Penguins hit the Rio Beaches
A Brazilian military spokesman says the National Navy and Air Force will transport at least 100 stranded penguins to Antarctica next month. The birds were found on Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro beaches. Every year, penguins arrive from the Antarctic Circle on the Brazilian beaches. They are transported on ice blocks that melt off the shore of Brazil.
The flightless birds are washed up on Rio beaches every winter. Each time this occurs, the birds are captured and returned to local zoos. Next month, a Brazilian plane transporting equipment to an Antarctic naval base will transport the penguins to Brazil’s southernmost region.
From there, the birds will be transported on board a naval ship to their environment. The ship will drop the birds in their Antarctic habitat.
Maybe the aliens are on a coffee break
This summer will go down as a dismal year for strange apparitions amid the cereal. Numbers are way down and no one knows why. Those who believe the patterns are extra-terrestrial signals claim the alien messengers have despaired of planet earth and have driven their UFOs off to another galaxy.
Others claim there is a farmers’ conspiracy to destroy all circles as soon as they appear. The curious death of a well-known crop-trampling enthusiast has also been cited, as has the present heatwave.
I don’t make them up—I just report them (Thanks, Katherine.)
A mom was concerned about her kindergarten son walking to school. He didn’t want his mother to walk with him. She wanted to give him the feeling that he had some independence but yet know that he was safe. So she had an idea of how to handle it. She asked a neighbor, Mrs. Goodnest, if she would please follow him to school in the mornings, staying at a distance, so he probably wouldn’t notice her. Mrs. Goodnest said that since she was up early with her toddler anyway, it would be a good way for them to get some exercise as well, so she agreed.
The next school day, Mrs. Goodnest and her little girl, Marcy, set out following behind Timmy as he walked to school with another neighbor boy he knew. She did this for the whole week. As the boys walked and chatted, kicking stones and twigs, Timmy’s little friend noticed the same lady was following them as she seemed to do every day all week.
Finally he said to Timmy, “Have you noticed that lady following us to school all week? Do you know her?” Timmy nonchalantly replied, “Yeah, I know who she is” The friend said, “Well, who is she?” “That’s just Shirley Goodnest” Timmy replied, “and her daughter Marcy.”
“Shirley Goodnest? Who the heck is she and why is she following us?”
“Well”, Timmy explained, “every night my Mom makes me say the 23rd Psalm with my prayers, ‘cuz she worries about me so much. And in the Psalm, it says ‘Shirley Goodnest and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my life,’so I guess I’ll just have to get used to it!”
Now they’ve gone too far! Petrol is one thing—beer is another thing entirely
Beer prices [in Australia] rise by up to 10 cents a schooner this week as inflation and rising fuel prices continue to hurt [Australian wallets]. Hit by an inflation-linked excise rise as they struggle with higher transport costs, publicans have defended the coming price rises, which also will apply to spirits, as a bid to break even.
Australian Hotels Association general manager Ian Horne said yesterday that the association’s recommended price rises, to be announced this week, would not increase pub profits. “Each venue must make its own decision,” he said.
They’ve finally found a way to make opera tolerable
A Berlin opera house is encouraging audience members to smoke cannabis joints during its latest production. The Neuköllner Opera House says it wants to enhance the psychedelic experience of Camille Saint-Saens’ drug opera The Oriental Princess.
The actors themselves will also smoke pot onstage while the audience mellow out in the stalls, reports DW-Worldl.
Artistic director Bernhard Glocksin maintains that the opera experience will be “improved with a few joints” while the opera house asserts that artistic license will protect it from drug laws.
“It’s a test to see just what we can get away with,” Glocksin said.
In Berlin, possession of anything up to 10 grams of cannabis is considered to be “for personal use” and is often overlooked. But smoking it in public places can be interpreted by law as an offence against the German constitution.
‘Does anyone know the way?’
Bus passengers were shocked to be asked if any of them knew the way because the driver hadn’t a clue.
They laughed when a supervisor asked if any of the 30 on board could give directions, reports the Mirror. But then he added: “It will really help you as your driver is Polish, doesn’t speak much English and he doesn’t know the route.”
Travel firm Fraser Eagle was running a coach replacement service for Virgin Trains between Birmingham and Rugby because of track maintenance.
One woman volunteered to sit by the driver and give him directions throughout the 20-mile journey. Passengers gave her a round of applause when the bus arrived in time for them to make their rail connections.
Stephen Beech, 38, said: “It was lucky there were a couple of local people on the bus and one of them gave the driver directions as he clearly didn’t have a clue.”
