$218 Trillion Dollar Phone Bill

I just found the funniest article on Techdirt. It seems a man in Malaysia has been sent a phone bill for approximately $218 trillion dollars.

The story is that it was the man’s father’s phone line, which he had disconnected in January after his father’s death. At the time, he paid the remaining $23 and assumed everything was settled. Somewhere along the way, though, something got messed up, and the man received this new bill, with the demand that he pay it off within 10 days. You have to give the Associated Press credit for admitting that: “It wasn’t clear whether the bill was a mistake, or if Yahaya’s father’s phone line was used illegally after after his death.” However, you have to wonder just how many phone calls it would take, between January when the last bill was paid and now, to create a $218 trillion phone bill. We hope the phone company hadn’t started spending on infrastructure improvements while awaiting the payment of the bill.

I would have a heart attack if I got that bill…

Giant rubber duck in France

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman has floated a giant rubber duck on the Loire River in France.



Title: Rubber Duck
Year: 2007
Location: river the Loire, France
Dimensions: 26 x 20 x 32 meters
Materials: inflatable, rubber coated PVC, pontoon and generator
Assigned by: le Lieu Unique and the Biennial Estuaire

Artist website: http://www.florentijnhofman.nl/

A seven-legged lamb has been born in New Zealand

Two of the extra legs hang useless behind the lamb's forelegs. The animal has three hind legs, one of them with two hoofs. It walks using its two forelegs and three hind legs.

The lamb was born last Friday on the farm of Dave and Di Callaghan. MrCallaghan said he was surprised to find the seven-legged creature, born with a twin, walking round in the paddock with its mother and normal twin sibling. "I have never seen anything like that," he said.

Although the six-day old bleats like a healthy animal, its abnormalities mean it is unlikely to survive.

Veterinarian Steve Williams at the Canterbury Vets clinic in the rural town of Methven said he believed an error during embryo formation had resulted in the lamb being born polydactyl -- with many legs -- a condition that occurs once in several million sheep.

He said the lamb was also hermaphrodite and missing a portion of its bowel so was unable to pass faeces and would have to be destroyed.

"To keep it alive is probably inhumane really," Mr Williams told the Ashburton Guardian newspaper.

Source: Telegraph

Chinese Flip Flops - So Cheap, So Dangerous

An unsuspecting lady purchased a pair of cheap chinese flipflops from Walmart. Little did she know they would nearly rot her feet away!

Link [Story & Pictures]

Man pulls vehicle for 40 meters using his eyelid

20 year-old Li Dasheng of Mazhuang village demonstrates his "eyelid power" by pulling a vehicle loaded with 3 guys and 2 girls for a distance of 40 meters with his eyelid!

Mr Li started practicing this incredible skill a couple of years ago, after watching a TV performance of a Shandong man pulling an automobile using only his eyelids. Mr Li also commented that such a skill requires great determination, as only a few people have managed to master it.

Link & Image: CriOnline

Andy Lau's sperm top the women-want-most list

Hong Kong entertainer Andy Lau has the sperm Chinese women want the most for their babies, a poll conducted by Self magazine found.

The 45-year-old star has beat out younger handsome faces like Brad Pitt and Tony Leung and billionaires such as Bill Gates to top the poll.

To the 1,000 women who, aged from 25 to 35 and taking the poll in 15 different cities, good looking and wealth are both very important to their kids' father. In addition, Lau has proved himself a hardworking man.

US billionaire Bill Gates comes in close on Lau's heels to be second placed while Japanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiron is in the third.

The list for Chinese women's most wanted sperm are as follow:

1. Andy Lau

2. Bill Gates

3. Takeshi Kaneshiro

4. Liu Xiang

5. David Beckham

6. Li Ka-shing

7. Tony Leung

8. Louis Koo

9. Lee-hom Wang

10. Brad Pitt

Kim Phúc - The napalm girl [1972]

The girl in the picture is Phan Thị Kim Phúc also known as Kim Phuc (born in 1963), a nine-year old running naked and severely burned on her back by a napalm atack.

Photographer Huynh Cong Ut, known by his colleagues as Nick, was working there as a photo journalist for Associated Press at the time and took a number of photographs of the villagers trying to escape the napalm. This one, epitomising the savagery and tragedy of the conflict, won him the coveted Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most published photos of the Vietnam war.

The boy is her older brother Tam who survived the attack but lost an eye. Ut (the photographer) poured water onto the young girl and took her and some of the other children to a hospital near Saigon where she spent fourteen months recovering from the horrific burns to her skin.

Later, the girl studied medicine and now she; a UNESCO member living in Canada.

