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?

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

———————————————
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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

AP:

VILNIUS, Lithuania – Climbing into a giraffe’s cage at the local zoo seemed a good idea after a few drinks. But the prank went wrong when the 1.3 ton animal flew into a rage and attacked the three student trespassers at a zoo in Lithuania on Monday night.

Ruta Greiciute, a 22-year-old student at Kaunas Technology University, was hospitalized with a broken collar bone and nose after the nine-year-old male giraffe, named Solut, attacked her.

The other students survived the incident unscathed.

“This was a very silly thing they did. The scared giraffe could have stomped her to death,” Kaunas Zoo spokeswoman Angele Grebliauskaite said.

The zoo reported that many animals had been disturbed Monday night as students celebrated a festival in a nearby condominium.

Police have launched an investigation to find out how the intoxicated students entered the zoo at night and climbed the 10 foot high fence surrounding the giraffe cage.

WIS10:

Police in Indiana think an injured man who was found in a cemetery over the weekend might be guilty of vandalism.

He was found amid 14 damaged headstones—including a thousand-pound stone that had tumbled over and pinned the young man to the ground. Police say the 22-year-old was found unconscious, with both legs broken.

They say it took five officers to lift the headstone. The impact left the letter “V” imprinted on Michael Schreiber’s thigh. Police say the “V” stood for the name on the family tombstone.

Schreiber will face charges of criminal trespassing, criminal mischief and public intoxication. He may also be ordered to pay for damage to 14 headstones.

Veterinarian Chang Po-yu reached through the bars to administer an additional shot of sedative, or to remove some tranquilizer darts from the hide of a Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) in the Shoushan Zoo located in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, depending on which account you read, when the insufficiently-sedated saurian turned and bit off Dr. Chang’s arm.

Reports in the Asian papers say that police were summoned, and the offending reptile was permanently sedated by two shots from an officer’s sidearm.

Western press reports claim that zookeepers merely fired two shot which either missed, or bounced harmlessly off old smiley’s neck. The shots proved sufficiently alarming, however, to persuade the grinning beast to drop his prize and beat a retreat.

The BBC even reports the croc is doing well, and is enjoying its 15 minutes of celebrity.

I personally suspect that the Oriental papers are telling the truth, and that crocodile has departed for the big swamp in the sky.

Taipei Times

National Geographic News

Whatever happended to the croc, the poor veterinarian’s arm was recovered, and doctors were able to re-attach it after a 6-7 hour operation.

2:21 video of car crashes on an icy hill in Portland, OR. Jan 16, 2007.

You’re not dumb enough to have fallen for one of those Nigerian email frauds, are you?

But, then you’re not a former democrat Congressman, married to a current democrat Congresswoman, whose son is dating Chelsea Clinton, either. I guess if you can believe that socialized healthcare will work, believing in free millions from Nigeria is no problem.

The Blotter:

If reports are true that Chelsea Clinton and her boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky are considering marriage, the father of the groom won’t be able to attend the wedding until he is released from prison in November 2008.

Ed Mezvinsky, a former Democratic Congressman from Iowa, is serving a seven-year sentence for fraud after getting caught up in a series of Nigerian e-mail scams.

Initially, Mezvinsky became the victim of “just about every different kind of African-based scam we’ve ever seen,” federal prosecutor Bob Zauzmer told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast this evening.

But then, says Zauzmer, Mezvinsky began to steal from clients and even his own mother-in-law to raise the money to try yet another scheme.

NBC10.com:

Former U.S. Rep. Ed Mezvinsky pleaded guilty to stealing $10.4 million from his friends, family and business associates and even his mother-in-law .

Mezvinsky tearfully expressed remorse before being sentenced Thursday to six years, eight months in prison for defrauding business associates, friends and family.

Federal prosecutors called Mezvinsky, 65, a “con man” who faked mental illness to avoid punishment for bilking friends and business associates. They were seeking a nine to 11-year prison term for the disgraced lawmaker, who pleaded guilty to 31 counts of fraud in September.

Through tears, Mezvinsky told U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell that he still fails to completely understand his actions.

“I went into a spiral that turned into the house of cards that fell,” Mezvinsky said.

Dalzell gave credit to Mezvinsky for accepting responsibility with a guilty plea, but rejected a plea for leniency over Mezvinsky’s alleged mental capacity. He sentenced the former lawmaker to 80 months in prison.

“Whatever impairment Mr. Mezvinsky may have had—and I am dubious in the extreme about that—it simply did not contribute to the … crimes which took place over 12 years,” Dalzell said.

Mezvinsky and his wife, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who also served in Congress, were once high-profile Democrats who hobnobbed with Bill and Hillary Clinton and raised 11 children, some adopted, at their suburban Philadelphia mansion.

