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HARRISBURG, Pa. – An appeals court has ruled Pennsylvania State Police botched a prostitution investigation in which troopers gave an informant money to pay for sex four times at a massage parlor, along with a total of $180 for the man's trouble. The Superior Court opinion issued Thursday upheld a Lehigh County judge's ruling that threw out prostitution charges against Sun Cha Chon in suburban Allentown on the grounds that the government had acted outrageously.....

This is the Happiness Hat. It detects whether or not you're smiling. If you aren't, it jabs you in the back of the head with a metal spike. Nothing makes people happier than sharp skull pain! The whole thing is a project by interactive artist and designer Lauren McCarthy, designed to train you towards "Improved Social Interacting." On the one hand, it seems like something out of a dystopian nightmare. On the other, you have such a pretty mouth when you smile! Why not show it off?

Long story short. I am looking to get a new cordless phone that is bluetooth enabled. This way I can link my cordless phone and my cell phone (i.e. when at home, and without having to do call forward, I can get the cell phone calls on my home phone). I know the Vtech DS6321 is the newest model that I know of that does this, but has one drawback, or is missing one feature that I need. Call Blocking on the phone. My current cordless phone has call blocking on it (Panasonic KX-TGA740), but none of the other features...

Hi all, I've been interested in dog training for quite some time now, and am wondering what the industry standard is (if there is one)....such as - which books to read, training methodology, etc. I'm also wondering if that it's a profession where you get licensed? Any info would help - thanks in advance. Scott

Good morning to all of you gardeners. I hope all of you are doing well this first week in November. This past week has been beautiful here in Miss. Highs in the mid 70’s, clear and dry. Great weather to clean up the yard and add to my compost pile but I just could not get motivated to do it. The indexing/archiving of this past year’s posts is still on going. Please let me know if there was a particular post that you found helpful or just interested you.

Is there a thread yet??? Couldn't find it... Top of the second, still scoreless...

My daughter a HS Junior is doing really well in school. I am planning to buy her a new laptop for school. She currently has a Dell 13" XPS that has been ok, but the battery has been replaced twice, the CD/DVD will currently only play CDs and it is getting slower to start up. So I start looking and I know she wants a Mac because they are cool, I however am not a Mac fan. Not that there is anything wrong with Mac, I have a slowly dying PowerMac G5 Dual that has a nice monitor I use...

"Managing unauthorized access to firearms, particularly KIDS. Just some basic tips about securing firearms so that only YOU have access to them. Not a comprehensive safety video" A few easy to apply common sense tips to secure your firearms from little ones and ideas on dealing with their curiosity about guns.

Sunshine today! The Royal Terns are coming in in large flocks, ahead of cold weather. The Grackles were pleased to see me, as usual. The males are getting over their fear of me. Grackles may be pests in urban areas, but around here they stay in the marshes and on the beach.

(CBS) No other object is shaped quite like it. Unique yet ubiquitous, it was the tool upon which all other tools were made for centuries. It is the common anvil. "How do you feel when you're surrounded by anvils?" CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman asked anvil enthusiast Gay Wilkerson. "I'm happy," Wilkerson said. Although Wilkerson's garage in Farmington, Mo., is lined with anvils, this story is about a lot more than just a collection. "Can we call it an obsession?" Hartman asked. "I think so," Wilkerson said. "I think it is. I think it is, yeah." About 20 years ago,...

BUTCHER Pan Xueping must have the world's strangest hobby. He collects hairballs from the stomachs of slaughtered pigs - just for fun. Pan, of Xiyangpan, eastern China, said: "They are very rare - I probably only find about one every three months when I'm cleaning the animals intestines. "I then wash them carefully to remove all the dirt and then I dry them with a hairdryer to make them nice and fluffy." The 42-year-old, who works in an abattoir, has amassed hundreds of furry balls over the nine years since starting his job, as reported in the Austrian Times. He...

My neice watches this crappy television show. Its just disgusting. Teen prostitutes?? Her only concern is that they might be raped or kidnapped?? Preview for tomorrows show?? 8 months old and working as a prostitute. Gawd.... kids are watching this stuff. Kids are getting the message that this is normal. Thats what they learn from TV, movies and music. crap. That is what TV is, just crap.

