Free Republic

HELENA, Mont. -- A jury on Wednesday found that the maker of Louisville Slugger baseball bats failed to adequately warn about the dangers the product can pose, awarding a family $850,000 for the 2003 death of their son in a baseball game. The family of Brandon Patch argued that aluminum baseball bats are dangerous because they cause the baseball to travel at a greater speed. They contended that their 18-year-old son did not have enough time to react to the ball being struck before it hit him in the head while he was pitching in an American Legion baseball game...

A walking bat in New Zealand took its marching orders from an ancestor, a new fossil-bat discovery reveals. Scientists had long thought that the lesser short-tailed bat evolved its walking preference independently. Since the bat's native habitat lacks predators, researchers reasoned that—much like flightless birds on isolated islands—the bat had adapted to its safer surroundings in part by walking. But the discovery of fossils of a now extinct walking bat in northwestern Queensland, Australia, suggests that the modern-day bats descended from 20-million-year-old Australian relatives. "We were amazed to find they were virtually identical to the bats in New Zealand today,"...

Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history—significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice.

A West Columbia woman is undergoing several weeks of preventive medical treatment after handling a bat that tested positive Wednesday for rabies. She took the live bat out of her dog’s mouth Saturday with her bare hands, thinking it was a baby bird, said Department of Health and Environmental Control spokeswoman Clair Boatwright. It’s unclear whether the bat bit the woman, but she is receiving shots, just in case. DHEC would not release her name, citing privacy laws. It was the fourth confirmed rabid animal in Lexington County this year, according to DHEC. The others were raccoons.

GREENPORT, NY — A Rhinebeck man was charged with second-degree harassment by Greenport Police Wednesday after allegedly confronting anti-abortion activists at the entrance of the Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood on Route 9 in Greenport. Jake Freedman, 20, was pulling into the reproductive health care provider’s parking lot with his girlfriend and mother at about 11:15 a.m. when he confronted the activists. “Words were exchanged,” said Greenport Police Officer Joseph O’Connell. Freedman then allegedly exited his vehicle swinging a cricket bat. “Nobody was hit, but two signs were damaged,” O’Connell said. Freedman also pushed a protester into the roadway, according to...

The bat, seen clinging to the external fuel tank of the Space Shuttle Discovery before its launch on Sunday, apparently clung for dear life to the side of the tank as the spaceship lifted off. And what a ride. The shuttle accelerates to an orbital velocity of 17,500 milers per hour, which is 25 times faster than the speed of sound, in just over eight minutes. That's zero to 100 mph in 10 seconds. Did it make it into space? No one knows yet. But photos of Discovery as it cleared the launch tower showed a tiny speck on the...

Bat Hung onto Shuttle During Liftoff 03.17.09 A bat that was clinging to space shuttle Discovery’s external fuel tank during the countdown to launch the STS-119 mission remained with the spacecraft as it cleared the tower, analysts at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center concluded. Based on images and video, a wildlife expert who provides support to the center said the small creature was a free tail bat that likely had a broken left wing and some problem with its right shoulder or wrist. The animal likely perished quickly during Discovery’s climb into orbit. Because the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge coexists...

Mother Gets 3 Months for Hitting Sex Offender with Baseball Bat Good for this Mom ...yes, an un provoked attack on a sex offender, and while that is a little over the top ...I say good for her. Isn't it amazing that criminally harmless gays are aware enough to find "gay friendly" communities and thus self segregate themselves ...but these sex offenders drop in where ever they want and bring fear to the life of families and young kids around them. Oprah needs to interview this woman and comp her 1M ...for her "statement" on behalf of society and our...

An Islip Terrace man is charged with fatally beating his 68-year-old father with a baseball bat after they argued Thursday morning about the son's messy bedroom, Suffolk homicide detectives said. Norman Murray, 33, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. After mortally injuring his father, Ainsley Murray, the son called police shortly before 8 a.m. to tell them what he'd done, police said. When officers arrived at the family home at 349 Oceanside St. they found Norman Murray sitting on the front steps. They found the father in a basement bedroom where the son had battered him with an aluminum...

Lake Wales, FL (AHN) - A Florida boy was bitten on the finger by a rabid bat while trying to get his dog away from the animal. The 12-year-old Lake Wales boy is receiving a series of shots to protect him from developing the fatal disease after the bat tested positive for rabies. Although human deaths from rabies are rare in the United States, many wild animals carry the disease, which can be transmitted to family pets and then to their human owners.

