American Madness

American Madness readers: meet William Johnson.

William, it is my pleasure to introduce you to American Madness.

I apologize up front for the awkward introduction, but this is the only way we could arrange for this meeting. William is currently incarcerated in Brazoria County, Texas on a burglary charge.

Turns out, he asked one of the local trailer park residents to help him move a big screen TV out of another trailer home that wasn’t William’s. Outside of stealing someone’s snuff, thievin’ a TV from a trailer park is about the highest crime you can commit in that part of Texas.

And he might have gotten away with the theft if he hadn’t been pulled over during a couple suspicious U-Turns in the middle of the Interstate. And even that might not have got him nabbed if the officers didn’t think it entirely too weird that his co-pilots were a six-foot long alligator and a water moccasin (a type of poisonous snake).

Ok, I’ll pause and let you read that last little bit over again.

Yep, William here is a man with a fondness for reptiles. The Houston Chronicle reports Johnson told the pokey that he found the snake and the alligator on the sides of roads and picked them up because he has an interest in cold-blooded, scaled creatures. (more…)

Snatch is a great movie. There is a line in it about pig farms, something along the lines of “never trust a man who owns a pig farm…” Actually I think that is exactly what the line is.

Well, apparently Guy Ritchie knew what he was talking about when he wrote this. A Canadian pig farmer was convicted last week of killing 6 different people. This was his first trial, he was found guilty of second degree murder for all six folks and will have another trial for the murder of an addition 20 people he supposedly offed. And that’s not all. Although he is only on trial for 26 different murders, he claims to have killed 49 people and was hoping to make it to 50.

Most of his victims were prostitutes, junkies and other people of ill-repute. After killing them he would chop up their bodies and, you guessed it, feed them to his pigs. Investigators found severed skulls and feet on his property. But he thought he was still going to get off since the fact that the skulls and feet were on his property didn’t mean he had killed them. Oh the other hand he probably overlooked his confession to an under cover cop and the fact that his wife claims to have seen him chopping up some bodies.

The odd thing about this case (okay, one of the many odd things about it) is that the jury did not find him guilty of first degree murder, meaning they felt he had not planned to kill the victims ahead of time. It was just 26 spur of the moment decisions to kill these women. Man, even his picture is creepy.

This week we have announcements of two developments that are bound to help out with airport security, protecting us from all thoe people planning to plant weapons in their shoes and making all of our lives easier by not having to take our shoes off at the airport.

First up we have the MagShoe “a high-speed, shoes-on, portable footwear weapons detection system.” It is currently used in Madrid, Prague and Budapest and may be making its way to the US and the UK. Basically it scans your feet for concealed metal objects that may be missed by your standard metal detector. I have to ask though, how does it respond to things like steel-toed boots or shoes with metal shanks (though apparently shoe manufacturers have been dealing with this issue since 2003).

(more…)

Although I am not a paranoid shut-in, afraid to step out my door, positive that imminent disaster waits around every corner, this is the website that could definitely turn me into one. So, before you go and check it out, be forewarned: This is not for people who fear disaster.

The Global Incident Map is just that, a map that charts the latest “Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activities.” This could include anything that could even be remotely considered “suspicious” including false alarms, as they raise fear and terror levels.

Click on any of the events on the map, each with its own icon to display the type of event (a little explosion for bomb threats, little trains for railway threats, little planes for airports, etc…) and you will discover what caused the little alert to show up, ranging from “Brooklyn-bound subway service on the 6 line was disrupted between 125th and 42nd streets due to a police investigation at the 77th street station” to “A suicide bomb on the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday killed six schoolchildren and wounded three Italians working on a project to build a bridge.” (more…)

Different folks like different levels of scary for Halloween, some people are all about watching the slasher flicks and checking out the newest haunted house guaranteed to make you wet your pants, others prefer something a bit tamer like Bedknobs & Broomsticks.

While people are headed out to the parade or heading to their local watering hole to get their Halloween groove on, if you are one of the ones who prefers a good fright maybe you are up for something a little different. If that’s the case the NY Post has just the thing for you: A list of the 10 most haunted sites in New York.

Included on the list we have Washington Square Park, the Chelsea Hotel and a couple of restaurants also some other hotels, churches and cathedrals and the like. The list was compiled by FindingDulcinea, a site that works to compile information.

Kind of neat and worth checking out if you are up for a good Halloween scare.

Remember when I wrote about the armed robots patrolling the streets in Iraq? Well, it might be time to start worrying about those machines.

Here’s the deal: “Many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic — picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger.” Well, one of these robots, owned and operated by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), didn’t quite wait for a human to pull the trigger and started blasting away on its own.

During a shooting exercise, where they were using live ammo, an Oerlikon GDF-005, designed to take down airplanes and other small, low-flying air crafts, went out of control, firing “hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells” which killed 9 and injured 14 others.

(more…)

I just came across an article I missed from the middle of September. Newsweek reported on a website called MarryOurDaughter.com. The site appears to be under construction right about now, but here is what it had offered (according to Newsweek): “a matching service for followers of ‘the Biblical tradition’ of arranged marriages.” It allowed people to look through profiles of girls… and when I say girls, I mean girls, the majority were apparently around 15… whose parents wanted to marry them off and were asking for a price for their hand in marriage, a dowry if you will, usually something in the low to mid- 5 digit range.

Seems like an obvious choice for Newsweek to write about. Mail-order brides are not a new thing to the internet, but usually hey are from foreign countries and they are not underage girls. The thing is, Newsweek was not ‘exposing’ this site and telling us about the dangers of the internet, instead they were discussing the true mission behind the site.

According to MarryOurDaughter.com the site was not exactly a hoax, but rather an attempt to educate folks through something they call ‘viral politics’:

Call it an experiment an experiment in Viral Politics. That children can marry down to twelve years old in America, which they can do, is Not Right. That the age of consent is higher than the age of marriage is Not Right. That parents can marry off their children for money or for any other reason is Not Right. Railing about it on the web, as many do, wasn’t making a difference. Thinking outside the box led us to marryourdaughter.com.

(more…)

As I type this I know my computer is headed for a crash, so I am going to make this brief, to the point and save it before I reach the point of impending doom where I actually loose data.

Anyway, I came across this article the other day about… well, the title kind of explains it: “Peruvians get sick from apparent meteorite crater,” of course, you guessed it, this is another one from Reuter’s “Oddly Enough” section of the paper meaning they don’t really see it as news, but more of a fluff piece that people will enjoy reading and maybe even have a nice little chuckle over.

Well, I read the article, the gist of it being that over 100 Peruvians who have visited the site of an apparent meteorite crater (that crashed down over the weekend of the 15th) have been vomiting and experiencing massive headaches. After some researchers had a chance to check it out they said, yes, it probably was a meteorite and that folks were probably getting sick from the gases it had released.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly find that to be very comforting, nor would I think the sick Peruvians would either. I’d want a much more detailed explanation of what these so-called gases were and an explanation of how long these symptoms were going to last (as of the writing of the article folks were sick for as many as 3 days already). A mysterious meteorite falls to Earth and folks near it start getting massively sick- this sounds like the start of a comibook or Sci-Fi monster movie, not something to be written off and tossed into the “Oddly Enough” bin.

Also, I guess there is a moral to this story- Don’t go visiting random craters that mysteriously appear over the weekend, you never know what they might contain or what might happen to you.

When Monsterous Peruvians infect with some space virus come attacking your town, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Okay, time to restart.

Does anyone else remember the Time-Life Series “Mysteries of the Unknown“?

It was the one that had the long commercials asking how the Egyptians were able to build such incredible pyramids and the Sphinx and then commenting how the moon had similar structures on it. Basically the books, as far as I know (unfortunately, I do not have the complete 33 book set or even one of them for that matter), examined some world mysteries, some dealt with the paranormal, and (okay) most dealt with the paranormal. Some just doled out paranormal explanations for mysteries of the world. Well, I found a website that totally reminded me of the series.

I admit, I was always intrigued by the series (and, at that age, a little unsettled by it), which is probably why I just spent a bit too much time flipping through it today. Word Mysteries is broken down into a couple of different sections, each with a ton of writing on the topic (after a bit, I took to skimming).

Of particular interest was the map by Piri Reis from 1513, which accurately maps the coast of Antarctica, an area believed to be covered in ice for at least the last 6000 years, and the Baghdad Batteries (possible batteries dating back to 245 BCE) — some really interesting hard to explain things. The site goes beyond just these “mysteries” and also looks at some “Mystic Places” and Ancient Writing,” plenty of stuff to check out while wasting away an afternoon

You know that friend of yours, the one who is always wearing Crocs and talking about how comfortable they are when folks try pointing out that they are god-awful-ugly?

Well, that friend may be in danger, especially while riding escalators. The Japanese National Institute of Technology and Evaluation has issued a warning to the public about Croc safety.  Some 40 individuals in Japan have suffered Croc-related injuries, usually at the hands of an angry escalator. This includes a 5 year-old girl who reportedly lost 3 toenails and suffered a broken toe.

If this isn’t enough reason not to wear Crocs, consider that they are hideous shoes and wearing them anywhere in public, except the beach, should be considered a hate crime against all of humanity (unless the person wearing them is under the age of 8 or Mario Batali). Just remember, if you lose a toe to an escalator or if angry mobs come for you due to your blatent disregard of style, you’ve been warned.

Oh, speaking of Crocs and Mario Batali, back in May it was announced that he will be the new spokesman for the company.