For motion picture use only. Or, for teasing customs and border patrol guards - they are known to appreciate a boredom interrupting joke. Amazon sells it for $54.They also sell fake money with bundles of white powder, but it's currently unavailable.

A long time, and well loved, resident of Yellowstone National Park, Scarface the bear, has been found shot dead. Scarface has been entertaining photographers, non-threateningly, for decades. It seems unlikely he was killed in self-defense, as he was unlikely to disturb family pic-a-nics. ICTMN shares:In the ongoing research into the habits of the grizzlies in Yellowstone, Scarface had been captured, collared, and released 17 times.Scarface did survive to a ripe old age for his species, 25. In his prime, he weighed 600 pounds. He was down to 338 pounds and biologists expected this last winter to be his last. They meant a death from old age, not from gunshots. Social media were full of outrage from biologists and wildlife photographers, for whom Scarface had become a symbol of the species struggling for survival against climate change and the invasion of bear habitat by humans.Shooting a grizzly is unlawful except in self-defense, but Scarface had a long history with people that made him an unlikely candidate to attack a photographer or a hunter. Because of the Endangered Species Act violation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has opened an investigation into the circumstances of the shooting. Several photographers, decrying the shooting, declared that Scarface was the most photographed bear in Yellowstone.

This week, Techdirt's Tim Cushing published a story about the Hancock County, IN Sheriff's Department officers who stole $240,000 under color of asset forfeiture. (more…)

For flying a really non-threatening kite, in low winds, I find the Prism Atom to be wonderful. For a bit bigger kite flying experience, this Prism Stowaway is just as simple, and fun.Prism specialises in making kites that are easy to deploy, and fly. I have quite a few kites, and even one or two are more complicated than I care to figure out very often. Prism kites pretty much spring into form, and are ready to fly.Prism Stowaway Delta Kite via Amazon

Seems the animal uprising continues on the North American continent! Vancouver humans are under attack by aggressive crows. Jim O'Leary, an instructor at Langara College, has developed an interactive map of the attacks, but as yet offers no explanation for the aggressive birds.Via the CBC website:"You could go out on the street and you could see the crows, literally, coming and hitting people on the head."O'Leary hopes his map will reveal some patterns in where crows attack. For instance, it is already showing that a large number of the attacks happen in the West End and downtown of Vancouver, which makes sense, he says, because crows love to be around human food, and those areas have lots of restaurants and leafy trees.The map has already gotten about 300 attacks recorded in it, and O'Leary wants to see more.O'Leary, however, hasn't added to any of that data, because he hasn't been attacked himself."I'm careful, and I have a little umbrella that I put behind me," he said.(Thanks, Russell Smalley!)

Sinister conspiracy theories about LSD, the government and MKUltra are not uncommon on the internet. But one anonymous Redditor's comments, easily ignored as odd paranoid tangents on the threads they appear on, add up to a "compelling science-fiction horror story" in aggregate — especially all that stuff about flesh interfacing. Reddit is a fascinating platform for such eerie, slow-building metafiction, writes Leigh Alexander. The seemingly random thread names start to form a pattern: the reader gets the distinct pleasure of wondering why the author chose to post each component in each place. Eerie fragments of fiction hide among commonplace online discussion. Sometimes readers reply and engage, and sometimes are none the wiser. The enthusiastic cult fandom quickly built a Wiki to study and catalogue the mysterious tale, create a timeline of known events, and to note in a sort of literary formalist way what tropes the author is employing. The story also has its own dedicated discussion thread where volunteers have even developed audiobook editions.The internet has always loved a good mystery, and Wikis, message boards and image boards have a history of playing host to fascinating and often scary folktales that leverage the format and utility of these digital spaces in creative ways."We can only hope," she adds, "that it's not a viral marketing stunt."

https://youtu.be/gGCg6M-yxmUThe Moog Model 15 App runs on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. It's $30 and judging by the track below, it's worth it!The Moog Model 15 App is an iOS version of the iconic 1970’s instrument. It is designed to evoke the joyous experimentation and sonic bliss of it’s predecessor’s vintage hardware, the Moog Model 15 App meticulously recreates the look, feel, and sound of its highly expressive analog namesake.[via]

It's unfortunate that this deer got its head stuck in a light globe. It must have been terrified. The good news is that Jeff Hull with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation managed to remove the globe, and the deer appears to be unharmed.As you might expect, the photo of the deer has become fodder for all kinds of photoshoppery.

https://youtu.be/2dhHpHOgrUIWhen powered mercury(II) thiocyanate is ignited, it summons Crom Cruach.

https://youtu.be/8X-L8z52v4MThis is from a 1994 episode of The Tonight Show host by Jay Leno. This clip begins after Leno interviewed Burt Reynolds, who is sitting to the left of an empty chair reserved for the next guest, Marc Summers (host of Nickelodeon's game show Double Dare). Before Summers comes out, Leno shows a scene from Double Dare where Summers gets repeatedly hit by pies from some kind of pie throwing machine.Leno asks him about it, and Summers says that it is weird for him to be the host of a messy show because he is a "neatness freak." (Summers has OCD) For some reason, that strikes a nerve with Reynolds, who starts making sourfaced verbal jabs. Summers makes a crack about still being married (Reynolds had just gone through a messy divorce with Loni Anderson) and Reynolds grabs a mug of water and tosses it on Summers. It goes downhill from there. Leno does nothing to stop it because he knows good TV when he sees it. If you want to know the backstory (and it's fascinating to hear Summers describe it), here's the chapter about the incident from Summers' book, Everything In its Place: My Trials and Triumphs with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. [via]

