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Post by maarts on Sept 6, 2005 20:58:15 GMT -5
Wood fired? You're fired!
A computer engineer who lost his job because he ate two of six slices of pepperoni pizza left over after a company meeting has been named the winner of an offbeat internet contest that solicited stories about outrageous firings.
A panel of judges assembled by Simply Hired, the emerging Silicon Valley search engine company that sponsored the contest, picked Jim Garrison's strange tale from more than 1000 entries. The prize is a free Caribbean cruise that will include passengers famously fired by Donald Trump on his popular television show The Apprentice.
Garrison, 39, prevailed over some tough competition.
The runners-up included these bizarre stories: a furniture mover who got fired after he and a co-worker were caught fencing with some adult sex toys they found in a customer's bedroom; a worker who misunderstood a manager's instructions to send some sensitive data to microfilm and emailed it to a "Michael Finn" instead; and a warehouse worker found doing perverse things with the prosthetics made by his employer.
It made for such fascinating reading that one woman posted an account of how she was sacked for spending too much company time scrolling through the postings on Simplyfired.com.
Garrison said he never thought he would be rewarded for getting fired. Then again, he never dreamed he would be fired for eating leftover pizza.
Although Garrison didn't work in the department that held the meeting where the pizza was served, he figured it was fair game since the company had bought it and it looked like it was going to be wasted if it wasn't eaten. What he didn't know was that several other employees had already worked out a plan to take the leftover pizza home with them. When they discovered a third of the leftovers had been eaten, they reported Garrison to management, ultimately leading to his dismissal.
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Post by maarts on Sept 6, 2005 21:00:01 GMT -5
Safe travel
Thieves in Austria nearly derailed a passenger train after pushing a 15-kilogram stolen safe onto the track in the hope that a speeding locomotive would smash it open, Austrian police said.
The force of the collision, near Bregenz, did open the safe, a police spokesman said, "but nearly all the money was thrown out and the perpetrators had to flee," Agence France-Presse reports, "The locomotive was very badly damaged and there was nearly a derailment."
The safe had contained about €5000.
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Post by maarts on Sept 6, 2005 21:01:27 GMT -5
Watchdog's breakfast
An American scientist has designed a robot dog that monitors your daily food intake and pleads with you to curb over-indulgence, New Scientist reports.
The canine coach, a souped-up version of Sony's Aibo, is programmed to exhibit four behaviours: lethargy, energy and two stages in between.
If you keep to your daily kilojoules, the dog will jump up and down, wag its tail, play cheerful music and flash brightly coloured lights that stud its body. But if you splurge on the cheesecake it will move ponderously and play sorrowful, low-energy music.
The pooch gets its information from a pedometer, bathroom scales and personal digital assistant on which the owner is supposed to truthfully record food intake.
The data from these electronic devices are sent to the dog by wireless technology. The system, still in its early stages, has been designed by Cynthia Breazeal at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, New Scientist reports.
The apparently frivolous invention has a serious idea behind it. Past studies have shown that people who record what they eat and how much they exercise, and who receive close encouragement in their endeavour, are more likely to succeed in their diet.
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Post by maarts on Sept 6, 2005 21:04:39 GMT -5
It's a long way to the top if you wanna....
Some young Japanese graduates will have a mountain to climb to get their first job.
One of the country's top internet apparel retailers wants to make sure new employees have what it takes to scale the heights of business by interviewing them at the summit of the 3778 metre Mount Fuji, Reuters reports.
About 50 hopefuls will climb the mountain with company executives on Wednesday, aiming to reach the summit for an interview at dawn the next day.
"A lot of people have said we are strange," said a spokesman for the parent company, ImageNet Co.
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Post by maarts on Sept 6, 2005 21:06:13 GMT -5
Pay to be a monster
How much would you pay to be immortalised as a zombie in a Stephen King novel or a good guy in a John Grisham thriller?
King and Grisham are among 16 authors selling the rights to have characters in books named after bidders, to raise money for the First Amendment Project, a California group that promotes freedom of information and expression.
Details of which characters are on offer have been posted on the internet auction site eBay. The auctions will be held from September 1 to September 25.
King is offering a character in a novel called CELL, to be published in 2006 or 2007. "The buyer should be aware that CELL is a violent piece of work, which comes complete with zombies set in motion by bad cell phone signals that destroy the human brain," King said. "Like cheap whisky, it's very nasty and extremely satisfying."
King adds that if the buyer wants the character to die, it must be given a female name.
David Greene, of the First Amendment Project, said fans had already shown significant interest. "My job is to put out the most conservative estimate, and we're hoping to raise somewhere between $US40,000 ($52,000) and $US50,000 between the 16 authors."
