Sunday, October 14, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
Giant 'mystery eyeball' discovered on South Florida beach:
Carli Segelson, spokeswoman for the agency, said the eyeball is slightly larger than a baseball and presumably belonged to some kind of marine animal.
"We're hoping to determine what kind, but at this point we just don't know," Segelson said.
The eyeball is being preserved and will be delivered to the agency's research lab in St. Petersburg, where it's hoped an official identification can be made.
Meanwhile, people are making all sorts of guesses.
Perhaps the best comes from George Burgess of the Florida Museum of Natural History. Burgess has suggested that the eye may have belonged to a bigeye thresher shark. The species is found off Florida in moderately deep water, and the sharks are aptly named.
Other guesses have appeared on the FWC's Facebook page.
"I'm going for a whale eye ...," reads one comment.
"Giant squid?" reads another.
Then there was this more adventurous theory: "A giant squid ripped out a whale's eye."
Segelson said it might be several days before a precise identification is made.
Monday, October 8, 2012
High school students suspended for possession of energy mints:
A group of high school students in Pekin, Ill., were suspended last week after school officials suspected the mints they were eating were actually illegal drugs. Jason McMichael, the father of one of the students, told the Journal Star that his 17-year-old son Eric was suspended for two days from Pekin Community High School and not allowed to attend the school's homecoming festivities after staffers found four students eating energy mint tablets that are marketed like caffeine energy drinks. McMichael said he received a phone call from the dean's office informing him of his son's suspension and that the teen was being monitored by the school nurse for an elevated heart rate—though McMichael doesn't believe it was due to the energy mints. "He's never been in trouble," McMichael said. "He was probably just nervous." Eric McMichael said he and three others were eating Revive tablets—touted as "nature's energy mints"—in the school cafeteria when they were disciplined. "People bring energy drinks to school every day," the teen told Central Illinois' WMBD-TV. "I see this every day and we get in trouble for energy mints?" According to EnergyFiend.com, each mint contains 101 milligrams of caffeine along with guarana, green tea, ginseng, acai, mangosteen and goji. The Revive brand is endorsed by several MMA fighters and fitness pageant contestants. McMichael's father said school officials later admitted they did not know if the chewable, unmarked mints were, in fact, illegal drugs but upheld the suspensions anyway, saying the teens displayed "gross misconduct for taking an unknown product." "Now they know nothing illegal happened," McMichael said on Friday, "but they're still pursuing the suspension." Superintendent Paula Davis told the paper that while she was not able to discuss the incident, school officials would have been within their rights to discipline the students if they were seen "ingesting things that look like unmarked pills."
Thursday, October 4, 2012
American Airlines Resumes Talks With Pilots After Scares and Delays
Delays and plane maintenance issues have finally led American Airlines management and the pilots' union back to the bargaining table for the first time in weeks.
After a tumultuous week of seats' becoming loose, flipping over in mid-flight in one case, American Airlines announced it was resuming stalled contract negotiations with its pilots' union.
Today, another safety issue put American Airlines under the microscope because of a mid-flight maintenance scare when a plane's landing-gear warning light jammed after take-off.
Flight 1862 from Dallas to St. Louis had to return for an emergency landing 10 minutes into the flight Tuesday. The passengers were told to brace for a crash landing at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Jim Faulkner, an American Airlines spokesman, said the flight turned back to the airport without incident around 8:40 a.m. local time. Passengers were put on another plane to St. Louis.
"When they said assume the position, it was scary," passenger Elaine Krieger said.
Some passengers were left to wonder whether the landing-gear concern was real, well aware of the airline's recent trouble with labor.
"Some people are cheering as we landed, and the rest of us are thinking, 'Is this a scenario they created, or was it real?'" passenger Jeff Estes said. "Are they really heroes, or are they guys just creating a job action?"
Former American Airlines pilot Ron Carr said pilots would not go that far, but it's clear he said that despite union denials, pilots are using their ultimate power in the cockpit to delay flights by forcing even small maintenance issues, like a broken coffee pot, to be fixed before takeoff.
"I think there's a lot of things that could be written up on an aircraft," Carr said. "You have a, a very complex machine that's being operated and there's always going to be something that's not quite right that could be written up."
Carr, who is currently an assistant professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, added that he did not think any pilot would resort to "sabotage" as that would be a safety issue.
"That would be very stupid on their part to pull a stunt like that… they would not do anything is that nature to jeopardize, or purposefully, to cause a problem to cause a delay. That's not going to happen, in my opinion," he said.
If pilots are using their authority to delay flights, it is a tactic that seems to be working for pilots who have put pressure on American by doubling delays and inconveniencing customers.
Thomas Horton, CEO of American parent AMR Corp., said Tuesday in a statement that he was pleased that "intensive bargaining" was scheduled to begin this week.
"It has been a very challenging couple of weeks for our company. As you know, our operations have experienced significant disruption, affecting our customers, our people and our owners," Horton said.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Critics take aim at underwhelming Resident Evil 6
It might have morphed into a lucrative film franchise, but the game that put survival horror on the map is returning to its roots.
Releasing Tuesday, Resident Evil 6 lets gamers fight off undead beasts as multiple characters from the franchise's 15-year history. It's the largest Resident Evil game yet -- and it's gotten a significant push from both publisher Capcom and partners like Microsoft, who put it center stage during its E3 press conference earlier this year. In a holiday season filled with huge names like Halo and Call of Duty, it still manages to stand out.
But something is rotten in the state of Resident Evil, and it's not the corpses. Critics are ripping into the new game like a hungry zombie, calling it poorly paced and poorly executed.
"This is a wannabe action film that resents your interference, and punishes you by forcing one horrible quick-time event after another upon you," writes GameSpot, which gives the game a mere 4.5 out of 10. "There's a place for contextual prompts and cinematic storytelling in video games, but Resident Evil 6 is a mishmash of elements put together without any sense of care or direction. Series faithful might stumble through for the sake of story, and perhaps to appreciate those few moments that recall when Resident Evil was at its peak glory. But this long, poor sequel is the ultimate test of patience for even the most dedicated."
Joystiq is equally unimpressed.
"If every idea had come together without friction, and with the aid of Capcom's top-notch presentation, Resident Evil 6 would have been a tremendous action game," they write in a 2.5/5 review. "Instead, it's a fully-featured, sloppy, frequently frustrating attempt to do well by everyone."
That sentiment is echoed by Polygon in a brutal 4/10 review that calls the games "an oversized behemoth" and "a franchise-diminishing disappointment."
"In the end, Resident Evil 6 resembles one of its grotesque mutations — bloated, out of control, and recklessly trying to consume everything around it," gripe reviewer Philip Kollar.
While dialogue has never been a particularly strong suit in the Resident Evil games, critics say it's especially cringe-worthy this time out. And the pacing is being particularly lambasted.
"I constantly found myself wondering: Is this game in some kind of hurry?" notes 1Up's Jose Otero. "You'd think as much from the intrusive waypoint marker system. … These on-screen markers constantly rob RE6 of tension. … The unfortunate truth is that Capcom hasn't figured out a new way to terrify gamers in the eight years since RE4." They award it a C+.
G4, meanwhile, rips into Capcom's development decisions, giving it a 2.5/5 while saying this installment "completely changes the core gameplay that made the series so great, and instead goes for something that resembles their idea of Uncharted or an over the top action experience. Unfortunately, this means that the rest of the game suffered, leaving a broken shell of a game."
So is it just an unmitigated train wreck? Not if you ask Game Informer, who dole out a whopping 88/100 while calling it "an unhinged, flaming rollercoaster ride" and praising the game's co-op feature. And though IGN's 7.9/10 is tempered by loads of complaints, the site applauds Resident's Evil 6's production values and cleverly integrated storylines.
The game also enjoyed a number of well-attended midnight launch events at retail stores across the country, so perhaps the critical take won't sway consumer interest. But with a current Metacritic average of only 68, it's a rough start to the holiday season for Capcom. That's not quite a death knell, but it's clear this undead franchise isn't what it used to be.
How to become a barbie tutorial :D
Still deciding on this year's Halloween costume? Check out this flower fairy makeup tutorial by Anastasiya Shpagina (a.k.a Fukkacumi), from Ukraine. The 19-year-old hair stylist uses extreme makeup techniques and costumes to transform herself into a real-life anime character. "I'm not a like a doll, a doll is like me," she writes on her vk.com (a European version of Facebook) page.
It takes Shpagina about an hour to achieve her doe-eyed look—don't worry, the video is only six minutes long. Photographs on her Facebook fan page show a dangerously waifish young woman with deep crimson hair. She says she would like to one day have surgery to reshape her eyes and nip in her waist even more drastically. Shpagina is reported to weigh only about 90 pounds. Her VK page is posted with images that inspire her such as dragonflies, flowers, butterflies, tiny deer, and other woodland creatures, but her true muse is Valerie Lukyanova, the 21-year-old who sparked controversy in the spring by using plastic surgery and photo retouching to become a real-life Barbie.
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