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Wacky News Stories

I read a story last year in Cruizing World magazine I think. Can't find it on line. The author was talking about doing a long distance solo in about a 24 foot sailboat. He was in a slow calm wind doing about 2 knots and decided to fish to augment his galley fare. He caught a mako shark probably a little smaller than the one in the above article. He thought it would make a great story and wanted it as a trophy, so fought to bring it aboard. He fought it for hours and finally tired it out an managed to get it into his cockpit. Once in the boat, the monster suddenly became renewed with energy and started thrashing. The author described it as basically destroying his boat. By the time the ordeal was over, the cockpit was such a mess, broken up with debris and blood, that he had to throw his prize overboard and try to get his now barely seaworthy boat to the closest port. If I remember right he said his boat was layed up for weeks for repairs.

As an amatuer sailor I read a lot of sailing articles, and thought this one might be of interest.

SHARK ATTACK, OR ATTACK SHARK?
The Sailboat Free Willy has a shark encounter of the strangest kind.
BY Bud Elkin, s/v Free Willy

Bud is a longtime sailor and the author of several books including Pirate's Gold: A Teen Love story that includes Pirates, Pirate Treasure, and Sailing in the Caribbean!

My name is Bud Elkin, and I live in Palmetto, Florida. I dock my boat at Tropic Isles marina. I often take trips up and down the west coast, but this day I just wanted to go out for a spin with a couple of my friends. I decided we should take a trip up and back in Tera Cia bay. The bay is no more than a couple of miles long and probably no more than a mile or so wide.

We were out for a lazy afternoon sail in my Aloha 28. Austin is in the navy, and gets leave every now and then, so we decided to get together with Bradley, my neighbor, and go out for a spin. After clearing the shallows around marker 4 we set the Genoa. The Genoa pulls us along in a moderate wind about 4 to 4.5 knots, so we didn’t see the need to mess with the main. After all we were just out to enjoy the sun and water.

On our way back down the bay, heading back in, Bradley was sitting in the cockpit on the port side, I was sitting on the starboard cockpit side with the tiller in hand, and Austin was standing by the starboard winch holding on to the boom. Two other boats were sailing past us, we waved, they waved, we smiled, they smiled, and then just as the last smile left our faces we hit something hard enough to stop us in our tracks. Austin was nearly thrown off the boat. He was hanging on to a rope I had tied off to the boom and a cleat to keep the boom on the starboard side of the boat. Bradley slid and hit the front cockpit wall, and I was thrown toward the open hatch. The hold on the tiller is the only thing that kept me from going down below.

Using proper sailor terminology I said, “What the hell was that?” Austin was dragging himself back onto the boat as best he could, Bradley jumped down below expecting to see water flushing madly through what must have been a keel removing moment, and I continued to steer over something that first sent the bow straight up into the air followed with the bow heeled to starboard 45 degrees diving into the drink. Next the whole boat rolled to starboard touching the rail while Austin was holding on to the boom rope for dear life.

After we righted and Bradley crawled up from below to say we had no leaks, we looked behind us to see a whirlpool right aft of the rudder with what looked like a flipper or some kind of gray looking fin just under the water spinning in a rather large circle. It reminded me of the whirlpools we used to see in the Colorado River when I was younger except this one had something large spinning around in it. We sat there for a moment or two before the Genoa took up the wind and darted onward. All three of us looked in amazement behind us as the roiling whirlpool got smaller and smaller while “Free Willy” sailed away.

I jumped on my cell phone to call Ray. Ray scrubs all the boat bottoms in our area. I thought he could get hold of Mote Marine or the marine patrol to come over to see what I ran over. He has seen almost everything possible while diving on our boats. He has been rammed by manatees, bumped by sharks he didn’t care to measure, and has had to put up with red tide, and other anomalies in his tenure. I thought with all of his experience he would be able to figure out what it might have been that we ran over. I was certain it wasn’t the bottom or any obstruction because the water is 11 to 12 feet in that area, and there are no obstructions anyone knows about near that position. Mote marine came over and found two 9’+ bull sharks. They tagged both of them. “One was sporting a new white stripe on his side.” Ray said. It appeared the shark’s radar, sonar, or whatever they use was on the blink that day. I figured that shark helped me out a bit by scraping some barnacles off my keel.

Two days later we went out again, and wouldn’t you know it I spotted a fin not two hundred yards away from my port side. I pointed the fin out to Bradley. I had to make sure it wasn’t just me that saw it. As we sailed very near where we hit the shark earlier I thought there must be something causing these suicide attacks. I have never heard of a shark attacking a sailboat, although I have heard and read a number of stories of sharks attacking people, rafts, surfboards, etc.; I have not heard of anyone running over a shark? It appeared like the crazy thing was coming back for a rematch.