Photographer: Huynh Cong Ut (Associated Press)
Source: wikipedia.org

Kid Without Eyes

This poor one year old boy from Xiamen, China was born without eyes where its regions are replaced with small dimples. This illness is known as cryptophthalmia and is very rare, only hundred known cases have been discovered. Although the little guy has no eyes, he could still feel the brightness from light.

A nurse at the hospital that is helping look into his condition says that the little boy is very cute but worries that as he grows up, his smiles would slowly diminish. She once took him out to the yard and other children would exclaim 'That kid has no eyes' and he would just hide behind under his mom.

Real Spider-man

He has scaled another building unaided in front of thousands of people – a feat of which his superhero namesake would be proud.

'Spider-man' Alain Robert made it to the top of Abu Dhabi's tallest building, the 185m Investment Authority, without safety gear.

The 44-year-old, who suffers from vertigo, used tiny slots in the concrete for purchase.

He has climbed more than 70 giant structures around the world, including London's Lloyd's building.

Risks of Female Masturbation According to Islamic Teachings

Several of the comments I've read here are just outright racist and uneducated. What surprises me is how many of you watch these videos with the guise of trying to learn something about a religion and then you go and make the most absurd remarks that show that you made up your mind about whatever the video is taking about ages ago, and are just here to mess around. If you want to learn something, go read a book or write serious commentary.

Sandals You Can Drink

With the Reef Dram Sandals, you can easily bring the drinks with you during those long romantic walks along the beach. Each sandal contains a generous three ounces of storage capacity for the drink or your choice (presumably hard alcohol).

Link

If you do plan to use these to stash some drinks for a date, at least remember a cup. Nothing kills a romantic moment like removing your sweaty sandals and sucking on them.

iPod Saves a Soldier’s Life

This 20GB iPod saved a soldier life. Kevin Garrad is a soldier and also an iPod user got a shot in the chest when he was on a street patrol in Iraq. He met an armed (AK-47) insurgent, both of them opened fire, the insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest on the pocket where his iPod in. The bullet was shot on the iPod and Kevin suffered from no wound. Wow, that’s so lucky.

Traveling Cat.

A white cat nicknamed Macavity has the habit of boarding bus 331 in London Wolverhampton several times a week and riding to the next stop, where he gets off near a fish and chips shop. No word on whether he takes the same trip home or walks the 400 meters back. Link

Chinese foot binding

Foot binding was practiced in China for 1000 years. Young girls would have their feet wrapped, thus limiting the normal development and essentially crippling them. Today, it is a prominent cause of disability among elderly Chinese women. Read more about it here.

Beware of your maid

Guys,

This happens to me just a few weeks ago (nov 2006). I had taken a maid

from one tekong in sg buloh few months back. She was screened. Her name

was uyun. She is from madura. Age late 30.


I was very satisfied with her services. Everytime I come home, the

house is spick and span. Floors mopped, windows wiped, dishes cleaned,

laundry folded. No complaints. But I noticed that she never had any

sprinkle of water over her, she was never wet or look tired after a day

of hard work.

And we live in a huge penthouse.



One night we were having a family dinner. The phone rang and she picked

up.

But the moment she said hello the line went dead. This happens a few

times.

So i suggested that next time it rings, i will pick it up. So the phone

rang. It was a guy on the other line. He said that if the maid is next

to me just answered everyting as "yes". So I did. The guy pictured the

maid to us and identified our house correctly. He told me that my

family and I is in great DANGER and asked me to take the family out

immediately and meet him somehwere.



I put down the phone and told the maid that my mother-in-law has fallen

ill and that we have to go back to Kelantan right that minute. She

insisted to come along but I instructed her to stay.



We dumped our children and my parents at the mall. My husband and I

went to see the guy that night. The guy said that the maid used to

work for her. I asked him how he got our number. He said that the maid

has been calling their teenage son everyday as she had fallen in love

with him. But that is just part of the problem.



Later they discovered that the finger tips of their 5 year old son were

damaged. They got smaller and thinner. The doctor said that something or

someone has been sucking blood out of the fingers. So they immediately

sacked the maid.



I didn't believe the guy, but later told my father who is paralysed and

lived with us on the ground floor. He said that he noticed something was

wrong with the maid. Everytime he wakes up to go to the toilet at 2 or 3

in the morning, the maid was not in her room and the door was wide

open. She could not have been outside the house as she doesn't have the

key to the front door.



I sensed something wrong. I told my husband to send her back. When we

got home, we told her that we have to be in Kelantan for a few months

and that she has to go back to the tekong. She refused to go and

refused to pack.

But I insisted to send her that very same night and said that I will

send her things later. By then my husband managed to get help from a

pak haji neighbour to follow us to the tekong. She was very angry of

course but did not say a word.