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Parent Hacks: 134 Genius Shortcuts for Life with Kids by Asha DornfestWorkman2016, 272 pages, 5 x 0.8 x 7 inches (softcover)$36 Buy one on AmazonIn 2005 Asha Dornfest, a new parent, launched the blog Parent Hacks as a way for parents to share tips that make raising young children less nerve-racking. This book has the 134 best tips from the blog. Here are a few examples from the On the Go section:#116 Write your phone number on your kid’s belly.#113 Strap ankle weights to a lightweight stroller to keep it from tipping.#110 Line your car’s cup holders with cupcake liners.#118 Use adhesive bandages to baby-proof hotel room outlets.Other tip themes include pregnancy and postpartum, sleep, food and mealtime, organizing time and space, and getting dressed. Craighton Berman’s clear illustrations make it easy to understand most tips at a glance. If you or someone you know is pregnant, this book is essential reading.(Read Cory's review of Parent Hacks, too!)

In 2015, Bloomberg's "With All Due Respect" asked Presbyterian Donald Trump what his favorite Bible verses were. "I wouldn't want to get into it. Because to me, that's very personal," he said. "The Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics."When the show's host asked Trump if he favors the Old Testament or the New Testament, he said, "Probably equal. I think it's just incredible," he said.Last month, Trump decided not to keep his favorite Bible passage a secret any longer when Bob Lonsberry of WHAM 1180 asked him, "Is there a favorite Bible verse or Bible story that has informed your thinking or your character through life?""Well, I think many. I mean, you know, when we get into the Bible, I think many. So many," Trump responded.“And some people — look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that," he said. "That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us. And they laugh at our face, and they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our money, they’re taking the health of our country. And we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you."I wonder if Trump likes Proverbs 16:5: "Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished."

Money is tight for the great majority of people right now. If renting an apartment is not for you, and you want a small house for less than $40k, then chances are it’s going to be a so-called “tiny house.” These are typically 50 to 400 square feet and most often use a compost or chemical toilet (or, god forbid the smell, an incinerator toilet).Here (right) is a photo of a typical tiny house from Wikipedia.People think this is a new thing. While the reason people may be building and living in houses the size of a single room in a home may vary (“I want to downsize,” “I can make do with less,” “Who can afford a regular size house?” “My wife and kids drive me nuts!”), the fact is that people have been living in eensy-weensy domiciles for hundreds of years.I suppose we could start with the cave, and the caveman and woman, but that’s silly. They didn’t even know about toilet paper.In the 1800s, as the migration toward the western part of the U.S. began in earnest:As the first waves of loggers swept over great portions of the Pacific Northwest's old-growth forests in the second half of the nineteenth century, those men opened up the dark dense woodlands to settlement. …. Left behind was a scarred landscape, scrap wood, and stumps. Many stumps. Huge stumps. Stumps that still stood a full 10 feet high but were undesirable as lumber because they tended to swell down toward their base, making the wood-grain uneven. When subsequent waves of pioneer settlers came on through, they found those old logging sites to be welcome clearings that hinted at possible futures as rich farmland. But, being littered with debris—and those towering stumps—these homesteads presented the challenge of years' worth of hard labor just to clear (by burning and digging-out stumps) enough proper space to plant orchards or raise crops or livestock.For select stumps would-be farmers found other uses … By constructing roofs on them and attaching a door or gate the stump-based shelters worked fine as storage sheds or chicken houses, or pens to keep pigs and calves safe from prowling predators including raccoons, bobcats, or bears. And sometimes it was people who were the denizens of these stump houses. As early as 1847 the pioneering McAllister family moved northward to the Medicine Creek area (near Nisqually). It was there that they set up shelter by hollowing out a stump and making a “Home Sweet Home” there until they could erect a proper house. After that, the structure served them as a barn.Later, on June 20, 1892, a William D. McDonald opened up the very first U.S. Post Office located in the remote northern portion of the Olympic Peninsula. The McDonald Post Office was located at a site 10 miles southwest of Port Angeles, and on the east side of the Elwha River. It was located in a large roofed stump. In time the house was sold, moved, renamed the Elwha Post Office. Today the aging icon still stands.But the most famous of all local stump houses was one located on the Lennstrom family's property in Snohomish County's Stillaguamish Valley, in the tiny community of Edgecomb, which is currently a neighborhood within the old logging and railroad town of Arlington.It was likely in 1901 that the first of many curious visitors toting a camera arrived and documented the stump house in photographs. The Northwest's famed photographer, Darius Kinsey (1869-1945), brought four cameras (of different formats) and took eight classic shots. Over the ensuing two decades they were marketed as postcards and stereoview cards and helped establish the stump house as a regional icon. Kinsey himself liked the stump house so well that by March 1902, he was using a small image of it on his company's business stationery.In 1903 the Skagit County Times newspaper up in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, offered this description of the stump-house: “Inside it is one good-sized room, which is boarded up and neatly papered and made as comfortable as any apartment could possibly be made. The walls inside slant inward at the top, which gives one the impression rather that it is an upstairs room, otherwise it is not different from any other room.” Amazingly, a few of these stump houses still remain.So, if you have a big old massive tree stump on your property and are looking for a new private space, get your tools ready. It took one guy 20 years to carve out his stump house![Via Vintage News, which used text, with credit, from Historylink.org]

