TSA Screeners Fired for Groping Passengers

A couple of TSA screeners have been fired for having a little too much fun with one of their screening machines at the Denver airport. It seems these screening machines are smart enough to scan a passenger and determine if they're concealing something by scanning the person and spotting those telltale bulges (or the lack thereof) we're all aware of that exist between the sexes.

So, the TSA fellow in our story decided it would be hilarious that when he spotted a nice looking male passenger coming in through the gate, he'd motion over to his cohort, the female screener, to tell the machine the passenger was female and not male.

The machine would then scan the passenger thinking he (she) was female and register an anomaly when it spotted a suspicious bulge in the passenger's groin area.

The machine's alarm would then go off indicating that he (she) might be concealing something illegal, like a bomb or firearm, and the male passenger would be pulled out of line to be checked more closely. 

The TSA fellow would then pat down the poor guy supposedly looking for the illegal something by touching the passenger's groin and buttocks areas, explaining that this was standard procedure. He was lying, of course, because doing this is actually a rather serious violation of TSA policy.

The TSA figured out what the screeners were doing after being told about it by someone anonymously back in February, and now both screeners have been fired. However, no charges are apparently going to be filed against them because none of the victims of the searches has come forth with a complaint, and the TSA has been unable to identify the passenger who was groped back in the February incident.

Ah, the hilarity in what these ingenious pranksters can think of! Now, I guess, the jokes on them!

CEO Stuns Employees with Gigantic Raise

Dan Price started up a credit card processing business called Gravity Payments about ten years ago when he was 19 and it's grown very well over the last few years. The firm is now expected to turn a profit this year of a little over two million dollars, so he's got to be pretty proud of himself, his business and his employees.

Dan started Gravity in his dormitory room at Seattle Pacific University using money borrowed from his older brother. The idea struck him a couple of years earlier when he was playing in a rock band at a local coffee shop. The shop's owner was having trouble paying the exorbitant fees charged by the company that processed their credit card payments. He looked into the matter and realized he could form a company that did the process cheaper, more efficiently and even provide better customer service at the same time.

Now that the company's become so successful, Dan's proud of his employees and he decided to do something special for the 120 people working under him. He's giving everybody a really big raise. And not just a few bucks here and there. He's decided to set a minimum salary for his workers of $70,000 a year, regardless of how much they're making now.

Dan says he came up with the idea when he read an article on employees and how happy they actually were. The article said that people who earn less than $70,000 a year always seem to need a little extra money to be truly happy. 

So he decided that his employees deserved to be happy and so, over the next three years, he's raising the salaries of everybody, even the lowest paid clerk, salesman and customer service rep to a minimum of $70,000. The raises will affect about 70 employees with 30 of them doubling their pay since the average salary at Gravity right now is $48,000 a year.

He made the announcement at an employee meeting the other day and just about everybody "freaked out," according to one. After the clapping and whooping died out, there were a few moments of what he said were "stunned silence."

Dan says he'll pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from about $1 million to $70,000 and then taking a big chunk out of the company's anticipated $2.2 million profit this year. There's no question everybody at Gravity is happy with the idea. Wait a go, Dan. Wait a go!

Human Head Transplant Coming Soon

There are a bunch of elite surgeons scattered all around the world that have been working on a medical first - a complete human head transplant. No, I'm not talking about a movie, this is the real thing.

There's a guy in Russia with an incurable disease, Werdnig-Hoffman. It's a form of spinal atrophy, and there isn't any cure for it. Valery Spiridonov is 30 years old and apparently quite willing to let them see if they can save his life by transplanting his head onto the body of another person, presumably dead from some sort of head injury, while the rest of the donor is in pretty much healthy condition.

Meanwhile, the team of surgeons have been itching to try out a new procedure they've been working on, and an Italian surgeon by the name of Sergio Canavero is going to take on the task of chopping off Mr. Spiridonov's head and playing a 21st Century Dr. Jekyll, putting it onto the body of somebody else. Yes, they say it's really going to happen. Nobody, of course, is sure the final result will be successful, but at least one person, Mr. Apiridonov, has high hopes that it will.

