90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, June 8, 2019

Stabbed In The Slow Lane...

10 Offbeat Stories You Might Have Missed This Week (6/8/19)

The weekend is upon us, which makes this a good opportunity to review the peculiar stories that have made headlines over the last several days. Click here to catch up on last week’s list.We have stories from both sides of the law. On one side, we have a decades-old FBI investigation into Bigfoot and a scantily clad Aussie who fought crime wielding a didgeridoo. On the other, there is a group of Russian bridge thieves and the thrilling return of Florida Man.

10The Return Of The Chessman

Photo credit: Sotheby’s
A family from Edinburgh discovered that they had one of the lost pieces of the Lewis Chessmen sitting in a drawer for decades. The artifact, which the family bought for a paltry £5, is now expected to fetch around £1 million at auction.The Lewis Chessmen are a group of almost 100 game pieces, mostly chess, carved out of walrus ivory and dated to the 12th century. They were recovered in the early 19th century on the Scottish Isle of Lewis. After their discovery, the pieces were split up; some were exhibited, and some were sold off. Nowadays, the British Museum owns the large majority of the chessmen, but the whereabouts of five pieces became lost to history.As it turns out, one of the Lewis Chessmen had been with the same family for 55 years. The grandfather bought it in 1964 from an antiques dealer who clearly had no idea what he possessed because he sold it for a fiver.[1] The family looked after it for decades before finally deciding to have it appraised at Sotheby’s.The newly discovered piece is a warrior with a helmet, a shield, and a sword called a warder. His modern equivalent would be the rook. It will go on display in Edinburgh and London before being sold at auction on July 2.

9Captain Underpants Goes Down Under

Photo credit: Nine.com.au
An Australian man chased away a home invader wearing only his underpants and armed with a didgeridoo.Early Monday morning, Kym Abrook woke up to strange noises in his home in Adelaide’s Fulham Gardens. He interrupted a thief, who ran out the door when he saw Abrook. The homeowner picked up the closest weapon he could find, which was, in his case, a didgeridoo, and gave chase. He was undeterred by the fact that he was only wearing a pair of underwear. In fact, Abrook said it helped him run faster.[2]The thief might have been able to outrun the didgeridoo-wielding, nearly naked sprinter, but Abrook managed to call the police mid-chase. Authorities arrived, cordoned off the area, and found the 32-year-old perpetrator nearby with the help of a police dog. He had Abrook’s wallet and cash on him when he was arrested.The Adelaide man was kind enough to reenact his chase for local news stations. While he was still carrying the didgeridoo, this time he ran down the street wearing shorts. He has already parlayed his newfound fame into a fruit shop commercial.

8The Treasures Of Vermilion

Photo credit: Chris Stead
A museum visitor opened a safe that had been locked for over 40 years.In May, a machinist named Stephen Mills from Fort McMurray went on vacation with his family to Vermilion, Alberta, Canada. While there, they paid a visit to the town’s heritage museum.During the tour, Mills saw an old safe that had been sitting in the basement for decades. It came from the old Brunswick Hotel, which closed in the 1970s. It was donated to the museum in the 1990s, but by then, nobody remembered the combination or even what was locked inside it. At one point, staff even enlisted the help of a professional locksmith, who told them that the gears were probably too old to fall into place properly and that the safe would never be opened again.Like many visitors before him, Mills thought he would give it a shot “for a laugh.” He put his ear to the door to listen for the clicks and dialed 20-40-60.[3] The safe slowly creaked open.The contents weren’t exactly lost treasure but rather old documents from the hotel, including a pay slip and a pad full of restaurant orders.

7How To Save Schrodinger’s Cat

According to a new study published in Nature, physicists have developed an experiment that shows that quantum transitions are not instantaneous and unpredictable as previously thought and illustrated by Erwin Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment.Schrodinger’s cat is an idea meant to demonstrate quantum superposition or, in other words, that a particle can exist in multiple states at the same time until it is observed. To illustrate his point, the Austrian scientist proposed an experiment where a cat was sealed inside a closed box alongside a radioactive source, a Geiger counter, and a flask of poison. If an atom decays, it sets off the Geiger counter, which smashes the flask of poison and kills the cat. You can only determine the fate of the feline by looking inside the box and, until then, it is both alive and dead at the same time.Not necessarily, according to Dr. Zlatko Minev from Yale University. His team believes that the quantum jumps are not instantaneous, just really, really fast. In their experiment, they used artificial atoms called qubits which were cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and indirectly observed using three microwave generators in a sealed 3-D enclosure. The transitions were akin to a slide more than a quantum jump and could even be reversed with a perfectly timed pulse of radiation, thus saving the hypothetical cat from certain doom.[4] Minev believes this research could be valuable in the future for quantum computing.

6Florida Man Rides Again

Photo credit: Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office/Facebook
It is time, once more, to check out the thrilling adventures of Florida Man. This time, he found himself a partner and tried to gain access to...

The judge said the father of six who designed missiles for Islamic State chose to ignore the true nature of the terrorist group’s atrocities and was not “hoodwinked.” On the contrary Judge, Haisem Zahab understood very well the true nature of the Islamic State – Islam – which is exactly why he joined the war.

