Bright Hall http://brighthall.aol.com Bright Hall http://brighthall.aol.com/media/feedlogo.gif Bright Hall http://brighthall.aol.com en-us Copyright 2009 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/To Catch a... War Criminal?http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/17/to-catch-a-war-criminal/http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/17/to-catch-a-war-criminal/http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/17/to-catch-a-war-criminal/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Not to be outdone by CBS and its show Arranged Marriage, the potential ratings smash (or sign of the cultural end times, depending on your viewpoint), NBC just baked up its own batch of crazy: a show about catching war criminals.

The show would be a spin-off of To Catch a Predator. Predator used online traps to bring potential pedophiles and sex offenders to the houses of decoys pretending to be underage boys and girls. Instead, waiting inside the houses would be host Chris Hanson, a camera crew, and a lot of questions (see below; the interview begins at 5:17).


This new version would feature foreign-born war criminals. The first episode will be focused on Leopold Munyakazi, who is wanted for perpetrating a genocide against Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. He is currently a French professor at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland.

The government is a wee bit displeased with NBC's plans to chase around war criminals with cameras. The Department of Homeland Security believes such a show would interfere with the government's ability to capture these predators and use legal force against them.

Due to the government's negative reaction and the overal logistics, it's hard to imagine this show actually coming to fruition in the To Catch a Predator mold. A more reasonable version would be a documentary series shedding light on awful war criminals. But that probably wouldn't get high ratings.

So cue Chris Hanson, waiting for war criminals in a house NBC has rented and outfitted as a fake embassy.

 

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]]>Emily Lasky2009-02-17T08:00:00+00:00South Korean Grandmother Fails 771 Driving Testshttp://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/08/south-korean-grandmother-fails-771-driving-tests/http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/08/south-korean-grandmother-fails-771-driving-tests/http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/08/south-korean-grandmother-fails-771-driving-tests/#commentsFiled under: , ,

BBC News reports that a 68-year-old South Korean woman has failed a written driving test 771 times since April 2005. Mrs. Cha, a grandmother from the city of Jeonju, has always scored between 30 and 50 percent on the test, which requires 60 percent accuracy to pass.

Cha, who uses a handcart to deliver food and housewares door-to-door, has spent more than 4 million won, or nearly $3,000 U.S. on her hundreds of failed attempts.

"'Tis a lesson you should heed, try, try again. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," states T.S. Palmer's 1840 Teacher's Manual.

This isn't a case of initially failing, not giving up, improving and succeeding, though. This is simply ridiculous.The best Cha ever answered, out of 771 costly attempts, was half wrong about operating two tons of quickly moving mobile machinery.

It's troubling that one only needs 60 percent accuracy to be allowed behind the steering wheel of a Daewoo, but at least it's reassuring that the test is difficult enough that one can't randomly guess enough correct answers to pass after hundreds of attempts.

What's most troublesome is that despite the thorough documentation of Cha's inability to drive, a fluke of a successful test (although there is little reason to believe such a feat would ever be possible) would nullify all of that.

Then Cha would move on to the student driver training, where a 30-50 percent success rate can end many lives and destroy plenty of infrastructure. Let's hope that day never comes.

 

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]]>Adam Kirchner2009-02-08T14:36:00+00:00Arizona Sees Porn During Super Bowlhttp://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/02/arizona-sees-porn-during-super-bowl/http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/02/arizona-sees-porn-during-super-bowl/http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/02/arizona-sees-porn-during-super-bowl/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Touch-what now?

Late in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLIII, right after Arizona Cardinals' receiver Larry Fitzgerald scored to give his team the lead, viewers in Tucson, Arizona, were treated to a touchdown celebration of a different sort: porn.

Comcast customers in the area accidentally received a feed from adult channel Club Jenna, which, despite only lasting for a few seconds, still managed to include full frontal male nudity. The feed started with local NBC affiliate KVOA before reaching Comcast customers. However, only customers with standard broadcast or analog service experienced the interruption in regular programming. Yet another reason to upgrade to digital, folks.

As of yet, Comcast has not discovered the cause of the disruption. All signs point to the only Pittsburgh Steelers fan in Arizona, though his prank was witnessed in vain given the final score.

Thanks to Comcastus Interruptus and Bruce Springsteen's suggestive slide toward the camera during the halftime show (see below), this was the sultriest Super Bowl since Nipplegate. And I'm not even counting Conan O'Brien's Bud Light commercial.

 

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]]>Emily Lasky2009-02-02T22:27:00+00:00Postal Service Teams Up With the Grinchhttp://brighthall.aol.com/2008/12/19/postal-service-teams-up-with-the-grinch/http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/12/19/postal-service-teams-up-with-the-grinch/http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/12/19/postal-service-teams-up-with-the-grinch/#commentsFiled under: , ,


To the dismay of lovers of Christmas around the nation, postal service has made it official: they are against Santa.

More specifically, the postal service has put an end to a nearly 100-year-old program that allows postal workers and citizens to answer children's letters to Santa. The program, called Operation Santa, was shut down on Wednesday after the postal service acknowledged a "privacy breach" in which a known sex offender had "adopted" one of the letters.

"This is a program that we have promoted for 100 years that is very near and dear to the Postal Service," said Sue Brennan, a spokeswoman for the program told The New York Times. "Everyone wants to believe in Santa. For us to stop this, we feel we are doing the right thing."

Hundreds of thousands of children write to Santa each year, with the postal station at the North Pole receiving nearly 150,000 letters according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner; the New York City postal service receives nearly 500,000 letters a year (letter pictures at left).

