Man likely shot himself while sleepwalking

Police said a Boulder man who told police he woke up to a "bang" and realized he suffered a gunshot wound to his knee likely shot himself while sleepwalking. The Daily Camera reported that 63-year-old Sanford Rothman told investigators he had no clear recollection of the incident. No one else was in Rothman's home at the time.

Boulder police Sgt. Paul Reichenback said that Rothman keeps a 9 mm handgun near his bed and takes presciption medication for pain. Police said no alcohol or illegal drugs played a role in the incident.

Rothman was treated at a hospital and released.

emirates247.com

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FIFA World Cup 2010 Predictor - Paul the Octopus Died

Paul the Octopus, the cephalopod who became a global sensation after successfully predicting matches at the World Cup, has died peacefully in his sleep aged two.

Stefan Porwoll, general manager of the Oberhausen Sea Life centre in Germany - where Paul made his predictions - confirmed the news.

"He died last night, a peaceful and natural death," Porwoll said.

Paul, who was born in January 2008 in Weymouth, correctly predicted the winner of all seven of Germany's matches at this summer's World Cup in South Africa. He then correctly chose Spain over the Netherlands before the final.

Paul made his predictions by choosing between two feed boxes which bore the flags of the two nations involved in the next match.

Time and again his predictions came true, transforming him into a global sensation who attracted big-money transfer offers after the tournament.

Yet the Oberhausen Sea Life centre insisted on keeping their star attraction - and are now devastated at the news of his passing.

"We all loved him and we will all truly miss him," added Porwoll

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Mayan prophecy pegged to wrong year?

It's a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan "Long Count" calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it). The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn't end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will - or if it has already.

A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and overhyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.)

The Mayan calendar was converted to today's Gregorian calendar using a calculation called the GMT constant, named for the last initials of three early Mayanist researchers. Much of the work emphasized dates recovered from colonial documents that were written in the Mayan language in the Latin alphabet, according to the chapter's author, Gerardo Aldana, University of California, Santa Barbara professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

Later, the GMT constant was bolstered by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury, who used data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanac that charts dates relative to the movements of Venus.

"He took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant," Aldana said in a statement. "Others took his work even further, suggesting that he had proven the GMT constant to be correct."

But according to Aldana, Lounsbury's evidence is far from irrefutable.

"If the Venus Table cannot be used to prove the FMT as Lounsbury suggests, its acceptance depends on the reliability of the corroborating data," he said. That historical data, he said, is less reliable than the Table itself, causing the argument for the GMT constant to fall "like a stack of cards."

Aldana doesn't have any answers as to what the correct calendar conversion might be, preferring to focus on why the current interpretation may be wrong. Looks like end-of-the-world theorists may need to find another ancient calendar on which to pin their apocalyptic hopes.

yahoo.com

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Bored lottery winner drank himself to death

A father-of-two who won £9 million on the lottery was so 'bored' after he gave up his job as a baker he drank himself to death.

Keith Gough, 58, of Bridgnorth, Shropshire, was thought to be penniless when he died in March after suffering a heart attack brought on by drinking and stress, the Daily Mail reported. 

“read more” But he had actually left nearly £800,000 in his will, it emerged last week.

Gough and his wife Louise won £9m in 2005 and splashed out on a top-of-the-range BMW, racehorses and an executive box at Aston Villa Football Club.

But the couple, who were married for 27 years, separated two years later after Gough quit his job and began drinking heavily out of 'boredom'.

He moved to Cheshire where he rented a £1m home and hired a chauffeur and a gardener on annual salaries of £25,000 and £15,000 respectively.

But he blew a fortune on gambling and was duped out of more than £700,000 by conman James Prince, who persuaded him to invest in bogus business schemes.

He met the fraudster while he was being treated for alcohol dependency in the Priory rehabilitation clinic in Birmingham.

Prince, 37, was jailed for three years and four months at Chester Crown Court in June last year after he admitted fraud and money laundering.

Probate records released last week reveal that Mr Gough, a father-of-two, left an estate of £1,286,820, reduced after liabilities to £783,802.

Mr Gough claimed in an interview last year that his life had been 'ruined' by his lottery win.

He said: 'Without routine in my life I started to spend, spend, spend. In the end I was just bored.

'Before the win all I would drink was some wine with a meal. I used to be popular but I've driven away all my friends. I don't trust anyone any more.