A New South Wales electrician who designed missiles for Islamic State chose to ignore the true nature of the terrorist group’s atrocities and was not “hoodwinked”, a judge says.

Haisem Zahab pleaded guilty in October 2018 to knowingly providing support or resources to a terrorist organisation after working on a laser warning receiver, rockets and a rocket guidance method for IS from 2014.

The 44-year-old, from the NSW town of Young, also admitted he failed to comply with an order to help police access encrypted data on his phone and other devices.

Zahab has pleaded guilty to sending drawings and instructions to IS supporters overseas.

Zahab pleaded guilty to sending drawings and instructions to IS supporters overseas. (9News)

Justice Geoffrey Bellew today jailed Zahab for nine years with a non-parole period of six years and nine months.

Family members gasped and cried out in the NSW Supreme Court’s public gallery as the sentence was delivered.

The judge rejected Zahab’s testimony that he’d been in a cult or bubble of IS supporters – including on Twitter where he assumed the alias “Stranger” – and had divorced himself from mainstream news.

Zahab has pleaded guilty to sending drawings and instructions to IS supporters overseas.

The electrician’s work was described as sophisticated. (9News)

“His evidence essentially amounts to the proposition that he was living a hermit-like existence, cloistered in something akin to a hermetically-sealed bubble, completely removed from reality,” Justice Bellew said.

He further dismissed Zahab’s claim he genuinely believed at the time of his offending that IS was “a force of good” rather than evil and could, therefore, assist civilians in Syria fight the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Such a proposition, in my view, is fanciful in the extreme,” the judge said.

“The offender had become aware of the atrocities committed by IS. His level of dedication to that organisation saw him choose to ignore what had come to his attention.”

The agreed facts state Zahab researched and used 3D technology to develop the mechanical design and fabrication of a laser warning receiver to provide advanced notice of incoming laser-guided weapons.

He created a 288-page report on the receiver and sent it via secure software to a UK national in Wales who later admitted to membership of IS.

He also simulated flights of rockets with some featuring Islamic State’s black flag with white writing.

The judge said Zahab “earnestly” engaged in secretive and sophisticated nightly research for the terror group, providing “substantial and tangible” support.

“He did so with unwavering focus, at all times intent upon assisting IS in its involvement in armed and violent...

A captured ISIS fighter has revealed the terror group’s plan to send English-speaking fighters through the porous U.S.-Mexico border to attack financial institutions.

Abu Henricki, a Canadian citizen with dual citizenship with Trinidad, told the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism that the terror group asked him to travel the U.S. through Mexico in order to carry out “financial attacks.”

“They were going to move me to the Mexican side [of the US southern border] via Puerto Rico. This was mastermind[ed] by a guy in America. Where he is, I do not know,” Henricki said. “That information, the plan came from someone from the New Jersey state from America. I was going to take a boat [from Puerto Rico] into Mexico. He was going to smuggle me in.”

“What they wanted to do, basically, is they wanted to do financial attacks. Financial attacks to cripple the economy.”

“They have their system of doing it,” Henricki said. “It wasn’t me alone. They were sending you to Puerto Rico and from Puerto Rico [to Mexico].”

Fox News reports, “Henricki allegedly traveled to Syria with the intention of serving as an ISIS fighter, but was later told he could not take on soldier duties due to a chronic illness. At the end of 2016, he claimed to have been ‘invited’ by the ISIS intelligence wing – known as the emni – to join other Trinidadians and launch...

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Girls With Guns

TSA is letting illegal aliens fly on U.S. airlines WITHOUT proper documents while Americans suffer humiliating searches

After the horrific Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. homeland, Congress quickly expanded the federal law enforcement bureaucracy by creating the gigantic Department of Homeland Security and with it, a brand-new agency called the Transportation Security Administration.

Among other duties, the TSA is charged with screening passengers at U.S. airports via security checkpoints where agents force passengers to practically undress, be exposed to radiation-emitting x-ray machines, and be subjected to humiliating pat-downs in which scores of passengers have complained are too sexually exploitative.

But while American passengers are subjected to such outrages, the TSA’s parent agency, DHS, has been allowing non-citizens to board U.S. flights without proper documentation and, certainly, with far less than U.S. citizens are expected to present before boarding.

As reported by the Washington Examiner:

The federal agency tasked with overseeing security at transportation hubs has been violating its own policy by allowing migrants who have been released from federal custody onto flights despite not having required documents, according to several Department of Homeland Security officials.

For six months, the news site reported, TSA has been permitting migrants who have been released from the custody of other agencies that fall under DHS control to board planes to other parts of the United States even though the passengers did not have any of the 15 documents the agency says are the only acceptable forms of ID in order to fly.

So now, not only do illegal aliens not have to show an ID to vote in America, the don’t have to have one to get on board some flights, either.

DHS has refused to temporarily change federal policy or introduce a permanent solution since early December in order to address the problem, even as there are no indications that record apprehensions at the U.S. border, as well as mass releases of migrants, are going to abate soon.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released more than 200,000 migrants since January who presented themselves to U.S. border agents as part of a family. They must be released under a 2015 court decision barring ICE form holding families longer than 20 days.

Often, ICE personnel drops off migrants they are releasing at bus terminals where non-governmental groups have been pre-alerted to the drop-offs and thus send...