Here is the news

 
The 7 funniest news items of recent days, plus predictions

KIND READERS RACED TO help international tourism chiefs who have been running out of slogan ideas. Lift Lurker came up with a unique slogan which could be shared by a pair of West African countries: “The Congo: There’s only two.”

Not bad. We could use a similar idea for the two Chinas: “China—totally unique (both of them).”

He also came up with a slogan for Bangladesh: “Best Indian Food in the World.”

I shook my head at that. “No, you’ll deeply upset a certain other place which claims that title: Glasgow.”
*
Mr Lurker suggested that encouraging an element of competition would add spice to tourism campaigns. For example, Jakarta tourism chiefs have been using: “Indonesia: 100 years of Nation’s Awakening.” So someone else could produce something like “Korea: 200 years of nation’s awakening.” And so on.

Reader Christy Chiang perked up at that. She liked the competition idea. For example, Australia’s slogan is “Where the bloody hell are you?” So she suggested New Zealand could have a slogan that went: “Relax, dude, they're all here.”
*
Meanwhile, reader Paul Fox suggested: “Hong Kong: a fragrant harbor for all the wrong reasons.”

On the subject of the sea, how about that BP oil spill? Did anyone body have the same thought I had? The sea is now full of oil and fish. Add some diced potatoes, throw in a match and hey presto! A billion cubic liters of freshly fried fish and chips.

*
THE NEWS PAGES of the newspapers have been really weird lately. Here’s a round-up of seven favorite items, along with forecasts of how the stories will develop.
*

News item: A modern art dealer in New York City pleaded guilty to a swindling his clients out of US$100 million. Prediction: The judge sums up the case: “In other words, business as usual.”
*
News item: At least £57 million of small change is lost down the back of British sofas each year, researchers estimated. Prediction: New Prime Minister David Cameron will visit all his subjects and slip his arms into furniture cracks to cut the deficit.
*
News Item: United Airlines is offering door-to-door luggage service for US$75. Prediction: They’ll soon introduce extra charges for fussy passengers who want it delivered to the right country.
*

News item: Sandra Bullock is back at work after her marital dust-up. Prediction: In her new movie, Ms Uncongeniality, she plays a woman who tortures her husband to death.
*
News item: Hypercritical judge Simon Cowell did his final stint on American Idol last week. Prediction: He becomes chief judge of the International Criminal Court and when any country misbehaves, he says: “Oh come on!” and nukes it.
*
News item: The FBI plans to use Facebook to communicate with criminal suspects. Prediction: They’ll send out a wall message saying: “Give yourself up or we will de-friend you.”
*

News item: Paleontologists digging in China’s Henan Province have unearthed a dinosaur called “the roadrunner". Prediction: Further investigation will reveal it died after a creature called a Koyo-T-rex dropped an ACME brand piano on its head.
*
Anyone else spotted anything silly in the news?
*

Technorati Tags: oil spill,roadrunner,sandra bullock,tourism slogans,funny tourism

Comments

[farah]

@ Lift Lurker
now u gotta come out of that lift. you have lurked inside it for too long.

i loved watching road runner on cartoon network. when the acme branded water came out i thought if it would kill people. and who would forget the self T&T detonations.

[Chamin AKA Maria Chaminda Veneracion DeJesus III]

Two faculties of the university of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka were closed yesterday after two groups of students clashed and threw stones at each other, injuring quite a few (one needing eye surgery) and damaging property.

Reason for the clash: a mistake in writing faculty names on lanterns that were hung to celebrate the birth anniversary of the Buddha (the biggest religious event in Sri Lanka after cricket matches).

Hmm, I wonder how many ACME pianos will be needed to flatten students from two faculties....

[Ram]

Chamin mentioning about eye surgery reminds an advertisement... "Affordable in-home LASIK surgery... You can do it yourself"... Sounds weird huh?...

Their website says that the kit they supply comes with a femtosecond eximer laser, Mild sedative, eye drops that can prevent blinking while doing the surgery, a detailed instruction guide (may be we can use the other eye to read the instructions while operating) and a protective post-op sleep mask...