Now if you think that is strange, what happened next is beyond me to believe. As Bradley and I watched this psycho shark speed broadside toward “Free Willy,” my Aloha 28, I began to have flashbacks from the movie Jaws. What did I do to piss this animal off? We had no ill feeling toward the animal for getting in our way the first time. I saw enough shark shows to know that they have something going on that keeps them from running into stuff, so what was going wrong? We continued on our starboard tack awaiting the inevitable, and holding on tight. When the shark got no more than fifty feet to port a dolphin popped up right beside “Free Willy’s” port side spitting all over Bradley who went directly in to shock. “What the hell.” Is all he could say? His eyes were the size of silver dollars, his knuckles white as snow from the grip he had on the mainsheet and the side of the boat, and I didn’t look down, but I imagined yellow fluid running down the cockpit drains. “Are we in a Flipper movie?” He questioned. No sooner than he said that and the shark turned and swam away. Flipper stayed along side for a few hundred yards more.

If I had not seen this with my own eyes I would not have believed it, and to be honest I still can hardly believe it happened. I am writing this down now before I forget all of the details, or it before becomes just another sailor’s yarn.

http://www.saltysailors.com/articles-cruising/shark-attack.html

Have you guys seen this?

http://www.joeky.com/Wow/251/Killer_Whale_Destroys_Sailboat.html

Me think sea monters are alive and well me hearties! :sail YARRR!

MK
 
Awesome story MK! Bull sharks are one of the most ferocious predictors on the planet. Sounds like that one was definitely out for a bit of revenge for that white stripe across his back! Dolphins are absolutely amazing animals! :onya
 
From the U.S. Department of Justice, dated Tuesday, March 15, 2011:
DALLAS — Nathan Wayne Pugh, 49, of Sachse, Texas, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay to 102 months in federal prison for robbing the Wells Fargo Bank, 4332 Lemmon Avenue, in Dallas, last summer, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Judge Lindsay ordered that this sentence is to run consecutively to the 25-years sentences for the two aggravated robberies for which he was on parole when he committed this bank robbery.

According to documents filed in the case, at lunchtime on July 26, 2010, Pugh, carrying a bag from a fast-food restaurant, entered the bank and approached a teller, telling her that he wanted to “make a withdrawal.” When she asked him how much, he put the bag on the counter and passed her a piece of paper with the following written on it:

Look if you don’t want to die then you should do as this note says This is not a bag of food This is a bom, so just put money in an envelope and do not make any move till after I have left for ten mintis

Even though realizing the bank was being robbed and in fear for her life, the teller remained calm and told Pugh she would need to see his identification for her to give him money. Pugh gave the teller his Wells Fargo debit card, and when asked for another type of identification, gave the teller a State of Texas identification card bearing his name.

When Pugh turned away from the teller station to leave the bank, he saw uniformed Dallas Police officers at the main entrance. Pugh then approached a female bank customer, who was standing in the lobby with her child in her arms, and attempted to put her in a chokehold. They struggled and fell to the floor before officers entered the bank and took Pugh into custody.

Source: http://www.justice.gov/usao/txn/PressRel11/pugh_bankrob_sen_pr.html
Moral: don't try to rob a bank unless you have at least two functioning brain cells. xD:
 
i saw the most hilarious article in the newspaper today. they're checking pistol ammunition for poisonous materials used in their construction, because it might harm people. they were completely serious.

because we wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, right?
 
Of course not. xD:

And in other news, the Libyan rebels have apparently taken to wearing pink in hope that NATO warplanes recognize them and quit blowing them up. Next time it happens, perhaps they should claim they aren't rebels at all, just people running to raise money for the cancer institute. :woot
 
IMMA FIRIN' MA LAZOR! :woot

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/04/vi...s-ship-on-fire/

Video: Navy Laser Sets Ship on Fire By Spencer Ackerman
With clouds overhead in the salty air, irritable Pacific waves swelled to up to four feet. Perfect conditions, in other words, for the Navy to fry a small boat with a laser beam — a major step toward its futuristic arsenal of ray guns.

Researchers mounted the Maritime Laser Demonstrator, a solid-state laser, aboard the USS Paul Foster, a decommissioned destroyer. Off the central California coast near San Nicholas Island on Wednesday, the laser fired a 15-kilowatt beam at an inflatable motorboat a mile away as both ships moved through the sea. As the above video shows, there was a flash on the boat’s outboard engines, igniting both of them in seconds, and leaving the ship dead in the choppy waters.

All previous tests of the laser have come on land — steady, steady land — aside from an October test of the targeting systems. But for the first time, the Office of Naval Research has proven that its laser can operate in a “no-kidding maritime environment,” says its proud director, Rear Adm. Nevin Carr.

“I spent my life at sea,” Carr says in an interview with Danger Room, “and I never thought we’d see this kind of progress this quickly, where we’re approaching a decision of when we can put laser weapons on ships.”

