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gncxx King-Size Canary
Great Old One Joined: 25 Aug 2001 Total posts: 13557 Location: Eh? Gender: Male |
 Posted: 22-03-2013 18:40 Post subject: |
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| Where did he get all the stuff? Did he make it himself or does he have connections? Seems a hell of a lot of trouble to go to just because he didn't get the seat he wanted - one too many viewings of Catch Me If You Can, maybe? |
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ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 11-04-2013 14:08 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Hermit caught after 27 years in Maine woods
Christopher Knight, who disappeared aged 19, lived by stealing food and supplies from woodland camps in Maine, say police
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/11/american-hermit-caught-27-years
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 April 2013 08.30 BST
Jump to comments (547)
The woodland camp where Christopher Knight is believed to have lived for up to 27 years. Photograph: Reuters/Maine police
A man who lived as a hermit for decades in a makeshift camp in the woods and may be responsible for more than 1,000 burglaries for food and other supplies has been caught by a determined game warden who was fed up with the thefts.
Christopher Knight, 47, was arrested when he tripped a surveillance sensor while allegedly stealing food from a camp for people with special needs in a small town in the far north-eastern state of Maine.
Authorities on Tuesday found the campsite where they believe Knight, known as the North Pond Hermit in local lore, lived for up to 27 years. Knight's living quarters included a tent covered by tarps suspended between trees, a bed, propane cooking stoves and a battery-run radio, which he used to keep up with the news and listen to talk radio and a rock station, authorities said.
Some residents say they have been aware of the hermit for years, often in connection with break-ins. During questioning after his arrest Knight said that the last verbal contact he had with another person was during the 1990s, state trooper Diane Vance said. "He passed somebody on a trail and just exchanged a common greeting of hello and that was the only conversation or human contact he's had since he went into the woods in 1986."
Christopher Knight, 47, known as the North Pond Hermit, after his arrest. Photograph: Reuters/Maine police
He was so well known to some summer cottage owners that they left food out for him so he wouldn't break in during the colder months. But others were hardly aware of the hermit living within their midst without detection since 1986. "I was born in 1987. He was there before I was," Rome resident Melissa Witham said outside her home.
Paul Anderson, a town councillor, acknowledged local talk about a man living alone in the woods. "I've lived in the town for 32 years and I've never, ever met the guy," Anderson said.
Since vanishing from his Maine home for no apparent reason and setting up camp when he was about 19, Knight sustained himself on food stolen from dozens of cottages, but his favourite target was the Pine Tree Camp, where game warden Sergeant Terry Hughes, who had been trying to nab Knight for years, set up a surveillance alarm, authorities said.
Knight was caught on Tuesday as he left the camp's kitchen freezer with a backpack full of food, they said. "He used us like his local Wal-mart," said Harvey Chesley, the camp's facilities manager.
Ron Churchill, owner of Bear Spring Camps in Rome, said employees maintaining his camp's lakeside cabins had seen the man thought to be the hermit in the past. Churchill said his business has lost propane containers to thefts, the latest of which were discovered on Wednesday.
Despite Maine's harsh winters, during which temperatures sometimes struggle to get above -12.2C (10F) for a week at a time, Knight stayed at his encampment and avoided making campfires so he wouldn't be detected, and he used the propane only for cooking, Hughes said. To stay warm he would bundle himself in multiple sleeping bags, authorities said.
When caught Knight was clean-shaven and still using his aviator-style spectacles from the 1980s.
"When we went to the site where he has been living, it only took a few minutes looking around and making observations such as ropes that were embedded in the trees that had grown around them that he used to hold his tarps up, shoes that were under rocks that had been there for years, there was enough indication to me … that he had been there for a lot of years," said Hughes.
Christopher Knight, the North Pond Hermit, in a surveillance video during one of the break-ins he allegedly staged to sustain himself. Photograph: Reuters/Maine police
The trooper said that the case of the North Pond hermit sometimes seemed a "myth" that might go unsolved and bringing it to a conclusion is "amazing".
"I think it's still sinking in," Vance said. "I don't think I will ever be involved in such an incident or case it this magnitude."
Knight had been charged only with the Pine Tree Camp burglary, in which $238 worth of goods were taken, and was being held at the jail on $5,000 bail for burglary and theft. It was not clear whether he had a lawyer.
Knight had attended a high school in Fairfield, about 20 miles (32km) away. Why he decided to disappear in the woods remained a question on Wednesday. Attempts to reach relatives were unsuccessful. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 24-05-2013 12:12 Post subject: |
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Imho this fies here.
| Quote: | French ex-leader Giscard d'Estaing reveals panda attack
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22645963
Valery Giscard d'Estaing is seen here with the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979
Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing has revealed he was once jumped on by a panda when he dared himself to enter its cage.
He said he had been visiting Vincennes Zoo in Paris, where his daughter was on work experience, when he decided to test his "presidential courage".
A panda leapt on him and staff had to free him from its claws, Mr Giscard d'Estaing, 87, told a conference.
An expert at Edinburgh Zoo told the BBC the ex-leader had had a lucky escape.
"Although they are vegetarian bears, obviously at the end of the day pandas are still very powerful and muscular bears with teeth and claws to match," Iain Valentine, director of giant pandas at the zoo, told the BBC News website.
"Although not particularly aggressive by nature, pandas do have this potential and are very territorial animals. You can go in with young animals under the age of two years; however, after this age we really would not recommend it and certainly our keepers are never in the same area as our giant pandas."
Mr Giscard d'Estaing, who was in office from 1974 to 1981, was speaking at an event in Blois, capital of the north-central region of Loir-et-Cher.
Video of his speech on Tuesday evening was circulated by national media on Thursday.
The pandas, he said, had been a gift from China to his predecessor as president, Georges Pompidou.
"They came to extract me from its claws but imagine what would have been said had the animal knocked me to the ground," the famously tall president - he is 1.89m (6ft 2in) - remarked to laughter from the audience.
Mr Giscard d'Estaing is often regarded as the most cultivated and most aristocratic of recent French presidents, if not the most pompous. |
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| garrick92 Invisible Flaneur Joined: 29 Oct 2001 Total posts: 700 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 24-05-2013 12:48 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Mr Giscard d'Estaing is often regarded as the most cultivated and most aristocratic of recent French presidents, if not the most pompous. |
How on earth did a mean little dig like that get through the editorial process? |
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| Mythopoeika Boring petty conservative
Joined: 18 Sep 2001 Total posts: 9109 Location: Not far from Bedford Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 24-05-2013 20:10 Post subject: |
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| garrick92 wrote: | | Quote: | | Mr Giscard d'Estaing is often regarded as the most cultivated and most aristocratic of recent French presidents, if not the most pompous. |
How on earth did a mean little dig like that get through the editorial process? |
Just reporting the facts, weren't they.  |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 04-07-2013 10:26 Post subject: |
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US gym teacher becomes internet hit after wearing same outfit for 40 years
A retiring Texas gym teacher has become an internet sensation after wearing the same 1970s tank top and shirt throughout his entire 40-year career.
8:42AM BST 04 Jul 2013
Dale Irby, of Dallas, wore the same disco-era outfit for every single yearbook photo from 1973 until his retirement this year. After the Dallas Morning News published a story on the end of his four-decade fashion statement, the images went viral, attracting more than 1.3 million hits on the news website.
The 63-year-old said the tradition was started by accident after he wore the brown V-neck and pointy-collared cream shirt for Prestonwood Elementary's annual photograph for two years running from 1973.
Spending most of his professional life in gym shorts, he had little in the way of formal wear so when the school asked the teachers to "wear something nice" for the photo he just grabbed one of the few suitable items from his sparsely populated wardrobe.
“I was so embarrassed when I got the school pictures back that second year and realized I had worn the very same thing as the first year,” Mr Irby told the Dallas Morning News..
