NPR did a story on this and rickrolled their entire listening audience in the process. Dead air for a few moments then suddenly, I was no stranger to love.
WHITE PLAINS, New York (AP) -- An autopsy has revealed that a man found dead in a suitcase in a suburban park was a drug "mule" who had 50 packets of heroin in his body and probably died when one or two of them broke open.
Investigators expressed surprise that the man's body had not been cut open for the drugs. The heroin would have been worth an estimated $100,000 on the streets, Westchester County police spokesman Kieran O'Leary said Tuesday.
The man, estimated to be 50 to 60 years old, has not been identified. Investigators aren't sure who put him in the suitcase found last Thursday in Tibbetts Brook Park in Yonkers, just north of New York City.
But it probably wasn't the drug dealers who were expecting the man's shipment, because they likely would have cut his body open for the drugs, O'Leary said.
"We've seen that on occasions in the past," O'Leary said. "How he got to the park with the drugs still inside him is still a piece of the puzzle."
Detective Lt. Christopher Calabrese theorized that other mules, not wanting the dealers to cut open the corpse, bought the suitcase and dumped the body before the dealers came to collect the drugs.
"I'm very surprised this guy's not been cut open," he said.
Detectives believe the man traveled from the Dominican Republic.
While the man's cause of death had not been confirmed, one or two of the packets inside him were broken, O'Leary said. There was no outward sign of violence or trauma.
The man probably died a day or two before he was found, the spokesman said.
The body was discovered when a parks worker went to remove the abandoned black canvas suitcase near the park's entrance and the victim's leg popped out.
ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (AP) -- You can call her Cutout Dissection.com, or Cutout for short, but just don't call her Jennifer.
The former Jennifer Thornburg -- whose driver's license now reads Dissection.com, Cutout -- wanted to do something to protest animal dissections in schools.
The 19-year-old's new name is also the Web address for an anti-dissection page of the site for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, where she is interning.
"I normally do have to repeat my name several times when I am introducing myself to someone new," she told The Asheville Citizen-Times. "Once they find out what my name is, they want to know more about what the Web site is about."
The Asheville High School graduate, who is working in Virginia, said she began opposing dissections in middle school after a class assignment to cut up a chicken wing made her uncomfortable. She helped create a policy at her high school that allows students who object to dissections to complete an alternative assignment.
Despite her legally changing the name, she said most of her family members still call her Jennifer.
"It will take me a while," said her dad, Duane Thornburg, who lives in Daytona Beach, Florida. "She's still Jennifer to me. I understand why she's done it. Believe it or not, I totally respect it."
A CD showing the treatment of animals before they are dissected finally convinced him to support his daughter's cause, he said.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A North Korean woman accused in a sensational espionage case involving sex and poisoned needles was sentenced Wednesday by a South Korean court to five years in prison.
Won Jeong Hwa was arrested in July on charges of passing classified information to the North, including the locations of key military installations, lists of North Korean defectors and personal information on South Korean military officers.
Prosecutors alleged Won used "sex as a tool" for her mission, dating a South Korean army officer and making him work for her. Investigators have also said she plotted to assassinate South Korean intelligence agents with poison needles, but did not carry out the plan.
On Wednesday, the Suwon District Court, south of Seoul, accepted a prosecutors' demand that she be sentenced to five years in prison, a court official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He could not give more details.
Won is the second North Korean spy arrested in South Korea in a decade.
The movie-like details in the charges against her have drawn keen media attention, with some newspapers calling her Korea's version of "Mata Hari," the notorious dancer-turned-World War I spy.
The case further frayed South Korea's already troubled relations with the North, as the communist nation protested angrily that Seoul has fabricated the case to sully Pyongyang's image.
The two sides fought the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula technically at war.
Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes
Jackson County touch-screens switched votes, 3 residents say
At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.
By Paul J. Nyden
Staff writer
At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.
Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.
"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.
When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."
Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.
When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.
On her third try, Matheney managed to cast votes for both Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman, Democratic candidates for the two open seats.
Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.
"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.
"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.
"When I hollered about that, the girl who worked there said, 'Push it again.' I pushed Obama again and it stayed there. Then, the machine did the same thing for other candidates.
"Why didn't she [the polling clerk] tell me before I even used the machine that might happen? And how many people, especially my age, didn't notice that?
"Jackson County is a Republican county. I am a registered Republican, but I have been voting Democrat since the 1990s."
Thomas, who brought his daughter with him to the polls, said she had the same problem.
"After I finished, my daughter voted. When she pushed Obama, it went to McCain. It happened to her the same way it happened to me. If the poll worker knew that, why didn't she tell me before I even pushed the button?"
Deputy Secretary of State Sarah Bailey said, "When we received a call about this, we immediately called the county and told them to recalibrate the machines to make sure the finger-touch [area] lines up with the ballot.
"Sometimes machines can become miscalibrated when they are moved from storage facilities to early voting areas," Bailey said Friday. "We get a couple of calls about this each election year."
Most voting machines in most counties do work properly, Bailey added.
Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright said, "After we got a call from the Secretary of State's Office, we recalibrated the machine. We had already voted over 400 people with no problems."