A Virgin Trains spokesman said: “They are investigating. We would expect the driver to know the route he is supposed to drive.”
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It does seem that would be one of the qualifications for a bus driver.
Lots of Kiwis drive hearses
New Zealanders have been registering their cars as hearses to get out of paying full road tax.
It came to light when a Christchurch woman told a radio station she had paid just £19 to register her car, instead of the usual £60. She had registered it as a “non-commercial hearse” that would be used to carry dead animals.
The woman’s definition of carrying dead animals was taking frozen chickens home from the supermarket.
Other listeners then called NewstalkZB to say they had done the same.
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Needless to say, this is illegal and local officials are up in arms. My take? Ingenious!
Poll to taste test effluent water
The Queensland government will hold a referendum in the state’s south-east corner next year on the
use of drinking recycled waste water. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie announced the referendum after yesterday’s convincing no vote in the drought-stricken city of Toowoomba over drinking water recycled from sewage effluent.
Residents from Gympie south to the Gold Coast and west to Toowoomba will express their support for drinking their own waste water in the referendum to be held in March 2008, to coincide with the Brisbane City Council government election.
Mr Beattie said the controversial process would only be implemented to further bolster the government’s strategies to address south-east Queensland’s dire water shortage if residents approved.
What’s a Soapbox?
On a recent Saturday afternoon, a group of soapbox racers well past childhood gathered on a steep hill in Brooklyn. With a push and a prayer, they piloted their homemade carts – a wooden cabinet on wheels, a punked-out baby stroller, even a NordicTrack – down the street in head-to-head heats.
The Paping Soapbox Derby, now in its fourth year, is an extreme, strictly grown-up version of the kids’ cart sport. Unlike the nearly 200 traditional derby races held around the country last year, the Paping Derby occurs without benefit of city permits or the sanction of All-American Soap Box Derby, an Ohio-based group that oversees soapbox racing. And in carts built with little engineering know-how, the drivers in the most recent event careened down the hill, colliding with parked cars, curbs and each other.
Organizer John Mejias, 33, an art teacher from East Greenwich Village, was nonchalant about the frequent accidents. “It’s a steep hill and it’s just junk, so these things happen,” he said.
Indeed. Jamison Brosseau, 29, a painter from Bushwick who rode a wooden plank on wheels, bumped his opponent mid-hill, jumped a curb, flew past a parking sign and crashed into a wall. It was his last race of the day.
Linkletter Still Does The Darndest Things
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If you remember Art Linkletter you’ll find this article interesting. If you don’t remember him then just carry on, child.
During the past few months, Art Linkletter has sailed on the Queen Mary 2, flown to Washington, D.C., on business for two organizations and traveled to Rome for a cruise through the Mediterranean, making speeches everywhere he went.
When he sat for a recent interview in his office, he had spoken in Lincoln, Neb., the previous day and would be doing the same in Montreal the next day.
Linkletter turned 94 on July 12. That same day, he published his 28th book…
Norwegian May Do 15 Years Hard Time for Cake-Toss
A student who last October threw a cake at Norway’s new finance minister may face up to 15 years in prison for assaulting a government official, a state prosecutor said Friday.
On her first day in the job, Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen, from the Socialist Left Party, was hit with the cake by a young man as she arrived at the ministry in Oslo. The man approached her as a well-wisher who wanted to give her a cake. When she realized what was happening, Halvorsen turned away and the cake hit her in the back of the head. She was unharmed.
The man, whose name was withheld under Norwegian law but who was said to be 24 years old, has been charged with three counts preventing a government member from exercising authority, assault and “frightening and annoying” an official state prosecutor Marit Bakkevig said. The first count carries up to 15 years sentence.
The attacker, who has since quit his university studies, has told Norway’s largest newspaper, VG, that his action was intended to “start a debate on the effectiveness of having a finance minister from a left-wing party.”
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Can someone explain his “reasoning”? How does throwing a cake relate to a nation’s finances?
Today’s crime tip: Smile. Bank security cameras take your picture
Police are looking for a bandit who hit a bank in St. George [Utah] Friday, and made off with a load of cash. The heist was caught on tape…
The robber walked into the bank, and passed a note to the teller claiming he had a gun. The clerk gave him some cash before the man escaped. However, no gun was actually displayed during the robbery.
The robbery was captured on the bank’s surveillance cameras.
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Nice picture, too.
Monkey needed a little space for a while, but dinner is dinner.
