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What does a slick-suited, tousle-haired, big-spending associate of Japan's infamous Yakuza drive? Apparently, as the saying goes, anything he wants.

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A water ride accident injured seven riders at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. An animation, created by a group of Taiwanese artists, provides a visual explanation of how the accident happened.

The popular log flume water ride, Shoot the Rapids, malfunctioned on Friday. The boat, which was carrying seven passengers up an 85-foot hill, suddenly fell backward down the slope.

The boat flipped upside down at the bottom, dumping passengers into the water. The passengers were rescued by other park visitors and Cedar Point staff.

As reported by NewsOxy.com, six of the passengers were treated and released on scene. A seventh passenger required treatment at a local hospital, but was later released.

Cedar Point officials are currently investigating the water ride accident. The ride, which opened in 2010, will remain closed until the investigation is complete and the ride is deemed safe.

In 2012, Cedar Point was voted the Best Amusement Park in the World for the fifteenth year in a row. While accidents are rare at Cedar Point, they do occur.

As reported by Coaster Force, in 2011 seven people were injured on the now disassembled Wildcat coaster. The collision of two cars at the station caused the passengers minor injuries.

In May 2008, nine passengers were injured in a similar incident on the same ride.

In July 2004, four passengers received minor injuries on the Top Thrill Dragster roller coaster when a cable snapped.

A few accidents over a period of 10 years are unlikely to deter the millions of guests that visit Cedar Point every year. The latest water ride accident is frightening. However, nobody was seriously injured.

Fast response to the situation, by park guests and staff, assured that the accident did not turn into a tragedy.

While the water ride accident remains under investigation, the animation provides a good demonstration of how the accident occurred.

[Image via Wikimedia]

Water Ride Accident: Animation Shows How It Happened is a post from: The Inquisitr

John Fund / National Review:
Obama Voted to Strengthen Illinois's Stand Your Ground Law in 2004  —  President Obama spent part of his surprise appearance at last Friday's White House press briefing urging that the Stand Your Ground laws that exist in 31 states be reexamined.  But only nine years ago, in the Illinois state senate …

Only a drip wouldn’t be storked for such a swellelegant little guide.

Unfortunately, San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) 2013 is now over. We’ve already posted galleries for preview night, day 1, and day 3, so now, all that’s missing are pictures from day 4. A big, big thank you to Hayley Sargent for covering the event for us. If you’re looking for a photographer in the San Diego area, Hayley is a talented, professional and dedicated photographer! Be sure to like her on Facebook right here. Oh, and I’ve also added a few pictures from Photographer Erik Estrada to today’s mix. Thanks Erik!

Next time you feel like complaining about the Wi-Fi on your flight being slow, just remember it could have been worse. Much worse.

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Thanks Mike (from Spain)

Thanks Mike (from Spain)

That’s a talent!

The post OMG gymnastics puppy eats food appeared first on Say OMG - omg videos,omg photos, omg news, omg images, omg movies on say OMG.

A “green” Coca Cola beverage is currently being tested in Argentina.

Before you get worked up about the color of your favorite soda, it’s worth noting that the drink still looks very much like traditional Coke. The only thing different about the appearance is the absence of the company’s iconic red logo.

Released under the name Coca Cola Life, the new soda replaces all of that sugar with a healthier substitute called stevia. Unfortunately for curious beverage guzzlers, the latest offering is only available in Argentina.

Not only is company giving the bottle a green label, Coca Cola Life is also packaged in something called PlantBottle. This fully-recyclable packaging is manufactured using 30 percent planet material. Not only is the drink healthier for your body, the bottle is also better for the environment.

The company’s decision to test Coca Cola Life in Argentina stems from the fact that stevia is native to South America. Since people in this region are more familiar with the ingredient, the bottler has decided to test the new beverage there before rolling it out elsewhere.

Pepsi’s CEO claims that stevia really doesn’t work well in carbonated beverages. However, this hasn’t stopped the company from using the ingredient in the Australian version of their sodas.

However, the absence of sugar doesn’t necessarily mean the “green” Coca Cola beverage doesn’t contain any calories. The soda sports around 108 calories per serving, which is still considerably less than Coke’s usual 252 calories. As always, moderation is the key to enjoyment.