Mr. Toth's First-Class Obsession Recreates Defunct Airline's Cabin (Spiral Stairs, Too) Fliers nostalgic for the golden era of air travel might want to book a trip to Anthony Toth's garage. Mr. Toth has built a precise replica of a first-class cabin from a Pan Am World Airways 747 in the garage of his two-bedroom condo in Redondo Beach, Calif. The setup includes almost everything fliers in the late 1970s and 1980s would have found onboard: pairs of red-and-blue reclining seats, original overhead luggage bins and a curved, red-carpeted staircase. Once comfortably ensconced, Mr. Toth's visitors can sip beverages from the...

Wondering if anyone has recommendations for a handgun for a petite woman (me...5'2", 110lbs). Have used a small semi-automatic years ago, not sure of caliber. FIL worries that I might lack strength for semi-auto; I worry that loading bullets under pressure vs. loading ammo clip would waste precious time. Just curious what the ladies here are using? Going to gun range tonight and I think I will have the opportunity to handle a few different guns. Would like input to maybe weed out some choices that would be inappropriate for my size/needs. Another question: we currently have no handguns in...

I met another photographer on a forum, turns out he lives not far from the swamp. He rode over today and we went shooting. The tide wasn't really right, had to improvise and go looking for models. There is always something just waiting to be a picture!

The economic crisis combined with the election of a potentially anti-gun liberal to the White House acted as a big stimulus for the gunmakers. But it seems that all that happened was that gun demand got pulled forward, because now sales are totally falling off a cliff. A reader sends along some recent numbers from Ruger (RGR).If you look at the bottom line -- firearm sales -- it only looks like there was a slight sequential dip. But ignore that. The number to look at is orders received in 3Q, which were down 80%. Due to their backlog, actual firearms...

Many obsessive riflemen “know” a lot of things about the insides of their barrels. They know they must break-in barrels and that any bore only slightly smudged by the passage of bullets will shoot less accurately compared with a barrel as clean as Aunt Josie’s kitchen floor. First, let’s examine “proper” barrel break-in. According to just about everybody, this is accomplished by firing one shot, cleaning the barrel of all powder and copper fouling, firing another shot, cleaning, etc. Advice on how long to continue this tedious routine varies from 10 to 30 rounds. The procedure supposedly smooths the bore,...

Vilano Beach begins North of St. Augustine Inlet and runs to South Ponte Vedra. There are large deposits of Coquina clam shells, the main ingredient in Coquina rock, the material used for the Spanish forts here. On the white sand areas there are black streaks of Titanium ore. Ponte Vedra was once home to a Titanium mining operation. The "red shell" has been a traditional place to test beach buggies and 4WD vehicles, it is easy to bury your wheels up to the hubs if you get off the hard pack.

Good morning gardeners! Happy Halloween. Don't forget to set your clocks back one hour Sat. night! Since things have slowed down I thought I would revisit this years threads and try to locate and archive some of the great posts, advice and info you Freepers have given out over the past year. My objective would be to then put all the posts in to categories like; Fertilizer, Gardening Methods, Flowers etc. And then post all of this info in one thread at the beginning of next year. What do y’all think? Also I would like your input. Let me know...

LAUDERHILL, Fla. (AP) -- Look, over there. Under that blue tarp in a suburban driveway. That thing that's the size of a Smart car? It's Joel Waul's rubber band ball. Waul has spent the last six years carefully wrapping and linking and stretching rubber bands of various sizes into the ball shape. The Guinness Book of World Records declared it the world's largest rubber band ball in 2008. On Thursday, Waul said goodbye to his creation. A team from Ripley's Believe it or Not came to his house with a crane and hauled the 6-foot, 7-inch tall, 9,032-pound behemoth away...

The Grackles recognize the car now, LOL, I think I've started them on the welfare wagon!

Back when Norman Rockwell ruled Saturday evenings, Adobe wasn't even a gleam in some nerd's eye, but a new book shows that the painter was, nevertheless, a photoshop god. Very few Gizmodo readers were even born when Rockwell painted his last Saturday Evening Post cover, but we all know them. You hear that name and suddenly you can picture those overly detailed, cartoonishly dramatic but ultimately kinda corny depictions of American life. Well, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, written and compiled by Ron Schick, has given me immense newfound respect for the man, for the meticulous photography, the real people...