The most funny part is a cartoon saying "4 easy steps and you ll be seeing clearly before you know it"

http://www.lasikathome.com/foureasysteps.htm

[Dinu]

NEWS ITEM: Gunmen attack Pakistan hospital in Lahore, kill 5.

My Prediction: Cemetaries and graveyards will be evacuated under "next possible attack" alert.

[Chamin AKA Maria Chaminda Veneracion DeJesus III]

Ram, that one is both funny and scary. I wonder if that is even legal :-0

[Mahjuja]

Hmmm... seems like revering the Buddha hasn't helped these people (students in Sri Lanka) become any more non-violent, or, I wonder, how much more violent tendencies they might have had without following Buddhism.

Also wonder what Buddha himself would have made of this...

[Ram]

@Chamin,

The website says that it is not evaluated by the FDA... which automatically tells that its one among those non-sense products that claim to make wonders...

[Lift Lurker]

News item: A officeworker was not able to get into her Lift because the Lift was full. Prediction: She will catch the next one.

News item: Three passengers felt a jolt in their cabin earlier today. Prediction: They will go have coffee latte.

Sorry my news is pathetic. Nothing much happens in world of Lift. We don't bump into mountains or go off course and land in another building.

[fardel]

Correction
We , in the World of Aviation land ON something , not IN something
We do not go off course , we deviate course from weather or from discomfort to our passengers.

Yes , once every few millions flights , one errs into a hill;
This happen where a pilot runs out or lurk or his airplane looses lift
Nothing is Perfect, not even us

But bus and train drivers are even worse

[Lift Lurker]

Grand-pere,

Serious question (not a tease): what causes planes to crash into mountain? Did it happen only when deviating course? Does it happen also for normal course?

[Lift Lurker]

Follow up to Grand-pere my question was not complete. I mean, does not auto-pilot prevent such crash into mountain?

[sej]

Lift Lurker,

I think I can answer on Fardel's behalf... there are a number of reasons autopilots don't prevent aircraft deviating into the sides of mountains. In certain circumstances, they can turn off automatically, or at the very least, sub-systems of the autopilot turnoff.

Mostly though, I think it is usually due to human error, either entering the wrong information into the computer, or a human turning, at least part of, the autopilot off.

Overall though, the autopilot is probably one of the most robust systems on an aircraft, and least prone to failure.

An example was a tail-strike in Melbourne a year or so ago. The pilot entered the wrong weight into the computer, so the calculated takeoff speed was lower than it should have been, and the autopilot didn't apply enough thrust to get off the runway. The pilots in the end had to override the system and manually apply full throttle to get off as safely as they could without running out of runway.

Another example, where if I recall correctly, one theory over the Air France disaster last year, was the autopilot disengaged after multiple spurious airspeed readings and where it was deemed/designed the pilot should take over.

And as yet another example, where a 777 fell short of the runway at Heathrow I think it was a year or so ago, it was for whatever reasons, the engines which failed to respond to the autopilot's throttle up command rather than the autopilot itself.

So what usually stops an aircraft flying into the side of a mountain is the pilot.

[sej]

Okay, it's not so nice, but that Sink Hole in Guatemala... It was just so perfectly round, a bit like a crop circle, or a big drill had been used.

Straight out of X-Files or Doctor Who.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/giant-sinkhole-swallows-threestorey-building-in-tropical-storm-20100601-wtc6.html?autostart=1

[Angela]

Ah! Finally I am back to JamLand. What did I miss? I became a grandmama to lil liftie? Rick astley? The new side bar? Kewl btw (i always think using chat linggo makes me sound kewlr than I really am..lol..pardon this grandma)

Been running around like a headless chicken, trying to get stuff arranged for a Summer holiday with my little spawn.

News: truck driver talked to stranger in lift today and shared a little joke.
prediction: She will do it again everyday, talk to random strangers just for the fun of it.