Prosecutors said Mezvinsky began soliciting cash for fraudulent schemes in the 1980s, and eventually collected millions for business ventures that never materialized, including an oil deal, a coin trading company and an effort to sell bracelets in Africa.

In the meantime, Mezvinsky fell victim to several Nigerian investment scams and lost much of his borrowed money. He blamed the losses on a bipolar disorder and a bad reaction to anti-malaria drug Lariam.

“I have been in denial for a long period, and now I’m accepting responsibility,” Mezvinsky said.

Hat tip to John Brewer.

The Times provides a typical story of fireworks misuse by an ordinary citizen illustrating precisely why we all need the nanny state to ban them in order to protect us from ourselves. After all, absolutely anyone might try this.

Ballroom dancing

Four days ago, IvyGate (an Ivy League miscellaneous news and humor blog) linked a 6:46 minute YouTube video produced by Yale senior Aleksey Vayner to accompany the cover letter, resume, and research paper he was using to apply for investment banking jobs.

Mr. Vayner’s video (which showed the youthful job applicant lifting astoundingly large weights, skiing, playing tennis, ballroom dancing, and karate-chopping a tall stack of bricks) produced very much the opposite of what he had intended. No one called him for an interview, but amused NY bankers quickly began sharing his credentializing video’s link by email as the humor item of the week. That video soon went viral. Aleksey did not become any company’s newest AVP, but he did become the next Star Wars kid.

Dow Jones/AP:

Vayner, a self-described ``CEO and professional athlete,’’ submitted a cover letter and resume to UBS AG, describing his ``insatiable appetite for peak performance.’’ By Friday afternoon, both the cover letter and resume—which includes a link to the video, titled ``Impossible is Nothing’’—had circulated among employees at Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Credit Suisse Group and Wachovia Corp., to name a few.

UBS spokesman Kris Kagel said the firm is looking into the forwarding of the e-mail. ``We’re looking at whether it did come from UBS and if so, we’ll take action,’’ he said. ``As a firm we obviously don’t circulate (job applications) to the public.’‘

And it gets worse and worse.

One thing led to another. Curious viewers looked closely at Aleksey’s investment firm, charity, and book listed on his resume, finding major problems (like non-existence, misrepresentation, and plagiarism) with each.

The Yale Daily News joined the pack now barking at Aleksey’s heels, with other students supplying more stories.

Daniella Berman ‘07, who knows Vayner through the Yale Ballroom Dance Team, said she has heard “outlandish” stories about Vayner both from him and from other students. Among the claims she said she has heard is one that Vayner is one of four people in the state of Connecticut qualified to handle nuclear waste.

Berman said that while she thinks that kind of claim is fairly harmless, she thinks Vayner crossed a line by misrepresenting himself to a potential employer…

Vayner was profiled (as Aleksey Garber) in the Yale Rumpus in May of 2002 after visiting Yale as a prefrosh. The profile outlined Vayner’s many fabrications, including his claims that he was employed by both the Mafia and the CIA during his childhood and that he gave tennis lessons to Harrison Ford and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Today, IvyGate returned for a final coup de grace.

A member of the Yale tennis team wrote in to dispute Aleksey’s claim that he competed on the Satellite tour: “I played for Yale tennis, and he tried to walk on the team. He got cut the second day. I had one conversation with him, and he claimed to have KILLED 24 people in the caves of Tibet.”

(Other great comments: “I too played for Yale tennis, and Vayner/Garber claimed that he has trouble flying on planes because he has to register his hands as lethal weapons each time he goes to an airport.” And: “The giveaway on the investment firm was that he said his firm specialized in “risk-aDverse” strategies. The other giveaway was that he’s fucking crazy.”)

We decided to not be too scared of the cease and desist letter Aleksey emailed us, given that he copied and pasted it from the first Google hit for “cease and desist letter,” right down to the “very truly yours” signoff. Attorney Ron706@aol.com, Esq., really earned his fee there.

At Yale, Aleksey has offered to treat sports injuries using various “Eastern” therapy methods, including massage and acupuncture. Before “treating” a “patient,” he sent them this letter. You simply have to read it in full. Somewhere in there he claims that his brother is “head of pediatrics at Columbian Presbyterian hospital in NYC.” A search on the Columbia Presbyterian Physician Network turns up no one with the last name “Garber” or “Vayner.” But our favorite part is this line: “I am not certified in any Western sense of the word, neither in Chinese medicine, Tui-Na, Shaolin trauma medicine, nor in acupuncture, all of which I practice extensively never-the-less.”

And, um, not quite so humorously, the SEC and dean of Yale College have been notified of Aleksey’s transgressions.

God, what theater. You cannot make this shit up. Unless, y’know, you’re Aleksey.

