Man survived lightning strike
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo., Sept. 16 (UPI) -- A Texas man struck by lightning while riding his dirt bike in Colorado woke up a few minutes later lucky to be alive.
Jason Crawford of Houston told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel he has no memory of anything after the strike until about a half hour later. He and his brother John were on their bikes when he felt something strike his helmet.
Doctors at the Gunnison Valley Hospital told him the helmet saved his life, he said.
Crawford suffered a fractured skull and other injuries, including partial hearing loss.
When he regained consciousness, almost the first thing he asked his brother was whether he still had the gold chain and crucifix his mother had given him. He found the chain had burned into his skin before crumbling.
Prank ends poorly for gorilla streaker
UNION SPRINGS, N.Y., Sept. 16 (UPI) -- A Union Springs, N.Y., 17-year-old has been arrested for running naked through the halls of his high school wearing a gorilla mask.
Union Springs High School Principal Kimberle Ward -- a seasoned runner -- chased the naked ape through the school parking lot and down the street Monday before he finally gave her the slip near the village's downtown retail district, the Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard reported Thursday.
Ward interviewed several students and watched a hallway surveillance video to identify the streaker as a student.
The youth told police friends dared him to pull the prank, which netted him an indecent exposure charge as well as probable disciplinary action from school officials.
Stern joins forces with Bubba
NEW YORK, Sept. 16(UPI) -- New York shock jock Howard Stern says he may name one of the two channels he's programming for Sirius Satellite Radio after a feminine hygiene product.
Stern also revealed he has hired his old nemesis Bubba the Love Sponge to do a show on one of the channels, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.
"I've talked trash about Bubba in the past and he's talked trash about me," Stern said. "But there's something bigger going on now."
Like Stern, Bubba has had his share of run-ins with the Federal Communications Commission. He was fired from a Clear Channel Communications station in Tampa, Fla., after the FCC levied a fine for a bit about cartoon characters talking about sex.
Stern repeated his mantra about the FCC's campaign of fear induced censorship and predicted unregulated satellite networks will "save radio."
Where did the Chumash get those boats?
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 16(UPI) -- Two scholars have revived a long-dormant theory that California's Chumash Indians copped the design for their distinctive boats from Polynesian sailors.
University of California-Berkeley linguist Kathryn Klar and Terry Jones, an archeologist at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, acknowledge their contention will not sit well with others who have studied the question -- given that the idea had already been kicked around five decades ago and rejected as not supported by facts.
Jones told the Los Angeles Times he was slow to accept it too -- but after scouring evidence for the last five years, he thinks Polynesians visited the California coast centuries before Europeans got there.
"I didn't believe it myself for the first year or two and didn't talk publicly about it until the year after that," said Jones. "For at least 50 years, this whole idea has been considered unthinkable."
It still is, if you ask Brian Fagan, a professor emeritus of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara.
"I flatly won't accept it," said Fagan. "It's a wonderful, bold theory, and I admire them for putting it out. But I don't think it's supportable at the moment."
Jones and Klar reported their findings in the journal American Antiquity.
