[Hip Priest]

The police helicopter is out.

[Hip Priest]

Cops to hit streets to tackle lunar-tic drunks
By Louise Acford
Comment | Read Comments (13)


Extra police will be put on the streets during full moons after officers found a link between violent crime and the lunar cycle.

Inspector Andy Parr, of Sussex Police, was investigating external factors which affect people's behaviour when he discovered the link.

He said: "I compared a graph of full moons and a graph of last year's violent crimes and there is a trend."

Full moons and paydays were identified as key days when aggressive behaviour rises among drinkers in central Brighton's nightclubs and pubs.

Now police will respond this summer by putting extra bobbies on the beat on those days.

Insp Parr said: "Even if it is only one extra officer it can help prevent violent crime from taking place."

As well as causing violent crime, drinkers tended to be more aggressive and unhelpful during the full moon.

Insp Parr said: "People tend to be more aggressive generally.

"I would be interested in approaching the universities and seeing if any of their post-graduates would be interested in looking into it further. This could be helpful to us."

Extra police, on a larger scale, are already sent out on bank holidays and when there are large one-off events such as seafront gigs.

Insp Parr helps co-ordinate policing in the city's "marble" area, a police term for streets home to Brighton's busiest pubs and clubs.

It includes West Street, the seafront, East Street, parts of the Pavilion Gardens and extends from St James Street to Bedford Square.

Bouncer Terry Wing said: "It's so true. When there is a full moon out we look at the sky and say, "Oh no, all the idiots will be out tonight."

"I will start looking at the back of people's hands for hair next time."

Mr Wing, who is a former psychiatric nurse, said there was an established link between patients suffering from manic depression and the full moon.

He said: "It was thought the illness was related to the cycles of the moon."

Jim McFruin, the assistant manager of the Black Lion Pub in Black Lion Street, Brighton, said he hadn't noticed the link full moons and aggressive behaviour.

He said: "It's not something I've particularly noticed but I have been told about it before by a friend who used to work with the police.

"Doctors who work in casualty departments have also mentioned it before.

"Whether or not it is linked to alcohol, I don't know."

Taxi driver Damien Norman said: "It's a new one on me. I've been very lucky though and never had too much trouble from members of the public. I haven't noticed any difference with a full moon."

Earlier this year Professor Michal Zimecki of the Polish Academy of Sciences published a scientific paper which argued the full moon could affect criminal activity and health.

Full moons have long been blamed for extremes in human behaviour, including the transformation of men into the mythical beasts known as werewolves.

The word lunatic means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "affected with the kind of insanity that was supposed to have recurring periods, depending on changes of the moon."

The lunar cycle is aligned to women's menstrual cycles and the changing of the tides.

In 1992 Dr Peter Perkins, from Bournemouth, found calls to accident and emergency departments went up by three per cent during full moons.

He believes the human body is influenced by gravitational forces from the moon.

[nicfit]

does anybody wnat one of these things? (+ hard disk and cd-rom drive)
http://www.emulatorarchive.com/Sampl...4overview.html

[sonicl]

No, but if you have a sleeping bag and a pillow to offer I'll have those.

[nicfit]

Originally Posted by sonicl

No, but if you have a sleeping bag and a pillow to offer I'll have those.

Lady sonicl is angry?

[sonicl]

No, she's in Norway, so I stayed up late last night and I'm rather tired today.

[Hip Priest]

A very dark spot on Mars could be an entrance to a deep hole or cavern, according to scientists studying imagery taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.


The geological oddity measures some 330 feet (100 meters) across and is located on an otherwise bright dusty lava plain to the northeast of Arsia Mons, one of the four giant Tharsis volcanoes on the red planet.

The hole might be the sort of place that could support life or serve as a habitat for future astronauts, researchers speculated.

Must be deep

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) used its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument to draw a bead on the apparent deep hole - a feature that may cause more scientists to ponder about potential subsurface biology on Mars.

Because the spot lacks a raised rim or tossed out material called ejecta, researchers have ruled out the pit being an impact crater. No walls or other details can be seen inside the hole, and so any possible walls might be perfectly vertical and extremely dark or - more likely - overhanging.

HiRISE image specialists said the pit must be very deep to prevent detection of the floor from natural daylight, which is quite bright on Mars.

In April, it was announced that the
NASA Mars Odyssey and its Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) found near the equator seven dark spots that scientists think could be entrances to underground caves.

