So you want to sleep while you work...

Fox News reports that "It may not sound like much of a job — three consecutive months in bed — but NASA says the participants in its bed rest study are providing valuable information for the space program.
The test subjects are paid $10 per hour, or about $17,000 over the course of the study, which is carried out at the University of Texas...They spend three months lying down, and the preparation and rehabilitation take up another month.
MyFOXHouston.com reports that NASA's Flight Analog Research Unit is looking for ways to minimize the debilitating impact of zero gravity in space, which can cause reduction in muscle mass and bone density. One way to recreate those conditions on the ground is for test participants to lie down with head slightly tilted back for 90 days.
"It's very relaxing at times. This is probably the most I've sat still in 10 years," participant Heather Archuletta told MyFOXHouston.com.
They can shower, surf the Internet and watch DVDs, all while remaining in bed. Afterward, the rehabilitation phase is key to the study, because NASA tests ways of bringing their bodies back to normal.
"I just wanted to help out the space program keep astronauts more healthy so we can make it to Mars," said Archuletta, who updates an online blog from her test bed."

Anyone interested?...

Here is the entire story.

Here are photos of the study participants "in action."

Port-A-Potty Rescue

Fox News reports that in Lebanon, PA, "Rescue crews had to cut apart a portable toilet to rescue a man who got stuck naked inside the potty.
Authorities say 31-year-old Shannon Hunter, of Lebanon, used his cell phone to call 911 on Sunday from inside a portable toilet.
Police say Hunter had been drinking and had taken off his clothes. Somehow, he immersed himself in the holding tank.
Deputy fire commissioner Chris Miller told WPMT-TV, "I've been on the job in one form or fashion for 21 years, and this is the first port-a-potty rescue I've ever had."
Police charged Hunter with public drunkenness and creating a health code violation, but they have no idea why he was in the toilet with his clothes off. They say he didn't suffer any serious injuries."

Are you being tracked?...

Fox News reports that "Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell-phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.
The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.
It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives.
Nearly three-quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-wide circle for half a year.
The scientists would not say where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.

Researchers used cell-phone towers to track individuals' locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months.
In a second set of records, researchers took another 206 cell phones that had tracking devices in them and got records for their locations every two hours over a week's time period..."

Here is the rest of the story.

10 Baseball Bats Get You A...

Fox News reports that "During three years in the low minors, John Odom never really made a name for himself until he got traded for a bunch of bats.
"I don't really care," he said Friday. "It'll make a better story if I make it to the big leagues."
For now, Odom is headed to the Laredo Broncos of the United League. They got him Tuesday from the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League for a most unlikely price: 10 Prairie Sticks Maple Bats, double-dipped black, 34-inch, C243 style.
"They just wanted some bats, good bats — maple bats," Broncos general manager Jose Melendez said.
According to the Prairie Sticks Web site, their maple bats retail for $69 each, discounted to $65.50 for purchases of six to 11 bats.
The Canadian team signed Odom about a month ago, but couldn't get the 26-year-old righty into the country. It seems Odom had a "minor" but unspecified criminal record that wasn't revealed to immigration officials before they scanned his passport, Vipers president Peter Young said.
Odom said the charge stemmed from a fight when he was 17. Although he thought it had been expunged from his record, it popped up during immigration...
The bat trade wasn't the first time Calgary came up with some creative dealmaking. The Vipers once tried to acquire a pitcher for 1,500 blue seats when they were renovating their stadium, Young said."

Here is the rest of this story.

What's In Your Backyard?...

Fox News reports that "It's just a drop in the global oil bucket, but an eastern Indiana man is operating an oil well in his backyard in an effort to capitalize on soaring crude prices.
Greg Losh's rig produces three barrels of crude oil a day, though he told FOX News that he hasn't started selling it yet. For now, he and his partners are keeping it in storage containers.
He declined to say how much oil they've collected in the two weeks they've been pumping.
But as oil is going for about $127 a barrel on the international market, three daily would yield just under $400 a day for Losh on the global spot market — or 1/100,000 of the daily production increase the Saudis agreed to earlier this month.

Still, in spite of those returns and the $100,000 it costs to drill a well, it's worth it to Losh considering the current price of oil...

He expects to drill four more wells soon on his property in the town of Selma about 55 miles northeast of Indianapolis.

"It's a money maker. It is paying off," Losh told FOX.
The oil is stored in a tank and transported to Ohio for sale, he said. His oil well also produces natural gas to heat his home and several others."

It's Getting Rough In Mexico

Fox News reports that "Drug cartels are sending a brutal message to police and soldiers in cities across Mexico: Join us or die.
The threat appears in recruiting banners hung across roadsides and in publicly posted death lists. Cops get warnings over their two-way radios. At least four high-ranking police officials were gunned down this month, including Mexico's acting federal police chief.
Mexico has battled for years to clean up its security forces and win them the public's respect. But Mexicans generally assume police and even soldiers are corrupt until proven otherwise, and the honest ones lack resources, training and the assurance that their colleagues are watching their backs. Here, the taboo on cop-killing familiar to Americans seems hardly to apply.

Police who take on the cartels feel isolated and vulnerable when they become targets, as did 22 commanders in the border city of Ciudad Juarez when drug traffickers named them on a handwritten death list left at a monument to fallen police this year. It was addressed to "those who still don't believe" in the power of the cartels.