Coca Cola has been experimenting quite a bit here lately. The Inquisitr previously reported that the company unveiled an ice bottle in Colombia this summer. The chilly packaging is only available for a limited time, so be sure to book your trip to the country as soon as possible.

Here’s a picture of the bottle in question.

Coca Cola yeşermiş millet.Daha sağlıklı Coca Cola Life,Arjantinde satışa sunulmuş. Daha az kafein,doğal tatlandırıcı pic.twitter.com/1nNciYl7Gv

— Serkan Çamaltı (@SerkanCamalti) July 22, 2013

What do you think about the “green” Coca Cola Life?

[Image via hans engbers / Shutterstock.com]

‘Green’ Coca Cola Hits Shelves In Argentina is a post from: The Inquisitr

From Sweets

[Photographs: Jacqueline Raposo.]

Here, Cinnamon, Mocha, Strawberry and Glazed doughsants at Holtman's Donuts.

Over the past few years, Cincinnati locals have repeatedly warned me that the Queen City is often "20 years behind the times." But I'd recently been back in town for only two days when, while walking St. Gregory Street in Mount Adams, I was floored by the signs I saw: "We Have Cronuts and Crookies" and "Croughnuts are Here!" The craze started by Dominque Ansel back in New York had made its presence known in less than two months. And while he certainly isn't the first to cross a doughnut and croissant, those two signs were making rather bold statements.

"Ours is better," the barista at Bow Tie Café informed me, referring to my mention of The Sweetest Things, one block away.

I've spent enough time on both sides of the Ohio / Kentucky line to know that the people in the food industry here are extremely friendly, and so I suspected that their attempts weren't birthed by hostile competition. So then, what conversations had resulted in three local cronut interpretations six hundred and fifty miles away from the hubbub in New York? And what do their results taste like?

From Savor Catering in Newport, Kentucky

"Our pastry chef saw this story about cronuts and this beautiful photo and was like, I can do that!" says Mary Beiser, owner of Savor Catering and Events in Newport, Kentucky, who supplies to Bow Tie and two other local coffee shops. "And he did, and we just thought that they were wonderful." The buzz around them was minimal, but when local Channel 9 News broadcasted that one of their anchors really wanted to try the epic pastry, Mary was quick to offer her version up. Since their on-air success, they sell out at the coffee shops and at their stand at the Saturday morning Covington farmer's market in around an hour. They've become Savor's top selling item.

Nearby the market, Left Bank Coffeehouse's Maggie Soard had heard about cronuts before Mary's newscast, when Jean-François Flechet—owner of local Taste of Belgium restaurants—updated his wait at Dominique Ansel Bakery on their Facebook page. He was in line apparently to "see if it's worth trying to reproduce". But by the time his turn came, they were out. "In line for two hours for nothing. ‪#‎nocronut‬‬."

"Mary makes really good croissants," Maggie said. "So the cronuts are delicious. They taste the way a funnel cake at a fair smells; what you want it to taste like too, but it never does." Patron Kate Welsh added, "It's just pure wonderful. They run out very quickly—I've only had one."

"Quickly" means 20 pastries and 15 holes in about an hour on the three times a week when Savor delivers. It's a small but significant number.

At The Sweetest Things, Mount Adams, Cincinnati.

Back in Mount Adams at The Sweetest Things, owner/chef Heather Turner saw an opportunity for her much-loved croissant recipe to step up to the next level in a new offering for her clientele. Like Mary's version, Heather deep-fries and glazes her croissant dough, and while she only sells a few daily, they now compete with her signature pain au chocolat.

"These are amazing," Lucy Hodgson swooned as she took a bite. Neither she nor her dining companion, David Rentschler, had heard of them. But they were full of questions and seemed somewhat shocked by the around-the-block hysteria I explained was happening in New York, so much so that I gave them what I'd been photographing. By the time I'd packed up and left, the pastry was gone.

Cinnamon Sugar and Glazed at Holtman's Donuts, Loveland, Ohio.

Nearby in Loveland, Ohio, the community push came before Holtman's Donuts tried their hand; "We had just been on our local station and the next day or so it came out that the cronut was a big thing in New York, so the station called up to see if we'd make it for them," said Katie Willing, who works at and is marrying into the third generation of the family-run shop. But the team was busy preparing for their upcoming Over the Rhine location, and didn't think too much of it until more and more people began to request them. In their third trial batch, they sold three dozen in less than two hours. "We're not putting all of our money in this. If they sell, that's great. If they don't, it's just like the other fun little experiments we do."

