News items and other various tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share with his friends.
Man bets wife in poker game and loses. Wife finds out, gets angry at man, and divorces him. Just to spite him, she starts dating the “winner.” The winner turns out to be better husband material, so she marries him. Guess you shouldn’t bet what you aren’t prepared to lose.
Link: http://www.metro.co.uk/…
(via digg)
The 2006 Darwin Awards are out. Taking the top prize were two college students who suffocated inside a large, helium-filled balloon (repeat after me, “helium is not oxygen”). Runner-ups were (1) an electrician who used copper wire to fly a kite, which subsequently touched a power line, and (2) a man who used a sledgehammer to take apart a rocket-propelled grenade.
Here’s an example of some quality line-painting work.
The Mapuche Indians in Chile are suing Microsoft (in Chilean courts) for translating Microsoft Windows into Mapuzugun, a Mapuche language. The Indians are contending that Microsoft needed their permission to utilize the language.
It seems to me that the real problem is a cultural clash between the technology of the West and the lifestyle of an indigenous people, and the court case is merely the Indians’ best way of responding to it.
Link: http://today.reuters.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Yes, the Nobel prizes were awarded this week, but the real news is the Ig Nobel awards.
Chinese officials in the city of Dandong were planning to cut teaching jobs, but they made a special exception for single parents. The result? More divorce filings from a single school in one week than for the whole city in all of 2005.
14-year-old Shannon Derrik loaned her new iPod to a friend who managed to lose it. Shannon, being a typical modern-day American, filed a lawsuit to recoup the cost. But now the ludicrousness has gone even further, as both parties have agreed to appear on the Judge Judy show.
UPDATE: New developments in this case have precluded a Judge Judy appearance. Further updates to come.
UPDATE #2: This case has been resolved, with Shannon’s friend ordered to give her 30GB iPod to Shannon as a replacement for the stolen iPod Nano.
According to this federal appeals court ruling, carrying large amounts of cash is sufficient cause for the cash to be confiscated and not returned. What planet are these judges from?
This one’s a bit technical, but it goes something like this: A company designed a web site such that if you (1) disable javascript, (2) disable cookies, and (3) visit every link on the site… then you will delete all content on the site.
Unfortunately for the site owners, the Google web crawler meets all three of the criteria. And the site content was deleted.
Chad Cloman
Denver, CO USA
