Or maybe you won’t have to. A jury in Britain last Wednesday, encouraged by extreme partisan testimony from chief fraudster James Hansen himself, exonerated Greenpeace vigilantes who vandalized a coal-fired powerplant.

The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse” to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain’s green agenda and could encourage further direct action.

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How could any jury reach such a preposterous conclusion? Testimony from witch doctors on top of a prolonged steady diet of false information from the mainstream media, as in this typical example from the Telegraph.

Recent events have seen the scare campaign over global warming descend to the level of a Monty Python sketch.

Much publicity was given, for instance, to Lewis Gordon Pugh, who set out to paddle a kayak to the Pole to demonstrate the vanishing of the Arctic ice. At 80.5 degrees north, still 600 miles short of his goal, he met with ice so thick that he and his fossil-fuelled support ship had to turn back.

But this did not prevent him receiving a congratulatory call from Gordon Brown, nor boasting that he had travelled “further north than anyone has kayaked so far”.

It took the admirable Watts Up With That blog, run by the American meteorologist Anthony Watts, to point out that in 1893 the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen found the Arctic so ice-free that he was able to kayak above 82 degrees north, 100 miles nearer the Pole than our hapless campaigner against “unprecedented global warming”.

OK, you’ve seen those amusing Apple commercials in which the cool and complacent Mac patronizes the hapless and stuffy PC. Well, here’s the first salvo of Microsoft’s counterattack, for which they paid Jerry Seinfeld $10 million. It even features Bill Gates himself.

I’m not sure Apple shouldn’t offer to pay to run it themselves, demonstrating as it does that Microsoft’s clueless obliviousness runs all the way to the top.

1:30 video

So the Alien has an actual model in Nature: the Goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni). It figures.

1:40 video

From Atomic Nerds via Karen L. Myers.

CBS3.com reports that a woman dumped by a lion in Second Life tried to kidnap the real life individual behind the offending game avatar armed with a taser, a BB gun, and duct tape.

A woman wanted in the bizarrely complicated attempted kidnapping of her former virtual boyfriend has been apprehended after a multi-state search.

New Castle County Police said 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan of North Carolina was apparently distraught after her online relationship with a 52-year-old man from Claymont, Delaware came to an end.

The pair apparently met online in “Second Life.” A virtual relationship began between the victim, whose character was a Lion, and Jerrigan, whose online persona was said to be a virtual woman.

When the two met in reality several months ago, police said the victim ended the relationship, sending Jernigan into a downward spiral.

In the beginning of August, Jernigan allegedly drove to the victim’s Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint. While she was unsuccessful, she returned two weeks later to track down the victim’s Delaware address.

Police said Jernigan posed as a postal worker in order to locate the victim’s new address, as he had recently moved. After four days of searching, authorities said she found residence in the Whitney Presidential Towers on the 7100 block of Society Drive in Claymont.

With her dog Gogi in tow, investigators said Jernigan cut and removed a screened window in order to enter her virtual ex’s apartment.

When the victim arrived home on Thursday, August 21, he told police he saw someone pointing an object at his chest that was projecting a laser beam. He immediately fled the apartment and contacted police.

Officers arriving at the scene discovered a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a Taser and a BB gun as well as the suspect’s dog.

Police said Jernigan had bound her dog Gogi with duct tape and put him in the bathroom as he was making too much noise. The dog was said to be uninjured, but the SPCA is looking into possible charges of animal cruelty.

Apple, a heifer resident of Hygiene, Colorado, discovered an intruder in her pasture. She touched noses investigatively, doubtless reaching the correct conclusion that the visitor was a black bear cub, and promptly proceeded to run him off.

TheDenverChannel.com

slideshow

29-year old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, a Canadian citizen from Ottawa of Somali origin, was found deceased in his room at the Burnsley Hotel in downtown Denver, about four blocks from the State Capitol.

The cause of death remains to be determined, but the pound (.45 kg.) of Sodium Cyanide found by authorities next to the body may provide an important clue.

A suspicion person might conjecture that the late Mr. Dirie was visiting Denver in connection with some kind of plans related to the upcoming Democrat Party Convention, taking place August 25-28, and that the unlucky, or possibly maladroit Mr. Durie, while examining or otherwise manipulating the cyanide compound he had brought along for reasons of his own, met with an unhappy accident when he breathed in its vapors or somehow contacted the very dangerous chemical with his bare skin.

Mr. Dirie’s death (now being described as a suicide) somehow reminds me of the 2005 “suicide” of Joel Henry Hinrichs III, an engineering student with a Pakistani roommate who mysteriously chose to kill himself with a bomb containing the highly unstable and explosive compound triacetone triperoxide, in the very near vicinity of a football stadium where a game was being played with more than 80,000 people in attendance.

Fascinating, isn’t it, the way some people choose to commit suicide using very much the kinds and quantities of materials suitable for use in mass terrorism attacks in locations suspiciously close to suitable targets?

Villa Leopolda, Villefranche-sur-Mer

Charles Bremmer reports from Paris, in the London Times, that Russians are not only gobbling up real estate in the Republic of Georgia. Let’s hope they overpay just as much for that Caucasian real estate.

A mysterious Russian billionaire has trumped his big-spending rivals and broken a world record by splashing out €500 million (£392 million) on one of the most sumptuous villas on the French Riviera.

The price of the Villa Leopolda, a Belle Époque mansion on the heights of Villefrance, has amazed estate agents but fuelled local worries that the invasion of Russian money on the Côte d’Azur is getting out of hand.

Since the early 1990s, Russian oligarchs, drawn by memories of the Riviera-mad old Russian aristocracy, have been piling into seaside properties at Cap Ferrat, Cap d’Antibes, Saint-Tropez and the other great playgrounds.

