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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Mini-muscleman: Meet the world's smallest bodybuilder

At just 2ft 9in, Indian muscleman Aditya 'Romeo' Dev is the world's smallest bodybuilder.

Pint-sized Romeo is well-known in his hometown of Phagwara, India - for his ability to lift 1.5kg dumbbells - despite his overall 9kg body weight.

Every day, crowds flock to the local gym to the see the mini-muscleman in training.

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Mini muscleman: Romeo, pictured with his trainer Ranjeet Pal, weighs just 1 st 6 lbs

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Unlike many dwarfs, Romeo is well proportioned, with a head circumference of 15in and a chest measurement of 20in.

Romeo said: "I've been training as a bodybuilder for the last two years and by now I think I must be the strongest dwarf in the world.

"I have always been fit but since I started working out, I have become famous for my strength.

"My size has never stopped me. I train with dumbbells and do aerobics and dance. People are always pleased to see me. I have been invited on TV shows and dance on stage."

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Howzat: Romeo bats away any doubts about his sporting prowess prompted by his size

His trainer Ranjeet Pal spents hours helping his 19-year-old protege build his small muscles to perfection.

"Because of his small size, I don't assign him hard exercises. But Romeo trains more or less the same as anyone else and he's much more determined.

"When he first started, I insisted he did a month of basic exercises like aerobics, push-ups and basic gymnastics to prepare his body.

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Possibly the strongest dwarf in the world: Romeo and his 1.5kg dumbbells

"After that, I made lightweight dumbbells and taught him basic weight-lifting exercises to shape his biceps and triceps. His size and his weight were taken care of so that he never hurt himself."

Determined Romeo is hoping to have an entertainment career after performing in many local TV shows.

He said: "I earn good money through my dance and bodybuilding shows but being rich doesn't interest me.

"My dream is to travel a lot - I want to perform in London with my idol, Jazzy-B."

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Big dreamer: Romeo hopes to become a famous star both in India and abroad

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Weight lifter: Romeo lifts 1.5kg weights every day

WII FIT


Star Wars: The Clone Wars is Coming to Theaters!


February 11, 2008
Source: Variety, USA Today
by Alex Billington

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

You might have thought that no Star Wars movie would ever show in theaters again, at least not until Lucas re-releases them in 3D sometime after 2010. Good news - that's no longer the case, as we have received confirmation that the animated movie Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be playing in theaters on August 15th later this year! The movie is a full-length feature developed from the 25-episode animated Clone Wars series that played on Cartoon Network a few years back. Lucasfilm is launching this new movie in theaters where it will later play on Cartoon Network again before the launch of yet another new animated series. Star Wars is back in theaters again in 2008, baby!

Warner Brothers decided to kick off the series with this theatrical release after they were shown the first footage from the series. Star Wars: The Clone Wars will run around 100 minutes in length and will take place between Episodes II and III. Anakin is not Darth Vader yet and the story will be focused around the ensuing Clone Wars that began in Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Warner Brothers and Lucasfilm seem as excited about this release as we are, saying "I don't know anyone who wouldn't want it" and taking a risk by "trying to do something unprecedented — marrying TV series and theatrical release."

George Lucas is involved with the project as executive producer. Lucas said he began work on this new spin-off because he "felt there were a lot more 'Star Wars' stories left to tell." And instead of making more live-action movies, he wanted to tell those stories through animation, pushing the technology forward at the same time. Dave Filoni of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" will be directing, with Henry Gilroy, Scott Murphy and Steven Melching writing. No actors from the original movies are involved, except Anthony Daniels as C3PO and Matthew Wood as General Grievous and the battledroids.

USA Today has scored the very first photo from the upcoming animated film of Anakin Skywalker and Jedi apprentice Ahsoka, which can be seen below.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

In this film, Anakin and Obi-Wan are trying to hold together the galactic republic, split apart by war between a separatist robot army and the good-guy white-armored clones. The Jedi apprentice you see above is actually Anakin's padawan, a change from the story that we've been familiar with throughout the movies. However, they're not changing up the Star Wars lore without the help of the man in charge. "George is our guide. He's the creator of the Star Wars universe, so we couldn't have a better mentor," asserts director Dave Filoni.

I know we'll be in theaters on August 15th watching this movie. With the experience I had seeing TMNT in theaters, I'm certainly just as excited to now also see Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The theater is such a great platform and atmosphere to launch this series in, and I can't wait to see all the crowds and people, young and old, who will be there enjoying it together.