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Post by maarts on Oct 12, 2005 5:37:39 GMT -5
 Smurfs under fire ... The UNICEF ad campaign.Out of an idyllic blue sky dotted with birds and butterflies come warplanes that carpet bomb the Smurfs' forest village, killing Smurfette, leaving Baby Smurf wailing in distress and sending Papa Smurf and the others bolting for cover. The scene from a bizarre commercial featuring Belgium's lovable blue-skinned cartoon characters is so upsetting it can only be shown after 9pm to avoid scaring children. Yet it is part of a UNICEF ad campaign on Belgian television meant to highlight the plight of ex-child soldiers in Africa. "It's working. We are getting a lot of reactions and people are logging on to our website," said Philippe Henon, a spokesman for the Belgian office of the UN's children's agency. UNICEF says it hopes the ad featuring the characters - created by Belgian cartoonist Pierre "Peyo" Culliford - will draw in donations for its program to aid former child soldiers in Burundi, Congo and Sudan. The 20-second clip is meant to show that war can happen in the most innocent of places, Henon said, "We get reactions from all over the place. People are shocked and want to know the reasons behind this cartoon image." The commercial begins with the familiar image of the Smurfs joyfully frolicking and singing their theme song with birds and butterflies. Then, planes appear and rain down bombs, setting the houses ablaze. Smurfette is killed and the others go running. Baby Smurf sits crying at the edge of a bomb crater. The clip finishes with the written message: "Don't let war destroy the children's world" followed by a call for donations. UNICEF decided to stray from its more traditional ads using real life images of children playing and laughing in order to shock people, Henon said, "We wanted to have a lasting effect of our campaign, because we felt that in comparison to previous campaigns, the public is not easily motivated to do things for humanitarian causes and certainly not when it involved Africa or children in war." The UNICEF campaign was launched on Friday with the Smurf TV clip and lasts until April. "We see so many images that we don't really react anymore," said Julie Lamoureux, account director at Publicis, the advertising agency that drew up the campaign for UNICEF Belgium. "We wanted to show adults how awful war is by reaching them within their memories of childhood." The Smurf ad will be followed by a similar ad in November to promote UNICEF's "Let Children Live in Peace" campaign. French children's program Martine and a famous children's song, Au Clair de la Lune, will be launched with changed lyrics. AP Let kids be kids and don't take their heroes away for the sake of proving a point... |
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Post by ScottsyII on Oct 12, 2005 6:55:01 GMT -5
A darn good point... I'm all for the cause of not letting war affect Children etc, but damnit, I'd be really upset if my kids saw this sort of ad and it terrorised them... I loved the smurfs as a kid, and for me it was an ideal little world that I wanted to disappear into when I watched them...
Kids growing up these days already have fear beaten into them from the second they are able to understand it... they are little sponges... they hear the news, they soak up the media images and frankly, I think they need a refuge from that, not to be bombarded with more of it.
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Post by phil on Oct 12, 2005 7:26:45 GMT -5
I saw that Unicef spot on european TV yesterday...
Very well done and sure to raise awareness among people
who probably wouldn't care less about childrens being destroyed
by those "little" wars being fought all over the globe !!
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Post by phil on Oct 12, 2005 7:27:53 GMT -5
Maarts ~ You should post that image on CE ...
See what kind of reactions it might elicit ...
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Post by ScottsyII on Oct 12, 2005 7:38:42 GMT -5
would elicit a pretty interesting response I'd say... and maybe that place needs some agitating all over again... I hear it's been a little lacklustre of late...
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Post by maarts on Oct 12, 2005 8:08:14 GMT -5
I'd probably end up getting banned.
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Post by ScottsyII on Oct 12, 2005 8:15:02 GMT -5
Hmmmmm, yeah, there's a distinct possibility in that happening...
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Post by phil on Oct 12, 2005 8:16:01 GMT -5
I'd probably end up getting banned.
Maarts ~ You forgot something...
Here... ;D ;D ;D
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Post by maarts on Oct 12, 2005 8:31:51 GMT -5
He he he....
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Post by phil on Oct 23, 2005 13:12:09 GMT -5
Parking ticket put on car as man sat dead inside
Bernard O'Riordan in Sydney
Saturday October 22, 2005
The Guardian
A man who had died was given a parking ticket as he sat slumped in his car outside a busy shopping centre in Melbourne, Australia. A traffic warden stuck an infringement notice on the 71-year-old's car at Croydon Market, east of Melbourne, on Wednesday.
"It is a very sad situation. But it's simply a case of the parking officer not noticing," said Paul Denham, the mayor of the local Maroondah council. The man had been reported missing nine days earlier and was known to be seriously ill. A postmortem will be carried out to determine the time and cause of death.
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