William Todd Knight, the son of Billy and Ann Knight, “acted very wisely,” said Spartanburg County Coroner Jim Burnett. “His life was in danger, he looked for an escape and could not find one … he was a very brave young man.”

Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Department Capt. John Blackwood said the boy was watching cartoons in his parents’ bedroom Monday afternoon when he heard noises at the front door of the family’s brick, ranch-style home.

Todd told officers he was scared, so he went to his room for the .22-caliber rifle his father had given him for Christmas and loaded four rounds.

He then went to the front door and saw a man he described as “rough” pounding on the door. The man finally left in a white Datsun.

Todd said he resumed watching cartoons and about 10 minutes later heard banging, this time at a dining room window.

He saw two men climbing through the dining room window. The boy said he went into the bathroom to climb out the window, but saw the white Datsun was parked in the back yard.

Todd told police he went back to the hallway, peeked around the corner into the den and was spotted by one of the intruders as they were taking the VCR.

Todd then fired three rounds at the men, who dropped the VCR and fled.

When police arrived, one of the dead men was found face down next to a woodpile in the back yard, approximately 50 to 75 feet from the house, while the second man was in the driver’s seat of the white two-door Datsun.

Ever wonder why good stuff never makes NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, or ABC news……..an 11 year old boy, properly trained, defended his home, and himself……against two bandits……..and he wins. He is still alive. Now that is Gun Control !

Click here to view the embedded video.

December 19, 2007

The next time someone triple-dog dares you to stick your tongue to a frozen metal pole — don’t. Your tongue will be joined to the pole, and you’ll have plenty of time to ponder the thermal conductivity of metal while you await the rescue squad.

Your tongue is covered with moisture, which beings to freeze if its temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Your body counteracts the freezing by pumping warm blood to your tongue.

Heat from your blood warms the moisture through a process called conduction. Heat energy from the blood excites atoms in your tongue. The atoms absorb energy and vibrate. The more they vibrate, the more their temperatures increase. This incites vibrations in neighboring atoms, which take the energy and pass it up the line like a hot potato and eventually warms the surface moisture.

So why is the Fire Department on its way?

“It’s because of the high thermal conductivity of the pole,” explains Frank J. DiSalvo, director of the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future and co-director of the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute. “The metal is a much better conductor than your tongue (up to 400 times more powerful). The metal takes heat faster than your body can replenish it.”

The atoms in solid metals are packed tightly and transfer thermal energy more readily. They also have free electrons that boost conductivity. Free electrons are free to move from atom to atom. The electrons absorb heat energy and move through the flagpole, stirring up other atoms.

As your tongue touches the flagpole, the moisture on your tongue is robbed of heat. The temperature of the moisture drops. Water freezes inside tiny pores and surface irregularities on your tongue and the pole. You’re stuck.

So now your thinking, “Maybe if I just pull hard it will come off.” Yes, it will — a piece of your tongue, that is.

Kent Sperry is a 911 dispatcher at a place where people know about cold and snow — Boulder, Colorado. He offers a less painful alternative, assuming you happen to have the necessary remedy at hand: “Pour warm water on the area where the tongue meets the pole, and the tongue should come free.”

http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/071218-tongue-flagpole.html

Man Selling Soul On EBay For £500k
By Alex Watts Updated:13:54, Friday December 14, 2007

An American man is selling his soul on the internet for £500,000 – to raise money for Christmas.

He says the winning eBay bidder will receive his spirit in a glass jar as well as a contract “relinquishing ownership”.

He told buyers: “I’ve got no money for the Christmas holidays, and all I’ve got left to sell is my soul.

“I’m not really using it lately – and selling it on eBay is better than letting the Devil have it.”w

Full Story

Oct 17 08:58 AM US/Eastern

Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by researchers.
Yehuda Baruch, a professor of management at the University of East Anglia, and graduate Stuart Jenkins studied the use of profanity in the workplace and assessed its implications for managers.

They assessed that swearing would become more common as traditional taboos are broken down, but the key appeared to be knowing when such language was appropriate and when to turn to blind eye.