Netflix coming to Xbox 360 and PS3?

According to a blogged up blog post on the interblogs, a Netflix survey that's supposedly been making the rounds suggests that the service may be coming to both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. If you believe what Seanbajuice has to say, the survey asked, "If as part of your Netflix membership you could instantly watch movies and TV episodes on your TV with your PS/3 or XBOX 360, how likely would you/anyone in your household be to do that?" The survey then goes on to state that both the PS3 and the 360 will be able to play streaming media by using a "special Netflix disc." Here's the kicker: there won't be any extra fees besides the $3 charge for the disc. Of course, nothing is mentioned about how the PS3 will handle the Microsoft-based DRM, and while the whole thing sounds too good to be true, there have been rumblings about this recently, so let's just cross our fingers and make a wish, okay?

Siberian Tiger

Sea of Garbage

No matter how much you love swimming I’m willing to bet the farm you wouldn’t dare do it here…unless you have a death wish!

This is the Citarum river, in Indonezia, possibly the most polluted river in the world, due to mankind’s greed and insensibility regarding environment. Once one of the most beautiful waters in Asia, now the Citarum is a graveyard of debris, where locals, who can no longer fish, risk their lives scavenging for bottles and anything else they might sell for a small profit.

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Ready for Micro Projectors in the Cell Phone/Mobile device?


Better Viewing Experiences from Mobile Devices


Microvision is working with business partners to enable better viewing experiences for users of mobile devices. Sharing photos, watching movies, and giving presentations using the small screens of today’s devices limits our ability to imagine, entertain, and share.

Microvision is the number one choice for OEMs who wish to breakthrough through the display bottleneck and provide customers with new viewing experiences. From embedded projectors that sit inside a handset to accessory projectors that connect to mobile devices, Microvision's PicoP display engine offers OEM customers the ability to design next generation mobile devices that delight customers while creating new business opportunities.

Sweep The Leg

No More Kings

Kanye West Grammys 2008 Performance



Stronger with Daft Punk


Not sure if any of you watched the Grammy's but they were actually quite good this year.

here are some pics:
Grammy's 2008 50th Anniversary

Surfer / Copter

Worlds Most Dangerous Swimming Pool


Worlds Most Dangerous Swimming Pool - Watch more free videos
This might now be the worlds most dangerous place to swim but I have yet to see someone swimming in anything more crazy than this.

It's Victoria Falls in africa. It's a 400 ft drop over that ridge, but the current is so low you can sit in that hidden pool without worries of being pulled over.

Full Article with Pics HERE

Yellow Card on Blass


Giving away details of a movie ending that obviously not everyone has had a chance to see yet ("No Country..." in the Cohen Brothers post) is just bad etiquette. Not everyone watches the first shitty, handheld, cam versions that hit the web. Some of us wait for decent DVD rips... and I'm sure there are some mythical people out there that wait for an actual commercial DVD release as well.

Bad form I say... bad form indeed.

NEW COEN BROTHERS PROJECT: Yiddish Policeman's Union

Following the success of No Country for Old Men (which made my ten best of '07 list despite a shitty ending - a deam sequence? Come on.), the Coen Brothers have announced that they'll be writing and directing a film adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel Yiddish Policeman's Union.

The novel is an alternate history detective story based on the premise that after World War II, a temporary Yiddish-speaking settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Alaska in 1941. It also incorporates the (fictional) destruction of the State of Israel in 1948 after an unsuccessful struggle for independence. It takes place in a fictionalized version of the real city of Sitka.

"Against this backdrop is a noir-style murder mystery in which a rogue cop investigates the killing of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy who might be the messiah." Hmm, a noir-style murder mystery set in the snow, what does this remind you of...

It's hard to go wrong with the Coen Brothers and though I haven't read the book, Chabon's other novel Wonder Boys was a solid read. At the very least, it's nice to see Jews finally getting to make movies. They've gone underrepresented in Hollywood for too long.

Jerry O'Connell - party liaison

Jerry's party to celebrate the end of the WGA strike got a little out of hand.

The Samsung Soul


In today's episode of Slightly Over the Top Product Names and the Marketing Folks that Love Them, we bring you Samsung's Soul, a cool new phone with an OLED touch pad screen (that is haptic responsive) and a 'user-changed graphic interface.' The touchpad rests below the main screen, and the key feature is that the touch buttons change according to the application on the screen that you are using.

