More oddities spotted in the news

[hazard]

You mean there may be more lurking about somewhere, in various states of disrepair. It's been long enough I wouldn't be surprised if all other examples are utterly destroyed or otherwise lost.

[robkelk]

"Crowvid19" raises over $12,000 for local food bank

[RMH999]

Brain eating amoeba in town water supply

Brazosport water authority includes portions of southwest Houston.

[robkelk]

Government of Canada promises to make tax returns Y2K-compliant

Yes - 20 years after Denmark and Sweden did this, 80 years after the UK did the same thing, and an unknown-to-me number of years since Germany, Japan, Chile, Spain, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Iceland did the same thing, Canada is finally admitting that they already have everybody's tax slips on file because the employers, banks, and charities send them copies, and will start filling out the tax forms for us - thus ensuring that we get all of the tax credits that are due to us. Including the one-in-eight people who currently don't get tax credits because they don't file because they don't have to pay anything,.. but thus miss out on getting money from federal programs.

I have no doubt that the professional tax-preparation services are upset.

[robkelk]

"[A] legal procedure so rare Statistics Canada doesn't even track the numbers"

No sex? No marriage, rules B.C. judge in rare annulment because husband couldn't maintain an erection

[robkelk]

What happens to items returned to a big online store (in this particular case, the one with the smiley-arrow in the logo, but there's no reason to believe other online stores behave differently)

tl;dr: They're not put back on the shelves for re-sale.

[robkelk]

Fox News host's (mis)pronunciation of Ottawa puts spotlight on word's Indigenous origins

"I know he was trying to be funny ... but he actually came pretty close," said Jeff Monague, an elder from the Beausoleil First Nation and an expert in Anishinaabemowin, the language from which the place name Ottawa comes from.

[robkelk]

If somebody tells you that lawn ornaments have no practical purpose, point him at this story.

Man wields concrete statue to save young woman from bear mauling in Hay River, N.W.T.

[robkelk]

Peruvian archeologists unveil giant cat carved into Nazca Lines UNESCO site

[robkelk]

Canadian spending on Halloween is double Canadian spending on the space program.

So, if anybody ever tells you that money spent on space should be spent on solving problems on earth, tell them they'd get twice as much money to spend on solving problems on Earth if they cancelled Halloween.

[Norgarth]

Chile celebrates Voters' decision to scrap Constitution and start over
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/927859270...dyoDqTkoGQ

[DHBirr]

Saved BY the Whales:  Dutch train jumps tracks, and is kept from falling by a sculpture of a whale's tale.  It was a fluke occurrence.  (I wasn't the first to make that pun, and I'm NOT ashamed of it.  Nyaaaah.)

[robkelk]

Anti-anxiety alpacas

[classicdrogn]

Here's an article with another shot of that "Saved by the Whales" train, from the front as one (of eventually two) cranes is being rigged to it to get it down.

https://www.mail.com/int/news/europe/102...pture.html

[robkelk]

Scammer cold-calls police cybercrime unit

Vaguely related: 2020's most popular passwords. If yours is here, change it.

[hazard]

Reminds me of the time a scammer cold called the wife of (I think) a retired FBI director. Went about as well.

[DHBirr]

Or the very old anecdote of an attempted bank robbery ... of the bank used by agents of the local FBI office.  On payday.  "This is a stick-up!"  CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK

[Norgarth]

Or the very old anecdote of an attempted bank robbery ... of the bank used by agents of the local FBI office.  On payday.  "This is a stick-up!"  CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK

Similarly, I recall reading about a guy who tried robbing a gun store, in an open carry state (Texas? not sure) The robber made his demand and the half dozen or so customers drew their weapons on him.

Edit 8)

[Star Ranger4]

Canadian spending on Halloween is double Canadian spending on the space program.

So, if anybody ever tells you that money spent on space should be spent on solving problems on earth, tell them they'd get twice as much money to spend on solving problems on Earth if they cancelled Halloween.

...

And here I thought that Canada, as a better member of the Free Trade Agrement than the US has been...  Didn't have to worry about their own space program, we'd let them use ours.

Of course, that was 4 years ago.  Let us hope that it will be true again come Jan 21st.

[nocarename]

We train our own people, we plan our own experiments, we build our own satellites and sometimes we launch them too - though mostly into polar orbits, I think. What we don't do is maintain our own manned launch systems and facilities.

Which puts us outside of the serious space club of the US, Russia and China (and probably SpaceX soon) on one level.

It's not my preferred situation, but I have also never run for office or tried to position my career track to include orbit, so, yeah. If it comes up in a political campaign it might nudge my vote around, but I don't expect that to happen.

[Star Ranger4]

well, I can see that. Launch systems and facilities ARE really expensive.

[firvulag]

There were plans to build a launch facility near Canso, Nova Scotia back in 2017, for a mere $304 million.  Not sure what happened to that, but supposedly they're still hoping to begin launches in late 2021.

https://www.maritimelaunch.com/news

But yeah, we have a smallish, but extant space industry here.  The Radarsat Constellation Mission which launched last year is one of the more recent things we've done.

https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites...efault.asp

[DHBirr]

Japanese Wolf-bots Guard Against Bears

The scarecrow-like robots have shaggy bodies, four legs, blond manes and glowing red eyes. If the motion detectors are activated, they move their heads, flash the lights in their eyes and project up to 60 equally-horrifying sounds, including howls.

Frankly, I thought bears were bigger and stronger than wolves, and would try to eat the robots....  Are we being told that Japanese bears are wussies?  Also, how long before those wolf-howls in the night start giving the townsfolk bad dreams?

[hazard]

Just because you hear 1 wolf that doesn't mean there aren't a dozen more. And dealing with the one wolf might just be more effort than it's worth to the bear, especially if the bear's expecting the wolf to get back up.

[Inquisitive Raven]

Asian bears do tend to the small end of the bear spectrum and who says the robot wolves are merely life-sized?