Meanwhile, MRO is ready to target the dark spots on Mars over the coming months as opportunities arise, explained HiRISE principal investigator, Alfred McEwen, of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

"We especially want oblique images from the west, to see illuminated walls. These are deep holes with overhanging walls, but perhaps not long caves," McEwen told SPACE.com.

Cave dwellers

Caves on Mars gives rise to thinking about subsurface life on the planet, notes Peter Smith, principal investigator for NASA's next outbound mission to that distant and dusty world, the Phoenix lander. The deeper and deeper you go down on Mars, the warmer and warmer it gets, Smith said, and at some point the conditions are just right where liquid water is stable.

Moreover, could caves be linked to underground fractures allowing water vapor to be trapped inside, Smith speculates, perhaps the sort of comfy environment ideal for biology.

Smith said caves on Mars are an exciting find. "We can't say what's in the caves. It's just that they exist. It is hard to tell from orbit. Landers can follow up on these discoveries."

Penny Boston, director of cave and karst studies at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico, has been working on a Caves of Mars Project, funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts.

Not only are natural caves of biological interest, Boston says, they could also serve as habitats for future human explorers - nifty underground housing to protect against the high-radiation environment of Mars. Additionally, caves offer easier subsurface access for direct exploration and drilling, she suggests, and may provide extractable minerals, gases, and ices.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Are people really angry about this?

http://www.sportinglife.com/story_ge...al_222337.html

[king_buzzo]

 

[sonicl]

Originally Posted by Пятхъдесят Шест

Are people really angry about this?

http://www.sportinglife.com/story_ge...al_222337.html

Not angry, just bemused and slightly embarressed.

[Prisstina]

itunes is impossible to use.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Originally Posted by sonicl

Not angry, just bemused and slightly embarressed.

I actually quite like it. What are your thoughts?

[sonicl]

Well, someone had to point out to me that it said 2012, I couldn't work out what the hell it was meant to be. There's nothing about it that says London to me, and nothing that conjures thoughts of the Olympic spirit.

What it seems representative of at the moment is the inability of the London Olympic organisers to organise a piss-up in a brewery. There is a concern, I think, that the 2012 Olympics are going to be a shoddy affair and will make us look very very foolish on the world event stage. But we organised a pretty good bash for the Queen's golden jubilee, so maybe we should have more faith.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Yes, it took a few looks to see the 2012 clearly. I think its a neat design but you're right, there is nothing about it that shouts Olympics. It looks better suited for the advertising of a big concert, or something awful MTV would brew up. I imagine that if Miami were to be awarded the games, their logo would look something like this. Also, could the 'London' text be any smaller?

With that being said, I do like it...

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Yesterdays Gold Cup results. Both of them shocking (sort of).

Canada Starts With a Win

Guadeloupe and Haiti tie 1-1

The US takes on Guatemala in about two hours.

[Hip Priest]

Nice win for Canada. Did you see the photos of the skeleton stuck in the iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland?

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/na...2c&k=78707&p=1

[Hip Priest]

I've just read this review of a new film called The Bothersome Man. The review isn't entirely complimentary, but I like the sound of the film.

In The Bothersome Man, director Jens Lien takes a stereotyped Scandinavia – clean, nice, a little dull – and exaggerates it into a numbing dystopia of offices, dinner parties, consumerism and interior design, a sterile suspension between life and death.

Andreas (Trond Fausa Aurvaag), an accountant, is dropped off a bus at a rusting petrol station in the middle of a grey-brown desert, and taken into a city where everything seems perfect –he is given an apartment and a job, and effortlessly acquires friends and a girlfriend – except for the fact that the world has been drained of colour, sensation and emotion. Andreas has no idea how he came to be here, and no idea how to escape: drunkenness is impossible, as is losing the self in music or sex; the streets are patrolled by agents alert to any signs of independence of spirit; and he can’t even kill himself.

Problematically, the more successfully the film conveys the all-consuming stupefaction of boredom, and the alienating effect of being confronted with life’s inanities, as it lingers on the flat and the trivial and maintains its slow and unchanging pace, the more soporific and uninvolving it becomes to watch. And it can’t reach towards any kind of narrative development or conclusion, or even clarification, as this would negate its absurdity. Still, this is an effective, if perhaps not very complex (and sometimes rather heavy-handed) rehearsal of Kafkaesque and Beckettian themes, and a visually elegant portrayal of a man’s struggle to feel alive.

[Hip Priest]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that a warm Eccles Cake with a big serving of cold clotted cream is very nice.

[HECKLER SPRAY]

???????????????

[HECKLER SPRAY]

totally agreed.