Thursday, June 2, 2011

Thursday Thoughts: carnivorous ATMs and other stuff

Good Morning Humboldt County!

The coffee is especially good this morning. Have a cup with me as we explore what’s happening in the world. There’s a negative 2 tide this morning and my eldest son is out at Clam Beach getting his quota. It’s shaping up to be a real nice day. Now the news: 

ATM machine won’t let go of man’s hand!

A Pennsylvania cash machine apparently took all those cracks about service fees costing an arm and a leg a little too seriously.

Firefighters had to free a man who got his hand stuck in the ATM at a suburban Pittsburgh bank on Monday.

Moon Run Fire Chief Paul Kashmer told WPXI-TV his crew used special equipment to free the man after he got his hand stuck in the automated teller machine at the First Commonwealth bank in Robinson, Allegheny County.

Soldier home on leave thwarts Fla. bank robbery

An Army staff sergeant home on leave in southwest Florida chased down a suspected bank robber and held him until authorities arrived.

Eddie Peoples was at a Bank of America branch in Sarasota with his two young sons Tuesday when a man walked in with a handgun and demanded cash from the tellers, officials said.

Peoples told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune he sprang into action after the man, identified as 34-year-old Matthew Rogers, threatened his sons.

Fearsome lawn ornament shot dead by cops

File this story under “Shoot first and ask questions later.”

When an alligator was spotted near a suburban Kansas City pond, local police decided they were taking no chances: They would shoot the fearsome creature from a distance with a rifle. But the alligator took the first shot to the head without batting an eyelid, and then the second one bounced off.

At that point, the officers realized the animal was not a bulletproof beast; rather, it was just a concrete lawn ornament, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

Now we know where sports fans got the idea…

Penguins do the wave to keep warm

Anyone who's watched "The March of the Penguins" knows that Emperor penguins huddle together to cope with the harsh temperatures and winds of the Antarctic winter. It's a great deal for the birds inside the tightly packed scrum, but how do the penguins on the periphery get their turn?

Researchers spent a whole winter in 2008 tracking the movements of an Emperor penguin colony at Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica, and they present their answer this week in the open-access journal PLoS ONE. It turns out that the penguins engage in a series of continuous, coordinated shuffles that cause the birds on the outside to shift toward the interior, and push other birds toward the outside." Every 30-60 seconds, all penguins make small steps that travel as a wave through the entire huddle," the researchers write. "Over time, these small movements lead to large-scale reorganization of the huddle."

That's right: Penguins know how to do the wave.

Image: A Thai customs official holds a confiscated turtle

Rats on a plane! (And crocs, turtles on another)

A flight crew checking the cabin of a Qantas plane before takeoff found rats in a compartment holding medical equipment, grounding the plane for more than a day.

Crews did a visual check of the plane Tuesday afternoon and found no more rats or any damage.

The rodents had been in a cabinet holding a defibrillator. The plane returned to service Thursday morning, officials said.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

2 comments:

Tom Holloway said...

the story started out telling of a man's problem with an atm then switched to telling of the way the rescue team aided the woman(?). Did the atm clamp down on more than the dude's arm???

ImBlogCrazy said...

What are you talking about Tom?

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