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Joyce Bernann McKinney, who made headlines by having her pit bull cloned (previously on Neatorama), has left South Korea without the five cloned puppies she commissioned from a biotech company. Publicity over the cloning led to her identification as a fugitive from a British court in 1977. She had been accused of the kidnap and rape of a 21-year-old Mormon missionary. McKinney denied the charges, saying that the relationship was consensual. The case was never brought to trial, as McKinney fled to the US after making bail.
Now, a lawyer has identified McKinney as a fugitive from a criminal case in Tennessee.
The Tennessee charges stem from McKinney’s arrest in November 2004 after being found in a van with the teenager. According to prosecutors in Carter County, an area in north eastern Tennessee, she instructed the boy to burgle a house and was charged with criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
McKinney had allegedly told the teenager she needed money to help her three-legged horse. A representative of the South Korean biotech company said she had left for the US last week, but does not know where she is. Link -Thanks, Heather!
US Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson won a silver medal in the all-around competition yesterday in Beijing, but she has an even bigger honor awaiting her back in the States. Johnson’s likeness is on display at the Iowa State Fair, carved in butter!
Butter Shawn Johnson will share the spotlight with the butter cow in the Agriculture Building Aug. 7-17. Butter sculptor Sarah Pratt of West Des Moines plans to incorporate a balance beam into Johnson’s pose, and possibly an American flag.
The butter cow is a tradition at the fair.
There has been an Iowa State Fair butter cow since the early 1900s, according to fair officials.
Johnson will join an elite butter list that includes Tiger Woods, Elvis, Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” actor John Wayne and country singer Garth Brooks.
Pratt said she and Iowa fair organizers discussed options such as Indiana Jones and the 50th anniversary of the Doctor Seuss classic “The Cat in the Hat” before picking Iowa’s 4-foot-81/4 Olympic favorite.
Link -via YesButNoButYes
John Schwenkler wrote an interesting short piece for the Boston Globe by putting together profiles of the US presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, drawn from the most-used words from their respective blogs:
It’s nothing major: just a use of Wordle to pull out the most prominent words from the official McCain and Obama campaign blogs, and then some brief analysis of a few of the most interesting ones. But it is sort of fun, and I do think it’s genuinely revealing of at least some important aspects of the state of the debate.
It’s interesting to note that in both McCain’s, and naturally, Obama’s, blogs the most often used word is "Obama," but the tone of McCain’s blog is decided more negative.
Link – via Upturned Earth
One of my favorite photographers, Eric Lafforgue (previously on Neatorama here), went to North Korea for two weeks in April 2008 and snapped some really cool (government-approved) photos:
The pictures you will see are not stolen ones, it’s just what i’ve seen during my trip and what the governement wants or allows to show to tourists.
When you’re in North Korea, you have always with you two guides, everywhere you go.
Link – more at his Flickr photoset
(The small thumbnail above is "Kim," a ghostly pale army woman in Pyongyang. Photo: Eric Lafforgue)
There’s something fishy – literally – in San Francisco: a manta ray found on the sidewalk. alilrusky of Exprience Project has the story: Link
Photo: SEGA of America
When the folks of SEGA America blog went on a tour of the product development department in the SEGA HQ, they found this secret room full of just about every game and console ever made by the video game company!
Link | Hi-res Flickr photos
Angry that the garbage men refused to pick up backlog of rubbish after workers’ strikes last month, residents of West Yorkshire resorted to a little civil disobedience:
Angry residents annoyed at binmen who refused to pick up a backlog of rubbish left after strikes last month barricaded a refuse lorry and its crew in their street.
Children and parents from the quiet cul-de-sec formed a human chain around the large truck to stop it driving away while another resident blocked the road with his car.
The defiant families, angry after watching waste build up since the council strike on July 16 and 17, told the rubbish collectors: ‘You shall not pass.’
What is it with the British and garbage? Link
Stumpy, a humpback whale nicknamed because of its lack of a tail, was sighted today off the coast of Australia – some 20,000 km (12,400 mi.) from where he was first sighted years ago.
And in a coincidence worthy of a cosmic joke, Stumpy was first spotted by one Mr. Short:
The boat’s skipper Allan Short said he last saw the disfigured whale as a yearling in Hervey Bay in 2001. Scratch marks on its side indicate it was injured in a killer whale attack, Mr Short said.
"When we first saw Stumpy in Hervey Bay in 2001 we thought for sure he wouldn’t survive without his tail," he said. "It’s a 20,000-kilometre return journey when they migrate and that is an amazing feat for a whale without a tail."
A handsome yet unnamed young guard of the Olympics torch as it made its way around the world has become a Chinese Internet hero and sex symbol!
Known only as "Second Brother on the Right" because of his customary position by the flame, the young man with boyish looks and cropped hair is an Internet sensation and nationalist hero.
"They praised him for his 360-degree handsome look, well-built body in perfect proportion, refined and exemplary postures, smile and courtesy to torch bearers, his pals and audience, and determination to safeguard the Olympic spirit," reads his entry in the Wikipedia web database. [...]
"My dear Second Brother on the Right, please marry me!" begged one girl on a site with 542 pages of odes and photos to the nameless hero.
But he better watch out – other guards have also been idolized:
"Second Brother" is not the only hero among the torch guards, who, by contrast with their status at home, were sometimes vilified in the West for being unquestioning representatives of stern Chinese authority.