3D printing has been one of those “next big thing” innovations among early adopters and the tech circle in-crowd for a few years now. However, the prospect of creating your own three-dimensional objects is still in its relative infancy with the general public. While the idea itself is fascinating to most, high prices and the slow process of introducing a new technology to your typical consumer has translated into very few 3D printers in use today in an average home. So, now you can be an electronics trend-setter AND score it at a fantastic price by picking up a M3D Printer and four reels of filament for just $399, a 20% discount off its regular price.The affordable M3D will give you the means to launch literally thousands of fun and educational 3D print projects right off your office desk. Unlike other 3D printer manufacturers, M3D started as a Kickstarter campaign with backers supporting the high quality design that resulted in a sleek, compact and almost startlingly quiet 3D printer capable of producing objects on par with much more expensive models.The M3D’s micro motion sensor chip calculates ultra-sharp precision, while its carbon fiber rods allow for a sturdy and lightweight build. The unit’s Aerospace-grade ceramic heater system creates the type of rapid and precise heating necessary in 3D print projects along with both internal and external filament spooling options to help keep the material coming during the most exacting of builds.See what everybody’s talking about for yourself with the top quality, low cost M3D, available right now for a limited time at $399 in the Boing Boing Store.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL0FSg76gFI&w=560&h=315]

QF481, from Melbourne to Perth, was delayed last week because a passenger spotted a wifi network called "Detonation Device." (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s9GCkK6oZsA new documentary, "(In)Securus Technologies: An Assault on Prisoner Rights", tracks the rise of for-profit video "visitation" programs, which are being rolled out across America's unimaginably huge prison system, replacing the in-person visits that have been shown to be vital for prisoners' successful rehabilitation and reintegration into society. (more…)

A new ad campaign from the International Fund for Animal Welfare features rendered images of cross-sectioned endangered animals on the beds of 3D printers, being printed out, layer by layer. (more…)

For the second year in a row, a bunch of disgruntled "conservative" sf readers and writers are attempting to destroy science fiction's Hugo Awards by nominating slates of works that are, variously: rabid racist tracts; works by their ideological opponents; tepid military sf; works by bystanders; and weird porn by Chuck Tingle, a master of the form, who has nothing to do with any of this. (more…)

Since November 2015, FBI agents have been trying to get Tor developer Isis Agora Lovecruft to meet with them, but they won't tell her or her lawyer why. (more…)

In 2015, Stanford computer science PhD candidate Andrej Karpathy decided to test out some neural network tools he'd been experimenting with, and set them to generating plausible baby names. (more…)

An editorial in The American Journal of Public Health, signed by 2,000 MDs, endorses Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" single-payer healthcare system. (more…)

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo -- a former venture capitalist who invested state funds with hedge funds during her tenure as state treasurer -- invited Goldman Sachs to set up a partnership with the Community College of Rhode Island, then kicked out the college's daycare center to make room for Goldman staffers to work. (more…)

In 1996, New Jersey's courts heard 500 debt-collection cases; in 2008, they heard 140,000 cases, almost all against black people, almost all of whom were not represented by lawyers. The cases were filed by vulture capitalists who bought the debt for pennies on the dollar and employed "attorneys" who filed up to 1,000 cases a day, "reviewing" each one for about four seconds. (more…)

For amateur astronomers, tonight is an exciting night. (more…)

Matt Ritchie makes "slumps" — whimsical artwork of popular characters slumped over as if falling asleep or theatrically dejected by their latest mishap. Up top are the heroes of Star Wars, who have perhaps just learned that Disney has no plans to remaster the original theatrical release. Here's the Justice League, reading reviews of the movies they appear in. (more…)

Toy inventor Bob Knetzger alerted me to the new officially licensed Misty Copeland doll from Mattel, makers of Barbie. It has a "new 'ballerina body' sculpt, which in this case means large calves," says Bob. "This adds another body type to the new line of Barbie bodies."

The 25th year of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's activism to keep the Internet and its users free was an amazing one. (more…)

What a stunning portrait of one brave person. (more…)

NCR reports in-the-wild sightings of "deep skimmers" (tiny, disposable card-skimmers that run on watch batteries and use crude radios to transmit to a nearby base-station) on ATMs around the world: "Greece, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States." (more…)

Here's a puzzle from Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column, which ran for many years in Scientific American. I found it in his anthology, My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles, which is only $3.42 on Amazon.There is a simple procedure by which two people can divide a cake so that each is satisfied he has at least half: One cuts and the other chooses. Devise a general procedure so that n persons can cut a cake into n portions in such a way that everyone is satisfied he has at least 1/n of the cake.

Religion blogger Fred Clark is fascinated with the urban legends and panic surrounding "satanism," so years ago he set up a Google News Alert for the word "Satanic." Over at Pathos, he posted the funny, ridiculous, and fascinating things he's learned. Here's a sample:• Every year, dozens of filmmakers try to recapture the magic that made The Exorcist so unsettling. Most fail.• Pat Boone is still alive.• The political performance art of the Satanic Temple is both hilarious and pointedly effective. They’re defending the First Amendment the way that we Baptists are supposed to.• Adolescent legend tripping is happening all the time, every day, somewhere in the English-speaking world.• Adults who should know better are freaking out and over-reacting to adolescent legend tripping all the time, every day, somewhere in the English-speaking world.• Censorious adults worried about Kids Today listening to satanic heavy metal aren’t really keeping up with the satanic heavy metal acts trying hardest to gain their condemnation.• Same goes for video games."Things I Have Learned Due to My Google News Alert for the Word ‘Satanic’" (via Daily Grail)

Alert administrators at a Houston, Texas, public school called police when a 13-year-old student tried to use a $2 bill to buy chicken nuggets from the cafeteria. An officer went to the school office where the girl was being held, scaring the hell out of her and calling her grandmother with dire warnings about federal counterfeiting crimes being committed. Bill in hand, the officer went to the store that gave the $2 bill to the girl's grandmother and questioned them, then went to a bank with the bill, where he was told that $2 bills are legal tender. The officer never apologized to the girl, who missed her lunch that day.That's right: the 13-year-old didn't even receive an apology from the authority figures, even though she was ultimately denied lunch that day, according to her grandmother. Grandma also had this to say: "It was very outrageous for them to do it. There was no need for police involvement. They're charging kids like they're adults now."