None, however, has come near the price with which the unnamed Russian clinched the Leopolda deal with Lily Safra, the widow of Edmond Safra, a Lebanese banker who was killed by an arsonist’s fire in Switzerland in 2003.

Mrs Safra was said to have held out for months as the buyer raised his bid for the villa, between Nice and Monaco, which King Leopold II of Belgium acquired in 1902.

The previous record for a house was said to be the £57 (JDZ: reported as £117) million that Lakshmi Mittal, the steel tycoon, paid for a property in Kensington Palace Gardens in 2004. The macho spending contest by Russian oligarchs. ...

Russian excess is feeding discontent among poorer people. Pierrette, a housekeeper for one Russian, said: “I attended a party where the guests had fun throwing burning €500 notes into the air while everyone split their sides laughing. The domestic staff were later told to collect the ashes. It was sickening.”

House photos.

A candidate with his own presidential seal is prone to decide he also needs his own personal salute.

And, sure enough, US News & World Report recently found, Barack Obama’s gotten himself one of those, too.

But, maybe, just maybe, Obama needs to re-think these little personal touches. They provoke mockery, and worse, they prompt cynical people, like Gateway Pundit, to investigate possible sources of plagiarism.

The LA Times reports a curious local phenomenon.

A patch of land in Ventura County’s section of Los Padres National Forest where the ground recently heated up to 812 degrees continues to puzzle firefighters and geologists after weeks of monitoring.

“It’s a thermal anomaly,” said Ron Oatman, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

Firefighters responded to reports of a blaze there a month and a half ago, when observers noticed smoke rising from the parched scrub. But when they arrived, they found no flames.

Firefighters and geologists who have surveyed the area in the Sespe Oil Field are uncertain what’s causing the heat, but they do have a theory.

Allen King, a retired geologist with the U.S. Forest Service who went to the site Friday, said the smoking ground is “a normal occurrence” that does not appear to be the result of human activity.

The hot spot is in an area considered to be an active landslide that has shifted for more than 60 years. Several hundred feet below its cracked surface lie pockets of gas, tar and oil.

King said he suspects cracks along the landslide’s slope allow oxygen to enter into the earth and hydrocarbon material to “seep out” of the fine-grain shale. The combination can create underground combustion, he said.

King said the depth at which hydrocarbon material can be found “varies tremendously” and that he does not know at what depth the combustion in the oil field is occurring. The 812-degree temperature was measured Friday about a foot below the surface, he said. No other temperature checks have been made since, according to Oatman.

During Friday’s visit to the hot spot, smoke rose through five cracks in the ground. From a distance, it looked like “a small, smoldering camp fire,” Oatman said. The smoke comes and goes, he said, and fire officials expect it will last until the next heavy rainfall, when water and mud plug the fissures.

Mr. King says similar high temperatures have been recorded at that location five times since 1987.

When you or I get angry at one of our local politicians, we post an angry letter to the local newspaper. In Deltona, Florida, unhappy constituents (clearly originally hailing from more tropical climes) leave a Voodoo doll and candle by the offending politicians mailbox. Uh oh!

News-Journal

City Commissioner Zenaida Denizac’s happy day after a church picnic this past weekend was briefly ruined by the discovery of a voodoo doll on her lawn.

The doll was stuck with many pins and included a photo of the commissioner’s face pinned on the doll’s head. The doll, inside a black plastic tray, was found by Denizac’s husband next to a periwinkle plant near the base of her mailbox Saturday afternoon.

Jose Denizac said he saw the package when he left at 4 a.m. to fish but thought it was trash. When he returned at 5 p.m. he saw the object while parking his boat and checked it out.

“As soon as I saw the doll and the pins and the candle, I knew what the intention was,” Jose Denizac said. “It is envy. My wife has always been a leader who does not hide anything and speaks with frankness.”

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating the unusual incident, although they do not believe it is a direct threat to the elected official, said spokesman Brandon Haught.

News.com.au:

Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell – a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission – has stunningly claimed aliens exist.

And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions – but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as ‘little people who look strange to us.’

He said supposedly real-life ET’s were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

Chillingly, he claimed our technology is “not nearly as sophisticated” as theirs and “had they been hostile”, he warned “we would be been gone by now”.

Dr Mitchell, along with with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, holds the record for the longest ever moon walk, at nine hours and 17 minutes following their 1971 mission.

“I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real,” Dr Mitchell said.

“It’s been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it’s leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.

“I’ve been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes – we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it’s been happening quite a bit.”

Dr Mitchell, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics claimed Roswell was real and similar alien visits continue to be investigated.

He told the astonished Kerrang! radio host Nick Margerrison: “This is really starting to open up. I think we’re headed for real disclosure and some serious organisations are moving in that direction.”

Mr Margerrison said: “I thought I’d stumbled on some sort of astronaut humour but he was absolutely serious that aliens are definitely out there and there’s no debating it.”

9:15 video of Kerrang Radio Interview

A reader sent Steve Bodio this picture with the title: “Why City People Shouldn’t Move to the Country.”

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I see this, and think immediately: “California!”
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Hat tip to Karen K. Myers.

Allahu Akhabar! Rusty Shackleford has an (inadvertently very funny) Islamist recruitment 0:36 video. They would never recruit Ace with this one.

Hat tip to Dr. Mercury.

Things went wrong for 19-year-old Cameron Sands of Fort Worth on Tuesday. Upon breaking into a house in Grand Prairie, Sands found himself confronted by the homeowner. News reports are conflicting. Some say that he fired unsuccessfully at the homeowner. Others say that he merely brandished a gun. In any case, either while drawing his pistol from the waistband of his trousers, or while holstering it after taking a pot shot at the robbery victim, Mr. Sands mishandled his weapon and shot himself in the lower abdomen. Police arrived to find Mr. Sands had succumbed to his injury just outside the house.

