A missing college student’s remains were found recently in a landfill.    From the article:

“The injuries that Fiocco’s body had sustained were consistent with being processed by a trash disposal system, authorities said. They would not say whether the injuries had been sustained before or after Fiocco died.”

damn, that’s gotta suck.

A bus carrying Mexican tourists plunged off a 650-foot cliff Monday, killing at least 60 people in a crash police said could have been caused by brake failure on the steep mountainous roads.

Bummer.

Just out of curiosity, I wondered how long those people were in freefall before they hit and how fast they were going.

From physics class we all remember that distance travelled in freefall is d=0.5 * g * t^2.

650ft converts to 198.12m… so:

198.12m = 0.5 * 9.8 m/s^2 * t^2 solve for t
t^2=(198.12m / 0.5 * 9.8 m/s^2)
t=6.36s

6.36 seconds is a long time to know you’re going to die. Damn.

And just for fun, how fast was the bus going when it impacted?

Vf = g * t
Vf = 9.8 m/s^2 * 6.36s
Vf=62.33m/s or 138.43 mph

Sucky.

Looks like a girl I know named Jo.  

The brazen bull is an execution device designed in ancient Greece.

Perillos of Athens, a brass-founder, proposed to Phalaris, Tyrant of Agrigentum, the invention of a new means for executing criminals; accordingly, he cast a brazen bull, made totally of brass, hollow, with a door in the side. The victim was shut up in the bull and a fire was set under it, heating the metal until it became “red hot” and causing the victim inside to slowly roast to death. So that nothing unseemly might spoil his feasting, Phalaris commanded that the bull be designed in such a way that its smoke rose in spicy clouds of incense. The head of the ox was supplied by a complex system of tubes and stops so that the prisoner’s screams were converted into sounds not unlike the bellowing of an infuriated ox. It is also said that when the bull was reopened, the victims’ scorched bones shone like jewels and were made into bracelets.

Phalaris commended the invention, and ordered its horn sound system to be tested by Perillos himself. When Perillos entered, he was immediately locked in, and the fire was set, so that Phalaris could hear the sound of his screams.

Before Perillos could die, Phalaris opened the door and took him away. Perillos believed he would receive a reward for his invention; instead, after freeing him from the bull, Phalaris threw him from the top of a hill, killing him. Phalaris himself is said to have been killed in the brazen bull when he was overthrown by Telemachus.

The Romans were recorded as having used this torture device to kill some Christian martyrs, notably Saint Eustace, who, according to Christian legend, was roasted in a brazen bull with his wife and children by the Emperor Hadrian, and Saint Antipas, Bishop of Pergamum during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian, and the first martyr in Asia Minor, roasted to death in a brazen bull in c.92; his tomb became a site of supposed miracles.

Another Christian martyr, Saint Pelagia of Tarsus, is said to have been burned in a brazen bull in 287 by the Emperor Diocletian.

According to Herodotus, roasting inside a brazen bull was the most common form of torture known to the Greeks.

The satirist Lucian, in the 2nd century BC, is said to have given the first detailed description of the creation and use of the Brazen Bull.

(text from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull)