Samwise rides again

From DailyPost.co.nz …

Acting Sergeant Roger Schreuder, of the Rotorua police, received a cut to his leg after being bitten by a pitbull terrier.

Mr Schreuder said he was not frightened and initially did not realise he had a dog hanging on to him.

“I was just thinking about the other officers’ safety more than my own.”

From WanganuiChronicle.co.nz …

Tuesday-Shar Irvine knows she will be cringing with fear and be totally petrified if she sees a pitbull terrier again.

On Saturday the 10-year-old was roller-blading home from the dairy in Glasgow St with her best friend Sam riding her bike alongside.

The girls had gone to buy lollipops. Suddenly a ginger pitbull terrier was looking at them from the top of a high wooden fence.

I just knew he was going to jump at us. I just knew he was going to run at us, I was so scared, she said. The two girls quickly took off across the road but they weren’t fast enough for the prowling, angry dog.

It bounded across the road after them, sinking his teeth into Tuesday’s thigh and forcing her to drop to the ground. Sam jumped off her bike and tried to throw it at the dog to try and stop it from coming

I was screaming and screaming and screaming, Tuesday said yesterday, her fingers gripping the side of the chair. But the dog stayed, savagely biting her legs.

It inflicted five large, deep bites in both of her thighs and more than 10 puncture wounds over her right lower leg. I was wearing my shorts

The ripping and biting in her legs felt like burning hot needles and there was a lot of blood

To her rescue came a van containing a man. They saw what was going on and they jumped out yelling at the dog to stop

The dog turned tail and ran when it saw the pair and other adults who had heard the commotion. It took off home

Tuesday-Shar said she was at the hospital for some time and had to have injections and huge bandages

Constable Vinnie Heihei said the dog had run off home after the attack and the woman owner had put it in her car and driven off. She still hasn’t returned

An order to destroy the dog has been made and police hope to find the dog and its owner within the next day or so

From OC Register …

An animal-services officer was attacked by a pit bull Wednesday morning, suffering minor injuries

About 9 a.m., the officer responded to Willits and Wood streets after reports of two dogs that were attacking a smaller dog

Upon arriving, the officer attempted to corral the pit bulls but was attacked by one of them, a male dog estimated at around 100 pounds.
The officer quickly called for additional officers. The responding officers trapped one of the pitbulls in a back yard while the attacking pit bull was shot after it attempted to attack again

The animal-control officer then gave the injured pit bull a lethal injection to euthanize it at the scene. The other pit bull was taken to Orange County Animal Services

Police are still trying to identify the owner or owners of the pit bulls.

The smaller dog that was reportedly attacked has not been found.

From YorkDispatch …

An 8-year-old pit bull attacked two people Saturday afternoon, but whether the dog and its owner are protected by state law is a debate that an animal control official says is best left to attorneys.
The Staffordshire terrier, Buster, is under a 10-day quarantine for the attack that seriously injured Dr. Tony Skiptunas III and Mary Ellen Caldwell. When a dog bites a human, law requires the dog be quarantined for 10 days, which is sufficient time to determine whether the animal is rabid.

The two had been out campaigning in Caldwell’s bid for a spot on the Lower Windsor Township Board of Supervisors when the attack occurred outside a resident’s back door.

They contend the dog is overly aggressive, that it might have killed Caldwell had Skiptunas not stepped in.

The dog’s owner, Izel Knopp, says she feels horrible that the two were injured, but defends her dog, saying he was inside her home and Caldwell had no business at the back door of her Craley Road home.

“If you don’t belong here, you’re going to meet Buster,” Knopp said. “I’m sorry this woman got hurt and this man, and I’m angry at them for coming behind my house.”

Animal Control Officer Terry Hemler said Knopp had complied with state rules regarding shots, licensing and restraining to the dog. The animal was inside their house and thus was not required to be on a leash.

But Skiptunas, a radiologist, asks that the dog be euthanized because of the level of aggression; he plans to plead his case to Lower Windsor Township supervisors during its board meeting

“He wanted to kill,” Skiptunas said. “I’ve not seen that level of aggression in most dogs unless they’re fighting dogs.”

He is pushing for further investigation to determine whether Buster had fought before.

But Knopp says, “no,” that Buster was protecting his home, that the attack was an unfortunate accident.

“If she had knocked on the front door like she said, the dog would have barked,” Knopp said. “She would have seen him in the window. She had no business stalking all of the doors; she should have left when no one answered the front door.”

The minutes-long attack occurred about 6 p.m. Saturday outside the back of Knopp’s home. When it was over, a chunk of Caldwell’s calf was missing and Skiptunas had been bitten on the chest and hands — Buster bit through Skiptunas’ right hand.

