DC : Life imitates art, art imitates life

[Story]

Ray Nagin would make a great DC NPC, as the gibbering and completely paranoid ex-Mayor
http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2 ... k_for.html


Cocaine cut with the veterinary drug levamisole could be the culprit in a flurry of flesh-eating disease in New York and Los Angeles. The drug, used to deworm cattle, pigs and sheep, can rot the skin off noses, ears and cheeks. And over 80 percent of the country's coke supply contains it.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/f ... d=13902353


A Russian woman died from a heart attack brought on by the shock of waking up at her own funeral. Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, was mistakenly declared deceased by doctors, the Daily Mail reported Friday. But she later woke up - in a coffin surrounded by sobbing relatives. She started screaming after realizing she was about to be buried alive.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2 ... z1QLUXTcaN

[Morthrai]

Mirages over a Chinese city, or glimpses into another dimension?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... China.html

[Story]

Mirages over a Chinese city, or glimpses into another dimension?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... China.html

Heh. I wandered over to post the same thing, different source
http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-t ... 6082498230


And the no-fun logical explanation (coverup?)

http://aukiman.blogspot.com/2011/06/hua ... o-bad.html

[Morthrai]

http://bit.ly/mAUTMr

Now that's what I call a huge wombat!

Any of our Aussie contingent fancy writing up something antipodean for DC, like this or the Drop Bear maybe?

[Morthrai]

A good resource here, pointed out to me by Captain Obvious.

A potted history of post-WW2 UFO sightings in the Seattle area.

[ReHerakhte]

Now that's what I call a huge wombat!

Any of our Aussie contingent fancy writing up something antipodean for DC, like this or the Drop Bear maybe?

Hmm, serendipity, coincidence, chance, an accident of fate -- who knows but as it so happens I was looking at just that sort of thing yesterday (not just the ancient giant wombat but the range of Australian megafauna) with a view to get some stats for one-shot game that I'm going to run (using the GDW rules).

I'm hoping to do not just one of the giant wombats (there were a few of them) but also some terrestrial crodilians, a carnivorous kangaroo predecessor, the marsupial lion and Varanus priscus (a giant monitor lizard that could eat a human). Not sure specifically when I'll get it done as work is a right pain in the arse at the moment but hopefully in the next two-three weeks.

For an overview of ancient Aussie fauna, the wiki page is quite good
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna

[Story]

Following a series of moderate earthquakes that struck the country Tuesday, residents around the Guacalito River in Costa Rica discovered that the river had disappeared. Earthquake-report.com reported that sometime after the earthquakes, villagers living near the river, which is located near Armenia de Upala, discovered that the river was dry.
It was not immediately known if the waters of the river had disappeared due to sinkhole activity that can occur after earthquakes or if the earth shaking caused damming that dried up the river near the Miravalles volcano. The quakes were centered near the Nicaragua and Costa Rica border in the same vicinity as the Miravalles volcano.

http://news.yahoo.com/earthquake-causes ... 00966.html


The Minotaur for the 21st Century
http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/13/be ... ly-ripped/

[Morthrai]

The Indian megacorp Tata announced the world's cheapest prefabricated homes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14172605

We still aren't down to making the masses live inside converted shipping containers...yet...

[Story]

The Indian megacorp Tata announced the world's cheapest prefabricated homes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14172605

We still aren't down to making the masses live inside converted shipping containers...yet...

.... yet.

Houston Family Living in Storage Unit Loses Custody of Kids
http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/07/ ... y-of-kids/

A Flagler College student group's initiative to convert shipping containers into affordable housing is about to produce its first home, which will go to a quadriplegic man in Hastings
http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/ ... completion

8 + 1 Shipping container family container house
http://www.habinet.org/index.php?option ... =8&lang=en

[Story]

A professor with Kyoto University has asserted his plans to produce a cloned woolly mammoth, claiming that "a healthy mammoth could be born in four or five years." Dr. Akira Iritani sounds surprisingly nonchalant about the possibility of resurrecting a 5,000 year-old species of prehistoric animal, and he will travel to a Russia this summer in search of an adequate tissue sample for the procedure.

http://www.tecca.com/news/2011/01/17/a- ... h-by-2016/

And some dichotomy

HIGHLANDVILLE, Mo. (AP) __ A 72,000-sq.-foot private home being built in southwest Missouri will be one of the largest in the United States when it’s completed.
http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2011/07/18/ ... ion-in-mo/

