Couple arrested for sex on lawn at Windsor Castle

Queen Elizabeth II was at home at Windsor Castle, the sentries who guard her were on duty, and the large park surrounding the magnificent building was full of tourists on a Sunday afternoon. So it didn’t take long for people to realize that something was out of order when an inebriated couple arrived from a nearby restaurant and began having sex on a grass bank outside the castle, according to witnesses.

“One window from the guardroom opened up and when a soldier saw what was going on he told his mates — and lots of windows opened up,” witness Mark Robinson told The Sun newspaper.

“The couple did not care who was looking and just kept going as if they were in their own bedroom.”

Japanese tourists filmed the couple, who only stopped when police officers arrived on the scene, witnesses said.

Thames Valley Police said the man and woman were arrested and given a written warning about outraging public decency.

The queen was in the castle at the time, but her office declined Friday to comment about what had happened

via Couple arrested for sex on lawn at Windsor Castle.

Queenhibitionists?

Holy Bat Fungus, Cave Man

The U.S. Forest Service is closing thousands of caves and former mines in national forests in 33 states in an effort to control a fungus that has already killed an estimated 500,000 bats.

Bats have been dying at alarming rates from what scientists call “white-nose syndrome,” so-named because it appears as a white powder on the face and wings of hibernating bats.

The problem was first spotted in New York and within two years has spread to caves in West Virginia and Virginia. There’s no evidence the fungus is harmful to people.

Researchers believe the fungus is spread from bat to bat, but they have not ruled out the possibility that humans tromping from cave to cave might help to transmit it on their shoes and equipment, said Dennis Krusac, a biologist with the service’s Southern region.

“We don’t have the answers at this point,” he said. “If we have answers in a year or sooner, we can open them back up.”

Forest Service biologist Becky Ewing said an emergency order was issued last week for caves in 20 states from Minnesota to Maine. A second order covering the Forest Service’s 13-state Southern region should be issued later this month.

The sites will be closed for up to a year, she said.

The orders follow a March request by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for people to voluntarily stay out of caves in 17 states.

Biologists are concerned the fungus could wipe out endangered Indiana, Virginia and Ozark big-eared and gray bats.

Bats play a key role in keeping insects such as mosquitoes under control. Between April and October, they usually eat their body weight in bugs per night. The loss of 500,000 bats means 2.4 million pounds of bugs aren’t eaten in a year, Ewing said.

via Forest Service closes caves to stop bat fungus.

‘Worst Case’ Scenario for Flu Estimated

There will be about 1,700 U.S. cases of the new H1N1 flu, aka “swine flu,” in the next four weeks under a worst-case scenario, according to a research team’s new simulations.

And a second team working independently, about 200 miles away, on exactly the same question came up with a similar forecast.

As of Thursday, there were 109 lab-confirmed U.S. cases of the new influenza, according to the World Health Organization, which earlier this week raised the risk level of the influenza to one stage below pandemic because the virus is being transmitted within at least two countries in one region of the world. A full pandemic – the virus is also being transmitted within a third country in a different region – is considered imminent.

It is not clear, however, how virulent or deadly this flu strain will become. Flu viruses are unpredictable, and while some in history have proven incredibly deadly, many would-be-pandemics turned out to be quite mild. Also, medicine and public health are more sophisticated today, in terms of treatments and educational campaigns, than they were during the nation’s last pandemic flu in 1968, let alone during the Spanish flu of 1918.

Still, researchers are eager to predict what might happen and Dirk Brockmann has identified the hotspots.

California, Texas and Florida will have most of the cases by late May if Brockmann’s large-scale computer simulations are right. His group at Northwestern University came up with the figure of 1,700 cases by late May, and also projected more than 100 cases for the Chicago area.

“Remember – that’s exponential growth, which means slow at the beginning and then very fast,” Brockmann said. “If you run the worst-case scenario for four months, we’re at a very different number.”

Brockmann’s computer clusters can be used to simulate an infectious disease that spreads among 300 million people. The approach was based on human mobility patterns – daily commuting, intermediate trips and long-distance ones – which helps determine how a disease could potentially spread, and he modeled those on data from a dollar-bill tracking project called WheresGeorge.com. You can track people’s movements, to a certain extent, if you know where they spend cash.

“These networks play an important role in the spread of infectious disease,” he said. “So we’re looking at how people travel in the United States and Europe and trying to find a theory behind human traffic. Then we can unravel the structures within these networks and explain them.”

via ‘Worst Case’ Scenario for Flu Estimated.

Time machine

Time machine, originally uploaded by xeno735.

Indus Script Encodes Language, Reveals New Study Of Ancient Symbols

The Rosetta Stone allowed 19th century scholars to translate symbols left by an ancient civilization and thus decipher the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

But the symbols found on many other ancient artifacts remain a mystery, including those of a people that inhabited the Indus valley on the present-day border between Pakistan and India. Some experts question whether the symbols represent a language at all, or are merely pictograms that bear no relation to the language spoken by their creators.

A University of Washington computer scientist has led a statistical study of the Indus script, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and nonlinguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language. The results, published online April 23 by the journal Science, found the Indus script’s pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language.

“We applied techniques of computer science, specifically machine learning, to an ancient problem,” said Rajesh Rao, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering and lead author of the study. “At this point we can say that the Indus script seems to have statistical regularities that are in line with natural languages.”

via Indus Script Encodes Language, Reveals New Study Of Ancient Symbols.

Vista, fast file transfers

Vista, fast file transfers, originally uploaded by xeno735.

Alien Abduction, the “Two Most Trustworthy Cases”

The first case is not mysterious or even frightening (other than the abuse by the hypnotherapist) if you consider how memory and hypnosis work.