Fewer than three years after the Navy awarded Northrop Grumman a contract worth up to $98 million to build the Maritime Laser Demonstrator, it’s proven able to cause “catastrophic failure” on a moving target at sea the first time out, says Quentin Saulter, one of ONR’s top laser gurus.

“When we were doing the shot and the engine went, there was elation in the control room,” he says. “It’s a big step, a proof of principle for directed energy weapons.”

The Navy hopes that by the next decade, solid state lasers — which generate powerful beams of light by running electrons through crystals or glass — will be aboard its surface ships, disabling enemy vessels and eventually burning incoming missiles out of the sky. That latter goal will take at least 100 kilowatts of power.

But a beam in the tens of kilowatts, ONR proved this week, is deadly, accurate and, Carr says, “can be operated in existing power levels and cooling levels on ships today.”

Solid state lasers are just the beginning. The Navy’s also working on a much more powerful Free Electron Laser weapon thanks to ONR’s research. That laser works across multiple wavelengths, compensating for debris in the sea air, to cut through 2,000 feet of steel per second once it gets up to megawatt class. Its electron injectors are ahead of schedule and ONR expects it to be ready in the 2020s, though after its solid state cousins are operative.

Next up will be to “develop the tactics, the techniques, the procedures and the safety procedures that sailors are going need to develop” to wield laser weapons, Carr says. And then it’s time to scale up the laser’s power.

“This is an important data point,” the admiral says, “but I still want the Megawatt death ray.”
 
China bans time travel

Posted By Joshua Keating
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Monday, April 11, 2011 - 11:45 AM
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Beijing is taking action against an increasingly popular genre on Chinese television. From the China Hush blog:

In these time-travel based TV plays, usually the protagonist is from the modern time and for some reasons and via some means, travels through time and all the way back to the ancient China where he/she will constantly experience the "culture shock" but gradually get used to it and eventually develop a romance in that era. Though obviously the Chinese audience is fond of this genre of shows, the country’s authority -General Bureau of Radio, Film and Television, to be exact, is not happy about this trend and calls a halt to the making of this type of drama.[...]

The authority’s decision was made on the Television Director Committee Meeting on April 1[sup]st. – [/sup]but obviously it’s not a prank to fans of the drama genre. The authority has a good reason to go against the genre. "The time-travel drama is becoming a hot theme for TV and films. But its content and the exaggerated performance style are questionable. Many stories are totally made-up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty. The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore."

The New Yorker's Richard Brody suggests that what's making censors uncomfortable, is less what these dramas say about China's history, than what they imply about its present:

What the Chinese time-travel plots, as described above, have in common is the notion of escape: leaving contemporary, Communist-dominated China for the China of another era, one where, despite mores that are, in some ways, odd and outdated, love and happiness can be found. Time travel serves here as a dream of freedom from present-day strictures—or simply as a cry for freedom, from precisely this kind of idiotic and despotic regulation.

Variety reports that several remakes of classic texts and Western-style cop shows have also been put on hold.

Hat tip: Frank Chi
 
Earlier this year, they also made it illegal to be reincarnated without written government approval. It's getting so you just can't have any fun in China anymore! :rolleyes:
 
But wouldn't that mean all the earthquakes caused by billions of Chinese jumping up and down when excited would stop, meaning that's actually a good thing? :cheeky
 
3D erotic comedy Sex and Zen breaks Hong Kong record
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Japanese actors Saori Hara (top) and Hiro Haayana star in the film Continue reading the main story
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A 3D erotic comedy has taken the Hong Kong box office by storm, beating the first-day record set by Hollywood blockbuster Avatar.

Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy took HK$2.78m (£219,000) on its first day last week, compared to James Cameron's epic which earned HK$2.63m (£207,000).

The film has now taken HK$17m (£1.34m) in the five days since its release.

Takings have been boosted by an influx of viewers travelling from mainland China where it is not being screened.

Sex and Zen - a remake of a 1991 Hong Kong movie by the same name - tells the story of a sexually frustrated scholar in ancient China who loses himself in the harem of a duke he befriends.

The Cantonese production features Japanese porn stars Hara Saori and Suo Yukiko and Hong Kong actress Vonnie Liu.

In Taiwan, the film also earned TWD$17m (£360,000) in its opening weekend - the best for a Chinese-language movie in Taiwan this year, producer Stephen Shiu said.

As China does not have a film ratings system - enabling movie-goers of any age to see any film - it bans erotic content in cinemas.

It is not the first time mainland viewers have travelled to Hong Kong to evade censorship by Chinese authorities.

Many crossed over to watch the uncut version of Oscar-winning Taiwanese director Ang Lee's sexually explicit 2007 spy thriller Lust, Caution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13140810
 
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