Oddities spotted in the news

[DHBirr]

Meanwhile, there's Florida, where a big 'gator committed breaking-and-entering, apparently thinking this was where the drunken party was being held. They did find he'd smashed open four bottles of wine....

Florida must have delusions of being Aughstralia.  Even the huge reptiles like to get sozzled! 

-----
"Oh, my people had many gods. There was Conformity, and Authority, and Expense Account, and Opinion. And there was Status, whose symbols were many, and who rode in the great chariot Cadillac, which was almost a god itself. And there was Atombomb, the dread destroyer, who would some day come to end the world." — Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, H. Beam Piper

[Dartz]

1 Vote mattered

Wow! That's even closer that Edmonton in 1993. (By the second recount in that election, the margin was 12 votes.)

I know there's a trope for this...

Given how votes are redistributed after a candidate is elected/eliminated, this may literally be a rounding artifact in a dead heat.

It's not even one vote than mattered, it's a 3rd, or a 4th of even a 5th preference vote that might've mattered.

[robkelk]

Did supernovas get our ancestors to walk upright?

[Labster]

Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia gets building permit after 137 years

I'm pretty sure the Infinity Academy Construction Club didn't get permits for their version in Tokyo Bay, either.

[robkelk]

How a pub landlord wound up raising ravens hatched at the Tower of London

[robkelk]

Couple wins grocery-store shopping spree, donates everything to the local food bank

---

Deer gives birth to twins on University of Northern British Columbia campus quad - again

It's the third year in a row the doe has given birth on campus.

[robkelk]

If you "get" this, you're Canadian. If you don't, no amount of explaining here will help.

Saskatoon man buys canoe with Canadian Tire 'Money'

[Star Ranger4]

Actually I am boggled that a chain called Canadian TIRE carries Canoes at all.

[Norgarth]

oh, Canadian Tire carries LOTS of stuff.  Yes they do have a large auto parts department, but they also carry patio stuff, camping , stuff, hunting stuff (including bows, crossbows and a limited number of hunting rifles/shotguns), pretty much anything to do with the outdoors.   Plus loads more.

[robkelk]

An opinion piece:

The Register: Could an AI android live forever? What, like your other IT devices? You'd be lucky if it survives until next Thursday

You may find sci-fi childish and irritating already but I find this particular sci-fi trope particularly annoying: that androids, not being organic and therefore not destined to grow old and die, will live forever. Well-known examples such as Steven Spielberg's movie A.I. and Osamu Tezuka's manga Mighty Atom centre on this essentially daft conceit, allowing the authors to explore the emotional and psychological aspects of a self-aware computer inside a humanoid-styled vehicle outlasting its creators and possibly the human race itself.

I would like to invite fantasy authors and screenwriters – not Tezuka or Asimov, they're dead – to take a peek at the electronics at the back of my bottom drawer.

I go snowboarding and break a shoulder; a nurse helps reset it and, within days, the bones have already begun happily knitting themselves back together long before I get bored of watching Homes Under The Hammer. An android breaks its shoulder and an army of engineers have to retool spare parts in a purpose-built factory in South Korea before shipping them out with a team of skilled technicians to rebuild the shoulder, run exhaustive tests, tweak the performance as necessary, and make themselves sick one evening by trying to eat hamburgers "like the locals".

Treat your androids like that creepy bearded fat guy in Ex Machina and they'd be broken all the time.

No wonder Ghost In The Shell's Major Kusanagi spends half the time in the repair shop (i.e. hospital) getting something or other fixed, replaced or upgraded. It's a painfully recurrent story theme throughout the GITS manga, anime and even that recent live-action movie that suggests to me that author Masamune Shirow probably has a bottom drawer full of old earphones too.

[hazard]

This sounds to me like the issue isn't that the parts wear out, but that nobody has apparently considered how to handle maintenance and replacement.

[robkelk]

As the article says, how does an AI replace its arms if the arms have fallen off? Maintenance can only go so far.

[hazard]

... By going into a maintenance shop that you'd expect would have the means to repair the joints and connectors and/or replace the arms that were lost and do so properly.

I mean, what do you think a hospital is except a maintenance and repair shop for the human body? Sure, we haven't figured out how to flat out replace components of our body without complications, but we've been learning how to do that. Or what do you think organ implantation is? And where that's either impossible, or dangerous, or simply lacking in replacement organs we've been studying how to do mechanical assistance and replacement for literal centuries.

The only thing we won't be able to replace, and an AI might is the major calculation system, the brain, and for creatures of flesh and blood that's because we aren't software based intelligence, we're hardware based. The location of information in our brain is at least as important as the archiving and retrieval systems, whereas a software intelligence would depend on their archiving and retrieval systems and not care as much about where the data has resided in the mean time.

[DHBirr]

Norwegians don't want to emigrate to the U.S. ... but one really, really wanted to go to Canada.  2,700 miles in about three months — on foot.

[robkelk]

There's been some flooding in Toronto, due to heavy rain.

Getting a car out of a freeway off-ramp (401 to Islington):

---

How Zoe the police dog sniffed out 2 missing girls in Ontario's Algonquin Park

[Bob Schroeck]

Today's award for Best Headline Combining Irony and a Tongue-Twister goes to:

Five guys arrested after fist fight at Five Guys

[robkelk]

This is why you shouldn't park beside a fire hydrant.

When firefighters arrived they needed to access the hydrant behind the Subaru, said [Halifax assistant fire chief Chuck] Bezanson. Fire crews first tried to run the hose under the vehicle, but that didn't work.

"The only other option was to go through the car," said Bezanson. "Going over the car would have totally destroyed the outside, just the weight of the hose would have crushed everything."

Not only were the car windows broken, the car's owner also received a ticket for parking within 5 meters of a hydrant.

[Inquisitive Raven]

Reminds me of an early scene in the movie Backdraft.

[robkelk]

I've been lead to believe it's more common than most people think, but this was the first time I saw a photo.

[hazard]

I've a feeling it's also one of those things where the emergency services are by no means liable for the damage suffered.

That is, repairs are entirely your own problem.

[DHBirr]

I've been lead to believe it's more common than most people think, but this was the first time I saw a photo.

Nine years ago, I saved a photo of just this sort of thing (where I got it from, I don't recall). Since whoever posted it hadn't included a title, I called it "Firemen's Revenge."  The caption somebody had attached read:

Beemer—$28,000
Fire hose—$300
Knocking the glass out of this 
Idiots car—PRICELESS!!

-----
Up, lad, up!  We've villages to pillage, maidens to slay, and dragons to rescue!

[robkelk]

ER doctor, students invent device for common hospital complaint: rings stuck on fingers

[robkelk]

Bizzarchitecture

[Inquisitive Raven]

ER doctor, students invent device for common hospital complaint: rings stuck on fingers

Huh, I'd've figured that ER staffs would be real good at the dental floss trick. It works on pretty much the same principle -- use pressure to force the swelling down so the ring can be removed.  I've used the dental floss trick successfully albeit at least once with silk beading thread instead of actual dental floss.

[classicdrogn]

Sure there's a cheap and simple trick you can use, but that's an expensive high-tech device in a friendly cream and blue plastic case! Obviously it's the better option.