FukDatShhh.CoM

It’s easy for a gear-head to be discouraged about the state of the world, especially in times of Carpocalypse and Cash for Clunkers. But occasionally, a bright light of awesome renews the spirit. Road-legal bumper cars do just that.

Yes, you read that right; these little beasties are street legal. Either Kawasaki or Honda motorcycle engines for power, and retired vintage bumper car bodies – transformed into the most awesome form of mini-car we’ve ever seen.

There’s seven of these little monsters floating around California , and they’re all the creation of one man, Tom Wright, a gyro-gear loose builder on the outskirts of San Diego who figured the leftovers of the Long Beach Pike amusement park needed a more dignified end than the trash heap.

They were originally powered by Harley engines but rattled like heck and Tom replace them with Honda or Kawasaki 750’s… and a couple have been ‘measured’ [not run at] theoretically as capable of 160 MPH which is terrifyingly fast in machines with such a short wheelbase. Doesn’t mean we would totally rock one should the opportunity present itself. In fact, we now have only one burning desire, to see these things running a go kart track with a clown in the drivers seat.

Hint:

Click each picture for the FULL photo.

PENN VALLEY, Calif. – A coyote struck by a fast-moving car near the Nevada-Utah border apparently got trapped by the vehicle’s grill and rode for several hours all the way west to the foothills east of Sacramento.

Animal Struck By Car, Gets Trapped Behind Grill

Daniel East and his sister, Tevyn, were travelling at about 75 mph along Interstate 80 when they saw some coyotes running nearby. One of the coyotes ran in front of the car.

“Right off the bat, we knew it was bad,” Daniel East said.

They said they kept driving because they thought they had killed the animal, so there was no point in stopping. They were on their way to start to new chapter in their lives, to be in a community of artists and farmers in North San Juan, just outside Nevada City.

After they arrived — eight to 10 hours later — they found the trapped animal and called Penn Valley-based Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release.

Jan Crowell, a rehabilitation center volunteer, said she brought a catch pole, an animal carrier, gloves and blankets.

When she arrived, East and his sister were taking the screws out of the car’s grill in an effort to get the animal out. Once the grill was pulled forward, the coyote poked its head out.

“No broken bones, no internal injuries — nothing,” Daniel East said, adding that the animal only had a few scrapes on one of his paws.

Crowell said she placed the loop of the catch pole around the coyote’s neck and put the creature into a dog carrier.

The coyote was taken to the rehabilitation facility. It remained there until Thursday, when it managed to push up the steel at the bottom of a kennel to free itself, Crowell said.
It hasn’t been seen since.

“We named it Tricky for a reason,” Daniel East said.

SEE NEWS FOOTAGE HERE.

Source: KCRA Channel 3

NEW YORK (UPI) – A New York man invited to appear on “Good Morning America” for rescuing a man and a boy from a fire surprised his girlfriend with an on-air marriage proposal.

Horia Cretan, 33, appeared on the ABC morning show Thursday to tell how he carried a ladder from the Bronx store he was working at Wednesday to the burning building and climbed the fire escape to rescue a man who was having trouble climbing out of a window and a 4-year-old boy who was unconscious.

He ended the segment by asking his girlfriend, Desiree, to marry him with a promise that “there’s never going to be a dull moment.” Desiree, 24, quickly accepted the proposal.

Cretan told “Good Morning America” the boy was taken to a hospital once firefighters arrived and is expected to recover.

“He’s a brave little kid,” he said. “He’s really strong to go through what he went through.”

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

By JAY ALABASTER

CHIBA, Japan (AP) – Japan’s big-name electronic manufacturers are readying flat-screen TVs that can show high-definition movies and video games in 3-D for launch next year.

At the country’s biggest consumer electronics show, which opened Tuesday just outside of Tokyo, all the major makers had large 3-D prototypes on display. Visitors to company booths at the CEATEC show donned special electronic glasses and watched as soccer balls flew toward them in sports clips and virtual heroes dodged deep into the background of video games.

Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp. have both said they will bring their first models to market next year. Details about what will be available to watch on the new TVs are still sparse, though the companies said they want to begin with movies and games.

“Content is the most important thing,” said Masanobu Inoe, a Panasonic engineer who worked on his company’s new 3-D plasma sets.

The companies are working on standards for broadcasts and discs, which may end up as an enhancement of Blu-ray, the high-definition format designed to supersede standard DVDs. Sony, which also runs a large movie studio, plans to release selections from its holdings.

“They will be in a standard format that can be viewed on other companies’ TVs as well,” said Sony spokeswoman Satsuki Shinnaka.

Some companies such as Sharp Corp. displayed 3-D sets but are waiting until more content and TV broadcasts are available before they set a product launch date.

Most 3-D technology involves showing two images, one for each eye, that viewed together are seen as a single three-dimensional scene.