Dallas Morning News

Pegasus News

MyFox Dallas

This 3:10 video’s narrator has a job most of us wouldn’t like, but he thinks it’s no more dangerous than crossing the street.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Don’t think that saying “Gay Marriage isn’t real marriage” could get you into trouble one day?

Just give it time. Over in Europe, where political correctness is always just a step or two ahead, the Guardian reports that calling Scientology “a cult” is currently treated as a crime in Britain.

A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word “cult” to describe the Church of Scientology.

The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion.

Officers confiscated a placard with the word “cult” on it from the youth, who is under 18, and a case file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.

A date has not yet been set for him to appear in court. ...

The incident happened during a protest against the Church of Scientology on May 10. Demonstrators from the anti-Scientology group, Anonymous, who were outside the church’s £23m headquarters near St Paul’s cathedral, were banned by police from describing Scientology as a cult by police because it was “abusive and insulting”.

Writing on an anti-Scientology website, the teenager facing court said: “I brought a sign to the May 10th protest that said: ‘Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.’

“’Within five minutes of arriving I was told by a member of the police that I was not allowed to use that word, and that the final decision would be made by the inspector.”

A policewoman later read him section five of the Public Order Act and “strongly advised” him to remove the sign. The section prohibits signs which have representations or words which are threatening, abusive or insulting.

The teenager refused to back down, quoting a 1984 high court ruling from Mr Justice Latey, in which he described the Church of Scientology as a “cult” which was “corrupt, sinister and dangerous”.

After the exchange, a policewoman handed him a court summons and removed his sign.

In Germany, on the other hand, they’ll probably arrest you if you say that Scientology isn’t a cult.
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Hat tip to Little Baby Ginn at DBKP.

Democrats want felons to vote and don’t want anyone asking for IDs. The latter objectionable practice would prevent fictitious persons and the deceased from exercising their franchise.

Now, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry identifies one more constituency ideal for democrats: kids!

I do understand that some children are too young to read the ballot or to perform the actual physical act of voting, and that those kids shouldn’t vote directly. I believe that for very small children, their parents should vote in their stead. However, as soon as they can vote, kids should be able to. What age? 16? 15? 14? 7? Actually, I think another age barrier would be just as senseless as the one we have now. Kids should be able to get the vote when they decide they want the vote. A child who is old enough to vote (and who is a better judge of that than himself?) should be able to walk into his friendly neighborhood voting registration office and register for himself.

(There is also the matter of which parent gets the vote. This is a false debate: each country’s law has rules to decide who has parental authority in cases of divorce, etc. Whoever has parental authority should vote for the kids.)

If you base your politics on nothing but crude oversimplifications and appeals to emotion, of course you’d want kids making all the decisions.

I was always fascinated by the infinite, strange and ‘scandalous’ ways that insects copulate.”

Isabella Rossellini makes her directorial debut in a series of short films dramatizing the mating habits of invertebrates.

Produced for the Sundance Channel, the series of six very short, 1-2 minute, films, titled Green Porno, were made in a small screen format intended to be watched on cell-phone or iPod.

Rossellini commences each film, dreamily remarking that “If I were a…..(earthworm, spider, dragonfly, bee, firefly, praying mantis, snail, or fly)”, then appears herself in simple, childish costumes playing the male member of the species. The female is typically an even simpler cardboard mock-up.

She brings a peculiar enthusiasm and panache, especially for a woman of her sophistication and maturity, to a project featuring such a strange combination of slightness and deliberate bad taste.

pdf description of the series

4:11 interview with Rossellini video

Hat tip to U 2.

Very bad teenage boys.

AP reports:

David Blaine set a new world record Wednesday for breath-holding — 17 minutes and 4 seconds — fulfilling what he said was “a lifelong dream.”

The feat was broadcast live during “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the studio audience cheered as divers pulled the 35-year-old magician from a water-filled sphere 8 feet in diameter. Less than two years ago, Blaine went into convulsions during a similar attempt.

“A lifelong dream,” a relaxed-looking Blaine told Winfrey immediately after setting the record. “I can’t believe that I did that.”

While still underwater, Blaine worried his heart rate might be too high, saying he “actually started to doubt that I was going to make it” as a result. A lower heart rate helps minimize oxygen consumption.

The previous record was 16 minutes and 32 seconds, set Feb. 10 by Switzerland’s Peter Colat, according to Guinness World Records.

Before he entered the sphere, Blaine inhaled pure oxygen through a mask to saturate his blood with oxygen and flush out carbon dioxide. Guinness says up to 30 minutes of so-called “oxygen hyperventilation” is allowed under its guidelines.

Since he’s a professional magician, it seems more than possible that this alleged record may really have been a trick.

Gin, a dancing border collie, wows the judges on the Britain’s Got Talent television program.

4:08 video

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

ABC News:

PINELLAS COUNTY, FL (Clearwater/Tampa area)—An Eastlake Woodlands woman made a beeline for the door when she saw what was next to her refrigerator Monday night.

According to deputies, 69-year-old Sandra Frosti heard a noise coming from her kitchen. When she went to check what it was, she saw the head of a large alligator.

Frosti called 911, “There’s an alligator in my kitchen!” she explained. The emergency operator reportedly suggested it might be an Iguana. Frosti suggested otherwise and left the house.

Deputies showed up at the home a short time later and then called a trapper.

Deputies believe the 8-foot 8-inch (2.64 meter) gator was after the family cat. It apparently broke through the back porch screen door, entered the home through an open sliding glass door, and then made its way in through the living room, down the hall, and into the kitchen.