'When I see someone going in to a newsagent, I advise them not to buy a lottery ticket.'

emirates247.com

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Adriana Lima reveals her $2m diamond bra

Supermodel Adriana Lima brought part of New York to a standstill yesterday, by arriving at a lingerie store wearing a $2m bra.

Lima was modelling the Victoria's Secret 'Bombshell fantasy' bra -- also dubbed the bling-bra -- at their store in Soho.

The bra is encrusted with more than 3,000 cut white diamonds, light blue sapphires and oval-shaped topazes, all hand-set in 18 karat white gold.

Designed by Damiani it has a total carat weight of 142ct and the pattern is meant to be based on swirling stars and constellations.

Apparently 29-year-old Lima was also wearing a blue satin gown at the promotional event… we can't sae we noticed.

The bra took more than a thousand hours to create and will also appear on the runway at the 2010 Victoria Secret annual fashion show.

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"Dr. Death" sells human body parts online

The move has provoked strong condemnation from German churches which accuse him of degrading human dignity.

A whole body from www.plastination-products.com costs about 70,000 euros ($97,400), torsos start at 55,644 euros and heads come in at around 22,000 euros each — excluding postage and packaging.

For those on a tighter budget, transparent body slices are available from 115 euros each.

But these real body parts — which have undergone plastination, a process which replaces water and fat with plastic for preservation purposes — are not available to everyone.
Only “qualified users” who can provide written proof that they intend to use the parts for research, teaching or medical purposes can place an order.

Interested parties who do not fall into this category can buy reproductions of the real body parts — so-called “Anatomy Glass,” which the shop’s website describes as “high resolution acrylic glass prints of the original body slices.”

Jewellery crafted from animal corpses, including necklaces made from horse slices, wristbands made from giraffe tails and earrings made from bull penises, is also available to the general public.

The online shop has outraged leading members of Germany’s religious community. In a joint statement, Protestant regional bishop Ulrich Fischer and Catholic archbishop Robert Zollitsch condemned the online body shop, which they said was “breaking a taboo.”

Zollitsch said “human dignity is sacrosanct — even after death — so the human body shouldn’t be degraded and made into an object of spectacle, or a stock of spare parts.”

They said that “Germany must not be allowed to become a hub of the corpse trade.”

Von Hagens, 65, is no stranger to controversy. A public autopsy he performed in front of a live audience in 2002 was televised and caused a public outrage, as did his 2004 tour through Germany with his Body Worlds exhibitions.

canoe.ca

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Austria's first 'bionic' man dies in car crash

 The car mechanic lost both his arms when he climbed a high-voltage electricity pylon as a dare.

An Austrian man who became the first person outside the US to wear thought-powered "bionic" arms has died from injuries sustained in a car crash, the hospital where he was treated said.

Doctors at the Medical University of Graz said they switched off the life support machines of Christian Kandlbauer on Friday night after determining he was clinically brain dead.

Kandlbauer, who would have turned 23 next month, sustained severe head injuries when the specially modified car he was driving served off the road in the south east of Austria and crashed into a tree on October 19.

The cause of the accident is not yet known, particularly whether the neurally-controlled arm-prostheses he had been fitted with might have played a role.

Kandlbauer, a car mechanic from the south-eastern province of Styria, lost both his arms in September 2005 when he climbed a high-voltage electricity pylon as a dare.

Doctors fitted him with a prototype bionic arm for research purposes two years later and he became the first person outside the US to wear such high-tech prosthesis for everyday use in January 2009.

Just 10 months later, Kandlbauer passed his driving test and was given a specially-adapted Subaru. He returned to work as a warehouse clerk with his former employer.

"One of my first goals was a driving licence," he wrote on his homepage.

A trip to Australia and getting his own flat were among his other dreams.

"I love driving. My licence has given me back my independence," he wrote, saying his motto was: "Don't live for others, live for yourself!"

Otto Bock HealthCare GmbH, the German medical technology company which developed and built his bionic arms, paid tribute to Kandlbauer on its website.

The company said in a statement it was deeply shaken and in mourning for a man who had become their friend over the years of their partnership.

Kandlbauer "accepted his fate in a manner that commanded great respect from all of us. The courage to face life and the firm belief in living as part of society were his constant companions," the statement said.

Kandlbauer was a "pioneer of a technology that will permit many people to resume their everyday lives”.

emirates247.com

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