Flitting with disaster BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published Oct. 14, 2001.) A very important issue that we all need to be concerned about is global warming, and we will get to that shortly, but first we need to discuss what happened the other night in my kitchen. It began when I was in the bedroom, flossing my teeth (I keep my teeth in the bedroom). Suddenly my wife burst in and said: ''There's a bat in the kitchen!'' A snappy comeback line would have been: ''No, thanks! I already ate!'' But snappy comebacks are...

Good grief. The bizarre antisemitic propaganda being fed to the Iranian people would be funny in a dark way if it didn’t provoke such a sense of foreboding, of history repeating. (Courtesy of MEMRI TV.) (Video at link) Following are excerpts from an episode of an Iranian documentary series on Hollywood cinema, featuring “Saving Private Ryan,” which aired on IRINN – the Iranian News Channel on May 27, 2008: Narrator: The concentrated efforts of the Zionist lobbies in America have led the U.S. government to be the greatest supporter of the regime occupying Jerusalem. In recent years, following the exposure...

    To be exceptionally honest with you, Ultrasonic Batgoggles don't exactly need any pimping from us. What you see above is a homegrown device that enables humans to discover how bats must feel when using echolocation in order to judge how far away certain objects are. The main components are an Arduino microcontroller clone, Devantech ultrasonic sensor and a set of welding goggles -- oh, and a sick poker face to really round things out. Check out the links below to get a gist of the background as well as a step-by-step guide to concocting your own. EXCERPTED....

New And Deadly Viruses Passed Through Sweet Food And Domestic Animals ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2008) — Nipah virus is a new and deadly brain and lung disease that emerged from Singapore and Malaysia ten years ago. It is now spreading into rural India and Bangladesh killing up to three-quarters of the people who become infected in some outbreaks, scientists heard April 3, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting. "People are catching this disease by drinking date palm juice or probably by eating fruit contaminated by the virus, or through contact with infected animals. We have seen nine...

A six-inch robotic spy plane modeled after a bat would gather data from sights, sounds and smells in urban combat zones and transmit information back to a soldier in real time. That's the Army's concept, and it has awarded the University of Michigan College of Engineering a five-year, $10-million grant to help make it happen. The grant establishes the U-M Center for Objective Microelectronics and Biomimetic Advanced Technology, called COM-BAT for short. The grant includes an option to renew for an additional five years and $12.5 million. U-M researchers will focus on the microelectronics. They will develop sensors, communication tools...

It's been three decades now since the ping of aluminum started drowning out the crack of a wooden bat on youth baseball fields across America. But that older sound of summer is making a comeback on some grassy diamonds these days — not for nostalgia, but safety. Some Illinois lawmakers, in fact, want to ban metal bats from youth baseball.

MANILA (AFP) - A new species of flying fox or fruit bat has been discovered on an island south of Manila, it was reported Monday. The orange-coloured bat with a distinctive white-stripped face was discovered in a protected wildlife area on Mindoro Island, the Philippine Star newspaper said quoting the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). The discovery was a result of joint research between the University of Kansas' Biodiversity Research Center and a team from the Comparative Biogeography and Conservation of Philippine Vertebrates (CBCPV), the paper said. Known as the Mindoro Stripe-Faced Fruitbat for its striking facial features...

(Two years after amazing recovery, Fond du Lac girl is graduating today) Fond du Lac, WI - Jeanna Giese stood in the middle of the atrium at Marian College, nervously twisting a sparkly ring and frequently touching a blue bracelet that symbolized her miraculous recovery from rabies. As she cycled between anticipation of her date's arrival and fear that he might not show up, it was hard to believe that doctors once questioned whether the teen would be able to return to school - let alone recover enough to dance with friends at her senior prom or graduate on time...

BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. - An upstate New York couple didn't think a few bats in the attic were much of a problem when they were buying a house last summer. Months later, they found out how wrong they were when they discovered more than a ton and a half of bat droppings up there. Nick LaBoda and Jenna Caputo say a home inspector informed them about the bats. They called an exterminator, who told them to wait a while before removing the bats because the babies were too young to fly. Then they forgot about the bats until they smelled...

Ouch....