XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 06/27/12

Wednesday, 27 June 2012

Guardsman accidentally impaled by his bayonet - during the Changing of the Guards ceremony on Parliament Hill -

Guardsman accidentally impaled by his bayonet - during the Changing of the Guards ceremony on Parliament Hill -
Frank Ronnels

A member of the Governor General’s Foot Guards was seriously injured during the Changing of the Guards ceremony on Parliament Hill Wednesday morning.

A 20-year-old male suffered a severe stab wound from his rifle-mounted bayonet after falling during the parade. Medics from the Canadian Forces immediately provided first aid to the injured man, applying pressure to his wound until paramedics arrived.

In addition to his wound, paramedics treated the man for severe blood loss.

He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he is currently in serious, but stable condition.

“It was terrifying,” said a bystander who witnessed the moment when the man fell, at approximately 10:30 a.m. “You could see a lot of blood covering the bayonet, and all over the ground where he fell.”

Devron Gaber, from Victoria, B.C., also witnessed the incident.

The man was screaming in pain for several minutes, but went silent once the medics began to treat him, said Gaber.

Dozens of tourists remained on the scene, taking photos of the guard while he was wounded on the ground.

The man, who was marching in the last group of guards, had fallen as he was turning by the main gates of Parliament Hill. A few seconds before he fell, another guard had also slipped in the same spot, but managed to recover and continue marching, said Gaber.

Gaber believes both men had slipped on the manhole cover, located in the spot where the guards turn.

“There is a flaw in the ceremony,” said Gaber. “It’s the fact that the guards have to turn on that manhole. With the shoes they wear, several of them were slipping and losing their footing as they turned. It’s dangerous.”

Read more -
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/27/ceremonial-parliament-hill-guardsman-accidentally-impaled-by-his-bayonet/

Majority of Americans, nearly 65 percent, say Obama is better suited than Romney to handle an ALIEN invasion -

Americans may be split on which presidential candidate can fix the economy, but President Barack Obama trounces Mitt Romney in one out-of-this-world scenario — an alien invasion.

The majority of Americans, nearly 65 percent, say Obama is better suited than Romney to handle an alien invasion, according to a new National Geographic Channel poll, USA Today reports.

The survey, conducted to promote “Chasing UFOs,” a TV series premiering Friday, also found that almost eight in 10 people, 79 percent, believe the government has kept information about UFOs a secret from the public. In addition, 55 percent believe agents similar to those played by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the film “Men in Black” — their mission is to hide information about extraterrestrial beings — actually exist.

Meanwhile, more than a third of Americans, 36 percent, believe UFOs exist.

Read more -
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=40AD0C95-BA8A-4DA9-AD05-57328D0EB5FA

Pedestrian thrown in jail for holding up sign warning drivers about police speed trap -

A woman in Houston, Texas, was arrested and jailed for 12 hours after she held up a make-shift sign to warn drivers about a speed trap.
Natalie Plummer was officially charged with walking in the roadway -- jaywalking, essentially -- though she says the police officers who arrested her were just angry that she had tipped off speeders.
Miss Plummer was riding her bicycle along a road near downtown Houston on Thursday when she spotted police officers pulling drivers over.

She told KTRK that it looked like the officers were targeting cars at random, so she recorded some the activity on her cell phone.
Then, she said, she turned around and wrote 'Speed Trap!!' in large letters on a piece of grocery bag to warn oncoming traffic.
'I was simply warning citizens of a situation ahead,' she told the TV station.

The officers didn't see it that way. Shortly after she took up her post, a squad car pulled up to Miss Plummer and an officer grabbed her backpack off her shoulder and began rifling through it.
Then, he handcuffed her and told her she was under arrested for felony obstruction of justice and that she would spent three to five years in jail, at minimum.

She ended up being charged with misdemeanor 'walking in the road where a sidewalk is present,' through she was in jail 12 hours before she was able to bail out.
Miss Plummer said she wasn't obstructing justice, and she wasn't in the roadway, either -- she was on the sidwalk.
'He couldn't take me to jail for holding up this sign or he would have. So all he could do was make up something fake about it,' she said.
The Houston Police Department wouldn't speak on camera about the arrest, but stood by the officer's report that she was walking in the road and a danger to herself and others.
A KTRK legal analyst says Miss Plummer should not have been arrested.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165792/Natalie-Plummer-arrested-holding-sign-warning-drivers-police-speed-trap.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

A Texas woman claims a United Airlines maintenance worker dripped superglue into her hair while fixing an overhead bin -

A woman aboard a flight from San Diego to Houston said a United Airlines maintenance worker dripped superglue in her hair.

"When the flight attendant said, 'Hey, you got superglue in her hair,' he totally ignored the comment, wouldn't look at me, wouldn't make any comment and replaced the seat cushion and walked out," said Karen Reed, the passenger.

Reed said the worker needed to fix a portion of the overhead bin above her seat. The glue, she said, dripped everywhere, including in her hair.

She filed several complaints with United and the Department of Transportation because she said the airline did nothing.

A United Airlines representative told Local 2, "We are reaching out to Ms. Reed to apologize and offer compensation as an appreciation of her business."

"I don't know if I'd fly United again," Reed said.