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used ultrasound to transmit high-speed data through pork loin and beef liver. Why? They're developing a system for controlling wireless medical implants and also stream high-definition video from inside the body. "You can imagine a device that is swallowed for the purposes of imaging the digestive tract but with the capability for the HD video to be continuously streamed live to an external screen and the orientation of the device controlled wirelessly and externally by the physician," says engineering professor Andrew Singer.Singer and his colleagues posted their results on arXiv in a paper titled "Mbps Experimental Acoustic Through-Tissue Communications: MEAT-COMMS."“To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has ever sent such high data rates through animal tissue,” Singer said. “These data rates are sufficient to allow real-time streaming of high definition video, enough to watch Netflix, for example, and to operate and control small devices within the body.”That's a whole new spin on dinner and a movie.(Engineering at Illinois)

As a true crime journalist who searches for the missing, I am keenly aware of the breadcrumbs I’m leaving behind throughout a typical day. If I were to suddenly disappear, these bits of information will mean everything to detectives. But I worry that these clues will be misleading, that my receipts and cell phone pings will only muddy the waters of the official investigation should I vanish without a trace, because the littlest detail can seem quite suspicious when taken out of context.James Renner is a novelist and journalist from Ohio. He’s new work of nonfiction, True Crime Addict, follows his investigation into the disappearance of Maura Murray. It’s available everywhere books are sold, May 24.For instance, the police might find the credit card slip in my car that shows I was in the bad part of Akron, today, and think that has something to do with whatever happened. That’s where people go to buy crack, after all. But really, I only drove out to Exchange because I found a new place over there that serves authentic Pho. Yesterday, I paid for several mirrors at a craft-supply store I’d never visited in the past. If I disappeared, the detectives will wonder why I altered my routine that day. Maybe they’ll suspect I was using those mirrors to cut cocaine (my son needed them to build a periscope for Cub Scouts – honest!).When someone goes missing, the clues they leave behind lack context. There’s no telling which detail is important and which isn’t. And the cases that go cold often contain more clues than the ones that don’t. It makes a certain kind of sense, if you think about it. These unsolved cases lack focus because there’s just enough evidence to lead a detective in any direction they wish to go. Without focus, how can an investigator hone in on the solution?A disappearance is a half-finished story. Is the victim alive? Are they dead? Other crimes at least have a conclusion: murder, robbery, assault. We know what we’re dealing with. Not so with disappearances.Of course, that’s what I like about them. And I suspect I’m not alone. After all, who doesn’t like a challenge?Over the years, I’ve kept a log of the most alluring disappearances. I present them here, in no particular order.10. Ted ConradCase Background: It was the summer of 1969 and the future looked bright for young Ted Conrad. He was a handsome, bright kid with a nice job at Society National Bank, in Cleveland. He had a cute girlfriend and an apartment in Lakewood. He could have done anything he set his mind to. And what he set his mind to that summer was robbing the his bank.Conrad was a fan of The Thomas Crown Affair, the one with Steve McQueen. He watched the movie over and over, religiously and began to model himself after McQueen’s debonair character, purchasing a sports car and becoming fluent in French. On his twentieth birthday – Friday, July 11 – Conrad purchased a fifth of whiskey and smokes during his lunch break and made sure to show everyone the bag as he returned to the vault for the remainder of the day. When his shift was over, he walked out of the bank with the paper bag. But this time it was filled with $215,000. That was a lot of cheese in 1969 – adjusted for inflation, that’s equal to about $1.3 million, today.Nobody noticed he was missing until Monday. By the time the bank figured out it had been robbed, Conrad had a four day head start on the F.B.I.Possible Solutions: Conrad would be sixty-six years old, today. Family members claim he never contacted them after he fled Cleveland and his brother-in-law believes he’s dead. Conrad was spotted at a bar in Hawaii a couple weeks after the theft, by a couple from Cleveland on vacation. Before he vanished for good, Conrad sent his girlfriend a letter postmarked from Engelwood, California, near Los Angeles International Airport.Want to hear something really crazy? I was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations not long after I reported on Conrad’s disappearance for The Free Times. It was the episode where Bourdain travels to Hawaii and meets a strange old man living in a house on a volcano. The old man wouldn’t talk about his past and refused to leave the evacuation area as the lava fields drew near. I’m not positive, but damn it if that strange man doesn’t look like an old Teddy Conrad.9. Madeleine McCannCase Background: The disappearance of Madeleine McCann is easily the most publicized missing persons case this century. But for all the reports and news specials, the mystery remains unsolved. Madeleine was from Leicester, a city near the center of England. She was on vacation with her family at Praia da Luz, a Portugal resort, in May, 2007, a week before her fourth birthday, when she vanished from the ground-floor bedroom of a rented apartment near the beach. Her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, had gone with friends to eat dinner at a restaurant a mere 160 feet from the apartment door. During the meal, members of their group went to check on Madeleine, who was sleeping in a bedroom with her younger siblings. The McCanns had left the patio door unlocked so they could easily come in and out to check on them. Madeleine’s mother discovered her daughter was missing sometime around 10 p.m. The bedroom window was open, the girl was gone.Possible Solutions: How can a girl just disappear from a popular holiday resort? Was she abducted? Was her death accidental and her body hidden? Is she still alive? Early scrutiny fell on Madeleine’s parents but it’s very difficult to believe they could have had anything to do with some kind of rushed cover-up while dining with seven friends. And it was Madeleine’s father who reported the girl missing at 10:10 p.m. that night. In the last nine years, according to the BBC, police have taken 1,338 statements and have looked closely at 60 persons of interest. There have been over 8,000 reported sightings of Madeleine from all over the world – so many, in fact, that the sightings, alone, have their own Wikipedia page. In a recent interview, Kate McCann said she believes her daughter is still alive, and being held not far from Praia da Luz.8. D.B. CooperCase Background: This case is fascinating because it is actually a series of mysteries. On November 24, 1971, a handsome, well-dressed, Don Draper-type who called himself “Dan