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Interesting news you may have missed

341K views 6K replies 126 participants last post by  eddiemon 
#1 ·
I wanted to start a thread like this for awhile, since there's some stuff I'd like to occasionally share that doesn't fit into drama/funny/local (to me)/etc. sections.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/warrantless-house-search

Supreme Court OKs Warrantless House Search

By David Kravets
May 17, 2011

Police do not need a search warrant to knock on a suspected drug dealer’s door and then kick it down when a suspicious bustling noise is heard from the other side, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1.

Monday’s decision seemingly settles a legal issue to which the justices have given little guidance in the past — what type of “exigent circumstances” allow warrantless entry into a house. In this case, a lower court had thrown out the police search on the grounds that the cops effectively created their own emergency — the police had banged on the suspect door without a warrant, and then crashed through it moments later for fear that their knocking had set the inhabitants to destroying evidence. The police could have gotten the warrant before knocking in the first place, a dissenting justice ruled.

The appeal concerned a 2005 crack cocaine sting operation in Lexington, Kentucky, in which an informant purchased cocaine from a suspect outside an apartment complex. The suspect then walked through a breezeway of the complex, and officers on foot lost track of him.

The police, however, smelled marijuana outside an apartment, which was not the apartment the suspect had entered. They knocked and yelled “police,” heard some noise inside and kicked down the door to let themselves in on a belief that drug evidence was possibly being destroyed. The suspect they were looking for was not there, but three others were arrested for marijuana and cocaine possession.

One defendant, Hollis King, challenged his arrest, claiming it was based on an illegal entry. He pleaded guilty on the condition of an appeal and was sentenced to 10 years. A local judge said the authorities had the right to enter his apartment based on the smell of marijuana and the rumbling sounds inside the apartment. The Kentucky Supreme Court reversed, saying the entry was a Fourth Amendment breach.

“The Kentucky Supreme Court held that the exigent circumstances rule does not apply in the case at hand because the police should have foreseen that their conduct would prompt the occupants to attempt to destroy evidence,” Alito wrote. “We reject this interpretation of the exigent circumstances rule. The conduct of the police prior to their entry into the apartment was entirely lawful. They did not violate the Fourth Amendment or threaten to do so. In such a situation, the exigent circumstances rule applies.” (.pdf)

The decision was an offshoot of a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said the police may not enter a private residence without a warrant unless there was probable cause and so-called “exigent” circumstances.

The authorities in the case decided Monday claimed the exigent circumstance was a belief that drug evidence was being destroyed. Nobody disputes that the smell of marijuana created the probable cause.

But was there an emergency, an “exigent circumstance” where there was not enough time to obtain a court warrant? Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed the police needed a warrant before entering the apartment.

“The court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases,” Ginsburg wrote. “In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.”

The Kentucky Supreme Court found the potential destruction of evidence was an exigent circumstance, but ruled in January that it was unlawfully created by the police.

“Where police are observing a suspect from a lawful vantage point, and the suspect sees police, then the exigency is generally not police-created. But where police unnecessarily announce their presence, and this creates the fear that evidence will be destroyed, police have created their own exigency, (.pdf) and cannot rely on the fear of evidence being destroyed as a justification for a warrantless entry,” the Kentucky high court ruled.

At least 16 states had weighed in on the case, (.pdf) urging the justices to set a nationwide standard on the issue.
 
#3,185 ·
#3,189 ·
I'm sad to say I missed this sad news for over a month:
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20130210/CARNEWS/130219990

Phil Remington, fabricator, designer, engineer, known popularly as “Mr. Fix It” throughout a racing career that spanned almost every generation and genre of American motorsports, died Feb. 8 at age 92

Phil Remington knew how to build cars that went fast AND stayed in one piece. He built cars that won on the Salt Flats, on ovals (including Indy) and sports car courses in the USA and Europe. The roll of people who depended on him to win reads like a Who's Who of 20th Century Automobile racing: Lance Reventlow; Hilborn; Traco Engineering; Carroll Shelby; Dan Gurney. He won with Scarabs, Mustangs, Cobras and Eagles. I first became aware of him when I was a pimply gearhead devouring sports car mags in the late 1960s. One of the magazines (Sports Car Graphic? Road and Track?) ran a series of articles by him on race prep and engineering. I had never heard of "safety wiring" before, but reading about the care this old (at that time) hot rodder put into fabricating the cars I had been drooling over gave me my first appreciation of the nuts and bolts reality of fast cars, instead of the sound and speed images I'd seen in magazines and on movie screens.

Remington fabbed up the "Gurney Bubble" on the Dan Gurney/A.J. Foyt Ford Mk IV that won le Mans in 1967. Most recently he was involved in fabbing up the revolutionary Gurney "Delta Wing" that ran at Le Mans.