Read More -
http://www.click2houston.com/news/United-Airlines-passenger-says-superglue-dropped-on-hair/-/1735978/15315644/-/2crfs6/-/index.html

Store clerk was fired after she refused to take a customer’s Welfare card to pay for cigarettes -

Jackie R. Whiton of Antrim had been a six-year employee at the Big Apple convenience store in Peterborough until a single transaction sent her job up in smoke.
The store clerk was fired after she refused to take a customer’s Electronic Balance Transfer card to pay for cigarettes.
Whiton said a young man came in to the store to buy two packs or cigarettes on May 29. When she asked him for his ID, he handed her his EBT card.
EBT cards are used for both food and cash assistance programs. There are two types of cards: one can only be used for food. The other can be spent on anything and used just like a debit card.
Whiton said she did not think EBT cards could be used to purchase cigarettes and refused to sell to him. The two “had a little go-around” as the line got longer behind him, said Whiton.
“I made the statement, ‘do you think myself, that lady and that gentlemen should pay for your cigarettes?’ and he responded ‘yes,’ ” Whiton said.
The next day Whiton said the customer’s foster mother came to the store to complain. Whiton received a call later that day from the company’s home office in Maine, telling her it had received a complaint about her and reprimanded her.
“I said I would bow out gracefully and give my notice because I didn’t want to be a part of it. I’m 65 years old, you know?” Whiton said.
Charles E. Wilkins, the general manager of the C.N. Brown Co. that runs the stores, said the EBT cards in the cash phase could be used for any items, including alcohol, tobacco and gambling. Wilkins said the company gave Whiton the option of staying but she said she would not accept the cards anymore.
“She didn’t think it was right and just wasn’t going to sell to people in that program anymore,” Wilkins said.

Read more -
http://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/clerk-loses-job-over-stand/article_87627ed5-5d4e-5ff0-a781-f14deb034771.html

New US Disability Regulations Require Businesses to Admit Mini Horses as Guide Animals -

Although the Justice Department has extended the deadline for America’s hotels to comply with regulations regarding handicap access to swimming pools, new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines are already being applied at miniature golf courses, driving ranges, amusement parks, shooting ranges and saunas.

Among the provisions in the "Revised ADA Standards for Accessible Design," which went into effect on March 15, is one requiring businesses to allow miniature horses on their premises as guide animals for the disabled. Another limits the height of slopes on miniature golf holes.

“The new standards, for the first time, include requirements for judicial facilities, detention and correctional facilities, and recreational facilities,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said during a conference in Baltimore on June 7.

“We expect the implementation of these accessibility standards to open up doors for full participation in both the responsibilities, such as jury duty, and the benefits, such as playing at city parks, of civic life for people with disabilities,” he said.

Read more -
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/new-disability-regs-limit-slope-mini-golf-holes-require-businesses-admit-mini-horses

Women's Tennis Association to crack down on grunts -

With Wimbledon in full swing, the Women’s Tennis Association yesterday announced a crackdown on players who shriek, shout and grunt as they hit the ball.
Some super-grunters, such as top-ranked Maria Sharapova can top 100 decibels. A lion’s roar is only 110.
The solution? A hand-held device for umpires to measure sound levels on the court.
The WTA’s players council and representatives of the International Tennis Federation and the four grand-slam events approved the crackdown at a meeting this month in Paris.
“It’s time for us to drive excessive grunting out of the game for future generations,” the WTA’s CEO, Stacey Allaster, told USA Today.
But it won’t apply to the current generation.
After consulting coaches, experts in sports science and top players past and present, including Billie Jean King and Serena and Venus Williams, officials determined it would be unfair to force today’s grunters to change the way they play.
Nor will the new policy affect men — whose ranks have included world-class grunters like Andre Agassi and Jimmy Connors.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2012/06/27/women-tennis-association-announces-crack-down-on-grunting/?test=latestnews

Dessert with breakfast HELPS your diet -

Good news for dieters - having a sweet treat at breakfast can actually help you lose pounds and keep them off for longer.
Scientists followed 200 non-diabetic obese adults who were randomly assigned to eat one of two low-calorie diets.
Although both diets had the same number of daily calories - about 1,600 for men and 1,400 for women - one included a large breakfast with a sweet treat such as a doughnut while the other allowed for a larger meal later in the day.
The researchers from Tel Aviv University said those who consumed the carbohydrate and protein-rich 600 calorie breakfast were more successful at sticking to their diets than those who had the 300 calorie morning meal.
They found that halfway through the eight-month study, participants in both groups lost an average of 33 pounds per person.
However, in the last four months of the study, the small-breakfast group regained an average of 22 pounds while the participants who ate the dessert with breakfast went on to lose another 15 pounds each.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2164976/Dessert-breakfast-HELPS-diet-beating-cravings.html

Google’s Virtual Brain Goes On YouTube And Looks For Cat Videos -

Inside Google's secretive X laboratory, known for inventing self-driving cars and augmented reality glasses, a small group of researchers began working several years ago on a simulation of the human brain.
There Google scientists created one of the largest neural networks for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors, which they turned loose on the internet to learn on its own.
Presented with 10 million digital images found in YouTube videos, what did Google's brain do? What millions of humans do with YouTube: looked for cats.

The neural network taught itself to recognise cats, which is actually no frivolous activity. This week the researchers will present the results of their work at a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Google scientists and programmers will note that while it is hardly news that the internet is full of cat videos, the simulation nevertheless surprised them. It performed far better than any previous effort by roughly doubling its accuracy in recognising objects in a challenging list of 20,000 distinct items.
The research is representative of a new generation of computer science that is exploiting the falling cost of computing and the availability of huge clusters of computers in giant data centers. It is leading to significant advances in areas as diverse as machine vision and perception, speech recognition and language translation.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/googles-brain-simulator-16000-computers-to-identify-a-cat-20120626-20zmd.html#ixzz1yx7zvNoX