The operation is supposed to take a total of 36 hours or so and the operating room will be really crowded with about 150 medical staff giving their support. The plan is to take Mr. Spiridonov’s head along with the new body and cool them both down to a pretty chilly point to slow down the rate of cell decomposition. After that, doctors are supposed to hook up each of the major blood vessels in the neck to machines. That's supposed to keep everything flowing just right while they're transferring the head part.

Then they plan to sever the spinal cord and attach Mr. Spiridonov's head to the new body. Dr. Canavero says he'll use a water-soluble glue to connect the cells together and then connect the muscles, nerves and blood vessels.

Assuming everything goes as planned, the doctors say it will take up to a year for Mr. Spiridonov’s spinal cord to fuse completely with the new body. Of course, nobody knows what the brain is going to think about all this and the different electrical and chemical signals will probably be a problem, but Mr. Spiridonov and Dr. Canavero say they're ready for the procedure anyway.

Staff for the procedure will be hired starting in June and the operation may be scheduled as early as next year. I wonder if it will be televised?

Updates About the Miracles of Coffee 

It seems that all-of-a-sudden over the last few months there has been an enormous amount of news about the benefits of drinking coffee. The latest says that researchers have found it lowers your risk of getting liver cancer. Of course we all know it wakes you up in the morning and makes you feel more alert, but coffee also appears to help fight toxins in the body and reduce inflammation in the liver along with lots of other areas as well.

Coffee contains around a thousand antioxidants, and when you roast the coffee beans a few hundred more develop. That's more than green tea or cocoa, both of which are supposed to be the greatest superstars of antioxidants. Antioxidants fight inflammation, not only in the liver but they're also a great help with heart disease, arthritis, dementia and many cancers. Plus, there are a bunch of nutrients in coffee, including niacin, magnesium, potassium, manganese, riboflavin and pantothenic acid just to name a few.

Several studies report that coffee decreases Type 2 diabetes and reduces the risk of breast, prostate, endometrial, colon and rectal cancer.

Coffee not only wakes your brain up in the morning, it also helps your memory and concentration, actually making you at least seem to be a little smarter. 

Coffee also enhances your exercise performance by battling fatigue. It staves off depression by activating neurotransmitters in your brain that reduce your perception of pain. It helps you burn away far, and there's even a study that says coffee decreases your chances of getting gout!

For all its good points, there are some negatives. For some people coffee causes irritability and nervousness, and we all know it can cause insomnia and keep you awake at night. Switching to decaf can moderate these symptoms, but you may not get all of the above benefits since caffeine plays a part in some of them. 

How much coffee you can drink safely depends on the individual. For some, one or two cups is the limit; for others four or more each day is no problem. If you're looking for the benefits though, stay away from the sugary fat-filled varieties and stick with basic black or maybe with some added skim milk. Otherwise, you'll negate a lot of the advantages and put yourself at risk with additional health problems instead of the extraordinary benefits of this miraculous and unique beverage.

Prisoner Escapes by Emailing his own Release Order

Well, by golly, you knew it had to happen someday. A man by the name of Neil Moore who was in a British pokey for fraud and escape from custody (they should have known!) found himself a mobile phone and sent instructions to the prison staff to release him. Guess what? They did!

Yup, it seems that officers at Wandsworth Prison in London allowed Mr. Moore to walk out the prison gates based on some bogus bail instructions he'd sent them from a fake e-mail address that he created by using his phone. 

Officials admitted the plot was pretty much "ingenious" and I'm wondering why somebody hasn't tried the ploy before. His bogus email address identified himself as a senior court clerk and the message went on to tell prison staff that his bail had been paid and to release the prisoner. And so they did.

They only found out about the deception when solicitors went into the prison to find him for an interview three days later and discovered he wasn't there anymore. Oops!

Mr. Moore had used four different aliases earlier in order to commit fraud. That's why he was in the pokey in the first place. He was convicted of having posed as a staff member of several British banks and somehow managed to persuade some really big companies to give the bank (him!) money for some reason or another and apparently the deceptions worked rather well. His take, according to court records, totaled around $2 million.

The judge in the case was quite impressed, describing his behavior as "ingenious criminality." Apparently Mr. Moore seems to be quite good at this sort of thing. Perhaps he should think about getting himself a "real" job?

Russia May Build Massive Corridor from London to New York

I don't know who came up with this idea, but it's so crazy and far-fetched ... and interesting ... that it might even work out. Well, Russia has decided that since they no longer have any friends because of the Ukrainian mess and the ruble plummeting over 40% because the U.S. crashed the price of oil, their main source of revenue, Russia has decided to bail themselves out of all this trouble by constructing a multi-trillion dollar super highway from London to New York.

The route they've chosen goes the wrong way, of course, eastward from London through Moscow and out across the vast stretches of the frozen Siberian tundra. Then, somehow, it jumps over the Bering Strait, crosses Alaska east of Nome where there's no road at all right now, and then winds its way through western Canada to end up in The Big Apple.

Well, maybe the route isn't as important as the massive economic returns that will begin piling up once it's in operation, according to Vladimir Yakunin, the head of Russian Railways. It will link to just about everybody's existing transportation network throughout Europe and Asia, and they'll also include a nice high-speed railway for bullet trains to zoom alongside your Lada.

The giant project will be called the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development project or TEPR for short, and if all the pieces in the puzzle come together, the total distance it will cover will be just a shade under 13,000 miles. About half of that will be across Siberia, which if I remember correctly, is known for its really awful winters, so fixing all the potholes each spring will probably cost a pretty penny, or maybe ruble?

In addition to a new highway and high-speed railroad, the corridor will also carry oil and gas pipelines, electricity and water services. I guess that means when one of the gas pipelines in Siberia ruptures, not only will the cars and trains stop with nowhere to go, but the water and power will go out too while you're getting a tan at your posh vacation hideaway in the Caspians.

No timetable for construction of the new venture has yet been announced. Mr. Yakunin optimistically says that the new transportation corridor will make Mother Russia "a world leader in technological development." Yeah, right. Best of luck, Vlad!

Scientific Study Says There are Too Many Scientific Studies

There's a new report out that says in a recent scientific study a serious discussion was held about scientific studies, and the conclusion of the report was that there are too many scientific studies. Somehow I think we all pretty much knew this, but it's nice to see a genuinely clever and insightful scientific study from some learned scientists coming to the exact same conclusion.

Apparently scientists just aren't able to keep up with all of the studies that are being done in their fields of endeavor. The report, "Attention Decay in Science," says that what's going on is that the exponential growth occurring in the total volume of scientific papers is making it harder and harder for researchers to track all the stuff they need to know about in their fields so they can be up to date with their work.

It's all probably the fault of the Internet and all the tons of information that we're subjected to every second of the day. So what's happening is that all the people who are trying to understand this onslaught of information are winding up tossing everything away that they're exposed to at a much faster rate because there isn't time to absorb it properly before a new onslaught of information comes crashing down on top of them.

And guess what? Yes, of course, it's getting worse! The paper notes that scholars are tending to 'forget' stuff a lot easier than they used to because of the "exponential growth" in all the publications that are continually coming out.

The chief economist of the prestigious Bank of England, Andy Haldane, says that we're clearly in the middle of a new revolution of information. Nearly 99 percent of the entire mass of information that has ever been created on earth has been generated in just the past century.

There are benefits, of course, but the costs include shorter attention spans and the tenure of relationships and jobs is declining. In other words, we're in a mell of a hess and it's going to continue getting worse and worse. Welcome to the 21st Century!