No turkeys fall on Arkansas festival this year
Turns out turkeys don’t fly. The Baxter Bulletin reports that attendees at the Turkey Trot festival in Yellville were disappointed when no turkeys dropped from planes on October 7th and 8th.
The turkey drop is a mainstay of the event in northern Arkansas, though organizers don’t sanction it. Supporters say the turkeys can fly just enough to descend safely, but animal-rights advocates call it cruel.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals posted a $5,000 bounty for information leading to an arrest. The Federal Aviation Administration said any pilots dropping turkeys could lose their licenses.
People at the festival wore “I am the Phantom Pilot” T-shirts, and at least one sign offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest of the PETA employee who came up with the $5,000 bounty.
Runner disqualified for taking bus during marathon
LONDON — Rob Sloan boasted he’d completed an “unbelievably tough” marathon near Newcastle after crossing the finish line in third place with a personal-best time.
Apparently, he didn’t count the bus ride.
Sloan dropped out 20 miles into the race, hitched a ride on a spectator shuttle bus and emerged from the woods near the finish line to make the podium. “I’m convinced it was not premeditated,” Roberts said. “But he felt [tired], pulled out and flagged down a bus. It’s as bad as drug-taking in my book because it’s attempting to improve your performance by cheating. I’ve never known anything like it.”
Sloan will go before a district committee this month and faces the possibility of being banned from marathons.
One of the most famous cases of cheating in a marathon came at the Boston Marathon in 1980. Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line but was disqualified when officials discovered she jumped into the race about a mile from the end.
For $4,000, you can go as yourself for Halloween
A Japanese company has developed a way to make face masks of any person that are accurate right down to each hair and pore.
The masks, called 3-Dimensional Photo Forms, are manufactured by REAL-f. They sell for $3,920 for a face mask, and $5,800 for a mask of a person’s full head.
Gee, for that much money, you’d better get a lot of candy.
Nestlé ad goes ‘to the dogs’
VEVEY, Switzerland — Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, is seeking to conquer the dog-food market with special advertising targeted at man’s best friend, the firm said yesterday.
“Nestlé Purina has created the first-ever television commercial especially for dogs,” it said in a statement.
“The TV commercial to be screened on Austrian television uses different sounds — including a high-frequency tone — to capture the attention of four-legged friends and their owners.”
From the San Jose Mercury News, the Boston Herald and The NY Post