Thanks Rem. And Godspeed.
 
#3,192 ·
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout...man-dies-apparent-heart-attack-162858075.html

Heart Attack Grill spokesman dies of apparent heart attack


A regular patron and unofficial spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill has died of an apparent heart attack, the restaurant's owner said on Monday.

John Alleman reportedly suffered a heart attack last week outside the Las Vegas restaurant, according to the Las Vegas Sun. The 52-year-old was taken off life support on Monday.

Alleman, who was not on the restaurant's payroll, inspired the "Patient John" character that appears on the restaurant's menu.

"He lived a very full life," Jon Basso, owner of the Heart Attack Grill, told the newspaper. "He will be missed."

“I told him if you keep eating like this, it’s going to kill ya,” Basso said. “He’d say, 'I just love your place, Jon.' He’s the only person I know who was probably at the restaurant more than I [was]; he’d be here every darned day.”

Alleman is the second unofficial Heart Attack Grill spokesman to die in as many years.

In March 2011, Blair River, the restaurant's 575-pound representative, died from complications stemming from pneumonia. He was 29.

"Cynical people might think this is funny," Basso said at the time of River's death. "But people who knew him are crying their eyes out. There is a lot of mourning going on around here. You couldn't have found a better person."

Founded in 2005, the unapologetically unhealthy restaurant employs waitresses dressed as nurses and serves butterfat milkshakes, "flatliner" fries and 9,982-calorie "quadruple bypass burgers." (Patrons who are able to finish them are escorted to their cars in wheelchairs.) Customers who weigh over 350 pounds eat free.

Since opening in Las Vegas in October 2011, there have been various reports of customers having medical emergencies while dining at the grill.

Last February, a man reportedly suffered a heart attack while eating a “triple bypass burger." According to Las Vegas' Fox 5 affiliate, he survived.
 
#3,196 ·
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/13/sea-slug-regrow-penis-animal-behavior-science/



Why Sea Slugs Dispose of Their Own Penises




When it comes to kinky sex, nature has quite the imagination. Some animals devour their suitors after doing the deed, while others attach themselves, in a parasitic fashion, to their mates in order to reproduce.

But a new study finds that the ostentatious sea slug, or nudibranch, may take the cake—one species of this marine invertebrate cuts its own penis off after mating and regrows a new reproductive organ within 24 hours, whereupon it’s ready to mate again. (See sea slug pictures.)

“I have been working on the anatomy of nudibranchs for 20 years and I have never seen anything like that,” said Angel Valdes, a sea slug expert at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, who was not involved in the study.

Valdes added in an email that sea slugs are known to sever other parts of their body in a process called autotomy. Some species will shed protrusions called cerata while others will drop the frilly “skirt” that runs around their body in order to distract a predator while the slug makes its escape. (Read about nudibranch defenses in National Geographic magazine.)

Ayami Sekizawa, of Osaka City University in Japan and lead author on the study, wrote in an email that while other animals, such as some species of octopuses, also break off their reproductive organs after mating, they can’t grow them back as far as researchers know.

Removable Penises

Most nudibranchs are simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning individuals have both male and female reproductive organs—and they can deliver and accept sperm at the same time.

They can also store sperm from several mates and choose which ones to use in fertilizing their eggs by digesting the sperm they don’t want. (Also see pictures: “Fiery Sea Slug Discovered, Lays Lacy Egg Case.”)

When Sekizawa and her colleagues studied the mating habits of Goniobranchus reticulata (known as Chromodoris reticulata until last year), collected from shallow coral reefs near Sesoko Island (map) in the East China Sea, they noted that individuals would only sever their penis after disengaging from their partner.

And when researchers examined the discarded penises, they found sperm entangled in the backward-facing spines that cover the organ.

Sekizawa speculated that by removing their penis from their mate, the sea slugs were increasing the chances that their partner would use their sperm to fertilize its eggs, rather than a competitor’s sperm.

“If the sea slug left the penis in the mating partner’s female organ, it could not remove sperm of preceding mates,” wrote Sekizawa, whose study appeared February 13 in the journal Biology Letters. The researchers would need to conduct DNA tests in order to confirm this though.

Three Times a Charm

Sekizawa and her colleagues also found that intact individuals who hadn’t severed their male organ had a spiral structure in the middle of the inner duct of the penis. Discarded penises were missing the spiral structure.

They speculated that the spiral provided enough length for the sea slugs to grow and sever their penis at least three times, based on the fact that one G. reticulata in the study discarded and regrew its penis three times. (See “Barnacles Can Change Penis Size and Shape.“)

Valdes noted that other sea slug species have similar reproductive structures and couldn’t understand why this behavior hadn’t been observed before. But he’s excited to see whether other nudibranchs share this macabre habit.
 
#3,217 ·
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