Cave News

VW Suicide car bomb ad is a HOAX

Volkswagen officials are outraged by a phony web commercial that shows the Volkswagen Polo surviving a suicide car bombing. This bogus ad has been circulating on the Web recently.

Fake VW web ad
I have seen this ad on blogs blasting the Volkswagen company for poor taste. The blog authors were taken in by the hoax and presented the ad as genuine. See story here.

Hand picked snack: Calvin would approve

Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy says a top Austrian doctor. Innsbruck-based lung specialist Prof Dr Friedrich Bischinger said, “people who pick their noses with their fingers were healthier, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies. He says society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking and encourage children to take it up”.

"With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner…and eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system”. I’m not making this up. A link to the story is here.

Calvin would approve
Remember Calvin in the now retired comic strip Calvin and Hobbs? He is the kid who wondered how cold it had to be outside before the boogers in his nose would freeze. Calvin would probably agree with Dr. Bischinger…I’m not sure I do.

4 More Years - Thanks Hollywood!

Citizens United, a group that advocates a return to traditional American values, has purchased the use of three billboards near the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards. The billboards will be up for the month of February, which includes Oscar Night, Sunday, February 27.

The rantings by those pictured on the billboard went a long way to re-elect the President. Pictured with Michael Moore is Whoopie Goldberg along with other outspoken ultra left Hollywood stars. They really did help Bush and other Republican candidates. Story is here. Click here to see one of the billboards close up.

Left a laptop in a Taxi lately?

This is from a Reuters news blurb datelined: January 24 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands via CNN. You can see it here.

Can you imagine 11,300 laptop computers, 31,400 handheld computers and 200,000 mobile telephones left in taxicabs around the world? And this was just in the last six months. That’s a lot of expensive stuff!

“Taxi drivers in nine cities also said they had found a range of other items left by passengers, including a harp, 37 milk bottles, dentures and artificial limbs.” Harps? Aren’t they large, heavy, sit on the floor instruments? I’ve seen some harps that were heavier than a piano.

And artificial limbs - how could someone accidentally leave a limb in a taxi? Can you just hear someone calling the Taxi office in a panic: ‘I think I left my leg in one of your Taxi’s”. How did they walk away from the cab? Or was it an extra leg they carried around under their arm for a spare just in case?

The article says Londoners were more prone to leave laptop computers. In Denmark they were most likely to leave a mobile phone. In Chicago it was handheld computers that were left behind.

“Most of the items were returned to their owners, cab drivers said. Four out of five mobile phones and 19 out of every 20 computers found their way back”

When I finally quit my job as a cement finisher and went back to school at age 33, I drove a taxi in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was on the night shift when a lot of tipsy folk would need a ride home from a bar or tavern. I don’t recall anything left in my cab that was more valuable than a half-used book of matches or empty beer can. No computers, harps or limbs - just litter for the trash can.

Creating monsters

This is from Matt Drudge - via his Drudge Report (found here). Drudge has a link (found here) to very disturbing story about various animal-human hybrids from National Geographic News.

The story reports several troubling examples. Scientists in China fused human cells with rabbit eggs. “The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras* successfully created. “They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.”

Another example came from the Mayo Clinic where researchers created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies. At Stanford University an experiment may be done this year to create mice with human brains!

“Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing ‘spare parts,’ such as livers, to transplant into humans.” This is not science fiction - it’s actually happening!

Will we grow a part animal - part human creature? If so, the article wonders, “At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?”

*A chimera is a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail

A new Constitution for Iraq

This came in a recent email:

There is talk about drafting a new Constitution for Iraq. Maybe we could save them time and just give them ours.

It was written by a lot of really intelligent and patriotic people and it worked very well for us for more than 200 years. We would probably not miss it because we hardly ever use it anymore.

Radar detector with "Ticket Free" guarantee!

I have never owned a radar detector. If you use one, does it have a “ticket free” guarantee? This one does! Wonder how many tickets they have paid? Probably none because the ticket must state the speed was detected with a laser or radar. How many Patrolmen would write that on your speeding ticket? .

Radar Detector with
12 month guarantee!
The K40 Electronics radar/laser detector RD850 has a guarantee. For the first 12 months of ownership, K40 will pay for any ticket if your speed was detected with laser or radar. Points lost on drivers license and attorney fees not included. Details can be found here.

Out behind the barn

This story reminded me of the Little Jimmy Dickens novelty tune, “Out Behind the Barn”. However, in this case it was out behind the schoolhouse.

Valeta picked up grandson Patrick from HMS Richards School a few days ago. Instead of going right to the car, he went out behind the schoolhouse with a few other boys from his room (he is in the 8th grade). After a few minutes the boys returned. When Patrick got to the car he was quizzed about the trip out behind the schoolhouse.

Patrick Schwab
Patrick said one of the boys boasted he would eat a cricket for money. Patrick and some friends collected $6.25 as payment to the kid for eating a cricket. That must have been enough because he did and they paid.

On the way home, Patrick and his grandma said they would never eat a cricket…well…not for $6.25 anyway. Wonder what cricket tastes like?

World’s largest Aircraft: Russian Antonov 225

A few days ago the new super jumbo AirBus was in the news. It is the worlds largest airliner. This post is about the worlds largest airplane. It is large enough to carry the fuselage of a Boeing 737 in the cargo hold.

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The Russian Antonov 225 is the world’s largest aircraft. It was first flew in 1988 and entered service in 1989. The Antonov 225 was built to carry the Buran space shuttle. After cancellation of the Buran space program, the only An-225 built was stored in spring 1994.

Click here to enlarge

Click here to elnarge
To give you an idea of the size of this plane, the complete assembled fuselage of a Boeing 737 can be fitted into the cargo hold of the An-225. This plane has a 32-wheel landing gear system. It has two nose and fourteen main wheel bogies, seven per side, each with two wheels.

Click here to enlarge

Click here to enlarge

Seven years after the 1994 retirement, the aircraft was made airworthy again. The huge An-225 took to the air again on May 7, 2001. More information can be found here and here.

Moore or less ignored at the Oscars

Why is it that, since Election Day, whenever Michael Moore is in the news - the news is not good? The Republicans have always disliked Moore. After November 2, the Democrats don’t like him much either. Does Moore really care? Probably not. He likes to be in the news. It’s like P.T. Barnum once talked about publicity being good even if it was negative - as long as they spell your name right. Moore knows that and is probably laughing all the way to the bank.

Michael Moore and his controversial film Fahrenheit 9/11 were completely snubbed at the Oscar nominations. His “gamble to hold the film out of the documentary category - to boost its best-picture prospects - backfired. The movie was shut out across the board.”

Michael Moore
Hollywood actively endorsed and supported nearly every Democratic candidate in the last election. Michael Moore’s outrageous attempts to support Democrats last year ended up hurting the party instead. Some say that it was Billionaire George Soros and Michael Moore that kept John Kerry out of the White House. That’s a very good reason for Hollywood to snub Moore now. He is already snubbed by the Democratic Party. However, like I said before, Moore just wants to be in the news. More information here and here.