Other guards have been given nicknames such as "Leading Handsome," "Ravishing Hand," "Kindness" and even "Noodle Soup."
Link – via Oddly Enough
Open landfills in Mumbai, India, have been so stinky that municipal workers resorted to desperate means: spraying the garbage with perfumes!
Mumbai has a population of nearly 18 million, and generates 8,500 metric tonnes of rubbish every day. Nearly 500,000 people live near rubbish landfills. Officials say that the stench from the landfills in Deonar and Mulund was so great that local residents started protesting.
So the authorities hit upon the novel idea of dousing the landfills with perfume to kill the stench. A herbal perfume diluted with water is sprayed over the landfills almost every day. The perfume costs $114,000 for 42,000 litres, which is required to "perfume" the landfills for between six to eight months.
"Perfuming the garbage has helped. Residents are complaining less. This will continue till we find a long-term solution," said senior municipal engineer A Karim.
The newest trend in beauty also happens to be one of the most disturbing: pre-tween waxing!
According to Wanda Stawczyk, who runs Wanda’s European Skin Care, the number of young clients coming to her salon has skyrocketed – from just two in 1998, to more than 200 customers last year. Juanita Martin, manager of the swanky Juvenex Spa – best known for its celeb clients and late-night spa treatments – agrees.
"We’re seeing younger kids coming to the spas with their parents," says Martin. She estimates that Juvenex waxed 10 child-clients, ranging from 8 to 10 years old, this year. That’s compared to none five years ago. "I know other spas are also seeing younger children getting all sorts of treatments, like waxing," she says.
TriBeCa’s Eden Spa waxed 20 pre-tweens last year.
"I have one customer who started getting her eyebrows waxed. She’s 6 years old," says Eden’s manager, Evette Jiang.
(Photo: Caitlin Thome)
Way to go science! In another study hailed as a breakthrough, doctors announced that some patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma saw their cancer disappear after being treated with a new drug that boost their own immune cells:
Of the 38 patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who took part in the most recent study, two of the seven who received the highest doses of the drug saw their cancer disappear while five others had reductions in their tumours of more than 50 per cent.
One patient on a lower dose also became cancer free and remains so after more than a year.
The results, published in the journal Science, are encouraging because they suggest that the bigger the dose, the bigger the effect.
Previously on Neatorama: Doctors Inject Cloned Immune Cells, Cure Man of Cancer
There’s something unusually attractive about the ampersand (heck, there’s even a blog dedicated to it, as posted on Neatorama a while back).
Dan Cederhom of SimpleBits has a neat web design how-to post explaining how you can prettify your web text to use default fonts on Mac and Windows that have interesting ampersands (instead of the ho-hum Verdana’s &).
Link | See Also Meagan Fisher’s Ampersands desktop wallpaper
Man walked into a car dealership … and if that sounds like the beginning of a weird story, just hear the rest:
James F. Jones walked into an office at car dealer Jake Sweeney today, plunked down 16 coffee cans of coins and said: “I want that Chevy truck,” pointing to a red, 2008 half-ton Chevrolet Silverado.
The sales staff couldn’t believe he was serious, but Jones, of New Miami in Butler County, was very serious – and he had $8,000 in coins to back him up. [...]
Jones, 70, said he has always kept his personal money in coins because he doesn’t trust banks or paper money.
“Paper money will burn, but it is hard to damage coins. I bought four or five rolls of coins each month. I don’t know how long it took me to save this amount, probably all my life, spending some of it now in then,” said Jones, who retired as an engineer from Fort Hamilton Hospital’s maintenance department in 2003.
Add this to the tips of How NOT to get Screwed When Buying a New Car – the salespeople would be too amazed to do anything but count the money …
We posted about spray-on condom when it was invented by a German sex-health educator named Jan Vinzenz Krause. Now, over a year and a half later, the sales of the spray-on condom – unfortunately – haven’t, um, firmed up:
The prototype, which began testing last year, consists of a hard plastic tube with nozzles that spray liquid latex from all directions, much like the water jets in the tunnel of a car wash. According to Krause, there are numerous advantages to his spray-on condom. "The condom fits 100% perfectly, so the safety is much higher than a standard condom’s, and it feels more natural."
But there are some stumbling blocks. The men who tested the spray-on condom had a few hesitations, Krause says. Some were "a little bit afraid to use the tube" and would only try it on their fingers. Others worried that the mechanism, which hisses as it sprays, might ruin the mood.
But the most serious problem with the design — which is what has kept the product off the market thus far — is that the latex takes too long to dry. Liquid latex currently takes two to three minutes to vulcanize, making it impractical. "For people to buy it," Krause says, "it needs to be ready in five to 10 seconds."
Link – Thanks Tiffany!
See if you could title this post a little better …
Oh, I can just imagine the fun to be had by newspaper reporters when they turn in the story about this giant inflatable turd that blew away from a Swiss museum:
A giant inflatable dog turd brought down a power line after being blown away from a Swiss museum.
The artwork, entitled Complex Shit, was carried 200 metres on the night of 31 July, reportedly breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again.
The sculpture, by American artist Paul McCarthy, was equipped with a safety system that should have deflated it.
Apparently, it was a floater Link