But his wife, Cathy, dared him to wear the same combination for a third year running, and, with the encouragement of his students, the joke went on and on. “After five pictures,” he said, “it was like: ‘Why stop?’”
40 years on, he no longer wears the dated ensemble all day but slips it on for the shoot. It still fits, he said, "if I suck it in a little". 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10159091/US-gym-teacher-becomes-internet-hit-after-wearing-same-outfit-for-40-years.html |
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| cherrybomb Skating the thin crust
Great Old One Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Total posts: 1005 Location: Sitting on the roof at dusk Gender: Female |
| Posted: 04-07-2013 12:28 Post subject: |
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Haha! What a guy  |
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| sherbetbizarre Great Old One Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Total posts: 1418 Gender: Male |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-10-2013 11:25 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Stubble: Can you describe your political affiliation as a “Lauraist Communist”?
John: [If] you’ve read my autobiography, The Conscience of a Communist, you know I converted to Communism in September 1981 after reading a particularly touching article in the Daily World (at the time, the newspaper of the Communist Party USA). In May 1982 I started seeing visions of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who told me she is God and that I was right to be a Communist. Lauraism is my religion and Communism is my political philosophy. I was a member of the Communist Party USA in 2006 and 2007, but was dropped along with seven other members for alleged “factionalism” not related to my religious beliefs.
I founded the Edgertonite National Party in 2009, which was for converting most of Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and northern Iowa into an independent Lauraist nation to be called Edgerton (after the street in Saint Paul and more importantly, the former Rice-Edgerton bus company which became North Suburban Lines in 1975 and is now known as Lorenz). However, the ENP closed last year due to internal issues and lack of support. It was reborn as the Lauraist Communist Party this year. The new name is more to the point and requires less explanation.
The LCP currently has two members and no money of its own, so has little formal organization. We do have a provisional constitution and plans to hold a convention when there is sufficient membership to give it meaning. ...
http://stubblemag.com/2013/09/30/johncharles/ |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-10-2013 19:37 Post subject: |
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There's a strange person round here. I won't describe him, but most people on first seeing him would think "village idiot" (or similar).
But I've heard him talking to people, and he's quite coherent in his speech, and apparently intelligent. His normal gait is rather shambling, but I've seen him using a skate-board quite well.
Tonight he was in a pub, and he put on some country dance style music, and danced to it, all by himself, quite energetically. It may have been River dance crossed with Morris dancing and who knows what else, but he was quite co-ordinated. In fact he earned a round of applause!
And yet if you look at his face, you 'd think "V.I."...
"Differently Abled", I suppose... |
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| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 15-10-2013 20:55 Post subject: |
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| Forget it Rynner. It's Cornwall. |
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| SHAYBARSABE Great Old One Joined: 05 May 2009 Total posts: 1378 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 15-10-2013 22:25 Post subject: |
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| rynner2 wrote: | There's a strange person round here. I won't describe him, but most people on first seeing him would think "village idiot" (or similar).
But I've heard him talking to people, and he's quite coherent in his speech, and apparently intelligent. His normal gait is rather shambling, but I've seen him using a skate-board quite well.
Tonight he was in a pub, and he put on some country dance style music, and danced to it, all by himself, quite energetically. It may have been River dance crossed with Morris dancing and who knows what else, but he was quite co-ordinated. In fact he earned a round of applause!
And yet if you look at his face, you 'd think "V.I."...
"Differently Abled", I suppose... |
We've probably got his cousin over here. "Dancing Man" has been using a CD player to accompany his dancing on the streets for more than the last 15 years. From a distance, he looks like just another homeless guy, but when you talk to him, you realize how alert, coherent, and intelligent he is. |
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| Isis177 Great Old One Joined: 22 May 2004 Total posts: 425 Location: Australia Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-10-2013 05:17 Post subject: |
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I drive my daughter to the station about 7am each morning. On a couple of occasions I've seen a chap in a bowler hat walking down the road rather than the footpath.I've never seen anyone else wear one around here.
One morning I also saw a person with their face completely covered by a blank blue mask-I couldn't even see eye holes. |
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