Cooper,” boarded a Boeing 727 at Portland International Airport for a thirty-minute hop to Seattle. He lit a cigarette, ordered a bourbon and soda, and when the plane took off, he handed a stewardess a note in which he claimed to have a bomb. He then casually asked for $200,000 cash and four parachutes to be delivered in exchange for the passengers when they reached Seattle. The FBI met his demands and the passengers and some crew were released before Cooper instructed the pilot to take off again. After they were in the air, he told the rest of the crew to join the captain in the cockpit and stay there with the door closed. At about 8 p.m., the aft airstairs opened up and Cooper jumped out with the money and two parachutes. It remains the only unsolved hijacking in American history.So who was “Dan Cooper?” And where did he go?Possible Solutions: There are dozens of men who have been suspected of being D.B. Cooper, as he came to be known thanks to a newspaper misprint. Several books have been written, pointing fingers at different suspects. But to date, none of these men have been linked to the fingerprints and DNA the FBI have on file. It’s possible the hijacker died as soon as he jumped from the plane, his neck snapping when the parachute opened, his corpse slowly falling into the deep woods south of Seattle. Perhaps he landed in a river or lake and that’s why no body was ever found. After all, an eight-year-old boy discovered a couple bundles of Cooper’s ransom cash in the Columbia River, in 1980. But if Cooper did die that day, there has to be a missing persons report that matches him out there somewhere, since he never managed to return to the life he left behind.7. Amy Lynn BradleyCase Background: In March of 1998, twenty-three-year-old Amy Lynn Bradley joined her parents and brother on a Caribbean cruise, while on break from college. They were aboard Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Rhapsody of the Seas, en route to Curacao, the morning of March 24 when she suddenly vanished. She was seen around 5:30 a.m., on the balcony of her family’s suite. Her father realized she was missing around 6 a.m. The balcony door was left open and her sandals were just inside the room. This occurred just as the ship was entering the Curacao port and her father asked the crew to not let anyone off until they found Amy but the gangplank was lowered anyway.The night before her disappearance, Amy and her brother were up until 3:30 a.m., partying at the disco with the ship’s band, Blue Orchid. Amy was last seen in an elevator with one of the band members, a man known as “Yellow,” according to The Charley Project website.Possible Solutions: Though she was last seen on a cruise ship, it’s not likely that Amy could have jumped from the balcony or have been pushed into the ocean. At the time of her disappearance, the ship was pulling into Curacao and she likely would have been seen by crew or tourists on land if she’d fallen into the water. She was also an excellent swimmer. So, did Amy exit with the other passengers on Curacao? Did she decide to stay on her own or was she kidnapped? Two Canadian tourists claimed they saw Amy on a beach in Curacao in 1998, and even identified her tattoos. And, in 1999, a man in the Navy came forward saying he saw Amy in a Caribbean brothel, leading to speculation that she may have been sold into sex slavery.[caption id="attachment_460516" align="alignleft" width="300"] thierry ehrmann/flickr[/caption]6. The 229 People Aboard MH370Case Background: In this day of constant surveillance, advanced radar technology, and heightened airline security it is inconceivable that a large passenger jet could simply vanish without a trace. And yet that’s exactly what happened on March 8, 2014, when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 flew out of Kuala Lumpur International Airport and failed to arrive as scheduled in Beijing. Everything seemed fine when the captain communicated with air traffic control in Kuala Lumpur, but then he failed to check in with their Ho Chi Minh City counterparts when the plane crossed into Vietnamese airspace. At the same time, the jet’s transponder stopped functioning and it could no longer be tracked by tradition radar. However, military radar still had it. They tracked Flight 370 as it went off course and turned to the southwest. The aircraft’s satellite data unit continued to communicate with its satellite, even though the transponder was down. The SDU data suggests Flight 370 flew west for another five hours before it stopped transmitting altogether.Possible Solutions: Oh man, how far down the rabbit hole do you want to jump? There are those who believe the flight was hijacked by terrorists who diverted it to Afghanistan so the aircraft could be used in a future attack. Others believe that twenty-two employees of a semiconductor company who were passengers aboard Flight 370 had to be murdered to silence what they knew about stealth technology. And there are some who blame things like black holes, aliens, and Shakira (I’m not kidding).If Flight 370 was hijacked perhaps it was taken over by the two men who used stolen passports to clear security in Kuala Lumpur. Or maybe the captain decided to commit suicide and take everyone with him – it’s happened before. Maybe the lithium-ion batteries in the cargo hold caught fire and fried the electrical system.Last year, debris from a Boeing 777 washed up on a beach on Reunion Island, in the western Indian Ocean. Since then, other pieces of an aircraft have been found along the coast of Mozambique. Though these artifacts have yet to be conclusively linked to Flight 370, they do fit the pattern of debris we expected to find if it crashed into the Indian Ocean.But if it is Flight 370 how did it get so off course? What happened on board that plane for six hours after it lost contact with air traffic controllers? 5. Tara CalicoCase Background: Nineteen-year-old Tara Calico borrowed her mother’s bicycle and went for a ride near her house in the small town of Belen, New Mexico, the morning of September 20, 1988. She was listening to her Walkman as she pedaled along her usual route down Highway 47. She was due to return home by noon and was last seen around 11:45 a.m., two miles away. Her mother went searching for her at 12:05 p.m. When she could not find her, she contacted police. Later, part of Tara’s Walkman was found near a campground, nineteen miles away. Neither Tara nor the bicycle were ever found.Possible Solutions: There are two clear possibilities in Tara’s case: 1. She was abducted by a man or a group of men. 2. Her death was accidental but covered up.One clue that supports the abduction theory is the disturbing Polaroid photograph that was discovered in a parking lot in Port St. Joe, Florida, in 1989. It’s a picture of a woman who resembles Tara, bound and gagged in the back of a van beside a young boy, who is also restrained. Her mother believes it to be Tara and points to the scar seen on the woman’s leg that matches an injury Tara suffered in a car accident, as proof. But some police detectives who worked on the case lean toward a simpler explanation: that Tara was accidentally struck by a truck, driven by a boy she knew. That boy, and at least one friend, then covered it up, disposing of Tara’s body and the bike. Valencia County Sheriff Rene Rivera has publicly stated he believes this is what happened