Derren Brown's Blog, page 18

Apple holding more cash than USA

Apple now has more cash to spend than the United States government.

Latest figures from the US Treasury Department show that the country has an operating cash balance of $73.7bn (£45.3bn).

Apple's most recent financial results put its reserves at $76.4bn.

The US House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill to raise the country's debt ceiling, allowing it to borrow more money to cover spending commitments.

If it fails to extend the current limit of $14.3 trillion dollars, the federal government could find itself struggling to make payments, and risks the loss of its AAA credit rating.

The United States is currently spending around $200bn more than it collects in revenue every month.

Apple, on the other hand, is making money hand over fist, according to its financial results.

In the three months ending 25 June, net income was 125% higher than a year earlier at $7.31bn.

Full Story at BBC

Calling all geeks – Geeks.co.uk relaunch. The website born from a sofa.

Geeks.co.uk couldn't afford to pay writers – so offered "free room and board" in London when their writers had job interviews, and opportunities in London.

The website – started in Scotland by award-winning journalist Ally Millar – is celebrating its first year in the capital with a fitting party: a sleepover in a location familiar to many of the site's writers – the editor's flat.

Although this has been a breakthrough year for the site – finally hitting profit in November – the coffers were so tight that payment came by the 26 year old editor inviting contributors – from as far afield as Ireland and even Denmark – to stay on his sofa when paid work opportunities in London came up.

The site whose motto is "by Geeks for Geeks" exists to display the talents of aspiring artists, photographers, journalists, filmmakers, creative writers, and unsigned musicians and is often compared to a UK-wide student newspaper. It enjoys good relations with institutions from Brighton to Aberdeen; Cardiff to Belfast.

In the past we've pinched a few links from these guys, so we feel its only fair to say you should head over and check out the new site and geek out.

 

Penn and Teller release new "skeptical thinking" show: Tell A Lie

Teller has the following to say:

It takes the basic format of Discovery, which is, you know, fascinating, unbelievable science stories. [Each show will have] six or seven of these science pieces, with us doing a lot of the demos ourselves, and one of them is a lie. It continues our obsession with critical thinking and skepticism. The formation of Penn & Teller was about the idea: Can you use magic to tell the truth? Can you use the idea of lying to really get to what it means to have a fact? Everybody's lying to people on TV, so it's interesting to say when you are.

We wanted to work with Discovery, and then banged around a lot of different ideas. The fact of the matter is that in Penn and Teller: Bullshit and Penn & Teller: Tell a Lie, the first three words are the same. But whether you're talking about our live show or about our TV shows, it's always been about how we, as humanity, tell the difference between fact and fiction. How do we assess the truth, whether you're talking about the edges of science or about communication between people? That issue is very fascinating to us.

Read more about the show and it's availability here.

80 year old shot in the face with arrow calmly pulls it out, remains unharmed

An 80-year-old American woman who was enjoying a doughnut at her kitchen table was hit in the face by a stray arrow apparently shot by a neighbor honing his archery skills, police said on Wednesday.

The woman, great-grandmother Margaret Shofner, calmly pulled the arrow out of her jaw on Tuesday morning and put it on her table. She did not require hospitalization and wasn't sure at first what hit her.

"I pulled (the arrow) out and laid it on the table. That's when I realized what it was," said Shofner, who lives in the state of Missouri and told her story to a local television network.

"Who would have thought an arrow was going to come into your house and hit you," she added.

Full story at Reuters

Derren Brown Svengali 2012 Blackpool Opera House 2nd-4th April

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Continuing the 2012 Dates for Svengali, Blackpool Opera House has now confirmed it will issue tickets as of today.

Click here to buy.

Erik Grumpelt – the man who killed his girlfriend then lived with her corpse for 2 months

Police in suburban Phoenix say they have arrested a man suspected of killing his girlfriend and living with her body for more than two months.

Thirty-five-year-old Erik Grumpelt was charged Tuesday with one count of second-degree murder.

After receiving a tip from Grumpelt's father, Mesa officers went to the suspect's apartment Monday and discovered the body of 39-year-old Melinda Raya on a bedroom floor under several sheets. Investigators say the body was in an advanced state of decomposition and surrounded by air fresheners.

Full story at Washington Post

 

Wallmart arrests married couple then ruins their lives over $2.90 worth of chicken necks

A former Walmart employee in Alabama has filed a lawsuit against the retail behemoth, alleging that she and her husband were wrongly accused of stealing $2.90 in chicken neck bones, an accusation the plaintiff says led to her losing her job and having her husband deported.

According to the suit, the plaintiff and her then-newlywed husband, who hadn't yet gotten his U.S. citizenship, were using the self-checkout line at a local Walmart (not the one at which she was employed). When it came time to scan the package of chicken necks, they wouldn't register on the machine. So a store employee helped them out at the machine, told them "it's okay," and sent them on their way, only to be stopped by a door guard.

As a result of being in jail and being accused of being a thief, [the plaintiff] lost her home, her car, all of her personal belongings and her husband was deported. [She] seeks punitive damages for loss of income, loss of personal property, lost profits, lost time and imprisonment, libel and slander, mental anguish, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false arrest, malicious prosecution, slander, negligence and conversion.

Full story at The Consumerist

 

New York prosecutors witnesses the most elaborate framing plot with victims life destroyed

Soon after Seemona Sumasar started dating Jerry Ramrattan, she had an inkling that something might be wrong. He said he was a police detective, but never seemed to go to work. He seemed obsessed with "C.S.I.," "Law & Order" and other television police dramas.

About a year after he moved into her house in Queens, their relationship soured. One day, he cornered her, taped her mouth and raped her, she said. Mr. Ramrattan was arrested. But he soon took his revenge, the authorities said. Drawing on his knowledge of police procedure, gleaned from his time as an informer for law enforcement, he accomplished what prosecutors in New York called one of the most elaborate framing plots that they had ever seen.

One night, Ms. Sumasar was pulled over by the police. Before she could speak, detectives slapped handcuffs on her. "You know you did it," she said one later shouted at her. "Just admit it."

Ms. Sumasar, a former Morgan Stanley analyst who was running a restaurant, said she had no idea what that meant. Yet suddenly, she was being treated like a brazen criminal. She was charged with carrying out a series of armed robberies, based on what the police said was a wealth of evidence, including credible witness statements and proof that her car was the getaway vehicle.

In her first extensive interview about her ordeal, she recalled sitting in jail, consumed by one thought: "Jerry is behind this." But when she insisted to the authorities that he had set her up, they belittled her claims.

Full story (with at least a positive ending of sorts) at NY Times

 

World's biggest hotel left for 15 years unfinished finally opens doors – pics

The pyramid-shaped hotel, the largest structure in North Korea and one of the tallest hotels in the world, will open in 2012, 33 years after it was originally set to accept guests.

Construction on the project was stalled for 15 years until 2008, when Egyptian conglomerate Orascom committed $400 million to finishing it, Architizer reported.

The tower's sleek and shiny facade was finally completed this year.

The hotel, which has more than 3,000 rooms, will reportedly have five revolving restaurants. It is the only hotel in the world with more than 100 stories, though the Emirates Park Towers, which opened in Dubai this year, is technically taller.

Read more pictures and full article at Business Insider

 

Dead cryonics founder is frozen as planned

Robert Ettinger, founder of the cryonics movement, has finally become a human popsicle himself after dying on 23 July from unspecified causes following weeks of declining health. The 92-year-old joins his mother, Rhea, his first wife, Elaine, and his second wife, Mae, who were all cryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute as well. The minimum price tag: $28,000.

Other organisations charge upwards of $200,000 and offer the option of "neuropreservation": instead of freezing their whole bodies, clients freeze only their heads. The idea is that one's personality and memories will be preserved in the brain and could be uploaded to a computer or artificial body in the future.

No one really knows whether we can ever return consciousness to frozen corpses, but cryopreservation is a genuine phenomenon in the animal kingdom and a useful technique in medicine.

Full Article at New Scientist