[Angela]

Hey! I just read about sinkholes few days ago. One of the causes is poor sewerage that leaks water and made the soil soft over time and created the sinkhole. I am freaked out though, do people and stuffs fall inside the core of the earth like they were eaten by the planet? Can anything be recovered? How far did they fall?all the way to australia? Aaaaaaaaaaaah...... Well, hello sej!

Immigration people will freak out too...illegal aliens appearing without proper documents.

Perhaps it will one day become possible to travel through earth via terralifts. Passing through the earth and come out in another continent. Now we're talking a real threat to aviation industry.

[Boris]

News Item: Nury dreamed of giving a speech naked.
Prediction: He will follow his dream and give a speech naked.

[TS]

Worse, Uncle Nury had a nightmare.
He was giving a speech at a nudist conference and as he stood at the podium, he realised that he was fully clothed...

[Boris]

Even worse, Nury had a nightmare in a nightmare.
In his nightmare he was giving a speech at a nudist conference and as he stood in the podium, he realised that he was fully clothed, but as he wake up, he realised the nightmare had come true, only that he was facing a group of teachers and toddlers and he was the nudist guy.

[Karuna aka Kaye Moreno]

@Nury
Check if possible to increase the length of the "recent comments" section OR include a scroll button ?

And great idea to place Angela's photos on the very top. She has a real beautiful and great smile.

[fardel]

News item

A sinkhole just opened in Guatemala

Follow up
We just found Lift Lurker's address

Prediction
He has been responsible for the unplugging of volcanoes for the last two years

[Chamin]

Mahjuja,

I wonder if even Buddha might want to order Acme pianos with this kind of followers :-(

[shrynne]

i couldnt help it.. i miss hk,.. n i stumbled on this..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJH_DHsKPMk

[TS]

I second Karuna aka Kaye Moreno's suggestion that the "recent comments" list be increased.
You look away from the screen for a few seconds and you missed a long line of gold nuggets.

[Sabrina]

On that roadrunner case, maybe not Acme pianos, it's Acme-brand explosives (like the ones Wile E. Coyote often uses in the cartoons)

[Lift Lurker]

@TS you actually look away?

[Grandpa aka Faye Libad aka Fardel]

@Sej
Thank you for your explanation and defending me against an "elevator attack"

@Lift lurker
Airplanes do not crash into mountains
Mountains raise to impact them,
it is the revenge of the planet

In aviation ( as in sailing ) there is a rule ( which has been confirmed by insurance stastistics):
Accidents do not happen:

Accident : by definition it is an unpredictable situation which cannot be anticipated or expected: example a meteorite falls on you when you get out of your car.

accidents ; as we know them, they are the result of a sequence of events which lead from one situation to another one, to another one.
When they combine , or add up, the result is a disaster
In flight training we teach the students to recognize the situations which could lead to disaster, AND BREAK the chain of events
This subject was a 2-hour course I was giving to my students who were preparing their pilot certificates
Autopilots ( and computers ) are incapable of reasoning
The flight into the Hudson river would have had a tragic outcome without the pilot's skills
He broke the chain of events by taking drastic, immediate action
Every manmade equipment fails ( elevators more than airplanes(°_°)
Man fails.. sometimes
Women too.

[Angela]

The "undesirable attitude" is true both in aviation and in humans.

Pilots may be trained to avoid this "undesirable attitude" in airplanes but how do you deal with it in humans?

I am not a pilot (yet) so I choose to ignore the ignorants.

[Angela]

hmm..actually I wanted to comment on undesirable attitude in the workplace but I think it is also applicable everywhere.

When I find myself having to face undesirable attitude at work, first I get angry and blow my top off (not literally. guys, guys, stop trying to make me mad) but as I get older I learned that this does not provide a lasting solution, it only serve to perpetuate the inflation of my ego and the ego of the undesirable attitude.

So now whenever someone gets on my nerves with his/her undesirable attitude, if it is at work, first I will evaluate the importance of the matter. If not important then I will let it slide (ignore). If important, I will ask the question, who has the authority in the office? If it is me I demand that the job get done regardless of how it makes the other person feels. We are afterall not getting paid to boost our egos but to bring business to the company so it can pay our salary. If I do not have the authority (eg my boss has undesirable attitude) then I will go to the person who is the boss of my boss and get the final say.