A monkey that escaped from London Zoo yesterday was back in her enclosure after returning overnight. Betty, a ten-year-old squirrel monkey came back after more than 12 hours roaming the treetops in Regent’s Park. She escaped when staff let an overhanging branch grow over the enclosure she shares with 17 other squirrel monkeys. Her keepers arrived on Thursday morning to find the furry creature gone.
Zookeepers monitored her throughout yesterday to ensure she did not come down from the trees.
Emma Kenly, a spokesperson for London Zoo said: “Betty remained in trees by the zoo’s perimeter throughout the day, closely monitored by keeping staff and was still in the park when the zoo closed at 5.30pm.
“Betty voluntarily returned to her enclosure when it got dark, at around 10pm to eat food, including her favourite mealworms, that had been left for her. “We knew she would come back because she is used to being inside during the night.”
She has now been safely reunited with the rest of the group and the exhibit is closed today while tree surgeons are today removing the last overhanging branches in the enclosure to ensure the monkeys cannot go exploring again.
Hamlet was wrong about Denmark
If youre looking for happiness, go and live in Denmark. It is the happiest country in the world while Burundi in Africa is the most unhappy, according to a report by a British scientist released Friday.
Adrian White, an analytical social psychologist at the University of Leicester in central England, based his study on data from 178 countries and 100 global studies from the likes of the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
“We’re looking much more at whether you are satisfied with your life in general,” White told Reuters. “Whether you are satisfied with your situation and environment.”
The main factors that affected happiness were health provision, wealth and education, according to White who said his research had produced the “first world map of happiness.
“C’mon everybody! It’s a MIRACLE!”—or maybe not.
People who flocked to drink at a ‘miracle fountain’ from a statue of Pope John Paul ll have been told it’s just a council water pipe.
Locals in Pope John Paul II’s hometown of Wadowice, Poland, believed a miracle had happened when water began spouting from the base of the statue. Word soon spread across the country with pilgrims travelling from all over to the tiny town to fill up bottles with the liquid.
But their belief in what they thought was a “Godly experience” was shattered by town mayor Eva Filipiak [when she said] the local council had installed a pipe beneath the statue, reported daily Dziennik.
“We didn’t mean anything by it, it was just supposed to make the statue look prettier,” said Filipiak.
Internet parking ticket scam
Drivers in Belgium are buying used parking tickets on the internet to get out of paying fines. The scheme was set up by the Continental Computer Company in Antwerp which allows drivers slapped with a fine for not buying a parking ticket to buy a used one at an online exchange for just £5.
The motorists then present the second-hand tickets to the local council as proof they did buy one, claiming the ticket inspectors simply did not see it.
Company boss Marc Van de Vyver said there was nothing wrong with what they were doing.
He said: “We’re not doing anything illegal. Our website is simply a meeting place for collectors of parking tickets, just like there are websites for people who want to exchange stamps.”
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Uh huh. Right.
DIY RV
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How to tell if your garden is about to turn into a volcano
Want to know where a rumbling volcano is likely to split at the seams? Look for the tallest and greenest plants.
Vigorous plant growth on the flanks of a volcano like that at Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, can indicate where magma is most likely to spurt out. Satellite images reveal that shrubs and trees grow taller and greener along stripes where the volcano eventually ruptures.
What smells like pot and dryer sheets? Well—pot and dryer sheets
The driver of a Ford Aerostar appeared lost, perhaps confused.
“He was making U-turns looking for I don’t know what,” said Rialto police Sgt. Andrew Karol. Officers with the Multiple Enforcement Team were on their way back from Fontana [California] on Tuesday after completing some investigations when they spotted the van on Valley Boulevard west of Hemlock Avenue.
The driver seemed directionless and at one point almost struck a center divider, Karol said. Rialto police Sgt. Randy DeAnda and Officer Aaron Vigil decided to make a traffic stop and question the nervous driver, later identified as Jerald Thompson, 36.
“You could smell a strong odor of marijuana coming from the van,” Karol said. “That’s when he said, ‘You don’t have to look any further. It’s full of marijuana.’ ”
The van was carrying 857 pounds of marijuana packed with green plastic wrap into huge bricks. Those bricks were tightly jammed into packing boxes with foam popcorn, glue and scented dryer sheets, Karol said. Karol guessed the sheets were an attempt to disguise the marijuana’s pungent odor.
“Instead it smelled like marijuana and dryer sheets,” Karol said.
About
Oldster’s View is intended to be a news and oddity aggregation site which presents the more unusual or just timely
items. No blood or gore or fatal car accidents or fires or cameras stuck in the face of grieving parents or any of the other “news” that your TV proudly presents.
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