We went back to pack her things. I found a menu in her bag that says

she has to eat 10 eggs on monday night, some blood on tuesday night,

chicken blood on wednesday and so forth.



My husband and I together with the pak haji went back to send her stuff

the next night. As soon as the tekong opens the door, pak haji felt

that someone has lifted him up and threw him over to the wall. I saw

with my own eyes. He literally flew from one end to the other end of

the room. He got up and we quickly ran to our car. By then the tekong

had came out and shouted something to us. Since we had already left he

called us on the phone. He was shouting at us "Apa benda kamu hantar

ini?? Benda berhantu??

Dia sudah marah sekarang sedang terbang keliling rumah!!!". My husband

just shut the phone off and we went home.



Guys, please be careful. I live in Ampang and the tekong house is in Sg

Buloh. This incident happened just a few weeks ago. This "maid" or

whatever creature she may be is still flying around somewhere. This is

not a ghost story. I don't get a single cent out of this. Please be

careful.



Misha,

Ampang, Selangor.

30/11/06
i copy this from other blog

Hindenburg dirigible disaster [1937]

It is said this picture killed an industry. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg dirigible exploded killing 35 of the 97 people aboard. The incident killed the zeppelin travel industry, which was, at the time, considered the safest mode of air travel available. The funny thing is that it wasn’t the worst zeppelin accident but the only one cought on a picture…

Photographer: Murray Becker
Source: wikipedia.org

Bullet in heart removed after 39 years

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- A Vietnamese soldier who was shot by U.S. troops in 1968 and has lived with a bullet lodged in his heart for nearly four decades underwent surgery and the slug was successfully removed, doctors said Monday.

Le Dinh Hung, 60, underwent surgery on Friday and is recovering quickly, said Dr. Nguyen Sinh Hien, who spent three hours operating on Hung at Hanoi Heart Hospital.

"It is the strangest case that I have ever seen," Hien said. "Normally a person with a bullet in his heart would die immediately if they didn't have surgery right away."

Hung said the surgery had eased the chest pain he had suffered since the 1968 Vietnam War battle, in Quang Tri province near the former Demilitarized Zone that separated North and South Vietnam.

"I was very lucky to survive," he said from his hospital bed. "People believe in their fate and I do too."

One year after Hung was shot, doctors tried unsuccessfully to remove the bullet, which was just over an inch long.

Hien said the bullet went through Hung's stomach, damaged his cardiac valve and came to rest at the back of his heart.

Doctors, who replaced Hung's damaged valve with an artificial one, said he would be hospitalized for several more days.

Hung, who is retired, worked as an administrator at a Hanoi medical school after the war. He fought with the communist North, which defeated the army of the former South Vietnam in 1975. The war claimed the lives of 3 million people, including 58,000 U.S. troops.

National Robot Soccer Competition in Wuhan

Students and designers for the Harbin Institute of Technology Robot Soccer Team watch a match in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, May 14, 2007. The 8th National Robot Soccer Competition recently kicked off in the city, attracting 86 teams from across the country. The winners will represent China at the Federation of International Robot-soccer Association World Cup in San Francisco on June 13. (newsphoto)

Students and designers for the Harbin Institute of Technology Robot Soccer Team watch a match in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, May 14, 2007. The 8th National Robot Soccer Competition recently kicked off in the city, attracting 86 teams from across the country. The winners will represent China at the Federation of International Robot-soccer Association World Cup in San Francisco on June 13. (newsphoto)

Robots play soccer during the 8th National Robot Soccer Competition in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, May 14, 2007.(newsphoto)

Crocs Shoes & Escalator Accidents

Over the last couple of years, Crocs shoes have exploded as one of the biggest footwear trends since UGG boots. But over the last couple of months, the rubber clogs have come under some scrutiny due to escalator accidents involving children wearing the beloved colorful shoes.

While Crocs are popular enough to be identified by name after such an accident occurs, it's important to note that other shoes can also pose a risk to riders.

In fact, most recently, a child in Singapore lost her big toe wearing rubber clogs that resembled Crocs, but were actually an imitation brand.

Parents should be aware that any type of rubber or soft, pliable shoes can be problematic, as can long and untied shoe laces.

In recent statements, the Crocs company claimed that "Crocs shoes are completely safe," and went on to point out that escalators that have not received proper care and maintenance pose a risk to their riders. They have called for improved escalator safetey, and are currently designing a new tag that includes safety tips for escalators.

For more details about the accidents, and to get some helpful escalator safety tips, be sure to check out the following resources.

The Crazy Couple - India Train

This is unreal, this woman is literally seconds away from almost certain death as she plays chicken with a passenger train doing over 200km/h. Not only does this woman take a really stupid risk, the train driver takes this passenger train to its limits, its not designed to travel that fast, its not a French speed train by any means