The pair said swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, but in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and express frustration, stress or other feelings.

“Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner,” said Baruch, who works in the university’s business school in Norwich.

Banning swear words and reprimanding staff might represent strong leadership, but could remove key links between staff and impact on morale and motivation, he said.

“We hope that this study will serve not only to acknowledge the part that swearing plays in our work and our lives, but also to indicate that leaders sometimes need to ‘think differently’ and be open to intriguing ideas.

“Managers need to understand how their staff feel about swearing. The challenge is to master the ‘art’ of knowing when to turn a blind eye to communication that does not meet their own standards.”

The study, “Swearing at work and permissive leadership culture: when anti-social becomes social and incivility is acceptable”, is published in the latest issue of the Leadership and Organisational Development Journal.

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July 27, 2007 — An artificial big toe attached to the foot of an Egyptian mummy could be the world’s oldest prosthetic body part, British researchers said Friday.

The fake toe, which is made of wood and leather and is currently on display at the Cairo Museum in Egypt, dates from between 1000 and 600 B.C.

Researchers at Manchester University in north-west England hope to prove it was used to help someone who had lost their original big toe to walk.

If they do, it could mean that prosthetic body parts were in use up to 700 years earlier than was previously thought.

The oldest known prosthesis is a bronze Roman leg dating from about 300 B.C. which was kept at the Royal College of Surgeons in London but was destroyed during a German bombing raid in the Second World War.

A second false big toe, which is on display at the British Museum, will also be tested by scientists in Manchester.

“If either one is functional, it may be interesting to manufacture it with modern materials and trial it for use on people with missing toes,” said Jacky Finch, a researcher working on the study.

She added that the Cairo toe is the most likely to have been a prosthesis, because it shows signs of wear and is attached to a “well-healed” amputation site.

The London toe, by contrast, does not bend and is therefore more likely to have been cosmetic, she said.

Discovory Channel

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A Belgian man appeared in court on Friday after a woman at his dinner party found the bodies of his wife and stepson in the freezer as she put away the leftovers, prosecutors said.

The woman went to the police after discovering the 46-year-old woman and her 11-year-old son and officers arrested the man in the town of Verviers, near Liege in east Belgium, on Wednesday.

“She went to the freezer and that is what she saw. She then alerted the police,” said Georges Lahaye of the local public prosecutors’ office. Prosecutors want the suspect, aged 43, to be remanded in custody to allow more time for an investigation into the deaths.

Lahaye said the suspect had not made a confession. He added that the couple argued a lot.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Two German teenagers robbed a girl but accidentally left their own pictures behind for police on a discarded mobile phone.

After stealing a 15-year-old’s shoes, money and mobile phone, the two older girls gave her an old mobile phone, police in the western city of Bochum said on Wednesday.

But the two 17-year-olds had forgotten the phone had their own photos, striking smiley poses, which police published online on Tuesday in an effort to find the culprits.

The two muggers turned themselves in almost simultaneously when the pictures appeared on the evening news.

“One girl was brought down by her father after he saw her on the television,” said police spokesman Frank Plewka. “Today the pictures were in the papers, so the father’s phone has been ringing all day, because everyone recognized them.”

Neither of the two had been in trouble with the law before.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – An Amsterdam barber has been arrested for stabbing a client with scissors, the second such incident involving the barber, Dutch police said on Saturday.

The client was stabbed and seriously wounded after a fight broke out earlier this week at the barber’s shop, police said.

The barber stabbed another client with scissors in 2000. The man later died of his wounds, although the barber was cleared of any charges after a court found he had acted in self-defense.

Police said they were holding the man, 42, and investigating whether attempted manslaughter charges should be brought against him.

The parents, both doctors from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, screened a video recording of the operation on a 20-year-old woman to other doctors in the hope of attaining the record as the world’s youngest surgeon, newspapers reported.

Family members said the boy was only helping out in the operation, handing his father medical instruments. Indian medical authorities are investigating the case and could revoke the couple’s medical licenses.