High times in Argentina.
Eight Argentinian police officers have been dismissed due to a pending investigation into their claims that mice are responsible for the disappearance of 1,191 pounds of marijuana, reports the BBC.
Police say the drugs missing from the warehouse in Pilar had been in storage there for two years. The officers involved in the investigation claim the drugs were “eaten by mice,” but forensic experts say if mice ingested the drugs they probably would have died and “a lot of corpses would have been found in the warehouse.”
WPLG 10 ABC News
[h/t LD]
Rare Medical Mystery
“Though it resembles a coral, root system, or some other kind of growth, the photo actually depicts a six-inch-wide blood clot in the near-perfect form of the right bronchial tree of a human lung, the Atlantic reported on Thursday.”
It might seem a little like rubbernecking to gawk at the product of someone’s medical misfortune, but even most doctors may never have the chance to see something like this. Though there are other conditions which can result in bronchial casts, including infections and asthmatic conditions or lymphatic-flow disorders that can cause buildups of mucus or lymph fluid respectively, Wieselthaler was emphatic that the size of this one is almost unprecedented.
“We were astonished,” Wieselthaler told the Atlantic. “It’s a curiosity you can’t imagine—I mean, this is very, very, very rare.”
Gizmodo
I’m not saying it’s aliens, but …
The once anonymous physicist only known as ‘Dennis’ who put Area 51 on the map in 1989 is now coming forward in a recently released documentary: Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.
“Plus watch an exclusive clip.”
“In December 2017, The New York Times revealed the existence of a top secret government program called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification. “The program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift,” the Times reported…”
The film culminates in the heavily-teased FBI raid. In a spooky clip, Lazar and Corbell go deep into the woods to discuss claims that Lazar made when he first went public: that he had managed to steal a piece of “element 115,” the then-undiscovered element that Lazar says fueled the reactors. The clip distorts and flashes, and Lazar never gives a straight answer. The next day Lazar’s business was raided by the FBI, and, we are told, “this conversation was directly referenced in the raid.” While authorities said that they were looking for years-old paperwork for a customer who had ordered potentially toxic materials, Lazar describes the raid as “like a Twilight Zone episode.”
“The street filled up with vehicles and the building completely filled with agents”—and all for something “they could have called for.” Corbell asks Lazar if he believes that the authorities are trying to find the 115 that he claimed to have taken out of the lab 30 years ago. “I don’t feel comfortable addressing that,” Lazar replies.
Daily Beast; Dec 4 2018
Wikipedia describes ‘element 115’ as “Moscovium.”
Moscovium is a synthetic chemical element with symbol Mc and atomic number 115. It was first synthesized in 2003 by a joint team of Russian and American scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. In December 2015, it was recognized as one of four new elements by the Joint Working Party of international scientific bodies IUPAC and IUPAP. On 28 November 2016, it was officially named after the Moscow Oblast, in which the JINR is situated.[6][7][8]
Moscovium is an extremely radioactive element: its most stable known isotope, moscovium-290, has a half-life of only 0.8 seconds.[9] In the periodic table, it is a p-block transactinide element. It is a member of the 7th period and is placed in group 15 as the heaviest pnictogen, although it has not been confirmed to behave as a heavier homologue of the pnictogen bismuth. Moscovium is calculated to have some properties similar to its lighter homologues, nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, and bismuth, and to be a post-transition metal, although it should also show several major differences from them. In particular, moscovium should also have significant similarities to thallium, as both have one rather loosely bound electron outside a quasi-closed shell. About 100 atoms of moscovium have been observed to date, all of which have been shown to have mass numbers from 287 to 290.
Wikipedia: Moscovium
For more on Moscovium:
Facts About Moscovium (Element 115); By Tim Sharp; December 1, 2016; Live Science
IUPAC Announces the Names of the Elements 113, 115, 117, and 118; Elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 are now formally named nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og); November 30, 2016; International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry – IUPAC
It was all pretend … but his dachshund was not harmed.
“Ex-Marine admits he lured Seth Rich conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman to a hotel parking garage, then shot him”
A man who worked as an investigator for conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman will serve nine years in prison for shooting and wounding his ex-boss in a complicated plot involving a fake FBI exposé.
Kevin Doherty, 46, said little as Judge William T. Newman Jr. sentenced him Monday for malicious wounding and use of a firearm in commission of a felony, but he acknowledged the veracity of a set of facts read by Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Evie Eastman detailing his “serious falling out” with Burkman and the “grand ruse” he concocted in revenge.
…
When Burkman leaned over to get the documents, Eastman said, Doherty shot him twice in the buttocks with a rifle. Burkman fled up a parking ramp, carrying the traffic cone and his dog, Jack Jr. Doherty admitted he then ran down his former employer from behind the wheel of a black SUV.Burkman suffered a broken arm, and two bullets remain lodged in his buttocks, Eastman said. His dachshund was not harmed.
Washington Post; Dec 3 2018
Stream of conmansciousness.
From Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine, organizer of the Ig Nobel Prizes: