Google Fined $2000 for Cleavage in Street View

Apparently this has been going on a lot lately. Google's Street View has again been put to task for showing something that somebody was embarrassed about. This time they sued. And won.

The latest embarrassment for Google's Street View comes from Canada and a lady who was just sitting there on her front steps minding her own business and just happened to be leaning over checking her cell phone when Google's camera car came driving by. Click, click, and there she was, for all the world to see, unintentionally showing some rather ample cleavage to the rest of the world. 

Maria Pia Grillo found her image on Google and naturally was a wee bit embarrassed. But she got rather mad when several million others also found the image. Even though her face was blurred in the image, the cleavage wasn't. She says she sent messages to Google but got no response, then she sent Google a registered letter arguing that she felt that she was "at the mercy of potential predators" because of the picture.

And so, back in 2011, Ms. Grillo filed a judicial complaint against Google, and demanded it blur the rest of her body along with the license plate of her car which was also shown in the photo. She asked for $45,000 Canadian because she said she had suffered emotional damage along with mockery from her colleagues at her work. 

Now, a Montreal judge has agreed, at least with part of her argument, and ordered Google to pay her $2,250 plus interest, along with $159 in court costs.

Google can afford it. They made something like $60 billion last year.

Chocolate Each Day Makes Your Brain Younger

Scientists at Columbia University's Medical Center have just published a report that says eating or drinking a large amount of chocolate (yes, chocolate) can increase your brain's memory capability. The results were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience this past weekend. According to the study, one of the active ingredients in dark chocolate is group of antioxidants called flavanols, and flavanols given daily may give a typical 60-year-old the memory functions of a person twenty to thirty years younger.

A group of 37 volunteers from 50 to 69 years of age were split into two groups; one who drank a cocoa drink with a high dose of flavanols (900 milligrams) and the other the same drink but containing a low dose of just 10 mg.

Then the researchers did some brain imaging on all participants and measured the blood volume in a part of the brain that's age-sensitive and largely responsible for memory formation. According to Scott Small, professor of Columbia's department of neurology, the scientists found that typical 60-year-old participants who drank the high flavanol drinks had the memory of a typical 30- or 40- year old at the end of the study while the group that drank the low flavanol drinks showed no change at all.

The findings parallel those of a study at the University of Nottingham England in 2007 that reported eating chocolate helped sharpen up the mind and gave a short-term boost to cognitive skills. So, enjoy your daily dose of chocolate and you'll think you're a lot younger than you really are.

Google Exec Breaks World Skydiving Record

This is pretty strange. A 57-year-old executive at Google has broken a skydiving record by jumping out of a helium balloon and dropping 25 miles down to land (without breaking any bones) in New Mexico. In the process, Alan Eustace beat the world skydiving record and exceeded the speed of sound as well on his way down.

Mr. Eustace took off in his balloon Friday morning and jumped out from just about the top of the earth's stratosphere at an altitude of 135,890. According to reports, he didn't just get up there and decide to immediately jump, but hung around for half an hour or so admiring the scenery.

On his way down, he went faster than the speed of sound, reaching more than 800 miles per hour, creating a small sonic boom.

Over three years of preparation went into the jump. He wore a space suit specially designed by Paragon Space Development Corporation, a company dedicated to exploring the stratosphere above 100,000 feet.

The previous record was set by Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner who parachuted back in 2012 from a height of 128,000 feet.

Mr. Eustace also broke several other world records including the fastest vertical speed reached during freefall (822 mph) and total freefall distance of 123,414 feet, lasting four minutes and 27 seconds.

Wow, what a ride that must have been!

American's "Sex Toy" Sculpture Vandalized in Paris

There is an art fair going on in Paris at Place Vendome and one of the artists, Paul McCarthy, created a nice sculpture for the event. Paul, who lives and works out of Los Angeles, is rather infamous for creating ususually large objects, usually of a sexual nature, for display to the public. So, he created an 80-foot-tall inflatable sculpture that resembles, many say, a large green butt plug.

The sculpture seems to have caused a bit of controversy among Parisians who walk by. Within two days, the piece was deflated by vandals. McCarthy told the press that he didn't want his masterpiece to be repaired or replaced, that it was only intended as a joke in the first place.

Meanwhile, the French Minister of Culture called the vandalism, "an attack on the principle of artistic freedom," and the art fair said they'd fix the deflated sculpture as soon as it could. McCarthy also told a newspaper that he had been attacked by a man who told him that the sculpture didn't belong on the street.

McCarthy says his work, entitled "Tree," was an "abstract work" based on a joke about a sex toy and that it was also inspired by a Christmas tree.

The mayor of Paris, Ms. Anne Hidalgo, described the attack as "unacceptable," and she also denounced the attack on McCarthy. "Paris will not succumb to the threats of those who, by attacking an artist or a work, are attacking artistic freedom," she said. "Art has its place in our streets and nobody will be able to chase it away."

CDC Screws Up Again with Ebola Virus

This isn't weird, cool or even fun. It's downright awful.

