing Boing
Two acquaintances of Jeremy Allan Steinke, a man accused of murdering his pre-teen girlfriend’s family, say he professed to be a 300-year-old werewolf who liked the taste of blood — via Warren Ellis
A startling Internet video that shows someone spraying graffiti on President Bush’s jet looked so authentic that the Air Force wasn’t immediately certain whether the plane had been targeted. It was not so much a hoax, as a ridiculously expensive attempt at viral marketing by Marc Ecko Enterprises
South Carolina’s Legislature is considering outlawing sex toys. The South Carolina bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Ralph Davenport, would make it a felony to sell devices used primarily for sexual stimulation and allow law enforcement to seize sex toys from raided businesses — via Boing Boing
America’s estimated 30,000 Elvis impressionists fear that they are about to be put out of business. Robert Sillerman, a New York businessman, has bought the rights to Elvis’ name and likeness and has threatened to ban unauthorised
Elvis clones — via The Times
Five girls decorated their Ohio hometown with life-size Super Mario Brothers power-up bricks. The Man responded with full-on terrornoia, dispatching video-game illiterate bomb-squads to defuse
the bricks, and now the girls face potential criminal charges
— via Boing Boing
Shoppers in the British city of Nottingham are being kept in line by a team of former Ghurkas hired to patrol Ikea. Since the team took over three weeks ago, not a single crime has been reported — via SBS News
Agents from the US bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents detained a suspicious individual
on a Georgia college campus — a guy dressed up in a ninja costume, on his way to a party on campus — via Boing Boing
70 year old Yasumasa Matsuzaki was evicted from a convenience store because of his habit of reading magazines without ever buying anything. He returned five minutes later with a chainsaw and threatened the staff before returning to the magazine rack. The incident last week is part of a wave of so-called grey crime in Japan. The percentage of over-65s in prison has trebled in the past decade and exceeds 10 per cent of the total prison population – four times the UK figure. Japan has the highest rate of incarceration for pensioners in the industrialised world
What happens when your satellite navigation system in your car gives you bad advice on which road you should take? In Britain, these systems have been directing drivers down a road near the (aptly named) town of Crackpot that is strewn with boulders and has an unprotected 100ft dropoff on one side. The locals are worried someone’s going to go off the edge
Police in China are investigating whether the discovery of more than 120 human skulls may be part of a growing trade in macabre handicrafts — via Warren Ellis
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