Caldwell had been out campaigning, assisted by Skiptunas. Caldwell said she avoids homes with dogs, that although she has a German shepherd, she is cautious of dogs she doesn’t know. Skiptunas owns two Rottweilers and has bred and shown dogs for some 18 years.

The two stopped roadside. Skiptunas began to cross Craley Road and Caldwell headed up to Knopp’s home. She said she knocked on the door, no one answered and so she headed around back to see if someone was there.

She knocked on the back screen door, and within seconds Buster appeared. Caldwell said he lunged at the door twice until the door opened.

“That dog went at my leg, it just sunk its teeth in my leg and started shaking me around,” Caldwell said. “I started screaming at the top of my lungs. (Skiptunas) came running up there, and by that time, I had a lot of flesh all over the driveway.”

Skiptunas said Caldwell was on the ground, that Buster was hovering above her about to make another move. As Skiptunas approached, he saw blood and flesh. Buster turned his attention to Skiptunas and lunged some five feet out and up to land a bite on the left side of Skiptunas’ chest, he said. The attack continued.

Eventually, Skiptunas said he grabbed onto Buster’s collar and twisted it until the dog couldn’t breathe. He then wrestled Buster to the ground, holding his head down with his knee. About that time, Knopp arrived home. She said she had left the house to pick up dinner to go.

She arrived to find Skiptunas wrestling Buster and Caldwell lying in the driveway. She told him not to hurt her dog. By then, her son Jason had heard the commotion and come outside to help. Buster was led into a garage.

Authorities and medics arrived; the victims were taken to separate hospitals, where their wounds were cleaned and dressed. Now, the two must avoid infection during the months-long process of healing.

Knopp says she’s hurt about the incident, too.

“I don’t want anything to happen to my dog,” she said. “If no one answers, common sense tells you to leave. He was in his house on his own property.”

She since has posted signs that read: “No Trespassing and Beware of Dog.”

“When the dog is outside, it’s to be on a leash or under control. The dog was inside,” he said. “If someone goes around to the back side of the house and this happens, well, that could be a real good discussion between the lawyers. We don’t get involved in that.”

From Aunty …

The Dutch government is banning the sale of all magic mushrooms after a series of high-profile incidents involving tourists who had taken them.

Tourists, eh ?

Figures.

The Netherlands is famed for its liberal drugs policy, with marijuana openly sold in licensed cafes.

Magic mushrooms, more properly known as psilocybe, contain the psychedelic chemicals psilocybin and psilocin.

The psychedelic mushrooms found natively in the UK are known as Liberty Caps.

Currently in the Netherlands the sale of dried magic mushrooms - in which the psychoactive chemicals psilocybin and psilocin are stronger - is banned but fresh mushrooms are allowed.

This is because it is more difficult to ascertain how much of the chemicals fresh mushrooms contain.

Calls for a re-evaluation of the drug grew after a 17-year-old French girl jumped from a building after eating magic mushrooms during a school trip to Amsterdam in March.

Other incidents involving the drug have included an Icelandic tourist jumping from a balcony and breaking both legs and a Danish tourist driving his car wildly through a camping ground, narrowly missing sleeping campers.

“It’s a shame, the media really blew this up into a big issue,” said Chloe Collette, owner of the FullMoon shop, which sells magic mushrooms in Amsterdam.

She said all the incidents had involved magic mushrooms in conjunction with other drugs.

Mixing drugs generally skews the picture of the problem, for example many deaths attributed to MDMA are largely not caused by MDMA at all, but as a result of something else the user has taken. MDMA however makes a better headline.

Users of fresh mushrooms experience effects ranging from giggling fits and intensification of colours, lights and sounds to, more rarely, hallucinations. Negative effects can include vomiting, and anxiety.

As always, responsibility and maturity are the order of the day.

Homepage of David “Keanu” Sai, who is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science specialising in Hawaiian Constitutionalism and International Relations.

The papers and .ppt presentation on his page are well worth a look, it mainly concerns the prolonged occupation of the Kingdom of Hawai’i by the United States of America following the Bayonet Constitution.

Sourceforge page for ext2fsx.

I had a look at this two possibly three years ago when it was in beta, or possibly alpha.