What was it, last month when we read about the CDC transporting Anthrax around in Ziploc bags?

Then a week or two before that, they found some cardboard boxes in an old storage room near Washington that were supposed to have been stored by the CDC that contained some decades-old vials of smallpox packed away that everybody seems to have forgotten about. 

Then another time, the CDC apparently mishandled some Anthrax and had to give their employees tons of antibiotics because they figured they might be infected. Wait a go, guys!

Now it seems they've screwed up again. This time it's with Ebola. This poor guy from Liberia flies to Dallas with Ebola and nurses there treat him. One nurse then comes down with the virus and another is planning to fly out of Dallas and starts to feel sick, so she decides to call the CDC and ask them if it's OK to fly on a plane with dozens of other healthy people. 

What do they say? They tell her YES, it's just fine. Her temperature is only 99.5 degrees so go ahead, you're fine, and it's perfectly OK to take your trip.

This has got to be just about the biggest OOPS! you could possibly find in the annals of human history.

Now they've figured out, finally, that the nurse, Amber Vinson, also has the Ebola virus. Wow, what a coincidence! Of course, she's been isolated, and now they're running all over the place trying to locate all the other 260 or so passengers that were on the Frontier Airlines flights she was allowed to travel in back and forth from Dallas to Cleveland and back after she was told it was OK to fly by the infamous CDC.

Almost 5,000 people have died so far, most in West Africa, during this year's horrific Ebola outbreak. So far, cases in the U.S. and Europe have been limited. The disease was only identified back in 1976, and causes fever, diarrhea and vomiting. It only spreads through bodily contact, they think, but it's highly contagious.

The motto of the CDC (US Government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is ...

"Saving Lives, Protecting People, Reducing Health Costs"

Yeah, right.

New Model Tesla P85D goes 0-60 mph in 3.2 Seconds!

He's done it once more. Elon Musk, the inventor of PayPal, SpaceX, Solar City and Tesla, has now come out with another version of his highly rated P85 electric car called the P85D. Not satisfied with a zero to 60 time of a slowish 4.2 seconds? The new model adds a second motor and all-wheel drive, giving it 691 horsepower and a one-second faster 0-60 time of 3.2 seconds, which is pretty darn fast in anybody's book.

The new P85D looks almost exactly like the regular Model S but under the skin it's added a new motor that sits between the front wheels and with four wheel drive it'll be great for people in the northern climates where ice and snow wreak havoc on driving during the winter months.

Musk says the car is "nuts." And he seems to love it. "It's like taking off from a carrier deck," he says. And it will be even more efficient than the current Model S, going about 275 miles on a single charge thanks to a newly designed system that shifts power between the two motors so each one operates at peak efficiency.

Musk also noted at the unveiling of the new model that all Teslas now come with new safety technology that allows them to avoid danger automatically by practically driving themselves. Adaptive cruise control has been added along with the car's capability to understand speed limit signs ahead and stop itself if it determines there will be a crash. 

Musk also said the new cars will include a radar system that can see through snow and fog and spot pedestrians, traffic lights and signs. To top it all off, the cars will be able to park themselves in your garage.

All versions of the Model S will be available as D models. Prices for the Model S with a 60kWh battery will run from $71,070 to $75,070 for the two motor system. The Model S with an 85kWh battery will be priced from $81,070 to $85,070, and the top of the line Performance Model S will sell for between $105,570 to $120,170. Deliveries of the P85D should begin in December 2014 and all other models in February 2015.

1968 Moon Photo Shows 10 Mile Long Spacecraft

OK, hold onto your hats, my friends, there's a photo just released that's supposed to be from 1968 that was taken during a Lunar Orbiter mission to the moon that shows a spacecraft right in the middle of the Moon's crater Manlius. 

As if an alien spacecraft showing up in a moon photo isn't enough, they've measured it and concluded that it's ten miles long. Yes. That's 10 MILES long.

Most of the ship shows up quite well in the photo with the sun brightly illuminating almost all of it. Manlius is 20 miles wide and the ship takes up just about half of the crater, so that's how they figured it must be 10 miles in length.

The photo comes from a YouTube video released on October 4th. According to a blog post from UFO Sightings Daily on October 5th, the ship is a UFO that NASA was studying back then and was the actual target for some of the Apollo moon missions.

The video was taken by Lunar Orbiter III (frame 3073) sent back in 1967 to photograph potential landing sites for future Apollo missions.

For you non-believers, one possible explanation of the ship, er let's say "object" for you, is that it's an optical illusion because of a depression that occurs in the center of the crater. The "object's" contours, however, are outlined quite well by the sun's shadow where it meets the crater's rim, so it really is a spaceship, OK?

There's also a road up there. Yes. The Lunar Orbiter photo also shows even more evidence of something artificial there: a road that looks like it's about 60 miles long right there on the moon’s surface. The road is straight as an arrow and goes from one end to the other of the photo, suggesting that it's even longer than 60 miles.