Memories: When we remember something, we actually don’t recall the original event. What we do is remember the last time we remembered the event. Details drift over time and this is why we are sometimes absolutely certain and absolutely wrong about something that happened in our past. Memories are changed by new events.

Hypnosis: Hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation which includes a singular focus (usually on the hypnotist’s voice) and it has a component of faith in authority.  Hypnotic regression is not a useful tool at all, other than for trickery or entertainment. What happens when you take someone back to a past event under hypnosis is that you are actually leading them to create a memory. Their imagination fills in details under the authority of the hypnotist which are as real as actual memories, because this is the mechanism of actual memory.

The real reason this hypnotherapist’s face is blanked out is that she violated all kinds of rules by doing what she did. She essentially creates a new traumatic event on top of whatever he originally experienced, if anything at all, and then she’s there touching the patient to “comfort him” from a false traumatic event she induced. This is why you need a license to become a hypnotherapist. You can royally screw some people up if you are ill-willed or incompetent.  If she had a license, which I doubt, she would probably lose it over what we’ve just seen.

The shard of glass in his leg? I’d need to see the complete report of the people doing the study. My guess is that the Abduction Researcher is taking a few lines of the report out of context. “It is unexplained how a bit of shower door got lodged in this guy’s leg. Very mysterious.”

I’m not saying alien abductions are impossible, I’m pointing out the simplest explanation. This type of jumping to wrong conclusions happens many times without the knowledge of either the therapist or the patient.  Both are fooled when their pre-existing beliefs lead them down an imaginary path. Science is full of examples of wrong conclusions and self-fulfilling prophesies generated by flawed methods.

If the “shard of glass” was communicating with a mother ship, if it floated in thin air, if it moved by itself, if it disappeared, if it was magnetic, if it could pass through solid objects, or if it contained a highly advanced  encoded language … then I’d have a different conclusion.

Grey Alien Caught on Traffic Cam?

What do you think of this? Someone messing with a video editor? The car that almost hit the beast didn’t react, so I think this is fake. Still interesting.

No Crackdown on Las Vegas Sex Clubs

Sex clubs offer nearly anything you want with anyone who’s willing. They operate in a world of loose regulation, weak enforcement and an anything goes attitude.

Technically they are illegal. From wife-swapping to whips and chains, it’s yours if you want it. There is a huge market for clubs that offer every fantasy imaginable for just an entrance fee. County code says that won’t fly. So, why hasn’t there been a crackdown? The answer is more complicated than you’ve heard before. It’s where money, power and sex all come together.

“From bondage, to transgender to Bi to whatever else, we’re the ‘everybody else’ club,” said Mike Powers, Power Exchange. Powers is the owner and operator of Power Exchange, the newest sex club in Las Vegas. His sprawling two-level complex off Highland Drive is a fetish fantasy.

“It’s part of an open-minded alternative aspect of society. Powers calls it a social club for like- minded people,” Powers said, adding, “It’s like the Elks Club or the Lions, kind of club for extreme interests, perverse interests or bizarre interests.”

“None of them are licensed to be sex clubs,” said David Cooper, who used to be in the sex club business until the county shut him down last year. Since then, he’s been waging a one man war against sex clubs. “Sex clubs apparently are legal in Clark County because they are not prosecuting them, they’re not going after them, they’re not doing anything,” said Cooper.

Clark County code calls sex clubs a “public nuisance.” It defines them as places for “adult social sexual encounters”, where patrons can “voluntarily engage in and/or view” live sex. So, if the county prohibits it, how do the clubs stay in business? “I think the ordinance itself is a mess,” said Allen Lichenstein, a prominent attorney. He is Cooper’s former lawyer and he currently works for Power Exchange and other adult clubs.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There really isn’t a problem,” Lichenstein said. He says the county’s code is confusing and up for interpretation. Read one way, it could lead to moral crusades.

“It’s not prostitution, it’s not drugs, it’s not violence. Why should anyone else care?” Lichenstein does counsel potential clubs to find unique ways to work within the county code. They are licensed as nearly everything but a sex club because which would be illegal. There are licenses for tanning salons, clothing and accessories shops, and restaurants. Club owners do operate those on site too but it’s only a small portion of the bottom line.

via I-Team: Tricks of the Trade in Las Vegas Sex Clubs – Las Vegas Now.

People are such freaks.  I didn’t know there was anything like this in Vegas. Not surprised, I guess.  The reason the cops there leave these places open is anyone’s guess. Vegas is it’s own little world.

The philosophical question–which applies to the rest of the world–that caught my attention with this is:  Why do we have so many unenforced laws?

Should we have laws which can not be enforced? I suppose so, but it’s an odd way to run things.  I think of speeding, for example.  If they suddenly locked everyone up who had ever gone faster than the speed limit, would anyone still be on the road? Probably not. Just me. But if you got rid of the speed limit, people would go nuts and you’d have way more fatalities.  So, it seems that our society is filled with people who are always breaking the law, always getting away with something.  Fuzzy math. Approximation of correctness. Is this human nature?

Man Jumps Off Casino Ship On $15 Dare

An 18-year-old man jumped off a gambling cruise ship near Port Canaveral on a $15 dare and swam to Jetty Park, deputies said. James Raynor jumped off the Sun Cruz Casino ship at about 4 p.m. after accepting the dare from his friends, according to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office.

Raynor was not injured and had not been drinking, deputies said.

“The ship was already at the port. It was moving to the berthing area,” Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Vic DeSantis told Local 6 News partner Florida Today.

The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said a referral will be sent to the state attorney’s office for a possible misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.

via Man Jumps Off Casino Ship On $15 Dare – Orlando News Story – WKMG Orlando.