The gator was slightly injured as it was being trapped, when a plate was knocked to the ground cutting the alligator.

video

Other saurian attempts at trespass:

posting 29 May 2007

posting – 25 June 2006

Artist scamp hard at work

A new report from the Oldest College Daily advises the well-and-truly-grossed-out news-reporting and news-reading worlds that Aliza Schvarts (Y’08)’s miscarriages-as-art project was merely a naughty undergraduate joke intended to spark conversation and debate.

Aliza Shvarts ’08 was never impregnated. She never miscarried. The sweeping outrage on blogs across the country was apparently for naught — at least according to the University.

As the news of her supposed senior art project chronicling a year of self-induced miscarriages was greeted with widespread shock on campus and elsewhere, the Davenport College senior traded barbs with Yale officials on Thursday over a project she described as an exhibit documenting a nine-month process during which she claimed to have artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically inducing miscarriages.

But while Shvarts stood by her project and claimed that administrators had backed her before the planned exhibition attracted national condemnation, the University dismissed it as nothing more than a piece of fiction.

“The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body,” Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said in a written statement Thursday afternoon.

Klasky said Shvarts told Yale College Dean Peter Salovey and two other senior officials Thursday that she neither impregnated herself nor induced any miscarriages. Rather, the entire episode, including a press release describing the exhibition released Wednesday, was nothing more than “performance art,” Klasky said.

“She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art,” Klasky said. “Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.”

But in an interview later Thursday afternoon, Shvarts defended her work and called the University’s statement “ultimately inaccurate.” She reiterated that she engaged in the nine-month process she publicized on Wednesday in a press release that was first reported in the News: repeatedly using a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself, then taking abortifacient herbs at the end of her menstrual cycle to induce bleeding. Thursday evening, in a tour of her art studio, she shared with the News video footage she claimed depicted her attempts at self-induced miscarriages.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, adding that she does not know whether she was ever pregnant. “The nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

Told of Shvarts’ comments, the University fired back. In a statement issued just before midnight on Thursday, Klasky told the News that Shvarts had vowed that if the University revealed her admission, “she would deny it.”

“Her denial is part of her performance,” Klasky wrote in an e-mail message. “We are disappointed that she would deliberately lie to the press in the name of art.”

Yale’s response to the supposed exhibition came at the end of a day of widespread shock. The blogosphere erupted in stunned indignation over Shvarts’ detailed description in Thursday’s News of her supposed exhibition, which she said would include the display of blood she preserved from her nine-month endeavor.

As more news outlets posted their stories online early Friday morning, Shvarts responded to the University’s second statement, asserting that her project was, in her words, “University-sanctioned.”

“I’m not going to absolve them by saying it was some sort of hoax when it wasn’t,” she said. “I started out with the University on board with what I was doing, and because of the media frenzy they’ve been trying to dissociate with me. Ultimately I want to get back to a point where they renew their support because ultimately this was something they supported.”

It was a media frenzy that Shvarts triggered herself. The article in Thursday’s News was prompted by a press release Shvarts circulated on Wednesday in which she discussed — in graphic detail — what she called a cycle of self-insemination followed by “repeated self-induced miscarriages.”

The Drudge Report linked to the News’s story early Thursday, overloading the newspaper’s Web site with traffic and attracting the attention of news outlets across the country. The article generated more press inquiries from the University than any matter since the controversy surrounding Yale’s admission of former Taliban diplomat Rahmatullah Hashemi flared up in 2006, according to a Yale official.

In an interview for the article in Thursday’s News, Shvarts explained that the goal of her exhibition was to spark conversation and debate about the relationship between art and the human body. She said her endeavor was not conceived with any “shock value” in mind.

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

Shvarts said her project would take the form of a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall. Shvarts said she would wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around the cube, with blood from her self-induced miscarriages lining the sheeting.

Recorded videos of her experiencing her miscarriages would be projected onto the four sides of the cube, Shvarts said.

And while some news stories late Thursday dismissed Shvarts’s exhibition as a wholesale hoax, the Davenport senior showed elements of her planned exhibition to News reporters, including footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed, alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup. It was all part of a project that Shvarts said had the backing of the dean of her residential college and at least two faculty members within the School of Art.

Davenport College Dean Craig Harwood — whom Shvarts said supported the project — and Shvarts’s thesis adviser, School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, could not be reached for comment Thursday. The director of undergraduate studies in the School of Art, Henk van Assen, referred a request for comment to Yale’s Office of Public Affairs.

Which denoument makes a lot of sense. The whole business did sound just a little too far out there in a variety of ways to receive academic approval. And it’s true, we all gaped and marveled, but accepted the story at face value.

Does this prove that news organizations and bloggers are unbecomingly credulous? I don’t think so. The alleged miscarriage project was not all that far removed from any number of real examples of purported art featuring unlikely materials of organic origin, in some cases personally provided by the artist.

Aliza Schvarts’ alleged art project made news on the basis of its man-bites-dog outrageous character, but these days the relationship of major universities and the arts to perversity and shock is so warm and intimate that it all had a distinct air of plausibility.

Despite the unfortunate aesthetic and moral aspects of her prank, my own disposition is to smile and extend congratulations to Aliza Schvarts for successfully pulling so many legs. What is undergraduate life for, if not for shocking and outraging the adult bourgeois world?

Well done, Aliza.

Her taste may be questionable, but she demonstrated admirable quantities of imagination, flair, and enterprise. The world should keep an eye out for this girl. What an advertising campaign manager she is liable to make!

The Yale Daily News (fallback link, thoughtfully provided during the Oldest College Daily’s site maintenance) reports on a student art project which will inevitably receive wide coverage.

Beginning next Tuesday, (Aliza) Shvarts (‘08) will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock – saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

The “fabricators,” or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself. ...

The display of Schvarts’ project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts’ self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, Schvarts? senior-project advisor, could not be reached for comment Wednesday night. ...