It apparently is now ready for production use, which sounds positive. A colleague is planning to use it after I hip’d him to it, so I will let you know what it’s like and how well it works, though I am hoping it is better than HFS+ support on non-Apple system ;Op

UPDATE : So …. it turns out that the last time I looked at ext2fsx it was stable, but only available for MacOS X prior to 10.4 ( pre Tiger, ) the current version that works with 10.4 is a development version and can cause kernel panics. However, when we plugged it into a CentOS 5 box to format as ext2fs, the disk had already been formatted HFS+ ( not HFSX, ) and was mounted automatically. This came as a shock as HFS+ support in Linux can only have been added recently, at the very least since I bought my iPod. Of course there is a possibility that it is third-party and not in the kernel at all, the only linux HFS+ support I can find is here, and that is still in beta. Answers on a postcard.

UPDATE : Apparently HFS+ isn’t a part of the linux kernel proper.

Hola Ernesto,

Doctors working under the Cuban socialist health care system saved the sight of the man who ended your life, apparently he obtained treatment under a false name …

Mr Teran had cataracts removed under a Cuban programme to offer free eye treatment across Latin America.

The operation on Mr Teran took place last year and was first revealed when his son wrote to a Bolivian newspaper to thank the Cuban doctors for restoring his father’s sight.

Che returns to win yet another battle

“Now an old man, he [Teran] can once again appreciate the colours of the sky and the forest, enjoy the smiles of his grandchildren and watch football games.”

! No lo vamos a olvidar !

Che Che

http://dl.che-lives.com/pics/sierra.jpg

From Record Online …

The girl was called out of class by a security guard during a school sweep last week to make sure no kids had backpacks or other banned bags.

Samantha Martin had a small purse with her that day.

That’s why the security guard, ex-Monticello cop Mike Bunce, asked her The Question.

She says he told her she couldn’t have a purse unless she had her period. Then he asked, “Do you have your period?”

Samantha was mortified.

She says she thought, “Oh, my God. Get away from me.” But instead of answering, she just walked back into class.

It appears that at least a few other girls were also asked the same question.

On Sept. 21, Martin and other girls were called to the office of Principal Robert Worden. Lisa Raymond, the assistant superintendent for business, was also there, Martin said.

“They just asked me what he (Bunce) said. I told them, and they said thanks for coming,” she said.

The small Sullivan County school has been in an uproar for the last week. Girls have worn tampons on their clothes in protest, and purses made out of tampon boxes. Some boys wore maxi-pads stuck to their shirts in support.

After hearing that someone might have been suspended for the protest, freshman Hannah Lindquist, 14, went to talk to Worden. She wore her protest necklace, an OB tampon box on a piece of yarn. She said Worden confiscated it, talked to her about the code of conduct and the backpack rule — and told her she was now “part of the problem.”

The administration is investigating whether they said anything more to some girls.

The school banned backpacks in the halls this year for two reasons, George said: Student health, because heavy bags could hurt the kids’ backs or people could trip on them; and for security concerns, felt nationwide, about concealed weapons.

The health angle is nothing but shit, and the security aspect is laughable security theatre, however if there was a shooting or knifing, they could have used those tampons to stem-the-flow-of-blood ;Op

Parents are furious.

… and quite right too.

Again, not a true “When animals attack …” but having recently been bitten by mosquitoes I am feeling this is worth inclusion.

From Aunty …

Michael Nicholson, from Livingston, West Lothian, contracted the rare Triple E bug from a mosquito bite in the US

Mr Nicholson’s relatives say that if he lives he is expected to be severely disabled for the rest of his life.

He is being treated in Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital.

The virus, known as Eastern Equine Encephalitis or Triple E, is regarded as one of the most serious mosquito-borne diseases on the North American continent.

It is found mainly in the eastern regions of the US and has a 35% mortality rate.

Symptoms develop after three to 10 days, and include flu-like illness, inflammation of the brain, coma and death.

“You don’t think there is going to be a risk if you get bitten by a mosquito in somewhere like the US, or Spain.

“So we had no idea this would be so devastating.

Mr Nicholson spent six weeks with family and friends in Rhode Island and New Hampshire this summer.

He fell ill on 31 August, a day after flying back to Scotland.

Within two days he had lost consciousness and was transferred to the intensive care unit at the Western General.

Mrs McKenzie said doctors diagnosed her brother with Triple E on 13 September, telling the family his was the first case in Europe.

She said Michael was now in the hospital’s neurological unit where he remained unconscious and unresponsive.

“He has opened his eyes, but is not aware of anything,”

“We have been told he is likely to be severely disabled at best.

“EEE is an extremely rare disease which has never been transmitted from person to person, and it can only be caught through bites from infected insects. The virus is not found in the UK.”

US health records reveal 220 confirmed cases of Triple E between 1964 and 2004, an average of five per year.

Not a true “When animals attack …” episode, but I am including it as it involves bees attacking elephants and people. It also involves bees and elephants which are both favourites of mine.

From Aunty …

Oxford University researchers found that elephants would quickly vacate a spot after hearing recordings of bees.