Movies have been shown for decades using an older technology that requires bicolored glasses to filter out an image for each eye. The new generation of 3-D TVs uses a technology that rapidly flickers between two images, together with electronic glasses that allow each eye to see only one. Without the glasses, images on the screens are blurry and a bit nauseating to watch.

Toshiba Corp. also introduced a new TV, slated to go on sale later this year in Japan for about $11,000, that includes a high-tech chip it developed together Sony and IBM Corp.

The ‘Cell’ chip, which is also used in Sony’s PlayStation 3, allows the TV to show and record eight channels at the same time. A prototype, due for release sometime after next year, can convert standard images to 3-D images for viewing with glasses.

Other companies including South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and Hyundai have already launched 3-D TVs with lower specifications. Cable stations in Japan broadcast short clips in 3-D a few times each day.

The coming wave of 3-D TVs has been enabled by new technologies, but is also driven by manufacturers searching for ways to spur sales and differentiate themselves from a host of low-end TV makers cranking out flat-screen models at low prices.

But in a keynote speech to start the show, Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo said his company would not lose sight of products for lower-income countries, where markets are rapidly expanding.

“In each region, we want to create a new ‘volume zone’ of products that people want,” he said.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

Source: BN9.com

NEW YORK (UPI) – The health of employed U.S. workers is trending downward and one in three experiences one or more symptoms of clinical depression, researchers say.

A report by the Families and Work Institute also says 28 percent of employees report that their overall health is “excellent,” down from 34 percent six years ago.

The report also reveals:

• 41 percent of employees report experiencing three or more indicators of stress sometimes, often or very often.
• One in five employees has trouble falling asleep very often or fairly often, and 31 percent awaken too early and have trouble falling back to sleep.
• 21 percent are treated for high blood pressure and 14 percent are treated for high cholesterol.

The report says 49 percent of U.S. employees have not engaged in regular physical exercise in the last 30 days, including 22 percent not engaging in any rigorous physical exercise. One in four U.S. workers smokes.

Having paid vacations bode well for personal health and well-being, as well as intent to stay in one’s job, the study says.

The study used data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce, which surveys the U.S. workforce every five years. Sample sizes average about 3,500, including wage and salaried employees, as well as self-employed workers.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

TAMPA, Fla. (UPI) – Two Florida brothers set a record for a trans-Atlantic journey in a 21-foot fishing boat, the smallest powerboat to make the trip, they reported on their blog.

Ralph Brown, 50 of Spring Hill and Robert Brown, 52, of Merritt Island left Tampa, Fla., June 27 and arrived in London Friday, they said on their Web site, www.crosstheatlantic.com.

“It is exciting that we are actually here.” Ralph Brown told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times in a telephone interview. “By the way, it is a beautiful place.”

The trip of almost 7,000 miles also set a record for longest ocean journey in a flats boat and for being the first flats boat to make it across the Atlantic Ocean, the Times reported Sunday.

The brothers made the trip in a boat designed by Ralph Brown, who owns Dream Boats in Hudson, Fla. In Greenland, they collided with an iceberg, slammed into rocks and almost ran out of fuel and money.

The brothers set a Guinness record in 2007 for a 1,400 mile journey in a similar boat from Atlantic Beach, N.C., to Bermuda to New York Harbor, the newspaper said.

The current trip was conducted to honor three of Ralph Brown’s fellow U.S. Marine, who died in 1980 in a failed attempt to rescue American hostages from Iran. The brothers said they are trying to raise $3 million for charities benefiting wounded heroes.

The two sailors will travel to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, after their London stop.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

By DEVLIN BARRETT

WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal prosecutors on Monday charged a Miami man with the largest case of credit and debit card data theft ever in the United States.

Authorities said Albert Gonzales, 28, has broken his own record for identity theft by hacking into more retail networks to steal data from 130 million accounts.

Gonzales, who is already in jail awaiting trial in a hacking case, was indicted Monday in New Jersey, charged with conspiring with two other unnamed suspects to steal the private information.

Prosecutors say Gonzales, who is also known online as “soupnazi,” targeted customers of convenience store giant 7-Eleven Inc., and supermarket chain Hannaford Brothers, Co. Inc. They also targeted Heartland Payment Systems, a New Jersey-based card payment processor.

Gonzales is awaiting trial in New York for allegedly helping hack the computer network of the national restaurant chain Dave and Buster’s. Trial in that case is due to begin next month.

He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the new charges.

The Justice Department said the new case represents the largest alleged credit and debit card data breach ever charged in the United States, beginning in October 2006.

Gonzales allegedly devised a sophisticated attack to penetrate the computer networks, steal the card data, and send that data to computer servers in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

The indictment also charges that Gonzales and his co-conspirators used sophisticated hacker techniques to cover their tracks and avoid detection.

Also last year, the Justice Department announced additional charges against Gonzales and others for hacking retail companies’ computers for the theft of approximately 40 million credit cards. At the time, that was believed to be the biggest single case of hacking private computer networks to steal credit card data.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed