Eric C. Gottschalk was at the bottom of the pecking order in the Parkrose apartment he shared with a "street family" of young adults.
Prosecutors say the band's matriarch and its enforcer had the 23-year-old sign a contract in which he agreed to do whatever they said and gave them permission to beat him if he didn't. The contract was marked with Gottschalk's blood.
The band of mostly 18- to 25-year-olds didn't allow Gottschalk to sit on the apartment's furniture. Members punched him with brass knuckles and -- in one of the more violent incidents -- put him in the bathtub and poured hot cooking grease on his genitals, prosecutors say. - Oregonlive
Scholar Finds New Archaeological Sites by Googling
Indiana Jones's next adventure may well be in front of a computer if Hollywood scriptwriters decide to embrace a new approach to archaeological research in war-torn zones.
David Thomas, a Ph.D. student in La Trobe University's archaeological program in Melbourne, has used Google Earth to safely uncover historic sites in a remote part of war-torn Afghanistan.
Using the free Internet resource, Thomas found up to 450 possible archaeological sites in Registan, which borders Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan. The decision to use Google Earth was "partly born out of adversity", Thomas said, when a planned field trip was canceled because of security concerns. - Discovery
Relocation, relocation, relocation to save species
ANIMALS threatened with extinction because of climate change should be moved to parts of the world where they are more likely to survive, a team of scientists suggested today. The controversial idea could be the only way to stop some species dying out, according to the authors of a report in the journal Science.
Species the scientists think could benefit from being moved include the possum in Australia, coral in the Great Barrier Reef and even giant pandas.
But some conservation groups have reacted with horror to the report – entitled Moving with the Times: Assisted Colonisation and Rapid Climate Change – because in the past introducing alien species has harmed native animals. - Scotsman
'Twas a slow week at work, hence a trio of cool articles from OregonLive...
Uno:
In the distant underwater murk, the spots appear first, moving in unison like a school of fish. Coming closer, the illusion gives way. A shark the size of a city bus emerges, speckled and crosshatched like a checkerboard from head to tail, cruising fast and effortlessly through the warm sea.
"It's an amazing pleasure to swim with them," says Jason Holmberg, who met his first whale shark while scuba diving in the Red Sea in 2002. The giants -- reaching lengths greater than 60 feet -- use their cavernous mouths to suck up tiny plankton; they approach divers with curiosity.
"Its eyes will track you; you can look at it, and it will look back at you," he says. "It's like contact with alien life." - More
Whale Sharks are inherently cool.
Dos:
The 24-hour Church of Elvis is Back!
Elvis has re-entered the building -- or at least the building's elevator shaft.
After an absence of seven Blue Christmases, Portland's erstwhile international icon, the 24-Hour Church of Elvis, is coming back.
By mid-May, worshippers should be able to don their blue suede shoes and rock over to 408 N.W. Couch St., where a storefront window will house the "church," the world's cheapest psychic and the world's first 24-hour coin-operated art gallery. - More
Tres:
Yes, you can get a burger at the new Deschutes Brewery & Public House in the Pearl District -- a burger with house-made pickles, a roll fresh from their bakery and, soon enough, beef from cows fed on the brewery's spent grain.
"As a brewpub, we'll exceed people's expectations," said chef Jeff Usinowicz. "We'll definitely be a brewpub, but we'll also be a great restaurant -- the kind of place where, if you don't feel like getting dressed up for Bluehour, you can drop by as you are for some great food and great beer."
The $5 million brewpub opens Friday across from the Gerding Armory, in a historic 1919 building that the Deschutes management saved from being razed for another condo tower.
When you visit, you'll find lobster ravioli on the menu, plus Buffalo wings and hand-cut french fries; sausage and duck prosciutto made in-house, just like the pretzels; blackened ahi tuna or pub-style fish and chips; wild mushroom ragout topped with Juniper Farms goat cheese; or good ol' mac and cheese. - More
Mirror Pond on tap and decent sounding eats....I'm there dude.
Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.
Fisher died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday of kidney failure after a long illness, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said Friday.
Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer faced criminal charges in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph. - RGJ.com
LiveScience has an interesting take on the use of satellite mapping in the search for Steve Fossett:
Adventurer Steve Fossett went missing Sept. 3 about 70 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada, in a small plane. He left no flight plan, and searchers have combed tens of thousands of square miles of Nevada and California. After weeks of fruitless searches, and with the survival window closing, Web users were enlisted to help in Fossett's rescue, from the comfort of their own homes.
Using a program called Mechanical Turk, high-resolution satellite imagery of the search area was collected and analyzed. Participants were shown a single satellite image and asked to note any objects or wreckage that could be a plane or its debris.
The search did solve a few mysteries: several previously unknown small plane wrecks - some dating back to the 1950s - were found. Though Fossett and his plane remain missing, the satellite technology used to search for him could theoretically be applied to other types of searches. It may finally verify the existence of large, mysterious creatures reputed to inhabit the globe. Unknown animals such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, for example, might be easily located and captured - if indeed they exist. - More
It's an interesting argument, and as a huge cryptozoology fan I'd love to see something come of it. It's becoming increasingly difficult write-off cryptozoologists as the tin foil hat set when every few years new species are being "discovered" left and right. It wasn't that long ago when giant squid were just a myth.
And speaking of the Loch Ness monster, from an article in the Reno Gazette-Journal, I learned Lake Tahoe has their own lake monster, Tessie.
TAHOE CITY - Each report of a Tahoe Tessie sighting adds to the mythology of the lake's legendary creature.
The legend is so prevalent that Beth Douglas, of Sacramento, thought Tessie sightings happen every day in Tahoe.
That's why Douglas didn't blink at her friend Ron Talmage's reaction last Friday afternoon to a dark shape undulating at the lake's surface about 100 yards off Tahoe Park Beach.
"Does that look solid to you?" Talmage, of Rocklin, said to Douglas.
When Douglas replied that the shape - with three to five humps along its back - did look solid, Talmage flatly said "Damn, that's Tessie." - Tahoe Tribune
The Tessie plot thickens with reports of a Lake Tahoe dive by none other than Jacques Cousteau - a dive that yielded a sighting so horrific that Cousteau hid the footage, claiming the world wasn't ready for what he witnessed.
"Even famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau is said to have had a brush with something horrific in a deepwater dive in the mid-1970s. "The world isn't ready for what was down there," is the quote most commonly credited. Cousteau never released any photographs or data from the dive, adding to the mystery and legend." - San Francisco Gate
The only kink in the story is Cousteau never actually made the dive. Nevada historian Guy Rocha does an effective job debunking the Cousteau legend on the Nevada State Library website as part of his excellent Historical Myth a Month series. In the same article he also details the legend that the bottom of Lake Tahoe contains a underwater graveyard complete with perfectly preserved bodies due to the frigid lake temperatures. Granted with Nevada's history of mob activity there probably are more than a few bodies resting on the bottom of Lake Tahoe, but the idea that they would remain preserved after all these years flies in the face of science, not to mention common sense. Then again, so does George Bush. :)
On a decidedly non-cryptozoological note, Northern Nevada also boasts another mystery - the whereabouts of John C. Fremont's lost cannon. According to the same RGJ article that turned me on to Tessie:
Snow was deep over the Carson Pass in January 1844 as Fremont's group, which included Kit Carson, tried to cross. The 1835-model mountain howitzer they carried proved too cumbersome and they left it behind somewhere near the state line and Bridgeport, Calif.
"They were in the vicinity west of the Walker River," said Nevada state archivist Guy Rocha. "They just walked away from it."
The group headed to California and never returned to find it. Along the way, Fremont is believed to be the first white man to view Lake Tahoe. Treasure hunters have looked for the prized cannon without success, using Fremont's journals as a guide.
"Like buried treasure, people will look for that cannon 'til kingdom come," Rocha said.
John C. Fremont deserves an extra shout-out as Portland, Oregon's Fremont Bridge is named after him - although in my house it's always been known as the "Big Scary Bridge," I love it when a story on Steve Fossett leads to Tessie, which in turns leads to Jacques Cousteau, underwater graveyards, lost cannons, and eventually home. Yes folks, this is what I do at night when I should be writing.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Engineers made plans to move some structures at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump after rock samples indicated a fault line unexpectedly ran beneath their original location, an Energy Department official said Monday. - RGJ
Bear in mind the powers that be have been looking at this site for about twenty years, and they just now realized there's a fault running through the place?
Just what Nevada needs, their very own Hanford. Better book those Vegas trips fast, it won't be long before the term "neon glow" is going to take on a whole other meaning.
I don't like it but I guess things happen that way...
RALEIGH, N.C. - Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire and then saw it collapse in disgrace, has died. She was 65.
Messner, who had battled colon cancer since 1996 that more recently spread to her lungs, died peacefully at her home Friday, said her booking agent, Joe Spotts, in an e-mail. A family service was held Saturday in a private cemetery, where her ashes were interred, he said. - Yahoo
I'm not a big fan of Christians in general, and televangelists even more so, but I've been a HUGE fan of Tammy Faye for a number of years now. Considering the public stage is filled with a new breed of televangelists - Bush, Bin Laden, etc., etc. - the world just lost a much needed voice of reason.
"Once again, Nevada has a ranking and reputation Metro isn't too proud of: The most dangerous state in the country. That's according to a new survey. It's the fourth year in a row we've come out on top but officers aren't willing to accept the bad rap so quickly. ... The report's publisher admits these rankings are controversial, but argues rates are what they are. For example, the survey pits Nevada's 8.56 murders for every 100,000 people against the national average which 5.6." - KVBC
Do we get some kind of plaque for this? Granted I'm a relative newbie to Nevada - we've been in Reno just shy of two years, before that Molliwogg and I lived in Las Vegas for a couple months sometime in the 90's - but I've seen less crime here than I did in Portland.
Metro's Sergeant John Loretto says the survey is misleading. "Not all incidents come from the Las Vegas Valley."
Sorry bud, but you're going to have eat this one. I did a little research - not a lot, mind you, just a little - and quickly found some statistics.
According to Morgan Quitino Press, the national average for murder in 2004 was 5.5 murders per 100,000 people. In that report, Las Vegas averaged 10.6 and North Las Vegas, 9.3 - nearly double the national average. In comparison, Reno averaged a lowly 4.5 - lower than Portland at 5.3, but higher than Seattle at 4.2.
Dig the top four on the list: 1) Camden, NJ - 60.8 2) New Orleans, LA - 56.0 3) Gary, IN - 53.7 4) Richmond, VA - 47.3 (Morgan Quitino Press report - PDF)
I realize population affects these figures and 4.5 is probably high for a smaller city, but give me Reno over Gary or Camden any day of the week.
Here's the funny thing - I'm switching over to Infoplease's statistics for Most Dangerous States and Most Livable States for these figures - Nevada is the most dangerous state, Oregon ranks #27, while New Jersey (apparently home to the murder capital of the U.S. - take that Santa Cruz!) ranks #32. In the "most livable" charts, New Jersey ranks #5, while the most dangerous state in the union ranks #24, above Oregon which scores a relatively low #33.
I never took statistics in high school or college, but it would seem to me that the designation of "Most Dangerous State" would affect your status on the "Most Livable State" charts. On that same note, harboring the city with the highest murder rate in the United States would appear to exclude you from ranking in the top five of most livable states.
Sticks and stones may break my bones (except in Camden!), but statistics will always confuse me.
Will someone bury James Brown already? According to imdb, it's been 73 days since his death, and he's still not in the ground.
"The nation's top two law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday the FBI broke the law to secretly pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions. " - Yahoo/AP
I had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st, it wouldn't be the first time I've lost a few weeks to the pesky space-vice continuum, but sure enough, it's no joke and this is still March.
This is news???
Who didn't know this already? Show me one person who can sincerely say they weren't aware this kind of crap was happening. Just one.
For all we know, they cross-referenced everyone with an I.Q. over 75 and laid in the taps.
Sure, that leaves the chimp safe, but what about the rest of the country?
In lieu of an actual post, here's five articles that caught my attention recently.
Velvet Undergound Acetate on ebay.
At about 8:30 tonight, the eBay auction of an early, ultra-rare acetate record by the Velvet Underground rock band will conclude, and Isaacson, owner of Mississippi Records in Portland and the selling agent for the record, will know for sure how high the bidding reached. Its price tag of $151,000 at midday Thursday looked, shall we say, promising.