Their experiment sheds light on the differences between what's popping up around Cincinnati and Chef Ansel's version. His is a layered pastry that's rolled in sugar, piped with pastry cream in layers, then glazed and garnished—a recipe that took him two months to perfect and takes three days to execute. "Chef Dominique Ansel's creation is not to be mistaken as simply croissant dough that has been fried," his website clarifies.

[Photograph at Dominique Ansel Bakery by Niko Triantafillou]

Which is, in simplest terms, what bakers nationwide and locals in Cincinnati are making. Savor and The Sweetest Things versions are fried and glazed croissants—they retain all the things you love about a doughnut but they have an airier texture and aren't as cloyingly sweet. Holtman's are made from layers of their doughnut and Danish doughs, which they let rise, freeze, and rise a second time before frying and either rolling them in cinnamon sugar or glazing them with strawberry, mocha, or plain glaze. They taste like a really well made classic doughnut with a somewhat flakier texture and much more volume, but not a croissant made in the style of a doughnut.

"It's our version, we're not trying to copy anything", Katie is quick to point out. The same was said at Savor and The Sweetest thing; each shop is proud of their accomplishment, and not trying to knock-off or compete with the original.

Yet they know the comparisons are out there, and it's already changed the way they look at and speak about their pastries. In the three days between when I'd read that first "We Have Croughnuts" sign and spoken with the creator, Mary had gotten a Cease and Desist letter in the mail from New York. She pressed, "We are a catering company in northern Kentucky that doesn't do any advertising—it's all word of mouth—so the news spot was a golden opportunity to maybe get more catering jobs. We never thought that we were taking something from someone a thousand miles away. We feel awful about the attention that poor man is getting up there—it looks like it's just craziness. But it was quite the shock when we got that letter in the mail."

Dominque Ansel (the chef and the company) has received a lot of backlash since similar letters went out around the country, and Mary is right that there's been much attention heaped onto the chef from both sides of the argument. A recent statement on the bakery's Facebook page clarified, "Our desire to protect the name is not an attempt to claim or take credit for all cooking methods associated with the recipe or all croissant and doughnut products in general. Instead, it offers the bakery and Chef protection against un-granted affiliations with the bakery or confusion from customers."

Heather and Katie hadn't received one, but were very aware of the patent issue around the word and now all three make it clear that they offer "doughsants". They're careful not to even "like" it when someone tags their pastry as a cronut. Yet that word accidentally slipped constantly from well-meaning mouths, including mine, during conversations with bakers, baristas, and diners alike. Many miles from New York, the craze of the cronut has created a strong ripple, if not a stir, in Cincinnati.

But if someone were to want to put a truly local stamp on the pastry, David (the diner at The Sweetest Things) offers up a solution: "Put some bacon on it. That's how we do it in Cincinnati. Make it a three-way."

Days after this statement had slipped from David's mouth, Mary at Savor began doing just that; this past Saturday at the farmer's market, she welcomed in the Bacon Maple Croissant Doughnut.

About the author: Jacqueline Raposo writes about people who make food and cooks things for her bread and butter. A "three way" in Cincinnati refers to their Cincinnati chili, not something naughty, by the way. Read more at www.WordsFoodArt.com or tweet excessively with her at @WordsFoodArt.

Unstoppable was banned by Facebook claims Kirk Cameron, but would a better explanation involve an atheist conspiracy?

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Kirk Cameron claimed the Unstoppable Facebook ban was purposeful:

“Facebook has officially “blocked” me and you (and everyone else) from posting any link to my new movie at UnstoppableTheMovieDOTcom, labeling the content as “abusive”, “unsafe”, and “spammy”! I can’t even write the real link here, or Facebook would block this post too!!”

Kirk Cameron even claimed Unstoppable was “officially shut down by Facebook and [they were] unable to get any response from them.” In response, some people have said Kirk Cameron lied about the whole thing. Others decry the supposed Unstoppable Facebook ban as corporate Christian persecution. But let’s apply Occam’s Razor here, which basically says that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Besides Kirk Cameron, other individuals on Facebook confirmed the “spammy” Unstoppable Facebook ban by trying it themselves, although for some people Unstoppable.com links worked at various times. How do we deal with this conflicting testimony?