Flower Mound, Texas, that of the divorcee-filled home with musical toilets, is now home to a guy who paid $16 for a fancy-looking house worth an estimated $300K. After spending months researching the state's "adverse possession" law—referring "to the circumstances under which one may lawfully lay claim to ownership of property not originally one’s own"—Kenneth Robinson filled out some forms, handed over $16 at the local courthouse, and now holds rights to the abandoned, furniture-less house.
http://curbed.com/archives/2011/07/18/g ... h-300k.php

[Morthrai]

Somewhat reminiscent of Phil Ward's article "Strike Face pt 1" in issue 8 of Protodimension methinks. Maybe this is how it all begins?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14222573

[Story]

Here's a big idea: Writing your name in the sand so large that it can be seen from space. Of course, you're much better position to carry off this sort of vanity project if you're Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Ahyan, a super-rich Arab sheikh who is the president of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. He also happens to own an island--an ideal canvas for what is essentially the world's largest self-referential graffiti tag.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/man- ... 16989.html

A gold-plated super-yacht that is claimed to be worth a staggering £3 billion ($4.5 billion) has taken the title of the most expensive in the world.
UK designer Stuart Hughes claims that the 30-metre long History Supreme yacht is adorned with 100,000 kilograms of gold and platinum that covers more than half its surface and even comes with a statue made from the bone of a T-Rex dinosaur.


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/travel/holiday-i ... z1Sk12PABj

[Story]

A SWEDISH team searching for booze on the bottom of the ocean may have found a UFO instead. The Ocean Explorer team made several million dollars back in 1997 when it located the wreck of the trade ship Jonkoping. On board was a consignment of 1907 Heidsick Monopole Gout Americain, the corks of which were popped late last year after wine buffs snapped up the bottles for around $13,000 apiece. That's kept Ocean Explorer team leader Peter Lindberg in the deep-sea suds search business ever since, but nothing he's found has caused as much controversy as a circle that turned up on a sonar survey on June 19. Mr Lindberg didn't say much about it at the time apart from releasing the image and ruling out theories that it may be a land mine or algae bloom.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-t ... z1SmVLMzyR

Several days ago, we reported that a Swedish team of shipwreck hunters discovered a strange, circular object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea that looks sort of like the Millennium Falcon. The group was using sonar to plumb the depths of the waters, hoping to find shipwrecks that might contain treasures they could sell. The Ocean Explorer team isn't sure what to make of this strange discovery that some are calling a crashed UFO, but they've released more information about it.

http://io9.com/5822917/treasure-hunters ... baltic-sea

[Story]

In New York, on the distant end of the city from Manhattan, the Rockaways sit on a thin strip of land at the southern edge of Queens, bounded on one side by the Atlantic Ocean and on the other by Jamaica Bay. It has recently become a destination for young adults, and now there's a hip new place to stay, right on the water.

Using lumber she found in dumpsters, donated building supplies and funds from her own pocket, Constance Hockaday has transformed five abandoned vessels into a boat hotel attached to a floating platform with a movie screen on it. Hockaday, 29, makes no secret that the Boggsville Boatel, as she has dubbed it, was inspired by a 19th century madame who presided over a floating bordello in Oregon.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/25/138169328 ... -york-city

[Story]

CANONSBURG, Pa. -- An 11-year-old western Pennsylvania girl is recovering after she was struck by a bolt from the blue.

Lisa Wehrle tells the Observer-Reporter newspaper of Washington, Pa., that the sun was shining when her daughter, Britney, was struck by lightning Friday, apparently from a storm several miles away.

Lisa Wehrle says, "There was no rain. It was a beautiful day. All she heard was some thunder."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/2 ... lnk2|81576

GM on Monday introduced its smallest diesel car engine anywhere in the world to power its Chevrolet Beat in India as the US-based giant took on rivals in the fast-growing small diesel vehicle market.
The 1.0-litre diesel engine has been developed by GM's engineers in Europe and modified to suit Indian driving conditions, Karl Slym, president and managing director at GM India, told a news conference.
Slym said GM India is the sole producer of the new diesel engine and there are plans to export it to Europe.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/gm-launches-sm ... w--;_ylv=3