Saturday, October 20, 2007

Parrot wakes up owner to shoot burglar

A parrot chirping "hello" woke his Texas owner up to find, and then shoot, a burglar in his garage on October 16th, police said.

"I guess you could call him a stool pigeon," owner Dennis Baker told the Dallas Morning News.

It was the fifth time the home, which is also used as a locksmith shop, was burglarised this month.

So when Baker woke to the sounds of Salvador, his Mexican Red-headed parrot, saying "hello, hello" he knew something was wrong.

Baker grabbed his gun and shot the burglar in his garage at about 1:30 am. The man died at hospital, police said.

"I have tools in my garage, my house and my van," Mr Baker said. "They were coming here like they owned the place. I hate what happened, but somebody has to do what's necessary."

The bird also chirped "hello" when police arrived, Baker said. "Sometimes he says 'hi,' but you can't get him to speak on cue," Mr Baker said. "He has a mind of his own."

Texas has recently eased restrictions on people confronting intruders in their homes, businesses or cars. They are no longer obligated to retreat before responding with deadly force.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Unusual car accident...

Humans had beach party 164,000 year ago!

In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show.

Call it a beach party for early man. But it is a beach party thrown by people who were not supposed to be advanced enough for this type of behavior. What was found in a cave in South Africa may change how scientists believe Homo sapiens marched into modernity.

Instead of undergoing a revolution into modern living about 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, as commonly thought, man may have become modern in stuttering fits and starts, or through a long slow march that began even earlier. At least that is the case being made in a study appearing in the latest issue of the journal "Nature" last week.

Researchers found three hallmarks of modern life at Pinnacle Point overlooking the Indian Ocean near South Africa's Mossel Bay: harvested and cooked seafood, reddish pigment from ground rocks, and early tiny blade technology. Scientific optical dating techniques show that these hallmarks were from 164,000 years ago, plus or minus 12,000 years.

"Together as a package this looks like the archaeological record of a much later time period," said study author Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.

This means humans were eating seafood about 40,000 years earlier than previously thought. And this is the earliest record of humans eating something other than what they caught or gathered on the land, Marean said. Most of what Marean found were the remnants of brown mussels, but he also found black mussels, small saltwater clams, sea snails and even a barnacle that indicates whale blubber or skin was brought into the cave.

Then they put them over hot rocks to cook. When the food was done, the shells popped open in a process similar to modern-day mussel-steaming, but without the pot.

Marean also found 57 pieces of ground-up rock that would have been reddish- or pinkish-brown. That would be used for self-decoration and sending social signals to other people, much the way makeup is used now, he said.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Dice illusion...


THE LONGER YOU LOOK, THE MORE IT MESSES WITH YOUR HEAD!

Monday, October 15, 2007

No male rulers for Kumbwada...

In six generations no man has ever spent more than a week as ruler of Kumbwada, a kingdom in Muslim northern Nigeria. All have died mysteriously just after ascending to the throne.

The father of Hadiza Ahmed, the current queen, was no exception. "My father decided to see if he could break the spell but he failed. In his first week on the throne he became so sick that he had to abdicate and was rushed out of the village. He died three weeks later," said Hadiza, during a recent interaction with representatives of the western media.

That was nine years ago and Hadiza, 55, has ruled this community of half a million people ever since, despite being part of a culture where leaders are normally men.

According to Hadiza, the curse of Kumbwada kingdom started more than two centuries ago when the warrior princess Magajiya Maimuna led her cavalry from Zaria, a town to the north and conquered the kingdom.

"After the conquest Maimuna decided to leave her brother here as ruler but he fell sick and died within a week. The same thing happened with her second brother and in the end she decided to stay herself and she ruled for 83 years," Hadiza said, adjusting the white veil covering her head and shoulders.

Despite the widely-held view in the conservative Muslim north that it is an abomination for a woman to lead traditional and religious institutions, Hadiza looks very much in charge of her domain.

"I don't face any resistance from my subjects, they obey my commands as they obey their God because I'm a fair ruler who ensures justice in my kingdom," she said as the muezzin called the noon prayers.

A handful of her male subjects led by the village's imam Musa Muhammad, who have come to pay homage, listen and nod submissively, clustered around the blue silk-upholstered chair that serves as Hadiza's throne.

The monarch is flanked by her eldest son Danjuma Salihu and her eldest daughter and heir apparent Idris who wears a purple muslin veil.

Danjuma, Hadiza's eldest child does not seem to bear any grudge against his younger half sister Idris, the declared heir to the throne.

"I know and everybody here knows that no man can rule this kingdom and survive. It is not in my own interest to be heir apparent," Salihu said.

Local people say the curse is linked to a large rock, visible from the village. No one goes there to find out more however as the few who did never returned.

Married to a local businessman, Hadiza is the only female chief who bore children, thanks to her three marriages before assuming the throne, which produced five children, three of them girls.

The people of the village believe that any woman who assumes the throne becomes barren.

"I'm the chief here but I discharge my domestic duties as a wife and mother. However my husband knows his limits, royalty is royalty," Hadiza said with a dignified smile.

Four hundred kilometres (250 miles) away in Kano, northern Nigeria's commercial hub and a flashpoint for sectarian and political strife, Muslim leaders frown at the idea of a woman leading a community.

"The fact that any man who assumes the throne dies in a week strongly suggests the use of black magic which Islam absolutely condemns," Aminuddeen Abubakar, a prominent Muslim cleric said. "Once there is evidence of magic in any situation Islam considers it a deviation which must be reversed."

However, Musa Muhammad, the imam of Kumbwada thinks differently. "This is an exceptional situation none of us can change. A woman chief is a necessity given our peculiar circumstances," Muhammad said.