Both Facebook and YouTube rely on a user-based reporting system for spam. The simplest explanation is that a large enough number of people were reporting Unstoppable.com as spam. In response, a large number of people reported the spam link clicks as being erroneous. Thus, we saw Facebook links to Unstoppable.com go from “spam” to “not spam” as the tide of user opinion swayed back and forth. Finally, Facebook employees stepped in to clear up the Unstoppable spam mess.

But you might ask, “Where does an atheist conspiracy for the Unstoppable Facebook ban come into play? Wouldn’t that violate Occam’s Razor by introducing additional assumptions?” Admittedly, that is correct. I don’t have any hard evidence of an atheist conspiracy for an Unstoppable Facebook ban, but my personal experience leads me to posit this hypothesis.

Books and movies that discuss serious questions pertinent to life’s mysteries tend to be extremely controversial. The entire goal of the Unstoppable move is to try to answer the question: “Where is God in the midst of tragedy and suffering?” For many atheists, the problem of evil was the beginnings of doubt and thus Unstoppable is a project that, well, they’d want to stop.

In my past, I’ve worked with various Christians by helping them with website development and programming (my background is in computer science). Along the way, I came to find out there is a background war being waged on the internet between Christians and atheists. Books on Amazon would find themselves targeted by negative review campaigns organized by atheist blogs and organizations. Often times, it was evident from the contents of the review that the reviewer had never read the book. Despite this fact, these negative reviews would have a serious impact on sales.

In response, Christian groups would attempt to even the balance by urging others to post positive reviews or down vote the negative reviews. Unfortunately, some of these well-intentioned positive reviews were also from people who never the books, although many admitted the reason for why they were posting in the first place was to balance out the problem. Richard Dawkins books also tended to be the target of Christians who never actually bothered to read them. From what I understand, these internet religious battles led Amazon to modify its review policies over time.

So, in my opinion, it’s not inconceivable that such organized efforts by atheist groups could occur again, although, obviously, it’s not the simplest explanation for the Unstoppable Facebook ban. It’s possible the whole thing was an emergent property of social media. But if this is indeed happening, I urge such atheist groups to abandon such tactics and instead focus on the evidence or arguments raised by Kirk Cameron’s Unstoppable movie.

Do you think an atheist conspiracy better explains the Unstoppable Facebook ban claimed by Kirk Cameron?

‘Unstoppable’ Facebook Ban By Kirk Cameron Best Explained By An Atheist Conspiracy? is a post from: The Inquisitr

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced a sweeping set of reforms on Monday that seeks to limit access to online pornography and do away with the more obscene materials. In a speech, Cameron outlined a new filter system that will compel all British internet users to select whether or not they want family-friendly filters in place on their accounts. Blimey.

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While Apple most-recently went smaller with the iPad, moving down to a 7.9-inch display with the iPad mini, but it seems Apple will be moving in the opposite direction if a recent report is to be believed. It’s said that Apple is testing out 13-inch iPad prototypes, as well as larger displays on iPhones that exceed the current 4 inches.

According to the Wall Street Journal, sources from suppliers in Asia say that Apple has asked for prototypes of screens larger than 4 inches for the iPhone, as well as ramblings of the company wanting to experiment with larger iPads that are around 13 inches in size. This means we could see a third iPad model, offering the Goldilocks effect to potential iPad buyers.

Of course, experimenting with different sizes of displays doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll see a larger iPad come into fruition. Apple is known to experiment quite a bit with potential products, but seeing as how larger screens are becoming popular than ever, it would make sense that the Cupertino-based company is looking to get in on that market.

The report on the larger iPhone displays goes right along with rumors last month of low-cost, plastic iPhone models with up to 5.7-inch screens. These are said to be budget-friendly devices that would get even more iPhones in the hands of consumers, since Android has a huge hold on the lower-cost device market currently.

Of course, Apple increased the size of the iPhone’s screen to 4 inches with the introduction of the iPhone 5. That marked the first time that the iPhone has gotten a screen size change, with all past models having 3.5-inch screens. The company has said that the screen size would never get any larger, but it seems that they’re buckling under peer pressure.

SOURCE: WSJ