56 Years Old Michael Thorson Sexually Assulted Sleeping Lady

When a Glendale woman awoke from a vodka and Xanax-inspired nap Thursday night, 56-year-old Michael Thorson was in the town house she's sharing with a friend -- and his fingers were in her vagina.

According to court documents obtained by New Times, the 53-year-old victim and her female roommate were at the pool at their complex of town houses on Northern Avenue in Glendale, which is where they met Thorson, who also lives in the complex.

The two women -- as well as Thorson -- had been drinking. The victim later told police she saw Thorson drink at least eight beers in about three hours as she and her friend drank vodka and juice.

The three went back to the women's town house where they ordered food and continued to drink. Then the victim decided to throw some Xanax into the mix, which caused her and her friend to pass out with a still-conscious Thorson in their town house.

The victim was wearing only a night shirt and underwear. When she woke up, Thorson's hand was under her night shirt, and his fingers were in her vagina.

The victim then kicked Thorson out of her house.

The next morning, the victim called police and told them about the sexual assault. With police listening in, she called Thorson and got him to admit to getting a little grabby while she was passed out the night before.

Thorson acknowledged that he put his fingers in the sleeping woman's vagina, and that he was sorry.

Thorson was arrested at his home later that day. He again admitted to police that he'd assaulted the woman, and continued to apologize.

Thorson was booked on one count of sexual assault. 

Hotel Floating on the Water

In a world of chain hotels and boutiques so ubiquitous they no longer merit the term, a hotel floating on the water is still a rarity.

A few intrepid hoteliers have set out for the seas, refitting old yachts, retooling old barges and making the most of their host cities' waterfronts. But some boat hotels go beyond just a cruise ship that never sets sail.

In New York City, an art installation in Jamaica Bay could be the coolest hotel in town, floating or otherwise. And in Sweden, a little cabin on the lake gives way to an underwater chamber that gives guests the feeling of sleeping in a fishbowl.

 

 

Where Do USA’s Most Prosperous Citizens Hang Out?

Where do this country’s most prosperous citizens hang out? How much money do they have? President Obama wants them to pay a bit more in taxes. But how much are they coughing up now?

Answers to these questions can be extracted from a little-utilized IRS database of income tax statistics. The file sorts tax returns by income range and by zip code.

Wary of releasing any data that might reveal something about individual taxpayers, the IRS slices its statistics into broad ranges. In this data set the top tier of income is $200,000 and up. Except, perhaps, to a politician looking for revenue increases, this scarcely qualifies a taxpayer as wealthy. 

 

Slideshow: America's Millionaire Capitals

So I put a finer sieve on the database, zeroing in on communities where the average income within the 200K-and-up set is at least $1 million.

Result: a set of 130,400 tax returns from 64 hot spots of prosperity–suburbs, islands, parts of cities. The list of ritzy places ranges from Fisher Island, an enclave of yacht owners off Miami, to the Tribeca area of Manhattan, where wage slaves with seven-figure salaries have their chic loft apartments.

Ranked by income, the list of rich places starts with Fisher Island, at $3.2 million per high-bracket taxpayer. Then come Purchase, N.Y. at $2.2 million; two more New York City suburbs, New Vernon and Alpine, N.J., both at $2.1 million, and Atherton, Calif. at $1.9 million.

Residences on Fisher consist for the most part of ritzy condos with very stiff maintenance fees. You can’t get on the island except by boat. Mel Gibson and Oprah Winfrey have had places there.

I did something more with the data that the IRS doesn’t do: estimate net worths, using figures on dividend, interest and business income as starting points.

In estimated net worth, the richest five communities are: Fisher Island, at $57 million per high-bracket return; Alpine, at $28 million; Medina, at $26 million; Palm Beach, Fla., at $23 million, and the King’s Point/Great Neck area on Long Island, at $22 million.

The recent stock market swoon did some damage to net worths, but not as much as you might think. The moneyed set in this country hold a lot of bonds, too, and bonds have done well this year.

Where do the rich get their income? Just under half of the money coming in is from working: salaries, pensions, Social Security, IRA payouts. The upper-bracket folk in the 64 rich hot spots take in 52% of their income from property: stocks, bonds, real estate, oil wells and businesses.

For the average American taxpayer, property income is only 17% of the pie.

The fraction of income from property peaks at 85% for Fisher Island. Property accounts for 75% or more of income in two other Florida communities, Boca Raton and Key Largo, and in Charlottesville. It hits bottom in fast-paced New York. Tribecans get only 25% of their income from investments.

Tribeca, in other words, is for up-and-comers. Fisher Island is for people who made it a long time ago and are sitting on fat brokerage accounts.

No. 5 - Kings Point, N.Y.

Kings Point, NY is No. 5 in highest net worth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These building lots on Gatsby Lane are listed at $18 million. If you build there, you will have high-bracket neighbors averaging $21.8 million in net worth.