The Operation Santa program allowed a handful of those children to receive the gifts they requested from generous strangers. Prior to Wednesday, those wishing to participate--nearly 3,000 people a day in New York--could check out a letter from any post office participating in the program. Based on the wish list contained in the letter they were able to shop for the young letter writer and personally deliver their gifts according to the return address listed.

Now, only the New York operation is functioning, leaving children in Newark, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas and other cities hung out to dry. The program now functions anonymously and the postal service delivers the gifts in an attempt to protect the contact information of children.

According to The Times, the century-old concept began because the post office was receiving a tide of letters addressed to Santa. Postal workers began voluntarily writing back and eventually began inviting the public to do so, too. Charities and businesses were also drawn in. New York's program was the first, beginning in 1912, strictly with postal worker involvement. In the 1940s, the public got to answer letters. Many respondents began sending not only letters but also gifts.

 

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]]>christmasgiftsgrinchpostal servicePostalServicesantaSam Guzik2008-12-19T13:58:00+00:00Life Got You Down? Go Skinny Dippinghttp://brighthall.aol.com/2008/10/07/life-got-you-down-go-skinny-dipping/http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/10/07/life-got-you-down-go-skinny-dipping/http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/10/07/life-got-you-down-go-skinny-dipping/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

It's good to know that people can still have fun, even when the global economy is taking a major beating.

While some people are taking refuge in the realm of politics, others have found more unconventional forms of entertainment, like swimming naked in the moat of Japan's Imperial Palace.

"He spent nearly two hours skinny dipping in the moat and climbing the walls as the police gave chase," Reuters reported in a video. "Every time an officer tried to approach, he either splashed them or pelted them with rocks."



For nearly two hours, the unidentified man-who claimed at first to be British and then to be a Spaniard living in Britain-splashed around and entertained tourists who looked on.

"I've never heard of anyone doing such a thing," an unidentified man at the scene told TV Tokyo, Reuters reported. "He must be a bit crazy."

The palace, which is surrounded by nearly 12 miles of moat, is the home of Japan's emperor and empress, though it is unclear whether they were on the place ground at the time of the incident. In general, tourists can walk around the periphery of the palace and go inside on a tour, but in general are not allowed to step on the premises.

The moats surrounding the palace are considered sacred.

 

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]]>imperial palaceImperialPalacejapannakedskinny dippingSkinnyDippingSam Guzik2008-10-07T19:22:00+00:00Penguin Joins the Ranks of Great Military Leadershttp://brighthall.aol.com/2008/08/18/penguin-joins-the-ranks-of-great-military-leaders/http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/08/18/penguin-joins-the-ranks-of-great-military-leaders/http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/08/18/penguin-joins-the-ranks-of-great-military-leaders/#commentsFiled under: , ,

As of a ceremony last Friday, Penguin Nils Olav has become the most decorated penguin in any branch of the military around the world.

Olav is a Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Army and, as of last week, a knight. The most recent honor was bestowed by King Harald the Fifth of Norway. Olav has been an honorary member of the kings guard since 1972 and in that time has risen in the ranks to his current position.

During the ceremony at the Edinburgh Zoo, King Harald described Olav as a Penguin "in every way qualified to receive the honor and dignity of knighthood."



During the ceremony, Olav inspected a troop of 130 members of the Norwegian Royal Guard and received a ceremonial tap on each side of his head (penguins lack shoulders).

Olav's role is largely ceremonial and serves to strengthen the relationships between Scotland and Norway. The Norwegian Royal Guard generally visits the penguin every few years while they visit Scotland.

The ceremony went off nearly without a hitch, but, according to the BBC, "shortly before the ritual was concluded and possibly suffering a bout of nerves he was seen to deposit a discreet white puddle on the ground."

 

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]]>edinburghnorwaynorwegian royal guardNorwegianRoyalGuardpenguinscotlandzooSam Guzik2008-08-18T22:57:00+00:00Scientists Rap to the Sounds of Particles Acceleratinghttp://brighthall.aol.com/2008/08/07/scientists-with-too-much-time-yo/http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/08/07/scientists-with-too-much-time-yo/http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/08/07/scientists-with-too-much-time-yo/#commentsFiled under: , ,

With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) fully built and due to start firing its proton beams in just over a month, it seems that the researchers on site in Geneva have been looking for new ways to fill their time - rapping the details of their experiment.



CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

The LHC is the world's most powerful particle accelerator, producing beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine, and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance, probably by 2010. It spans two countries and is 27-kilometers long.

The collider is designed to create tiny black holes that will be in existence for fractions of a second in hopes of recreating the conditions present just before the big bang. Protesters say that the experiment is likely to end the world, though the coordinators of the experiment, the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), say that is not going to happen.

Evidently, the rap is a product of the CERN press office and it is filmed with real, live scientists.

For the next several weeks - including this weekend - CERN will be preforming tests of the LHC's various components and will be working to ensure that each part is synchronized and up to the task of making tiny particles collide at just below the speed of light. Timing between the two parts of the accelerator must be accurate to within a fraction of a nanosecond.

Scientists hope that the scale of the LHC will help them to discover some of the secrets of the universe and help them to prove the existence of "dark matter" and other particles that scientists believe exist but have never observed.

If you're interested in a more, well, serious look at the LHC, check out these pictures from the Boston Globe.

 

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]]>creneuropean center for nuclear researchEuropeanCenterForNuclearResearchlarge hadron colliderLargeHadronColliderlhcparticle acceleratorParticleAcceleratorrapscienceweird scientistsWeirdScientistsSam Guzik2008-08-07T17:10:00+00:00