Voting problems occur when voters touch the screen, Waybright said, but do not put their fingers inside boxes for their candidates.
Waybright blamed the problem on voters.
"People make mistakes more than the machines," he said, "but I went in yesterday and recalibrated the machines. We are doing everything we can not to disenfranchise anybody."
Matheney remains concerned.
"Leaving the polling place," she said, "I wondered how many voters might not have noticed that their vote was switched on the machine."
See, it's shit like this that makes me glad that this country sticks to older, slower but more reliable methods of voting, both by the public and the representatives in parliament.
OK. I've been looking for an image of the actual voting machine's screen. I can't find it, based on the descriptions of a check mark next to the name, I'm guessing it's something like most other menu screens out there. So if the idiots are trying to tough the spot where the check goes instead of the center of the main box they want, then they may be pressing a couple of spots at once. if the machine is a tiny bit off, it'll seem like it's off my a lot when they are missing their intended target anyway.
If anyone can find an actual example of the screen these people are using, it would help a lot. When they claim to be touching "negative space" they may not be. And I've seen way too many instances of people claiming that they did X and then I try and have no problem and then they try again and fuck up again.
Still my point stands, it should be as simple as: if you put your finger on the box, it fills in the box. If its kinda maybe, the machine shouldn't make assumptions, the boxes should remain uneffected.
That's my whole point. It's not making assumptions. The machine doesn't know what they intended to do, it only knows what they did do. And they hit the wrong box. Even if it was just with the tiniest piece of lint hanging off their finger as they hovered it over the screen after touching their initial choice. It's a natural motion for most people, they glide in with their hand, make contact and then glide out. In other words, they have their hand in constant motion in close proximity to the screen. It is the habit of most people to slid their hand away from the selection they just made to view the pretty little check mark, when they do this, they've slid their hand over the other box. they are no longer watching their hand and it touched the screen the tiniest bit and they say, "OMFGZ!!! it magically changed. I didn't do it. The machine cheated!" If the damn thing was actually rigged, it wouldn't be "jumping around" it would just interpret any contact as the desired selection. And it would be much more consistent than these people described.
In the insance you propose (inwhich the voter hits both boxes, unmeaningly) I still blame the technology for the mistake, because that (human) fault would render the machine inaccurate.
Edit: and I supose, I blame, to a lesser extent, the poll supervisers and organizers for not giving fair warning
... that.... doesn't really follow, I don't think. You can't blame the technology if they're not using the technology right. You can say that the technology isn't perfectly user-friendly, but it's not the technology's fault.
That would be like saying that if an old person can't go up to a Linux computer and use it perfectly, it's Linux's fault. Technology is designed to do things a certain way and if you don't do it that way, that's your fault for not understanding how the machine works.
Or is it the machine's maker's fault for not making it work in a way that all can understand it well enough that they can work it adequately. You kind of have to assume every ones a moron, and desine the system like so.
I actually have to agree with Blobby a little. I don't think they should give any "warning" but it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a little sign that shows the proper method of using the machine. Like a sign with a diagram that shows you to hold your hand to your chest, choose a target, extend a single finger and then retract back along the exact same path. I know I expect a lot from people sometimes. And as depressing as it is, those sorts of things should be taken into consideration. I'm not being sarcastic now, I'm being serious. I still think those people are idiots, but since it is "new" technology, it should have instructions, no matter how obvious you think it is.
EDIT: I just get really pissed off when the first conclusion people reach is conspiracy. The most likely explanation is human stupidity, not conspiracy or faulty equipment.
I still think it's more reliable and safer than paper that is hand counted. We still use the tabbed tally machines in my town. It's nice and easy. You slide a bar that closes the curtain and sets the machine, there are rows with names in them. You push down the tab under the name you want(or is it above, it's just so damn confusing when you start by looking at the middle. you know, because going from top to bottom is just for suckers), then you slide the bar back and the curtain opens and the tabs are reset.
But there are legit reports about how easy touch screens are to hack. You have to be inside to cheat paper.
Why not have the freaking touch screen print out a paper ballot that you can look at and verify before turning it in.
Don't have the thing connected to the internet, just have it print / punch out a ballot that is later read by a machine and verified by a person if needed.
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Also, tokio hotel is just a really crappy boy band.
In dissection protest, teen's name is now Cutout Dissection.com
Mmmm sexy Asian spies
Seoul jails 'sex for secrets' spy from North
I'm so glad I don't live in Asheville anymore.
If anyone can find an actual example of the screen these people are using, it would help a lot. When they claim to be touching "negative space" they may not be. And I've seen way too many instances of people claiming that they did X and then I try and have no problem and then they try again and fuck up again.
Edit: and I supose, I blame, to a lesser extent, the poll supervisers and organizers for not giving fair warning
That would be like saying that if an old person can't go up to a Linux computer and use it perfectly, it's Linux's fault. Technology is designed to do things a certain way and if you don't do it that way, that's your fault for not understanding how the machine works.
EDIT: I just get really pissed off when the first conclusion people reach is conspiracy. The most likely explanation is human stupidity, not conspiracy or faulty equipment.
Don't have the thing connected to the internet, just have it print / punch out a ballot that is later read by a machine and verified by a person if needed.