but cannot prosecute due to lack of a body.4. Ray GricarCase Background: On April, 15, 2005, the District Attorney for Centre County, Pennsylvania, vanished under very mysterious circumstances. He was playing hooky that Friday, as he liked to do, driving through Brush Valley, cruising the back roads of rural P.A. When he didn’t return that evening, his girlfriend reported him missing. Police found his red MINI Cooper parked in the lot of an antique store in Lewisburg, near a bridge over the Susquehanna River. He was never seen again. A few months later, fishermen recovered Gricar’s laptop computer from the river. The hard drive had been removed. The hard drive was eventually discovered on the shore but it was so damaged, nobody could recover the data it once contained. A search of his home computer found Internet searches for “how to wreck a hard drive” and “water damage to a notebook computer.”Possible Solutions: This one gets weird, fast. First, there’s the rumor that Gricar was murdered to avoid a sex scandal. You see, Gricar’s office had investigated Jerry Sandusky after kids came forward claiming they had been sexually abused by the Penn State assistant football coach. But in 1998, Gricar declined to press charges and the truth didn’t come out for another thirteen years. Some believe that Gricar, facing retirement in 2005, was finally going to make the allegations public and had met someone in the parking lot about this, only to be killed.I prefer to believe that Gricar staged his disappearance and changed his identity to live out the remainder of his life, quietly. And I think he did it in such a way as to pay homage to a science fiction book he once consulted on. Author Pamela West approached Gricar about twenty years before he disappeared, asking for a little help with a novel she was working on, titled 20/20 Vision. It was a mystery loosely based on the cold case murder of Penn State student Betsy Aardsma, but it used time travel to solve the crime. In the novel, the main character disappears from State College, on April 14. Like Gricar, this detective was about to retire. And cigarette ash was found in Gricar’s vehicle, just like in the book, though neither Gricar, nor the protagonist smoked. 3. Brian ShafferCase Background: Brian Shaffer was dashingly handsome med student at Ohio State University when he disappeared after a night of drinking, on Friday, March 31, 2006. Shaffer and his friend, William “Clint” Florence, met up at the Ugly Tuna Saloona around 9 p.m. and then went bar-hopping for several hours before returning to the Ugly Tuna just before 2 a.m. The bar’s security camera shows Brian walking in but never coming out, again. His friends say they figured he’d gone home. He wasn’t reported missing until Monday, when he didn’t show up to catch a flight to Miami, where he planned to spend Spring Break with his girlfriend.Possible Solutions: Not long before he went missing, Brian Shaffer’s mother died and those close to him say he took it hard. This event, and the pressures of medical school, lead some to believe he committed suicide, though no body has ever been found. Perhaps instead of killing himself, he simply walked away from his life. Others suspect foul play. His friend, Clint Florence, refuses to take a lie detector test. But again, where is the body? How did Brian get out of the bar without being seen by security cameras? Two New York homicide detectives have even suggested Brian was the victim of the Smiley Face serial killer, a rumored boogeyman who draws smiley faces near the locations of the bodies he’s dumped in rivers.2. The Beaumont SiblingsCase Background: On Australia Day, in 1966, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont disappeared from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia. Jane was the oldest at nine. Arnna was seven. Grant, just four. Their parents often let Jane take her younger siblings to the beach to play that summer. The children set out from home at 10 a.m. and were supposed to return at 2. When they still hadn’t come home by 7:30 that night, their parents called police. No trace of them has ever been found.Several witnesses came forward later to say they’d seen the Beaumont children playing at the beach. The children were seen in the company of tall, blond man with a thin face and a sun tan. They also bought a meat pie from a local vendor, which was strange for two reasons: 1. They’d come into the store before, but never for a meat pie. 2. Nobody knows where the children got the money for the snack, as they were not sent out from home with enough coin to cover it. Possible Solutions: Washed out to sea? Jane was the only one of the lot who could swim, and she couldn’t swim all that well. Did Grant wander into the ocean, prompting his older sisters to attempt a rescue? Were they killed in an accident while walking along Jetty Road, their bodies hidden as part of a cover-up? Did the tall, blond man abduct them? Was he the person who gave the children money for the meat pie? A reward of $1 million still stands for information that might solve this mystery.1. Maura MurrayCase Background: On the surface, Maura Murray appeared to be the quintessential All-American Girl: track star, former West Point cadet, nursing student, and cute as a button. Then a series of strange events began one night while Maura was working the security desk at Melville Hall, on the campus of UMass, Amherst. This was Thursday, February 5, 2004. A shift manager found Maura at her desk in a catatonic state. All she would say was, “my sister.” The manager escorted her back to her room. The next day, school was canceled due to snow. That Saturday, Maura’s father, Fred, came to visit, with $4,000 in cash, to find her a new car, he says, though they never purchased one. On Saturday night Maura wrecked Fred’s car on the way back to his motel room around 3:30 a.m. On Monday morning, Maura sent an email to professors, stating that she would not be in class that week due to a death in the family – this was a lie. Nobody had died.That afternoon, Maura got into her car, stopped by an ATM to empty out her bank account, and then drove north into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where she got into another accident, this time smashing into a snow bank. A bus driver who lived nearby stopped to ask if she needed help. She declined. The time between the accident and the moment the first officer arrived on scene was between five and seven minutes. Sometime in that window, Maura vanished.Possible Solutions: I began investigating Maura’s disappearance in 2010 and what I found was quite shocking. Maura was not the angelic young woman presented in early media reports. At the time of her disappearance she was in trouble for credit card fraud and identity theft. She left West Point in the middle of a judicial inquiry that was launched when she stole makeup from the commissary at Fort Knox. And she had been having an affair with her track coach and sometimes told him that she wanted to run away and start a new life.Where was Maura going when she crashed her car in New Hampshire? What happened to her afterwards? Was she heading into the White Mountains to commit suicide, to go off and die “like an old squaw,” as her father suggested to police. Was she picked up by a serial killer? Or did she use an underground railroad for abused women to aide her escape into Canada?