This micropolitics at work is an absolute pain in the buttonhole but it exists and has to be dealt with in the best possible way without getting blood on my hands. So that’s how I avoid committing colleaguecide (homicide in the work place)

[Angela]

ps: I am not (yet) above spitting in his/her coffee if given the chance and if provoked ;-)

[Mahjuja]

@ farah, here comes some more 'gems' of advice for your woes! ;-)

[Grandpa aka Faye Libad aka Fardel]

There is another way to give it another taste , but My mother does not allow me to give details here.
But the result is guaranteed

Grandma gave you good advice

[Lift Lurker]

Grandpere,

Airplanes do not crash into mountains
Mountains raise to impact them

I am concerned if we indeed related. I could not be descended from anyone with symptom of craziness.

But serious: Do you have anything you can share (powerpoint, websites, cash) about 2-hour training course on breaking chain of event, or maybe anything similar? It is interesting to me.

I am ashamed to confess some people in New York were stuck in lift for more than one hour! It is unforgiveable.

I am happy they can later get home to their family after being stuck in traffic for 2 hours.

[Angela]

Grandchild, since we are family now, i must tell you the truth about our bloodline: you descended from a long line of royal blood, pure, 100% insanity. But do not despair my lil liftie for "crazy people are not crazy if you believe their reasoning."

Now as we've gotten it out of the way, I wanted to share this As I think it might be related to your comment/question above. I heard this in a seminar I attended in which the speaker is a pilot and he talked about The debate on the practicality of training pilots to recover from airplane's "unusual attitude", which in earlier posts your trucker granny blatantly rephrased to "undesirable attitude" to apply it to humans.

now i wish i know how to make the following italics -seeeej, howd u do it mate?

********

Recovery from an Unusual Attitude

(Excerpts)

(by Richard Owen)

Training programs for pilots sometimes debate the merits of testing pilots on their ability to recover from “unusual attitudes”. Now I know what you are thinking; “unusual attitudes” these days in the airline industry could be a cabin staff who actually enjoy working for their airline. But I don't mean that.

An unusual attitude is when a pilot finds his or her airplane moving in a direction that is, well, suboptimal. All of this falls into the usual FAA lexicon of euphemisms which include remarks like "controlled flight into terrain" - otherwise commonly referred to as a crash. If the plane is pointing down, up, left or right to a considerable degree more than is "normal" it's an unusual attitude. You can think of normal as being simply defined as a condition where the pilot doesn't need to do anything radical to avoid executing a "controlled flight into terrain".

At first glance, the idea of training pilots to recover from that situation seems to lack controversy. But you would be wrong! The logic goes like this (and I will translate from FAA to English as we go): Any pilot whose skill level (lack of skills) is such that he or she is capable of creating the conditions (losing control) by which a plane enters an unusual attitude (ohmygodwearegoingtodie) is unlikely to posess (or suddenly develop in the 3 seconds of panic and terror they have to react) the skills required to recover the plane safely. Therefore, examiners and trainers would be better off investing the time spent training recovery into time spent avoiding the unusual attitude in the first place. The same argument is made around spin recovery, another nasty little aeronautical maneuver that rarely results in happy endings (passengers walking off the plane after it's re-introduction to the ground).

 ******

[Lift Lurker]

Truckie Nenek, great insight in the post.

I think it can apply to many many aspect of life not just planes.

Thanks for posting it.

[Grandpa aka Faye Libad aka Fardel]

We thought Angela was a truck driver.
Wrong
She is a flight instructor

@Lift Lurker
i am a little short on time for such an explanation

Some example can show you the way it happens:
The death of a singer :Alleyah
the death of a singer Richie Valens

[Angela]

I just remembered this news which was on the local paper about a month ago.

News item: disgruntled Indonesian maid urinated in her employer's waterjug. She was caught when the family thoguht their usual tea had a funny taste.

Prediction: The maid must have been really "pissed off" by her employer's maltreatment

[farah]

lmao..