I need some Freeper help...Usually I'm asking advice about guns or stuff. But I need a different kind of help...a techie solution. A gadget. A CHEAP gadget. I'm setting up a video-conferencing solution for my company. What we'll be able to do is participate in each other's sales meetings, via the web, via webcam and microphone. It's not a static environment, but one where the leader is moving around, from place to place in the room; sometimes at the whiteboard...other times at another place in the room. I've kinda got the camera thing figured out. But what I need is...

This is animated tortoise with humor!

I commented earlier on the value of White Ibis on lawns and in gardens. These guys are working this section of lawn for grubs and mole crickets. They leave a little hole that looks like it was made by a thick pencil, aereating the soil. They aren't messy like geese and ducks, and don't bother vegetation. Click on the link.

My little pond is all dried up, had to go hunting for models. I got a Big Mac and headed for the beach. I was alternating bites of burger and shooting seagulls from the window, looked over and a little femaled Boat Tailed Grackle was sitting in the window watcheng me eat. My camera bag always has a little ziploc full of dry cat food just for these occassions. She ate some from my hand, but I couldn't use a camera that way. I put a handfull on top of my camera bag, and she settled in for lunch. The...

If you've been holding off on buying a new computer, Microsoft Windows 7 will be a good excuse to get back into the game. And if you've been weighing a Mac versus a Windows PC, then you should know that "7" pushes the scales on the Windows side. But should you upgrade your aging computer, even if you're running Windows XP? And should you use the occasion to buy a new PC? Those are certain to be the questions on the minds of millions, and it's the main topic we tackle this installment of Tech Tuesday. After the upgrade debate...

CUSTOMS officials in Norway say they had arrested a man who tried to illegally import 14 snakes and 10 lizards into the country by taping the reptiles to his body. The snakes, king pythons that are large in size but not venomous, were rolled up in socks and taped to the man's torso, while the geckos were found in small boxes taped to his legs. The unusual load was discovered during a body search after customs officials found a tarantula in the man's luggage.

Researchers at the University of Reading (UK) and the University of Southampton (UK) recently made available the roster of men who served during the Hundred Years' War.

Espn's commentators tell politicians to govern and worry about our troops, the economy, etc and stay the heck out of football...

Walking through the lively districts of Harajuku and Shibuya in Tokyo, one might encounter a sight unusual to many people's eyes: men in skirts. Not kilts or kimono, but skirts. Called "the skirt boys," or "skirt tribe," the skirt-wearing men of Tokyo are beginning to get some attention from the fashion world. And so, though it may be a little rude, I have to ask: How is this different from being a cross-dresser? I see my first skirt-clad man in Harajuku on a weekday afternoon, his garment made of an almost transparent white cotton, with pretty geometric designs along the...

Measuring a tiny eighth of an inch by quarter of an inch, this carefully crafted piece of engineering is the world's smallest working train model. The five-carriage train, which is 35,200 times smaller than a real train, nips around an oval route even taking in a ride through a tunnel on its three-quarter inch track. Created by New Jersey train enthusiast David Smith, the miniscule model was built using nothing more fancy than a craft knife and a steady hand...

Iowa City police are investigating an early morning assault in which a man accused another of being a zombie, then punched him twice. Police said the assault occurred at 1:17 a.m. Sunday at an Iowa City restaurant south of the University of Iowa campus. A man was ordering food when he was approached by another man who called him a zombie, then hit him in the eye. When the victim tried to call police on his cell phone, the man punched him again, breaking his nose. The man then ran out a back door. The victim was taken by ambulance...

If you're on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site, you could be the next victim. Experts say cybercrooks are lurking just a mouse click away on popular social networking sites. That's because more cyberthieves are targeting increasingly popular social networking sites that provide a gold mine of personal information, according to the FBI. Since 2006, nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases have been reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. It starts with a friend updating his or her status or sending...

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- Last month two men and their teenage sons tackled one of the world's most unforgiving summertime hikes: the Grand Canyon's parched and searing Royal Arch Loop. Along with bedrolls and freeze-dried food, the inexperienced backpackers carried a personal locator beacon - just in case. In the span of three days, the group pushed the panic button three times, mobilizing helicopters for dangerous, lifesaving rescues inside the steep canyon walls. What was that emergency? The water they had found to quench their thirst "tasted salty......"

When it comes to maintaining your car, misconceptions abound. And even the best intentions can lead you to spend more money than necessary or even compromise your safety. Here are a few common car care myths that can do more harm than good. Myth: Engine oil should be changed every 3,000 miles. Reality: Despite what oil companies and quick-lube shops often claim, it’s usually not necessary. Stick to the service intervals in your car’s owner’s manual. Under normal driving conditions, most vehicles are designed to go 7,500 miles or more between oil changes. Changing oil more often doesn’t hurt the...

The Ibis was so venerated in ancient Eygpt that they were even mummified and placed in royal tombs. I think there is a reason. If you are trying to grow crops in a river bottom, in a warm climate, you will be plagued with grubs and bugs and other pests, all trying to eat your veggies. The Ibis is eager to help, they love to eat the pests. Egypt owes a major debt to the Ibis clan.

Only half-joking, Jody Kerzman said she's thinking of putting a sign in the window of the '49 Lincoln. "Will never be for sale," it would say. Her father, Jack Franken, loved this car. Turned it into a street rod. Drove it everywhere, especially car shows. Scored cool grandpa points with his grandchildren who saw the world zip past from its sofa-like back seat. For Jody, the car is a powerful connection to her dad, a south side Milwaukee truck driver who died in 1997. So you can understand her distress when the car got away from their family - not...

Washington Arms Collectors show today and tomorrow at Puyallup fairgrounds! Admission 8 bucks for non members, free for members

Yes, Windows 7 didn't even hit the market until Thursday. But that hasn't stopped a fog of myths from enveloping the newest version of the much loved--and much hated--PC operating system from Microsoft. [Slide Show: The Best of What's New in Windows 7.] The software giant hoped that wide exposure to Windows 7 would help smooth its entry. Microsoft let millions of consumers and professionals download test versions of the operating system. And by a wide margin, testers have found the new system to be the best yet from Microsoft. Version 7 is leaner, more useful, and prettier than past...

Good afternoon to all of you gardeners. I apologize for the late post today. Well the last days of October are upon us and the garden is finally tilled for the last time this year. I seeded it with an annual rye grass. I also started rebuilding my compost pile. The oak and pecan trees have yet to drop their leaves so I will have to wait for their contribution to the compost pile until November.

The little pond will be bone dry soon, I'll have to find another place to watch birds for a while. A good heavy rain would be a big help.

Few days ago, I have seen a section of article” Eiffel Tower, New York's Empire State Building, Tokyo TV Tower are western three famous buildings” it amazes me, here the Tokyo TV Tower isn’t in Japan. Traditionally in geography and culture Japan belongs to east, but why the international presses reported japan as a western country? Does Japan really belong to “western countries”?

Through its XP Mode, Microsoft Windows 7 can extend the useful life of legacy applications and peripherals. With a feature called XP Mode in Windows 7, Microsoft hopes to make it easier to use legacy applications and equipment. In this video, ZDNet’s Ed Bott, blogger of Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report, shows you how the new XP Mode works and suggests a few possible uses for the feature.

WORCESTER, Mass.- A Worcester, Mass., man said he will not appeal the city's order to tear down the $12,000 four-story tree house he built on his property . Michael Chapman, 48 -- who built the tree house over the course of three months from more than a ton of pressure-treated lumber, 1,000 feet of rope, about 500 lag screws and 48 feet of rebar -- said the city ordered him to remove the tree house by Nov. 2 and he intends to abide by the order, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday. Officials from Worcester's Department of Inspectional Services said they...

Two out of the six around here, the other ones hide when they see a camera. The tabby is my special buddy, she guards my corner of the house, and her snacks!

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison commissioned the fabricators at Kirkham Motorsports to build the ultimate, cost-is-no-object roadster. After years of labor, they've completed the all-billet aluminum Cobra. Click "more" to see them build one of the most spectacular custom cars ever.

Pictures of Dexter Cattle calves. They are hearty, small and ever so cute.

Reader Zacarious has a brother-in-law incapable of finding just one car he likes so he suggested picking a car from his birth year. Now he's eying a 1969 Mustang Mach 1. What car from your birth year do you want? Being born in 1983, choices are limited but very interesting considering the daily driver is already from 1986. But if the clock is rewound three years then we end up with a Callaway Alfa Romeo GTV6. The Callaway-tuned twin turbo V6 pushed out 230 HP for a 0-to-60 MPH time of just 5.9 seconds, making it one of the quickest...

~~Come on in and shoot the breeze~~   Gun Talk   10/11/09~7:00 CST