You can bet that Yale will now review this lad’s admission application materials, looking for discrepancies. Ouch!

Hat tip to Andrew Olson.

———————————UPDATE

Mr. Vayner has (not unwisely) gotten YouTube to pull the video, by claiming copyright infringement.

The vindictive IvyGate is defying him, and has placed the video in a new posting.
———————————-
UPDATE 10/16

He now has a Wikipedia entry.

Aleksey is being ridiculed by Gawker.

And poor Aleksey’s story, and some comments on this posting by classmates on my Yale College Class email list made the New Yorker.———————————-
UPDATE 10/18

There is now an Aleksey Vayner Repository web-site, where readers post suggested new claims and accomplishments for Aleksey. The order of precedence of new alleged Aleksey accomplishments is determined by reader votes.

And, we missed this earlier posting in which Bess Levin communes with Aleksey’s brain.

The House of Representatives, in a moronic 394-22 vote, inserted into the annual Defense Spending Bill a ridiculous feel-good clause forbidding the construction of permanent US bases in Iraq, and stipulating that all facilities under construction will be handed over to the Iraq Government.

What with Iran functioning as a principal sponsor of terrorism, and well on the way to acquiring nuclear weapons, who could possibly have any legitimate use for a permanent US base on Iraqi soil? All our effort and sacrifices and expenditures in Iraq really should be looked upon as a completely disinterested, no-strings-attached gift to a bunch of bigoted primitives who hate our guts, and desire our Civilization’s conquest. We defeated them in battle twice. The least we could do is spend a few trillion dollars, rebuild their infrastructure, replace their home-grown dictator with a democratic government, hand them a bunch of flowers, and walk away. It’s only right. Why should we get anything useful out of any of this?

If today’s morons were running the country during WWII, I’d be writing this in Japanese ideograms.

LA Times story.

The Telegraph reports:

A British tourist has shocked Australians by twice getting lost in the Outback in the same place, in the same circumstances, in a bungle which nearly cost him his life.

Martin Lake, 50, “the bumbling Brit”, first went missing last week when he strayed from a well-worn path at a historical telegraph station on the outskirts of Alice Springs.

Wearing only shorts and a T-shirt and carrying three litres of water, he spent three days lost in the wilderness, despite being only a few miles from the edge of town.

He made a desperate call to police on his mobile phone, starting a huge search involving officers on foot, three helicopters, Aboriginal trackers and rangers.

When Mr Lake was found in the desert on Sept 5 he was badly dehydrated and so burnt from the 86F (30C) heat that he looked like “a freshly-cooked lobster”.

Police said he was less than three miles from the town and almost within shouting distance of outlying houses.

He was flown to hospital, but not content with having survived one near-death experience, he returned to the area on Friday, apparently to recover belongings. Again he struck out into the desert and became disorientated in a landscape of baking red rock and parched scrub that looks very much the same in every direction.

He made another panicked call to police but was unable to tell them where he was. After a while his phone went dead.

He had, for a second time, broken the cardinal rules of Outback survival — he had no hat or sunscreen, not enough water and had failed to tell anyone where he was going.

“He told me he was somewhere north of Alice Springs and that’s about it,” said Sgt Graeme Farquharson, the search co-ordinator. “He didn’t have a clue where he was.”

Mr Lake, a divorcee and former trainee policeman, from Birkenhead, Merseyside, was found by a helicopter crew on Tuesday after spending another four nights in the bush. Again, he was only three miles from Alice Springs.

Crewmen passing 40mm rounds on board US Navy ship in 1945

Robert Colla (a Ventura, California Adult Education instructor) came across what must have been a WWII-era 40mm Bofors Anti-Aircraft round “years ago” while hunting, brought it home as a souvenir, and proceeded to use it as a paperweight.

On Monday the Ventura County Star reports, Mr. Colla brought that paperweight down on an insect he found crawling across his desk with disastrous results.

The Amherst Times offers:

American flag: $25

Gasoline: $2

Cigarette Lighter: $2.50

Catching yourself on fire because you are a terrorist a__ hole: PRICELESS!

———————————-
Hat tip to YARGB.

Man buys wife a Taser for personal protection. Brings it home and can’t resist playing with it.

What happened next is almost beyond description, but I’ll do my best…..

I’m sitting there alone, Tabby looking on with her head cocked to one side as to say, “don’t do it master,” reasoning that a one-second burst from such a tiny little ole thing couldn’t hurt all that bad.. I decided to give myself a one-second burst just for the heck of it. I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and HOLY MOTHER, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION@@ *I’m pretty sure Jessie Ventura ran in through the side door, picked me up in the recliner, then body slammed us both on the carpet, over and over and over again. I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, both nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position, and tingling in my legs. The cat was standing over me making meowing sounds I had never heard before, licking my face, undoubtedly thinking to herself, “do it again, do it again!”