The official reception for the Undergraduate Senior Art Show will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 25. The exhibition will be on public display from April 22 to May 1. The art exhibition is set to premiere alongside the projects of other art seniors this Tuesday, April 22 at the gallery of Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall on Chapel Street.

The establishment art world’s recent movement in the personal biological products direction at least represents a self-correcting problem. “Art works” consisting of human or animal waste or blood tend to develop “preservation issues” as their chosen media naturally breakdown or wind up being consumed by microorganisms.

Rodion Medvedev picks the 13 “most irresponsible” self defense gadgets.

How about a flashlight which doubles as a single-shot .410 shotgun? The catch is: It fires out the rear, so that when you are using it as a flashlight, the business end of the shotgun is pointing in your direction.

Some of us thought that the Obama video was pretty weird, but that was before we saw this McCain Girls 2:34 video. Wow!

Hat tip to Matt Yglesias.

The Southern African Wildlife College offers a one year course preparing for a career as a safari guide, costing UK£ 5595 / US$ 10,910 / € 8395, including “dangerous game experience.”

The Telegraph story reports that one of the lessons included the transfer of a black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) between containers, in the course of which a British student, one Nathan Layton, 28, was bitten.

Neither Layton nor the college’s staff believed the snake had injected any venom, so the lecture was resumed. Twenty minutes later, however, Mr. Layton went into a coma, and subsequently died.

The late Nathan Layton with girlfriend

Human feet wash ashore on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

I don’t know that he had a practicable way to secure that cage to the truck bed, but I expect he wished he did.

Via Gwynnie.

AFP reports a survey demonstrating that the beneficiaries of Labour’s education system are having increasing difficulty recognizing which famous names are historical personages and which are only characters in books.

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain’s most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.

Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Holmes actually existed; 33 percent thought the same of W. E. Johns’ fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people.

Reuters reporting from Helsinki:

A hospital patient in Finland found a mouse head among the steamed vegetables on his plate.

“Understandably, he lost his appetite,” said Sakari Kela, chief administrator at the Northern Karelia Central Hospital.

The health of the patient in Joensuu, eastern Finland, had not been compromised by the dead rodent, Kela said Saturday.

The severed head most likely originated in a bag of Belgian vegetables. The body has not been found and being “a Belgian mouse, the rest of it could be anywhere in Europe,” Kela said.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

A lot of tennis-players grunt with effort upon striking the ball, but the fetching 6’ 2” (188 cm.) Maria Sharapova produces a veritable kiai, which the Melbourne Herald Sun measured at “71.5dB—louder than a vacuum cleaner (70dB) and approaching the level of a power drill (80dB).”

Little do they know in Melbourne that, at Wimbleton in 2005, Sharapova was measured reaching 101 db, almost as loud as a police siren!

Mlaw has announced its annual wacky warning label awards:

A label on a small tractor that warns, “Danger: Avoid Death,” has been chosen as the nation’s most obvious warning label in M-LAW’s annual Wacky Warning Label Contest.

The Wacky Warning Label Contest, now in its eleventh year, is conducted by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, M-LAW, to reveal how lawsuits, and fear of lawsuits, have driven the proliferation of common-sense warnings on U.S. products. ...

second place: “Do not iron while wearing shirt.” ...

third place: a label on a baby-stroller featuring a small storage pouch that warns, “Do not put child in bag.” ...

Honorable mention for a warning label on a letter opener that says: “Caution: Safety goggles recommended.” ...

Another honorable mention for a warning found on Vanishing Fabric Marker which cautions users:
“The Vanishing Fabric Marker should not be used as a writing instrument for signing checks or any legal documents.”

Tyler (Texas) Morning Telegraph:

Sheriff’s officials were astounded by a letter requesting the man accused of murdering his girlfriend and possibly participating in cannibalism be placed on a vegetarian diet to keep him from being “involved in any senseless killing” while incarcerated.

The letter was faxed to the Smith County Sheriff’s Jail from the national headquarters of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Thursday morning.

“You have to be kidding me, right?” was his initial reaction to the news of the letter asking the jail to feed Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, a special vegetarian diet and no meat.

McCuin is jailed for the murder of 21-year-old Jana Shearer and authorities have said, in previous stories, that when McCuin was taken into custody there was an ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a plate on the kitchen table with what appeared to be human flesh and a fork.

“It is up to you to prevent McCuin from contributing to any more suffering and death by placing him on a healthy, humane vegetarian diet,” the letter by PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich reads.

In a phone interview with the newspaper Thursday, Friedrich responded the letter was serious and was not intended to be funny nor take away from the brutal death suffered by Ms. Shearer.

“Like humans, animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone. They have the same five senses that we do, and they have the same capacity to experience suffering and fear. And all animals share the desire to live their lives free of pain and to avoid a violent death,” he said.

Friedrich said his organization hoped to help Smith County prepare a nutritional vegetarian menu and possibly help organize a menu for the entire jail population.

Clearly not all the crazies are behind bars.

Kurt Daims
(All well-dressed machinists like to sport red berets.)

The New England town meeting has been long admired as a rare surviving instance of direct democracy in action, which gladdened the hearts of the democratic principle’s admirers everywhere by remaining practical and effective.

All that was, of course, in the old days, when town meetings were attended by crusty old farmers notorious for skepticism and common sense. Today, alas! Vermont towns have frequently been taken over by trust-fund bolsheviks and hippie tree-huggers, who bring a very different approach to direct democracy. Given access to direct democracy, these kinds of arriviste dingbats are moving to try to arrest the president and vice president.

Brattleboro Reformer:

We’re planning to arrest, detain and extradite him,” said Kurt Daims of Brattleboro, an activist who has sought to impeach President George W. Bush and is now trying to up the ante. “There’s a fundamental question here. If Congress doesn’t do this, shouldn’t it be done anyway?”

