Expensive Purina One bill!

n one of this week’s more bizarre stories, a Nebraska man was arrested for smoking marijuana out of a bong that had his cat stuffed inside. The man, who claims he was trying to calm down his hyperactive pet, faces animal cruelty charges but thankfully the cat, who was understandably disoriented, seems to be on the road to a full recovery:

“This cat was just dazed,” Sgt. Andy Stebbing said. “She was on the front seat of the cop car, wrapped in a blanket, and never moved all the way to the humane society.”
Schomaker told deputies 6-month-old Shadow was hyper and he was trying to calm her down. The contraption she had been stuffed inside was 12 inches by 6 inches. Shadow was timid but in good condition Monday at the Capital Humane Society, executive director Bob Downey said.

MSNBC’s Tamron Hall covered the story and was unable to stifle her giggles as she introduced the “sad but true” story. The network evidently felt the story lacked a certain realism because they played the sound of gurgling water over the anchor’s report. Anchor Contessa Brewer couldn’t quite believe that the cat was stuffed inside the bong, but as Tamron informed her, “I understand you can make a bong out of anything.” There were then more giggles all around.

Source

Corey Smith, Marquis Cooper Missing In Florida Along With 2 Other Boaters

The Coast Guard searched off Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sunday for a fishing boat carrying NFL players Corey Smith and Marquis Cooper and two other men missing more than a day in choppy seas.

Smith, a defensive end for the Detroit Lions, and Cooper, an Oakland Raiders linebacker, were on a 21-foot vessel that left Clearwater Pass for a fishing trip Saturday morning and did not return as expected, the Coast Guard said Sunday. Crews used a helicopter and an 87-foot ship to search a 750-square mile area west of Clearwater Pass, but poor weather made the search difficult. Officials did not receive a distress signal from the missing craft.

Cooper owns the boat and he and Smith have been on fishing trips before, said Ron Del Duca, Smith’s agent. The pair had been teammates on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2004. Two others were aboard: Will Bleakley and Nick Schuyler, both former University of South Florida players.

Coast Guard Capt. Timothy M. Close said the weather early Saturday had been fair, but worsened toward the evening as a front moved in. The National Weather Service said seas were about 2 to 4 feet Saturday morning and increased to 3 to 5 feet in the afternoon. Late Saturday night, a small craft advisory was issued, when winds were around 20 knots and seas were up to 7 feet or more. There were no thunderstorms in the area.

Close said the men were traveling in a boat manufactured by Everglades. At least one of the men was an experienced boater, and relatives provided the Coast Guard with GPS coordinates from previous fishing expeditions.

Close said there was no communication with the men even before the weather started to pick up. They were expected home by early evening. No sign of them or the boat had been spotted by Sunday evening. Relatives told the Coast Guard the men had lifejackets and flares onboard.

Poor weather conditions could be dangerous for a boat the size of Cooper’s.

“A 21-foot boat is a relatively small vessel to be 50 miles off shore in bad weather conditions, certainly the current weather conditions,” Close said.

Source

A bird strikes again?

MSNBC is reporting that US Air Flight 1549, which has crashed into New York’s Hudson River en route from LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte, NC, may have been felled by a flock of geese in what is known as a bird strike.

While it sounds absurd, the bird strike is a dangerous phenomenon well known to pilots and aviation enthusiasts alike.

Wikipedia says that bird strikes happen most often during take-off or landing, or during a low altitude flight. One potentially serious danger is jet engine ingestion, where the flock of birds is ingested into the engine:

Jet engine ingestion is extremely serious due to the rotation speed of the engine fan and engine design. As the bird strikes a fan blade, that blade can be displaced into another blade and so forth, causing a cascading failure. Jet engines are particularly vulnerable during the takeoff phase when the engine is turning at a very high speed.

As Wikipedia says, and as below photos demonstrate, bird strikes can cause serious danger to aircraft:

Bird strikes can damage vehicle components, or injure passengers. Flocks of birds are especially dangerous, and can lead to multiple strikes, and damage. Depending on the damage, aircraft at low altitudes or during take off and landing often cannot recover in time, and thus crash.

The Bird Strike Committe USA says that bird strikes cause over $600 million in damage in the US each year:

Bird and other wildlife strikes to aircraft annually cause well over $600 million in damage to U.S. civil and military aviation. Furthermore, these strikes put the lives of aircraft crew members and their passengers at risk: over 219 people have been killed worldwide as a result of wildlife strikes since 1988. Within the United States there was no one forum where information or concerns dealing with this problem could be addressed. Bird Strike Committee USA was formed in 1991 to facilitate the exchange of information, promote the collection and analysis of accurate wildlife strike data, promote the development of new technologies for reducing wildlife hazards, promote professionalism in wildlife management programs on airports through training and advocacy of high standards of conduct for airport biologists and bird patrol personnel, and be a liaison to similar organizations in other countries.

Bird strikes do have historical precedence in the United States. The Bird Strike Committee says that five large jet airlines have been brought down by birdstrike since 1975. Here is a list of bird strike occurrences.

Wikipedia also lists various bird strike incidents in the last few years:

In the summer of 2007, Delta Air Lines suffered an incident in Rome, Italy, as one of its B-767 aircraft, on takeoff, ingested yellow legged gulls into both engines. Although the aircraft returned to Rome safely, both engines were damaged and had to be changed. United Air Lines suffered a twin engine bird ingestion by a B-767 on departure from Chicago’s O’Hare Field in the spring of 2007. One engine caught fire and bird remains were found in the other engine.
Virgin America Flight 837 performed an emergency landing at San Francisco International Airport on September 3 2007 due to a bird strike. The plane involved was “Air Colbert”, named for host of The Colbert Report Stephen Colbert.

Source