This may be an innovative way to hide valuables in plain sight, but it really leaves you thinking about the kind of mind that would come up with something like that.

This incident makes you wonder if there are people who are just too stupid to live.

Student may face charges for making toxic drink

A West Texas student who mixed a chemical cocktail that landed a teen-ager in the hospital will face a felony charge if the student who drank it chooses to press charges, authorities said Tuesday.

Ector County Schools Police Chief Henry Jackson said the Odessa High School student, who drank the chemical on a dare, is considering pressing an aggravated assault charge. That charge is a second-degree felony.

“The person who mixed it knew it was bad,” Jackson said in a story in Tuesday’s online edition of the Odessa American.

The student, a 17-year-old recent transfer to Odessa High from Andrews, spent several days in the hospital after being found in a school hallway bleeding from the nose and mouth.

His identity has not been made public.

It seems odd to me that the idiot who made the drink could be charged if someone is stupid enough to drink it.  How stupid do you have to be to drink something if you don’t know what’s in it?

I thought it had to be a joke when I heard about it on the radio this morning.  However, it would appear that there is indeed a sport called Extreme Ironing.  Their site describes it as

…the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt.

Check out the pictures.

When I went into the store last night I couldn’t help but notice their display for the Huggies brand of disposable swimpants.  The reason is that they’re called “Little Swimmers.”  It left me wondering if anyone in the product naming group had ever given any consideration for the other meaning for that term.

Ok.  I admit it—I have an evil mind…

As if what he suffered wasn’t bad enough, some asshole vandalized the gravesite of James Byrd Jr.

The gravesite of a black man who was dragged to death in 1998 by three white men was found desecrated Thursday, police said.

An obscenity and racial epithet were carved into a small metal plate on the bottom of the broken tombstone of James Byrd Jr.  Byrd’s name and birthdate were engraved on the plate.

I guess for some people there really is nothing left that commands respect.  Why is it so hard to just let the poor man rest in peace?

I keep hearing ads on the radio where fly-by-night financing companies are promising to sell you a “brand-name” computer even if you have bad credit.  It’ll only cost you $29.99 per week for one year.

My handy calculator tells me that this would come to $1557.40.  If someone really wanted a computer and could afford $29.99 per week, they’d do a lot better saving that money and buying the computer outright.  I’d bet that these scammers are making at least $500 in interest on top of selling the computer at an inflated price.  As an example, eMachines has a 2.7GHz Celeron model (T2742) with just about all the features you’d reasonably need for $449.99 (and there’s a $50.00 mail-in-rebate as well).  Figuring in tax (I used the typical Texas rate of 8.25%), it would only require about 17 weeks of savings and would save $1049.65 over the total cost of the one from the scammers (I left out shipping costs, since there are a couple of retail outlets that carry eMachines).

If you’re ethically lacking, I suppose this would be a good business to get into.

A Dutch “artist” had surgeons remove a patch of skin from her stomach which she used to cover a tiny gun which was made of plastic.

The 38-year-old, who says her latest artwork underlined her “concern at the rising level of violence in society”, added she had no choice other than to use her own skin for the piece.

“Otherwise it would lose its expressiveness,” she said, adding: “It is easy to shoot someone until you realise it is skin that is being pierced.”

Spoken like the typical GFW who has never really given the topic serious thought.

During lunch on Saturday I went walkabout in downtown Pittsburgh in search of a place to eat that wasn’t already overrun with NRA members.  One good sign was that most of the businesses in the area had signs welcoming NRA members.  I think most of the them were happy to have us because of the money we were bringing (I overheard one NRA staffer in the elevator who said that it was estimated that the NRA meeting was bringing $7 million into the Pittsburgh economy; I don’t doubt it, given how expensive everything was).  The only people who seemed unhappy with us were the protesters (more on them later).

But as I was walking down Liberty Avenue (at least I think it was Liberty, I’m a bit fuzzy now on which street it was), I came across this:

It took me a few seconds to overcome the cognitive dissonance of a guy with a donkey in downtown Pittsburgh.  It turns out that he and the young woman next to him were out to advertise the opening of a new smoothie shop on Tenth (across from the Westin).  I’m not sure what a donkey has to do with smoothies, but it definitely got people’s attention.

The Darwin Award folks may want to keep an eye on this one.

A 12-year-old Granbury boy struck by a car while lying in the street with a pillow as his friends videotaped the accident is in critical condition.  A spokeswoman with Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth said the boy, Wesley Dell Parker, was in the hospital’s critical care unit and was in critical condition Tuesday afternoon.

On Saturday at 10:30 p.m., Parker was struck by a car as he laid with a pillow on Spanish Oak Drive near Misty Meadows Drive close to Emma Roberson Elementary School, said police captain Alan Hines.

Hines said two of Parker’s friends videotaped the accident. Although police did not officially say the kids were imitating a cable television show that airs stunts and physical accidents, officers at the scene said it appeared similar, Hines said.

The driver of the car that struck Parker left the scene but was tracked down by police Sunday, Hines said. When told she struck a person, the female driver became distraught, he said.

She told police she thought she hit a rock where the accident occurred.  The videotape is considered evidence, and district attorney Rob Christian must now consider whether a criminal charge of leaving the scene of an accident will be filed against the driver, said criminal investigator Russell Grizzard.

This little stunt takes stupidity to new heights.  Worse, they involved an innocent driver who will have to live with knowing she hit this kid, even if it wasn’t her fault.

Better leave your cell phone and PDA at home if you’re planning to visit Canneto di Caronia in Sicily.

The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again—even though electricity to the village was cut off.

…

Three-legged instruments to monitor geomagnetic, meteorological, electromagnetic and electrostatic indicators sit in apartments and next to lemon trees in the gardens. Colored markings on the street indicate the presence of volcano experts.

Police ruled out a possible prankster or pyromaniac after they saw wires burst into flames.

The hypotheses now range from a buildup of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the railway to a rare “natural phenomenon” in which surges of electricity rise from the earth’s core.

The fires have even consumed unplugged lamps and an entire apartment. Black scorch marks still scar the apartment walls.

Italy’s big utility, Enel, cut off electricity to the town and hooked it up to a generator—but that caught fire as well.

More recently, cellular phones and cars have also been acting up, with lock and alarm systems being set off without any apparent reason.

Given the fact that unpowered equipment as well as battery powered items are having problems, it would seem to point to an unusually high EM field in the area.  Those all sound like symptoms of current being induced into the equipment from an outside source.

Given that Sicily is a volcanically active area, I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be the answer.  Volcanoes have been known to generate huge electrical charges (although this is during eruptions).

Here is another site that examines some possible theories and has some observations about the area.

Link via Slashdot.