Angela, you're never short of ideas. i really really love the maid's idea. thanks for sharing :)

[Mahjuja]

Ha ha Mr. Farah's Colleague guy you better watch out! I would forget about enjoying tea and coffee if I were you...

[Grandpa aka Faye Libad aka Fardel]

She will not do it.........

[farah]

now now grandpa fardel dont jump to conclusions.

i will just now have to strategically get the 'secret ingredient' from the washroom to the kitchen to his coffee cup....

[fardel]

I would like to hear about it.

[sej]

Farah,

How about a cup of hot chocolate instead. Then the hot-chili mixed in wouldn't look/feel/taste out of place.

[fardel]

Hi everybody
This video is juste there to show you that planes can got through mountains, as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu8S5vn6ShI

Humm
I have been looking on internet.
I did not find any elevator videos doing this.
I wonder why ?!?

[Lift Lurker]

Grandpa, that is fantastic video!

It show pilots begin to learn how to slide into narrow shaft with only 100 feet gap on left and right.

Just like what Lifts do 50 million times per day. With only inches gap. For over 100 years now.

But it is interesting because I now begin to understand why airline pilots crash into mountain.

They think they have the same right stuff like the talented pilot on the video: "I am captain. I have sexy uniform. I have big fat wallet. Even cockpit hump adjust to me. Mountain will also adjust...BOOM!"

I want to see more video like it but when I look at the suggestions on the right, all i see is "plane crash", "lightning hit plane", "emergency landing", "crash, crash, crash"

It make me want to hide in my Lift forever.

[TS]

To me it looks more like a bunch of guys outliving their erotic dreams of conquering a very large woman in public.

What I don't understand s why they haven't hired these guys to get the trapped Chilean miners out once the drill gets through.
I looks a lot more comfortable and exciting than that narrow lift-cage they are planning to use.

[TS]

Lift-cage:

Versus stunt plane:

[grandpa aka Faye Libad]

Sad to say
airplane crashes sell better than elevator crushes
sigh

[grandpa aka Faye Libad]

Lift -cage

The only thing I see is a cage.

OOPs
My mistake ! I recognize an elevator to the fact that there is no seat.
The guy is trapped .
What was the brand of this contraption?
SIAS ?

[Mahjuja]

Hmmm, and so the battle continues...

[fardel]

The war will never be over.
That is the way when somebody wants to fly higher than his cables would permit

Welcome back Mahjuja
We missed your comments

My apologies too
I must admit that I am having a hard time to make fully blown puris, like the ones I saw in the movies

The first time n they were good , but I could not do it again.
There must be a secret; like the position of the moon in the sky

But the sauce which come with it is amazingly tasty ( i.e peppery hot)

[grandpa]

Her is some news
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/TechandScience/Story/STIStory_679698.html

I wonder when se are going to see a see-through elevator....
Hummm

[Ram]

@Grandpa: That's fantabulous stuff... I saw more pics of it today... Hope I ll be alive to travel in that one in 2050... !!!

[TS]

@Ram: Don't worry, if there is one thing that history have shown us, it's that no predictions of the future are very accurate and often it's more fantastic than you can imagine.

In 2050 they will laugh at us.

[TS]

And why is Grandpa reading The Straight Times now?

[TS]

Straits... that is...

[Lift Lurker]

I put very long post about this horrible news (almost 40 letters and punctuation marks) but it disappear.

[TS]

The spam filter ate my homework...

[Ram]

@TS: mmm... hope we have those tele-portation stuff around that time...

[grandpa]

"And why is Grandpa reading The Straight Times now?"

I have been reading the straits times since the day somebody from there invited me to produce electricity with her balloons

[TS]

I have been reading the straits times since the day somebody from there invited me to produce electricity with her balloons

You answer just leads to another question, but I'm afraid to ask it.

[grandpa]

Don't

[grandpa]

This is teeeeRRRRRRRRRible

The German have cloned Uncle Nury:
same looks ( more or less) same voice (more or less ) and a worse sense of humor.
Uncle
You should press charges of copyright infringements:
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_680388.html