The object of so much online auction desire is unprepossessing. The record has little more than the band's name, the name N. Dolph and a few numbers written on it -- in addition to the date, 4-25-66. - Oregon Live (The final selling price was $155,401.)
A Christmas Story house opens in Cleveland.
Though originally panned by critics as a dark depiction of the holidays, "A Christmas Story" has earned status as a movie classic, rivaling long-time seasonal favorites like "It's a Wonderful Life." Now fans from as far away as LosAngeles and Phoenix are flocking to a gritty Cleveland street overlooking a steel factory to visit the Parker family house restored to its movie glory.
A San Diego entrepreneur, Brian Jones, bought the house sight unseen on e-Bay for $150,000 in December 2004. He grew up watching "A Christmas Story" every year with his family. After Mr. Jones failed the vision test required to become a Navy pilot, his father tried cheering him up by building him a lamp with a woman's leg as the base, similar to the one that enchanted Ralphie's father in the movie. - NY Times
An Interesting Article on Walt Disney.
The weather was kind to Anaheim, California, on July 17, 1955. So kind, in fact, that the heels of women's shoes got stuck in the warm asphalt. Anything other than sunshine would have been an insult to the opening of America's latest Shangri-La: Disneyland, or, as its creator called it, "the happiest place on Earth." On that day, if you believe one estimate, as many as twenty-eight thousand people poured through the gates, with seventy million more, about half the population of the country, watching the event on television. Walt Disney had already conquered TV through "Disneyland," which was broadcast every week on ABC, and that day the Mouseketeers, Disney's troupe of performing children, danced live for the public, wearing their black skullcaps with rounded ears - the most recognizable corporate headgear after that of the Playboy Bunnies. The broadcast was hosted by three celebrities, who, just to double the delirium, played hopscotch through the crowds around the park. One of them was the movie star Ronald Reagan. - New Yorker
Again from the New Yorker, an interesting comparison of the BBC version of The Office and the hideous NBC version.
If Samuel Beckett were still around, his plays might begin on the late shift. "An office. An unattended PC glows under strong fluorescent light. Front left, a copying machine. Front right, a document shredder. Back, in near-darkness, a lounge with a disorderly refrigerator. A head peeps over a cubicle wall." - New Yorker
Finally, a history of MySpace from Valleywag.
On July 11th, 2006, Hitwise reported that MySpace had "surpassed Yahoo! Mail as the most visited domain on the Internet for US Internet users." Clearly, MySpace has become almost ubiquitous--everyone and their mom have a profile up, from the fourteen-year old girl next door to Madonna. Tom Anderson himself--one of the site's founders and every MySpace user's number one "friend"--has over 109 million pals with profiles, and that's just today; by next week that number could easily have increased by millions. What's interesting is that most users don't know that Tom Anderson is more of a PR scheme than anything else--the mascot designed to give a friendlier feel to a site created by a marketing company known for viral entertainment websites, pop-up advertising, spam, spyware, and adware.
Most users believe that MySpace started as some kind of fluke--a happy accident that began in Anderson's bedroom or garage--and many still don't wonder, know, or care about the site's real business history and model. Heralded as a haven of DIY self-expression, MySpace was actually created by executives whose backgrounds are anchored in spam and mass marketing, and who are tied to investment scandals. With his almost alternateen good looks, Tom Anderson has served as an exceptionally convincing distraction. The PR campaign is one of MySpace's two strokes of genius, brilliant, but not groundbreaking. - Valleywag
Gingrich thinking about a 2008 presidential run? If you want an indicator of how far to the right this country has swung, this is it pal. Conventional wisdom indicates the only way the Newt who stole Christmas would even think there's a shot at the presidency is in some kind of alternate universe. Welcome to Bizarro World ladies and gents. Course the Democrats could try the whole tried and true run-a-dead-guy routine, with both candidates out of the picture maybe we could get someone qualified to fill the position.
It's nice to see Portland getting a shout-out in the headlines. Those who watch the evening news have no doubt bore witness to the interview with the aunt of the friend of the second cousin twice removed from the newsmaker. Everything has a local spin to the point of absurdity. Leonard Thomas Bayard, proud owner of the Gulfstream jet that's been flying detainees to the latest torture hot-spots, has made an honest woman out of the Rose City with a legitimate connection to the national news. Problem is, the local Portland businessman doesn't seem to exist.