In India, 11,000 people die each year in automobile accidents tied to potholes or speed bumps, presumably because drivers fly over them, often on purpose. India's minister of road transport, Nitin Gadkari, hopes faux speed bumps will help by encouraging drivers to slow down while reducing the risk when they don't. "We are trying out 3D paintings used as virtual speed breakers to avoid unnecessary requirements of speed breakers," Gadkari tweeted along with the image above.The optical illusions have been tried in other countries, including the US, as I posted back in 2008."Initially they were great," Phoenix, Arizona police traffic coordinator officer Terry Sills said at the time. "Until people found out what they were."(Irish Examiner)

I hate Allen keys. This set of ⅜" drive hex bit sockets means I rarely have to fight one of those stupid tiny things again!Ever tried getting an over tightened socket head screw out of a 40 year old motorcycle's drain pan with 2 ½" long Allen key? I gave up. I ordered this set of ⅜" drive sockets to make the job easy, and it was. They come in handy when building a Blahblahblah from Ikea, or pretty much anything that needs a hex bit wrench. This Crafstman set comes with sockets sized 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10. 3 and 4 seem typical for most build-it-yourself furnishing. 6, 7 and 8 seem to be useful all over German and English motorcycles. Getting the seat off a Triumph is now a lot easier. Not that a lot of socket fasteners come with dictated torque settings, but it is notionally helpful to be able to put these on the torque wrench as well.I should likely get a set of Torx bits as well, although I still like what I currently use.CRAFTSMAN EVOLV 7-PC HEX BIT SOCKET SET *METRIC* via Amazon

The once famed HMS Endeavor, Captain Cook's ship as he claimed Australia for the British, later renamed something boring and sunk as part of the Royal Navy's blockade of Newport, Rhode Island, has sort of been found! The British scuttled 13 ships to block the harbor, and research has shown a ship formerly known as Endeavor, was sank in a group of 5 recently identified wrecks. One of them is almost certainly Cook's ship.Via Sky News:Lead investigator Dr Kathy Abbass told Sky News: "We may have been looking right at her without even knowing it."The important thing now is to get the funding so that we can build the facilities to process and house all of the artefacts we must examine to prove which one of the wrecks is Endeavour".Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission Charlotte Taylor said: "It really isn't easy to explore these sites.A print from a painting showing Captain James Cook (1728 - 1779) taking possession of New South WalesCaptain Cook takes possession of New South Wales"It takes time, money and effort at each step."Divers battle very poor visibility and lots of silt, which is hard to remove and risky to do, because it has essentially been protecting the wood of these ships for hundreds of years."The group from the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project hopes to have found and explored the fifth site by this summer.The Endeavour is one of the most famous ships in naval history.Captain James Cook sailed her to Australia and New Zealand in 1768.