The insects are able to inflict painful stings inside the animals’ trunks, and it is thought that elephants have learned to avoid them

Elephants are partial to maize, the principal crop for millions of Africans. Typically the animals seek out the crops just before harvest time.

The Oxford team set up concealed loudspeakers in trees where elephants regularly came to find shade.

While the animals rested, researchers played either buzzing sounds recorded at beehives, or a control sound of white noise.

The buzzing clearly had the animals concerned. Ninety-four percent of the elephant families left the tree within 80 seconds of hearing bee sounds, nearly half of the time at a run.

White noise, by contrast, only scared away 27% of the families.

“So you could use sounds to deter elephants,” noted Dr King, “but there are two major hiccups.

“Firstly, farmers don’t have money to pay for a loudspeaker and a minidisc, and on that level it’s not practical. Secondly, elephants are smart and would work out that there are no painful beestings; we don’t know if that would happen after three playbacks or 30, but it is clearly going to happen.”

It might be more practical and more desirable, she believes, to use real bees rather than their sounds.

Another of the projects that the group is running in Kenya involves creating a “beehive fence“, where the passage of a hungry elephant would trigger bees to start flying and buzzing, giving the animal cause to turn and not come back.

One experimental set-up involves suspending a chain of hives from stanchions, linked together by wires which would be disturbed by an elephant’s leg.

In certain situations, putting more bees into rural communities could help crop yields and provide honey either for local consumption or sale.

But African bees are quite aggressive and cause painful stings, so some communities might not welcome them.

Lucy King has felt their dark side more than once, having had a swarm settle on her during field trials.

“They sting you and they die; and when they sting you it releases a pheromone that encourages others to sting you. I was stung once on the jugular vein, so I’ve been very lucky.”

The research was partly funded by the organisation Save the Elephants, which has as part of its mission “to develop a tolerant relationship between the two species” of human and African elephant.

Peter :
Now, Mr. Spigott, I couldn’t help noticing almost at once that you are a one-legged person.

Dudley :
You noticed that?

Peter :
I noticed that, Mr. Spigott. When you have been in the business as long as I have you come to notice these things almost instinctively. Now, Mr. Spigott, you, a one-legged man, are applying for the role of Tarzan — a role which, traditionally, involves the use of a two-legged actor.

Dudley :
Correct.

Peter :
And yet you, a unidexter, are applying for the role.

Dudley :
Right.

Peter :
A role for which two legs would seem to be the minimum requirement.

Dudley :
Very true.

Peter :
Well, Mr. Spigott, need I point out to you where your deficiency lies as regards landing the role?

Dudley :
Yes, I think you ought to.

Peter :
Need I say with overmuch emphasis that it is in the leg division that you are deficient.

Dudley :
The leg division?

Peter :
Yes, the leg division, Mr. Spigott. You are deficient in it — to the tune of one. Your right leg I like. I like your right leg. A lovely leg for the role. That’s what I said when I saw you come in. I said ‘A lovely leg for the role.’ I’ve got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is — neither have you. You fall down on your left.

Classic. Too classic not to include.

Of course such obvious discrimination probably wouldn’t be allowed in this day and age.

From The Beeb …

A US man who stored his amputated leg in a barbecue smoker that was later auctioned off is locked in a custody dispute with the man who bought it.

John Wood’s smoker was sold to Shannon Whisnant last week after he fell behind on payments at the storage facility in North Carolina where it was kept.

He wants his leg back but Mr Whisnant says he has a receipt for the smoker’s contents and wants to share ownership.

Mr Wood’s leg was amputated above the knee after a plane crash in 2004.

He asked to keep the leg so he could be buried as a whole man when he died, and stored it at the facility in Maiden after losing his home.

But when Mr Wood failed to pay the necessary rental fees, the storage company auctioned the smoker and all its contents.

After buying the smoker last Tuesday, Mr Whisnant looked inside and found a man’s leg wrapped in a wire screen.

He initially gave the leg to the police, who concluded it had not been removed as a result of a crime and sent it to a funeral home until Mr Wood could pick it up.

But after making money by charging adults $3 (£1.47) and children $1 (49p) to look inside the empty smoker, Mr Whisnant asked for it back.

“It’s a strange incident and Halloween’s just around the corner. The price will go up if I get the leg.”

Having had his offer rejected, Mr Whisnant has threatened to begin legal action if the leg is not returned to him by next week.

“Everybody knows it’s mine, period,” he said. “And if anyone tries to take it, I want everything they got.”

Might cost Mr.Wood an arm and a leg.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.

UPDATE : The Nine Billion Names of God.