Daims hopes to gather the 440 signatures necessary to place an article on the Town Meeting warning that would call for the Brattleboro Police Department to arrest Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and cart them off to unspecified foreign entities.

“Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictment for consideration by other municipalities?” Daims’ proposed article reads.

“And shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro Police, pursuant to the above-mentioned indictment, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro and extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them.”

Daims joined a group of eight like-minded activists Friday afternoon for their weekly impeachment march through town. Beating homemade drums and waving signs calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, the protesters walked from the Brattleboro Food Co-op to the Municipal Building and dropped off a copy of the proposed article at the Town Clerk’s office.

According to Newfane Selectboard member Dan DeWalt, who made headlines when his town called for Bush’s impeachment in March of 2006, even if Daims is unsuccessful in throwing Bush in the clinker, his message could resonate throughout the country.

“Kurt saying ‘I’m going to arrest the president’ has no meaning. The town of Brattleboro voting to say they’re going to arrest the president does have meaning,” DeWalt said.

As to just where Brattleboro would send Bush if he was arrested, DeWalt said, “I know there are people preparing war crimes charges against him. I don’t know if they’ve officially been filed anywhere, but once they are filed that would give us a place to extradite him to next time he comes to town.”

Daims hopes other towns will be inspired by his quest and pursue similar courses of action—particularly Kennebunkport, Maine, where the Bush family spends its summers.

“We should do something Mr. Bush can feel. Maine is a very liberal state and I think this could pass in Maine, so then he couldn’t get to his million dollar family vacation resort,” Daims said. “They could arrest him there.”

Michael Ledeen announces the Darwin awards for 2007.

There’s really no need for my comments here, except to marvel at the fantasy, creativity and colossal stupidity that led these people (all men?) to remove themselves from the gene pool. Here you go:

DARWIN AWARDS 2007

And once again, it’s time for the Darwin Award Nominees. The Darwins are awarded every year to the persons who died in the most stupid manner, thereby removing themselves from the gene pool.

This years nominees are:

Nominee No. 1: [San Jose Mercury News]

An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriends windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.

Nominee No. 2: [Kalamazoo Gazette]

James Burns, 34, (a mechanic) of Alamo, MI. was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police describe as a “farm-type truck”. Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns clothes caught on something however, and the other man found Burns “wrapped in the drive shaft”.

Nominee No. 3: [Hickory Daily Record]

Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, NC. Awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson 38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

Nominee No. 4: [UPI, Toronto]

Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the buildings windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously has conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lawson, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was “one of the best and brightest” members of the 200-man association.

Nominee No. 5: [The News of the Weird]

Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolinas electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. While sitting on a metal toilet in his cell attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.

Nominee No. 6: [The Indianapolis Star]

A cigarette lighter may have triggered a fatal explosion in Dunkirk, IN. A Jay County man, using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader, was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriffs investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents rural Dunkirk home at about 11:30 PM. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a 54-caliber muzzle-loader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gun-powder ignited.

Nominee No. 7: [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario]

A man cleaning a bird feeder on the balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death. Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a wheelchair when the accident occurred, said Inspector Darcy Honer of the Peel Regional Police. “It appears that the chair moved, and he went over the balcony,” Honer said.

Finally, THE WINNER: [Arkansas Democrat Gazette]

Two local men were injured when their pickup truck left the road and struck a tree near Cotton Patch on State Highway 38 early Monday. Woodruff County deputy Dovey Snyder reported the accident shortly after midnight Monday. Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc, and Billy Ray Wallis, 38, of Little Rock, were returning to Des Arc after a frog catching trip. On an overcast Sunday night, Pooles pickup truck headlights malfunctioned. The two men concluded that the headlight fuse on the older-model truck had burned out. As a replacement fuse was not available, Wallis noticed that the .22 caliber bullets from his pistol fit perfectly into the fuse box next to the steering-wheel column. Upon inserting the bullet the headlights again began to operate properly, and the two men proceeded on eastbound toward the White River Bridge. After Traveling Approximately 20 miles, and just before crossing the river, the bullet apparently overheated, discharged, and struck Poole in the testicles. The vehicle swerved sharply right, exiting the pavement, and striking a tree Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions from the accident but will require extensive surgery to repair the damage to his testicles, which will never operate as intended. Wallis sustained a broken clavicle and was treated and released. “Thank God we weren’t on that bridge when Thurston shot his balls off, or we might both be dead,” stated Wallis “I’ve been a trooper for 10 years in this part of the world, but this is a first for me. I can’t believe that those two would admit how this accident happened,” said Snyder. Upon being notified of the wreck, Lavinia (Poole’s wife) asked how many frogs the boys had caught and did anyone get them from the truck???

(Though Poole and Wallis did not die as a result of their misadventure as normally required by Darwin Award Official Rules, it can be argued that Poole did, in fact, effectively remove himself from the gene pool.)

Hat tip to Dominique Poirier.

The Bangkok Post reports a story of imprudent optimism.

A Cambodian man who took off his trousers, tied the legs at the bottom and wrangled a 2-metre cobra into them died when it bit him through the fabric, local media reported Monday.

Khmer-language daily Koh Santepheap [Peace Island] quoted police as saying Chab Kear, 36, saw the reptile swimming in a river just outside the capital last Thursday during a drinking session and captured it in the hopes of selling it later in the day.

He tied the animal inside his trousers and a scarf around his waist, but as he continued carousing the enraged snake managed to get its fangs free and bite Kear three times on the stomach.

The newspaper reported Kear’s last words as being “don’t worry – it’s nothing a drink can’t fix” before he succumbed to the cobra’s venom.

MadOgre has quite a story about a chap test-firing his .50 BMG rifle.