Of the 22, seven have been killed and three wounded in assassination attempts. Of the others, all but one have quit, and city officials said he didn't want to be interviewed.
"These are attacks directed at the top commanders of the city police, and it is not just happening in Ciudad Juarez," Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said at the funeral of the latest victim, police director Juan Antonio Roman Garcia. "It is happening in Nuevo Laredo, in Tijuana, in this entire region," he said. "They are attacking top commanders to destabilize the police force."
The killings are in response to a crackdown launched by President Felipe Calderon, who has sent thousands of soldiers and federal police across the nation to confront the cartels. Drug lords have hit back by sending killers to attack police with hand grenades and assault rifles.
Police are increasingly giving up. Last week, U.S. officials revealed that three Mexican police commanders have crossed into the United States to request asylum, saying they are unprotected and fear for their lives.
"It's almost like a military fight," said Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "I don't think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border."
On May 8, Edgar Millan Gomez, who had taken over as acting federal police chief, just 10 weeks previously, was shot by a lone gunman outside his Mexico City apartment. Police blamed the Sinaloa cartel and said a police officer was among the suspects arrested.
The U.S. Embassy in the capital flew its flag at half-staff. "Mexico has lost another hero," Ambassador Tony Garza said in a statement. "Mexico has lost too many heroes in the fight against criminals and drug cartels."
Mexican government institutions didn't lower their flags, but held elaborate funerals.
In Ciudad Juarez, police have been given assault rifles -- they used to just carry pistols -- but also are instructed not to patrol streets alone. More than 100 of the city's 1,700-member force have resigned or retired since January.
Soldiers are also in the cartels' sights. The Zetas, an infamous group of soldiers who became drug hit men, strung banners above highways with slogans such as "The Zetas want you -- we offer good salaries to soldiers," and taunts about low army pay.
The conflict has become a battle for loyalty on several levels.
"Juarez Needs You! Join up and become part of the city police," say enormous city billboards. The jobs offer salaries about three times higher than those offered by the foreign-owned "maquiladora" factories that are the city's biggest industrial employer.
But police and soldiers keep deserting to the cartels, giving traffickers inside knowledge about tactics and surveillance.
And because of their history of corruption and abuse, police and soldiers run into suspicion as they patrol the border slums where traffickers throw children's parties, hand out cell phones and employ taxi drivers and youths as lookouts..."

Here is the entire story.

How Do You Tell Your Boss That You're Not Happy?

Fox News reports that "A 19-year-old flight attendant has been accused of setting a fire aboard a commercial airplane that was forced to make an emergency landing in Fargo, N.D.
Eder Rojas was charged Thursday in federal court in Minneapolis. The case will be prosecuted in Fargo.
Officials say the Compass Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Saskatchewan landed safely in Fargo on May 7, after smoke begin to fill the back of the plane.
Court documents say Rojas, of Woodbury, Minn., told authorities he was upset at the airline for making him work that route."

So you can do this to show the boss your displeasure...and end up in jail.

A Blowtorch Game?

Fox News reports that "A 14-year-old boy [in Manitowoc, Wisconsin] suffered burns to more than a quarter of his body after playing what authorities describe as a blowtorch game.
Manitowoc Fire Captain Mark Rusboldt says the boy and another teen were using spray cans as blowtorches. The 14-year-old was burned on his back, head, face, arms and hands. The other teen was not injured.
The burned boy was hospitalized Saturday at Columbia St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee."

Quick Thinking Lady Saves Herself

Fox News reports that "A fast-thinking woman used her cell phone to call police after she was abducted from a Target parking lot in Colorado Springs, it was reported.
According to MyFoxColorado.com the woman was hit on the head with a brick, bound with tape and thrown into the back seat of her car.
Colorado Springs Sergeant Mark Comte said the woman was able to make the call when her kidnapper left her alone in the car.
She didn't know where she was but was able to describe her car and surroundings, it was reported.
Police were able to locate her by honing in on the cellular tower transmitting her calls.
Shortly after police arrested Timothy Clapp and freed the woman, whose name was not released. She was transported to Memorial Hospital."

Woman Pregnant With 18th Child

Fox News reports that "It's a happy Mother's Day for an Arkansas woman — she's pregnant with her 18th child.
Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins.
"We've had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing.

The Duggars' oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.
The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children — whose names start with the letter J — are home-schooled.
Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and the family is in the process of filming another series for Discovery Health.
The new show looks at life inside the Duggar home, where chores — or "jurisdictions" — are assigned to each child. One episode of the new show involves a "jurisdiction swap," where the boys do chores traditionally assigned to the girls, and vice versa, Duggar said..

Duggar said she's six weeks along and the pregnancy is going well. She and her husband, Jim Bob Duggar, said they'll keep having children as long as God wills it.
"The success in a family is first off, a love for God, and secondly, treating each other like you want to be treated," Jim Bob Duggar said. "Our goal is for each one of our children to be best friends, and everybody working together to serve each other makes that happen."
The other Duggar children, in between Joshua and Jennifer, are Jana, 18; John-David, 18; Jill, 16; Jessa, 15; Jinger, 14; Joseph, 13; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 9; Jedidiah, 9; Jason, 7; James, 6; Justin, 5; Jackson, 3; and Johannah, 2."

Here is the Duggar family web site.

Here are some photos of the family.