SON-OF-A-.. that hurt like he** A minute or so later (I can’t be sure, as time was a relative thing at that point), collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape. My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. How did they up get there??? My triceps, right thigh and both nipples were still twitching. My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, and my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs. I’m still looking for my testicles? I’m offering a significant reward for their safe return.

Still in shock.

video

Last week’s Darwin award winner seemed to be Swedish executive Stefan Eriksson who lost control of a very very very expensive Ferrari Enzo, went airborne at some speed well in excess of 120 mph (current estimate is 162 mph), hitting an electric pole between five and ten feet off the ground, and dividing the exotic sports car into two parts.

But this week’s reports suggest that all this is part of some Raymond Chandler Southern California rich-guys-up-to-no-good mystery story, involving a clouded title, a mysterious driver who subsequently vanished, an increasingly illogical accident account, and the magazine from a pistol. Another news story.

The famous London gunmaking firm of Jeffrey introduced a proprietary series of cartridges around the turn of the last century designed to be used in massive double-rifles on the largest and most-dangerous African big game. The climax of the series, the .600 Nitro Express, introduced in 1903, remained the largest rifle catridge ever commercially loaded until 1988. The Nitro Express designation was applied to recently developed (circa 1900) higher velocity (Express) cartridges, loaded with Nitro, i.e., nitrocellulose, i.e., smokeless powder.

The .600 Nitro Express was three inches long, and 6/10 of an inch in diameter. The factory loading was 120 grains of cordite, which propelled a 900 grain Full Metal Jacketed bullet at a muzzle velocity of 2050 feet per second. More recent loads are slightly reduced (cartridge companies fear those old rifles are getting on in years) to the equivalent of 100 or 110 grains of cordite, producing only 1950 or 1850 fps.

This gigantic round was designed for only one purpose: to stop a charging elephant at close range with a single shot. Needless to say, it was possible to accomplish the same desirable feat with smaller cartridges, featuring less recoil, and only a very small number of rifles were built in the original period chambered for the mighty .600 Nitro Express.

There was a very substantial revival of interest in collecting, and shooting, classic British double rifles over the last few decades, and some of the surviving companies like Holland & Holland began producing them again to custom order. Finally, in 1988, purely for the fun of surpassing the historical record, a .700 Nitro Express cartridge was created.

More recently, it seems some custom gunsmith was commissioned to produce a barrel for the interchangeable-barreled Thompson Contender chambered for the dreaded .600 Nitro Express cartridge. Picture installing a Ferrari engine in a go cart.

Steve Bodio reports that someone was actually mad enough to fire it, and supplies the video. Gosh, I hope that wasn’t an expensive scope.

Tom Stienstra, the SF Chronicle’s Outdoor columnist, tells the story of this guy who was scared to death of bears.

But he was going to Bear Valley, and anyplace with a name like that would require some bear repellent, he figured…

He was tortured with the nightmare of a pack of bears surrounding him, slapping him around for fun, and then jumping on him, slobbering in his face. So he bought a canister of bear pepper spray, which is similar to mace. That is, if attacked, you spray it on the attacker’s face.

The outfitters from Alaska I know told me the hardest thing about administering pepper spray is that it hurts like heck when the bear stuffs the can down your throat.

Well, as the story goes, this guy in hysterics came running into the Bear Valley fire house.

“He was in great pain and wanted first-aid,” Jung said. “He thought pepper spray was like mosquito repellent and had sprayed it all over himself.”

That’s right, the guy sprayed himself with pepper spray.

In honor of this excruciating encounter, I hereby award Bear Repellent Bill the Bite-The-Alligator Award that I occasionally bestow.

This award is in honor of a small poodle dog in Florida that yapped at the alligator that climbed out of the canal, nipped it in the tail, whereupon the alligator whipped around and promptly ate it.

Of course, there is also the famous alleged Glacier National Park advisory sign:

MONTANA GRIZZLY BEAR ALERT

In light of the rising frequency of human/grizzly bear encounters, the Montana Department of Fish and Game advises hikers, hunters, and fishermen to take extra precautions and to stay alert for bears while in the field.

It is advised that outdoorsmen wear small bells on their clothing so as not to startle bears that aren’t expecting them. We also advise outdoorsmen to carry pepper spray with them in case of an encounter with a bear.

Additionally, it is also a good idea to watch out for fresh signs of bear activity. Outdoorsmen should be able recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear sign.

Black bear excrement is smaller, and contains lots of berries and squirrel fur.

Grizzly bear excrement has lots of little bells in it, and smells like pepper.