My favorite airport in America is changing its name to "Hollywood Burbank Airport," removing the name of racist, reactionary old-timey boob Bob Hope, whose name has been judged not to resonate with the modern traveller. (more…)

The Getty Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the J. Paul Getty Trust, established a program to create opportunities for college under grads, from cultures typically under represented in the arts, to get paid while gaining experience at real, interesting jobs. The Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program is so good that white woman Samantha Niemann is suing them for discrimination, as she feels she should be a recipient. Via CBS LA:Niemann — who is of German, Irish and Italian descent — was told by a Getty Foundation representative that she was disqualified from applyingbecause of her race and national origin, the suit states.A student at Southern Utah University with a 3.7 grade-point average, the lawsuit argues Neimann was “well-qualified” for the internship.According to the Getty Foundation’s website, the Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program is aimed at encouraging “greater diversity in the professions related to museums and the visual arts.”The program supports “substantive, full-time summer work opportunities for college undergraduates from cultural backgrounds that have traditionally been underrepresented in the arts,” the website states.Ron Hartwig, vice president of communications for the J. Paul Getty Trust, issued a statement in response to the lawsuit, which read in part: “Over the past 23 years Getty grants have supported over 3,000 internships at 152 organizations throughout the county. We review and revise all of our grant categories from time to time and over the years have made a number of policy and procedural changes to the internship program.”Several months ago – due to inquiries from potential applicants as well as internal and external discussions – the Getty modified the eligibility criteria for 2016 to state that applicants must be members of an underrepresented group, including but not limited to, those of black, Asian, Latino, Native-American or Pacific-Islander descent, according to Hartwig.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Megg and Mogg in Amsterdam (and Other Stories)by Simon HanselmannFantagraphics2016, 164 pages, 6.6 x 9.1 x 0.8 inches $14 Buy a copy on AmazonThe entire loveably dysfunctional freak family that stole our hearts in Megahex (and sold them on the black market for hookers and blow) are back in Megg and Mogg in Amsterdam (and Other Stories). Once again we enter the bizarre funhouse world of Megg the witch, her cat familiar/lover Mogg, and their coterie of hangers on: Owl, Werewolf Jones, Mike the Gnome, Booger (a boogey woman), Dracula, Jr., and others. On the surface, little has changed. The revolving door of Megg and Mogg’s house still spins to let their drug-addled crew enter, hatch a series of ridiculous schemes, inhale all of the drugs and fast food, and then we get to watch as one nightmarish scenario after another plays out like a slow-motion train wreck. But there are deeper relationship themes that run through Megg and Mogg in Amsterdam. Over the course of the book, strips begin to introduce trouble in Megg and Mogg’s relationship, and Megg’s growing attraction to Booger. Werewolf Jones also is having trouble in his marriage and is fighting to retain custody of his two sons (while doing every boneheaded thing in the world to ensure that doesn’t happen). The title of the book refers to a trip that Megg and Mogg take to Amsterdam to try and patch up their failing relationship. The level of depression and depravity that drives Megg and Mogg (even more intense here than in Megahex) might be too much for some, but there is also an undeniable heart that beats at the center of this work. There is obviously a lot of love and solidarity to be found within the complex relationships between these characters – in the midst of the binge drugging, the frequent release of bodily fluids, and the seeming complete lack of any motivation or ambition on anyone’s part. The gloss of Megg and Mogg is undeniably juvenile, but it all feels deftly counter-balanced by an intelligence and a weird shape of hope that always keeps me rooting for these cartoon human monstrosities. Megg and Mogg’s world leaks into mine: While I was reading the book and preparing for this review, I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. There I was, at 4am, in my boxer shorts, on the crapper, reading Megg and Mogg. All of a sudden, on the floor right below the book, a black cockroach the size of a midsized American car darted out from between my feet (I rarely get roaches in my house). I freaked. I leaped off the commode, threw the book on the edge of the tub, and grabbed the nearby toilet plunger. The next thing I know, I have the plunger in one hand, a can of Lysol in the other (to smoke him out), and I’m trying to wail away on him without spraying the book with Lysol. After having binge-read Megg and Mogg for a couple of days, I had this very bizarre feeling, there in my underwear, in my admittedly filthy bathroom, that I had somehow entered the aesthetic world of the book. It was a truly bizarre feeling. After the roach had been dispatched, and the fog of disinfectant had settled, I at least knew that I’d found the perfect place to photograph the book for this review. You’re welcome, Internet.

Writer's Block - A Supercut from Ben Watts on Vimeo.Ben Watts and Ivan Kander edited a supercut of scenes depicting writer's block from 53 movies. You can see the list of movies here.

No spandex in the Power Rangers reboot coming to theaters next March. “It’s tricky finding a new language for a superhero costume,” production designer Andrew Menzies (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) told Entertainment Weekly. “Ours is an alien costume that grows on them, that’s not man-made. You can’t win everyone over, but we are trying to appeal to a more mature audience and gain new fans.” Below, the title sequence from the 1993 television show:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQz8iZ9ot1I

Three legendary synth musicians -- Morgio Zoroger, Xangelix and Carla Wendos -- competed in 1986 for the right to be anointed Lord of Synth.

Fascinating, now gimme a double latte. (AsapSCIENCE)

After decades of fighting for open Web standards that let anyone implement software to receive and render online data, the World Wide Web Consortium changed course and created EME, a DRM system that locks up video in formats that can only be played back with the sender's blessing, and which also gives media giants the power to threaten and sue security researchers who discover bugs in their code. (more…)

White hat hackers get paid to find holes in their own employers’ online systems, and plug those holes before they become serious security risks. It’s a job that pays handsomely...mostly because few job candidates, even experienced IT professionals, have the skills to scamper over firewalls and infiltrate the deepest recesses of a battle-tested network. But you can begin your new career as a computer security specialist with this complete Pentesting & Ethical Hacking course bundle---and pay whatever price you’d like. (more…)

It's World Password Day and you can celebrate it by fixing your crappy passwords. (more…)

On Monday, Greenpeace leaked the highly confidential negotiating drafts of the TTIP, a top-secret, big-business-friendly trade agreement between the USA and the EU. (more…)

Thinkgeek is accepting pre-orders for six upcoming 14 oz Star Wars tiki mugs, standing 6.5"-7.5" tall, with contrast-glazed interiors. (more…)