6-27-07: BOOM HEADSHOT! This is amazing. Willie, the father of Tina, who made the sandbag rests fires a .50BMG, an Armalite AR-50 and it ricochets off of a steel plate that it should have easily penetrated. The bullet comes straight back and hits him in the head. You can see it hit the dirt about 15 feet in front on him before it clobbers him. Luckily he was uninjured. He’s a bit sore today, but otherwise fine. Lucky lucky bastard. He has been advised to buy lottery tickets while he still has so much luck. I don’t know about the timing, but you can hear the hit on the steel plate. Time that till the impact on Willie’s head… how fast is that 750 grain slug traveling? The range is 100 yards. Amazing.

0:41 video

I don’t think anybody could have predicted that ricochet. Things happen.

Some years back, I was test-firing a newly acquired 7.63 mm Broomhandle Mauser in my Connecticut basement.

I used to fire from one room through a doorway into another room, using a few pieces of 2×4 lumber, backed by a 5×5 hunk of post, backed by some plywood, backed by another 5×5 post.

Well, the old Mauser belched fire from the barrel and the breech, and that 7.63 mm fully-jacketed bullet sped off at over 1400 fps and proceeded to penetrate all the boards. It then bounced off several concrete walls and finally went right out one of two small basement windows in that room.

I could imagine only too well what my wife would have said if I had managed to shoot myself with my own ricochet, firing pistols in the basement.

AP:

Snake collector Matt Wilkinson of Portland (Oregon) grabbed a 20-inch rattler (Crotalus viridis viridis) from the highway near Maupin, and three weeks later, to impress his ex-girlfriend, he stuck the serpent in his mouth.

He was soon near death with a swollen tongue that blocked his throat. Trauma doctors at the Oregon Health and Science University saved his life.

“You can assume alcohol was involved,” he said. Actually, not just beer. It was something he called a “mixture of stupid stuff.”

Calls from cable network television stations poured in Tuesday, when he still had sore muscles and nerves from the venom.

It happened at a barbecue with friends.

Wilkinson, 23, had downed a six-pack and his ex-girlfriend asked him for a beer. He handed her one, not realizing the snake was also in his hand.

“She said, ‘Get that thing out of my face,”’ Wilkinson said. “I told her it was a nice snake. ‘Nothing can happen. Watch.”’

So he stuck the snake in his mouth.

“It got a hold of my tongue,” he said.

He was having breathing problems when his ex-girlfriend drove him to the hospital. “She was the only one sober,” Wilkinson said.

2:11 video

Hat tip to Xavier.

4:25 video

Japan undoubtedly has the funniest game shows.

Hat tip to Dominique Poirier.

Hermann Mayrhofer, curator of the Leogang Museum, with cross

AP:

A valuable cross dating to the Middle Ages has turned up in a trash bin in Austria.

Police in Salzburg say a woman looking for old crockery in a trash container in the western Austrian town of Zell am See stumbled upon the precious piece in 2004.

They say she apparently she had no idea of it’s value and just stashed it behind her couch.

Now experts say the cross could be worth as much as $575,000. ...

The Austria Press Agency quoted police official Christian Krieg as saying the woman found the cross after a hotel owner who lived in Zell am See died and his home was being cleared by relatives.

The woman showed the cross to the niece of the dead man, but the niece didn’t want it and allowed the woman to take it, the news agency reported.

Last month, one of the woman’s neighbours had an inkling the cross might be something special and took it to a local museum in the village of Leogang.

The curator, Hermann Mayrhofer, alerted police. An investigation disclosed that, until the Second World War, the cross had been part of an art collection belonging to Izabella Elzbieta of Czartoryski Dzialinska, Poland.

Before the outbreak of war, Elzbieta tried to hide the piece from the Nazis by concealing it in the cellar of a building in Warsaw. But the Nazis found it in 1941 and later brought it, along with other items from Elzbieta’s collection, to a castle in Austria. It is unclear what happened next.

This summer, the cross was taken to Vienna for analysis but it has now been returned to the museum in Leogang. Experts at Vienna’s fine arts museum determined that it comes from Limoges, France, and dates to about 1200.

A Prosser, Washington man learned the hard way the fact that the severed head of a rattlesnake remains capable of biting for a long time after being separated from its body. The old-timers in rural Pennsylvania always swore that a snake couldn’t die before sundown. I doubt that sundown has anything to do with it, but there is no doubt that the body of a decapitated snake will twist and coil for many hours and a decapitated snake’s head can definitely continue to bite for a very long time.

In this case, the perpetrator was probably the Western rattlesnake (Crotalus viridus).

AP story.

AP:

Three men who dug up a young woman’s corpse to have sex with it after seeing her obituary photo cannot be charged with attempted sexual assault because Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

A judge was correct to dismiss the charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21, because lawmakers never intended to criminalize sex with a corpse, the District 4 Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 ruling.

The three men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin on Sept. 2 to remove the body of Laura Tennessen, 20, who had been killed the week before in a motorcycle crash.

The men used shovels to reach her grave. They abandoned their plan and were eventually arrested after a vehicle drove into the cemetery and reported suspicious behavior, authorities said.

They said the men had seen an obituary of Tennessen with her photo and wanted to dig up her body to have sexual intercourse. ...

The men were charged with attempted third-degree sexual assault and misdemeanor attempted theft charges. But Grant County Circuit Judge George Curry dismissed the sexual assault charges in September, saying no Wisconsin law addressed necrophilia. Prosecutors appealed his ruling.

But there remain some limits to tolerance in Massachusetts.

The West African Cherry Orange (Citropsis articulata) is common throughout West Africa, but has become endangered only in Uganda where it is known as Omuburo. In Uganda, Omuboro roots are believed to be a powerful male aphrodisiac.

Independent:

It [the tree] is like a natural Viagra,” said Hannington Oryem-Orida, a professor of botany at Makerere University. “Because of its enormous medicinal properties, the tree is being harvested faster than it can reproduce, thus threatening its long-term survival.”