As a result, texting, calling, and playing music all have different buttons that generate on the touch screen and help to reduce UI confusion. At least that's the goal -- we'll see if it actually works when we get our hands on it.

The Soul's specs (other than its self-aware, immortal existence) are the following: 7.2Mbps Quad-band/HSDPA, 12.9mm thickness, 2.2-inch screen (at 320 x 240), RSS Reader, and an SD slot.

Nike Air McFly To Be Released?!


air mcfly

We all remember the awesome pair of Nike shoes Marty Mcfly wore in Back To The Future II. They had a self locking lace system, they lit up, and they were just gangster. There was even an online petition for them to be retro’d that got a hell of a lot of signatures.

I was recently sent these pictures from an undisclosed source, and I immediately went and matched them up to the originals from the film. Although they look very similar, it’s clear they are not the same exact shoe. The only thing I can gather from this is that they may be a Nike prototype/sample which hopefully will see the light of release day at some point in the future. Even if only in extremely limited quantities, this would be absolutely amazing.

You can see the original movie version on the left and the new version on the right for a side by side comparison.

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And more pics of the new version:

Catch of the day: Cocaine

Painted Cats

The book these came from said some of the paint jobs cost $15,000 and had to be repeated every 3 months as the cat's hair grows out. Must be nice to have $60,000 a year just to keep your cat painted!

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More PICS HERE

Roy Scheider, Actor in ‘Jaws,’ Dies at 75

February 11, 2008


Roy Scheider, a stage actor with a background in the classics who became one of the leading figures in the American film renaissance of the 1970s, died on Sunday afternoon in Little Rock, Ark. He was 75 and lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

Mr. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years, and died of complications from a staph infection, his wife, Brenda Siemer, said.

Mr. Scheider’s rangy figure, gaunt face and emotional openness made him particularly appealing in everyman roles, most famously as the agonized police chief of “Jaws,” Steven Spielberg’s 1975 breakthrough hit, about a New England resort town haunted by the knowledge that a killer shark is preying on the local beaches.

Mr. Scheider conveyed an accelerated metabolism in movies like “Klute” (1971), his first major film role, in which he played a threatening pimp to Jane Fonda’s New York call girl; and in William Friedkin’s “French Connection” (also 1971), as Buddy Russo, the slightly more restrained partner to Gene Hackman’s marauding police detective, Popeye Doyle. That role earned Mr. Scheider the first of two Oscar nominations.

Born in 1932 in Orange, N.J., Mr. Scheider earned his distinctive broken nose in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition. He studied at Rutgers and at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., where he graduated as a history major with the intention of going to law school. He served three years in the United States Air Force, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was discharged, he returned to Franklin and Marshall to star in a production of “Richard III.”

His professional debut was as Mercutio in a 1961 New York Shakespeare Festival production of “Romeo and Juliet.” While continuing to work onstage, he made his movie debut in “The Curse of the Living Corpse” (1964), a low-budget horror film by the prolific schlockmeister Del Tenney. “He had to bend his knees to die into a moat full of quicksand up in Connecticut,” recalled Ms. Siemer, a documentary filmmaker. “He loved to demonstrate that.”

In 1977 Mr. Scheider worked with Mr. Friedkin again in “Sorcerer,” a big-budget remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 French thriller, “The Wages of Fear,” about transporting a dangerous load of nitroglycerine in South America.

Offered a leading role in “The Deer Hunter” (1979), Mr. Scheider had to turn it down in order to fulfill his contract with Universal for a sequel to “Jaws.” (The part went to Robert De Niro.)

“Jaws 2” failed to recapture the appeal of the first film, but Mr. Scheider bounced back, accepting the principal role in Bob Fosse’s autobiographical phantasmagoria of 1979, “All That Jazz.” Equipped with Mr. Fosse’s Mephistophelean beard and manic drive, Mr. Scheider’s character, Joe Gideon, gobbled amphetamines in an attempt to stage a new Broadway show while completing the editing of a film (and pursuing a parade of alluring young women) — a monumental act of self-abuse that leads to open-heart surgery. This won Mr. Scheider an Academy Award nomination in the best actor category. (Dustin Hoffman won that year, for “Kramer vs. Kramer.”)

In 1980, Mr. Scheider returned to his first love, the stage, where his performance in a production of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” opposite Blythe Danner and Raul Julia earned him the Drama League of New York award for distinguished performance. Although he continued to be active in films, notably in Robert Benton’s “Still of the Night” (1982) and John Badham’s action spectacular “Blue Thunder” (1983), he moved from leading men to character roles, including an American spy in Fred Schepisi’s “Russia House” (1990) and a calculating Mafia don in “Romeo Is Bleeding” (1993).