 

No. 4 - Palm Beach, Fla.

Palm Beach, FL, famous for millionaires is in 4th place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Mediterranean-style home, built in 1926, has a $17.9 million price tag. Average high-bracket net worth in the neighborhood: $23.3 million.

 

No. 3 - Medina, Wash.

Medina, WA is No. 3 for highest net worth.

This four-bedroom at $6.9 million has a view and has Bill Gates living nearby. He is probably one reason the average net worth for high-bracket taxpayers is $25.5 million.

 

No. 2 - Alpine, N.J.

Alpine NJ is No. 2 in highest net worth.

This house comes with a heated driveway for $34 million. Average upper-bracket net worth in Alpine: $27.5 million.

 

No. 1 - Fisher Island, Fla.

Fisher Island, FL is No. 1 for both highest net worth & income.

Fisher Island, off Miami, is home to a dense collection of yachts and millionaires. The Forbes estimate of average net worth for taxpayers here with at least $200,000 of income is $57.2 million.

Striking World Of The Under Water

Reality TV Speech Inspires, Then Terrifies

Reality TV has given us many wonderful things. It’s given us the majesty of ‘The Osbournes.’ It has introduced us to the glorious beauty of Snookie. And now we have it to thank for this emotionally moving speech. This guy lost on this particular reality contest show… and wanted to leave viewers and the other contestants speechless.

Giant one-ton man-eating Crocodile Caught in Philippines

The 21-foot reptile was captured in a remote Philippine village following a spate of attacks on humans and livestock.

A giant saltwater crocodile believed to be the biggest ever caught has been captured in a remote Philippine town.

The 21ft, 2,370lbs reptile may have eaten a farmer who went missing in July, along with several water buffaloes in the southern town of Bunawan, crocodile hunter Rollie Sumiller said.

A crocodile also bit off the head of a 12-year-old girl in Bunawan in 2009, according to the environment ministry.

Josefina de Leon, wildlife division chief at the environment ministry, said that the beast was likely the biggest crocodile ever captured.

"Based on existing records the largest that had been captured previously was 17.9ft long," she said.

Mr Sumiller said he thought the male crocodile was more than 50 years old.

"This is the biggest animal that I've handled in 20 years of trapping," he said.

The Philippine specimen would easily dwarf the largest captive saltwater crocodile on record, which the Guinness World Records website says is Cassius, an 18ft male.

The Australian "salty" has lived in Marineland Melanesia, an Australian nature park near Cairns for 24 years, it said.

Published press reports have also cited a 20.3ft adult male killed on the Fly River in Papua New Guinea in 1982 that was measured after it was skinned.

"The community was relieved," Mr Sumiller said, but added: "We're not really sure if this is the man-eater, because there have been other sightings of other crocodiles in the area."

The team, employed by a government-run crocodile breeding farm, began laying bait using chicken, pork and dog meat on August 15.

But the reptile, which measured three feet across its back, simply bit off both the meat and the line it was skewered on.

An 0.31-inch metal cable finally proved beyond the power of its jaws, and the beast was subdued in a relatively fast 15 minutes at a creek late Saturday with the help of about 30 local men.

Bunawan Mayor Edwin Cox Elorde said the local government had decided against putting down the reptile and will instead build a nature park for it.

"It will be the biggest star of the park," Mr Elorde told reporters.

Mr Sumiller said the plan was the best option available for the reptile in Bunawan, a marshy town of about 30,000 people on the upper reaches of the massive Agusan river basin of Mindanao island.

"He's a problem crocodile that needs to be taken from the wild... [and] used for eco-tourism," Mr Sumiller said.

He said the giant reptile needed a 1,614ft square temporary enclosure, nearly three times the normal size alloted for captive crocodiles.

Crocodylus porosus, or the estuarine crocodile, is the world's largest reptile. It usually grows to 16-19ft in length and can live up to 100 years.

While not considered an endangered species globally, it is "critically endangered" in the Philippines, where it is hunted for its hide which is used in the fashion industry, de Leon said.

"There have been very few sightings of porosus in the wild in the Philippines in recent years," she added.

In July, a smaller saltwater crocodile, measuring almost 14 feet was caught on the western Philippine island of Palawan after it killed a man.

Female Orgasm Remains an Evolutionary Mystery

After baffling biologists for decades, the female orgasm has resisted yet another attempt to explain its elusive evolutionary origins.

A survey of orgasmic function in thousands of twins found none of the statistical patterns expected if female orgasm is just a coincidental byproduct of natural selection on its male counterpart, as has been suggested.

“The evolutionary basis of human female orgasm has been subject to furious scientific debate, which has recently intensified,” wrote University of Queensland geneticist Brendan Zietsch and Pekka Santtila of Finland’s Abo Akedemi University in a Sept. 3 Animal Behavior article. “These results challenge the byproduct theory of female orgasm.”