Seeds can be ordered from a California company.

AP:

No pair of pants is worth $54 million. A judge rejected a lawsuit Monday that sought that amount by taking a dry cleaner’s promise of “Satisfaction Guaranteed” to its most litigious extreme.

Roy L. Pearson became a worldwide symbol of legal abuse by seeking jackpot justice from a simple complaint _ that a neighborhood dry cleaners lost the pants from a suit and tried to give him a pair that were not his.

His claim, reduced from $67 million, was based on a strict interpretation of the city’s consumer protection law which imposes fines of $1,500 per violation as well as damages for inconvenience, mental anguish and attorney’s fees for representing himself.

But District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled that the owners of Custom Cleaners did not violate the consumer protection law by failing to live up to Pearson’s expectations of the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign once displayed in the store.

“A reasonable consumer would not interpret ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer’s unreasonable demands,” the judge wrote.

Bartnoff wrote that Pearson, an administrative law judge, also failed to prove that the pants the dry cleaner tried to return were not the pants he took in.

Bartnoff ordered Pearson to pay clerical court costs of about $1,000 to defendants Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung. A motion to recover the Chungs’ tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees will be considered later.

Earlier post 1

Earlier post 2

Last week a hacker calling himself “Gabriel” claimed to have penetrated the computer of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, J.K. Rowling’s British publisher, and obtained a copy of the 7th (and promised to be last) Harry Potter book, scheduled to be published 7/21.

Reuters

There is no way to tell if this idiot is telling the truth, but the curious who want to read the purported spoiler may go here.

Some people fall off roofs. Others are more lucky.

1:33 video

An overly enthusiatic pair of 21-year-old lovers evidently fell 50 feet (15.24 meters) to their deaths from the roof of an office building in Columbia, South Carolina.

KNBC

slideshow

1:20 video

Julian Dibbell describes, in the Sunday Times Magazine, the strange new economy of on-line gaming, featuring out-sourcing of tedious game tasks required for advancement of one’s avatar. The author tries to tell it as a suffering sweat shop workers story, and to milk all the sympathy he can, but I think those Chinese fellows have a job a lot of high school kids in America would envy.

It was an hour before midnight, three hours into the night shift with nine more to go. At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of him. The screen showed a lightly wooded mountain terrain, studded with castle ruins and grazing deer, in which warrior monks milled about. Li, or rather his staff-wielding wizard character, had been slaying the enemy monks since 8 p.m., mouse-clicking on one corpse after another, each time gathering a few dozen virtual coins — and maybe a magic weapon or two — into an increasingly laden backpack.

Twelve hours a night, seven nights a week, with only two or three nights off per month, this is what Li does — for a living. On this summer night in 2006, the game on his screen was, as always, World of Warcraft, an online fantasy title in which players, in the guise of self-created avatars — night-elf wizards, warrior orcs and other Tolkienesque characters — battle their way through the mythical realm of Azeroth, earning points for every monster slain and rising, over many months, from the game’s lowest level of death-dealing power (1) to the highest (70). More than eight million people around the world play World of Warcraft — approximately one in every thousand on the planet — and whenever Li is logged on, thousands of other players are, too. They share the game’s vast, virtual world with him, converging in its towns to trade their loot or turning up from time to time in Li’s own wooded corner of it, looking for enemies to kill and coins to gather. Every World of Warcraft player needs those coins, and mostly for one reason: to pay for the virtual gear to fight the monsters to earn the points to reach the next level. And there are only two ways players can get as much of this virtual money as the game requires: they can spend hours collecting it or they can pay someone real money to do it for them.

At the end of each shift, Li reports the night’s haul to his supervisor, and at the end of the week, he, like his nine co-workers, will be paid in full. For every 100 gold coins he gathers, Li makes 10 yuan, or about $1.25, earning an effective wage of 30 cents an hour, more or less. The boss, in turn, receives $3 or more when he sells those same coins to an online retailer, who will sell them to the final customer (an American or European player) for as much as $20. The small commercial space Li and his colleagues work in — two rooms, one for the workers and another for the supervisor — along with a rudimentary workers’ dorm, a half-hour’s bus ride away, are the entire physical plant of this modest $80,000-a-year business. It is estimated that there are thousands of businesses like it all over China, neither owned nor operated by the game companies from which they make their money. Collectively they employ an estimated 100,000 workers, who produce the bulk of all the goods in what has become a $1.8 billion worldwide trade in virtual items. The polite name for these operations is youxi gongzuoshi, or gaming workshops, but to gamers throughout the world, they are better known as gold farms. While the Internet has produced some strange new job descriptions over the years, it is hard to think of any more surreal than that of the Chinese gold farmer.

1:20 video

Lamborghini Murcielago, before

The Wall Street Journal Weekend edition, in Honey, I Wrecked the Porsche, discusses the really painful kind of car crashes, those involving $250,000+ exotic cars.

According to the California Highway Patrol, the total number of accidents involving Aston Martins, Bentleys, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Lotuses and Maseratis rose to 141 last year, an 81% increase from 2002, while overall crashes declined statewide during that period. Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which sell a wider range of models, saw a 22% increase during that time frame.

These accidents are happening so regularly that a Web site called WreckedExotics.com—which contains photos of dream cars reduced to smoking heaps—added as many as 700 new examples to its gallery last year and says it attracts about 650,000 visitors a month. Founder Gregg Fidan explains the attraction this way: “It’s like seeing a supermodel fall off the runway.”

slideshow

Martin Gegenfurter has a web site devoted to arguing< that a href="http://www.lambounfall.de/indexe.html"> it wasn’t his fault.

Lamborghini Murcielago, after

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Now, don’t you feel much better about not owning one?