While the male orgasm is, in evolutionary and practical terms, a fairly straightforward thing — it makes men want to have sex more often, thus continuing their lineage, and is achieved with ease — the female orgasm is a far trickier beast.

Unlike male orgasm, which is found across the primate spectrum, female orgasm has skipped some species. (Lady gibbons, for example, are out of luck.) In humans, men are far more likely to experience orgasm than women, of whom one in 10 don’t ever experience it.

That imbalance runs contrary to traditional explanations of female orgasm: that it strengthens bonds between mates and thus improves the care received by their children, or that the ability to elicit orgasm indicates a male’s virility, or that underlying physiological processes somehow improve reproductive success.

After all, if female orgasms are an important evolutionary adaptation, they should be easier to attain. Also perplexing is that many women require clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm, not penetrative action. If female orgasms were meant to encourage sex, the opposite ought to be true.

All this has led to an alternative explanation, popularized in Elisabeth Lloyd’s popular 2005 book The Case of the Female Orgasm: That there’s no adaptive purpose. Women simply happen to share biology with men, for whom orgasm is important. It’s an accidental byproduct, like men’s nonlactating nipples.

But while this idea is plausible, it hasn’t yet been rigorously explored. So Zietsch and Santtila devised a test. They surveyed 1,803 pairs of opposite-sex twins and 2,287 pairs of same-sex twins, asking them how often and how easily they reached orgasm. If female orgasm is evolutionarily connected to male, opposite-sex twins should have similar orgasmic function.

But that’s not what they found. Instead, while orgasmic function was genetically shared in same-sex twins — brother tended to share function with brother, or sister with sister — the relationship vanished in opposite-sex twins, though both share the same amount of genetic material. The underlying genetics, and thus the underlying evolutionary pressures, thus appear to differ.

“This does not support the hypothesis that female orgasm is maintained only as a byproduct of selection on the male orgasm,” wrote Zietsch and Santtila.

However, the researchers warn that their findings aren’t yet definitive. Self-reported surveys aren’t methodologically airtight, and a recent Journal of Sexual Medicine study by Zietsch “found near-zero correlations between women’s orgasm rates and 19 other evolutionarily relevant traits.”

Those findings contradict the latest study, and suggest female orgasm might be a byproduct after all. It might also have been evolutionarily important to humanity’s ancestors, but irrelevant now.

“The evolutionary basis of female orgasm is both important and unknown,” wrote Zietsch and Santtila. “Much more work needs to be done.”

EU Spends £2.5m Encouraging People to Eat Insects

Nutrition experts have found a cheap way to help save the environment and solve the food shortage crisis. They have found an abundant supply of food rich in calcium and protein, while low in fat. But the squeamish might want to look away now - because the food source is insects.

The European Union thinks creepy crawlies should start appearing on menus after experts in Brussels recommended that bugs could be a vital source of nutrition, The Sunday Times newspaper reported. So scorpion soup and cricket casserole could soon be options, as the European Commission has now offered £2.65million into a project to promote eating insects. 

They have also ordered the UK Food Standards Agency to investigate and potentially look at ways to make entomophagy - the eating of insects - a more popular choice. One study found that grasshoppers offer 20 per cent protein with a tiny six per cent fat, compared to lean ground beef's 24 per cent protein and 18 per cent fat.

The research institute that offers the best proposal for investigating 'insects as novel sources of proteins' will be awarded the money by the commission. They will have to research quality and safety, potential allergies and what sort of proteins the insects offer.

Professor Marcel Dicke, leading a team at Wageningen University, in Holland, is applying for the grant. He told the Sunday Times: 'By 2020 you will be buying insects in supermarkets. 'We have already seen the introduction of eggplants, sushi, things people never ate here. I think it will start with ground-up insects in sauces and burgers.' Snacking on silkworm moth larvae or adding blitzed bees to sauces could offer a much-needed solution to soaring costs of red meat.

More traditional sources of protein - such as beef - are not sufficient enough to feed the world's rapidly growing population and are costly to feed, so their prices are soaring. Alternatively insects emit fewer greenhouse gases than cattle, require less feed and are viewed as more environmentally friendly.

The Sunday Times reported that supporters claim that insects provide a minimum of 200kg of biomass - energy from biological material - because there is such a plentiful supply of them.

After television series including I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! in which contestants have to eat unappetising meals of different insects in 'bushtucker trials' there has been a swell of interest in eating insects.Selfridges and Fortnum and Mason started stocking the insects to cater for the -as yet - niche taste.

You Should Be Taller

You’re Never Too Old

Meet Fauja Singh.  He is a a marathon runner of Indian descent and is currently the world record holder in his age bracket after he ran the 2003 Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 5 hours 40 minutes at the age of 92.  Singh is now 100-years-old, and it doesn’t appear as though he is ready to stop running just yet.  “I won’t stop running until I die. The next target, God willing, is to be the oldest marathon runner ever,” Singh said back in 2009.  As a centenarian, I am fairly certain he has already reached that target.