One of the most memorable performances of his late career was as the sinister, wisecracking Dr. Benway in David Cronenberg’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s “Naked Lunch” (1991).

Living in Sag Harbor, Mr. Scheider continued to appear in films and lend his voice to documentaries, becoming, Ms. Siemer said, increasingly politically active. With the poet Kathy Engle, he helped to found the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, dedicated to creating an innovative, culturally diverse learning environment for local children. At the time of his death, Mr. Scheider was involved in a project to build a film studio in Florence, Italy, for a series about the history of the Renaissance.

Besides his wife, his survivors include three children, Christian Verrier Scheider and Molly Mae Scheider, with Ms. Siemer, and Maximillia Connelly Lord, from an earlier marriage, to Cynthia Bebout; a brother, Glenn Scheider of Summit, N.J.; and two grandchildren.

Everett Collection

Mr. Scheider played the lead role in Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” (1979).

Atlantis Shuttle Launch

Shock and awe: A $6 million home theater

This is a PS3 setup...look at the last picture; there it is, just below the middle of the picture.

BTW...thats what 6 million dollars will get you...now all breathe in deeply and drool.

UPDATED: Parts list at the bottom.

full article here









Partial Equipment List for the Kipnis Studio Standard Beta CinE:

Picture Elements:
Sony SRX-S110 Professional Video Projector
Stewart 18-by-10-foot Snowmatte 1.0 Gain Laboratory-Grade Motion Picture Screen

Players and Sources:
Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray Player
Sony PlayStation 3 Gaming Console
Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD Player
JVC HMDH-5U D-VHS Recorder
SATA Drive (72 HDTV Hours Total)
Mark Levinson N° 51 DVD/CD Media Player
Pioneer HLD-X0 Hi-Vision HDTV MUSE Laserdisc Player

Surround Processing and Decoding:
Theta Digital Generation VIII 32-bit 8x Oversampling Dual Processors (13)

Amplification:
Mark Levinson N° 33h Amplifiers (2)
McIntosh MC-2102 Amplifiers (30)
Crown Macro Reference Gold Amplifiers (3)

Speakers:
Snell 1800 THX Music & Cinema Reference Subwoofers (16)
Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference Towers (8)
MuRata ES103A Super Tweeters (10)
Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference LCR-2800 Center-Channel Speakers (3)

Makeover for Europe's Mars robot


Makeover for Europe's Mars robot
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, Kennedy Space Center

The boss of the European Space Agency has asked his officials to find a new name for the flagship ExoMars mission.

Jean Jacques Dordain said the rover concept had changed so radically since first envisioned and costed that it was really now a new venture.

Mr Dordain will ask ministers in November for a near doubling of the 650-million-euro budget for ExoMars they originally agreed in 2005.

The robot rover - whatever its name - should launch for Mars in 2013.

"I am asking [my officials] to find a different way to define ExoMars because if we say 'this is ExoMars', for most of the ministers it means 'over-cost'.

"And this is not over-cost because we are not speaking at all of the same mission; it is a completely different mission. This is to try to make ministers understand that this is not over-cost."

ExoMars will be Europe's big space exploration project in the next decade.

Beefed up

The plan is to put a hi-tech vehicle on the Red Planet's surface with a range of instrumentation capable of investigating the planet's life potential - past and present.

When the idea was first put to European space ministers three years ago, they embraced the project and actually gave it slightly more money than was being asked for at the time.


EXOMARS MISSION CONCEPT
Set to leave Earth in 2013; primary aim is to search for life
Will launch on a heavy-lift Proton or Ariane 5 rocket
Vented landing bags allow for a larger payload
Rover will carry a 16.5kg 'Pasteur' instrument suite
30kg geophysics/environment static station also possible
This would study the weather and listen for 'Marsquakes'
Concept to cost Esa states more than first estimates

But as the detailed design work was carried out, it became clear the original concept would not meet the expectations of scientists; and a decision was taken within the European Space Agency (Esa) to beef up the mission.

"Today what I call 'ExoMars 2008' is different from the 'ExoMars of 2005'," Mr Dordain said.

"This is why I'm looking for a different name. In 2005, it was mostly a technological mission with some scientific passengers. But the interest in Mars, and specifically exobiology, meant that I had a queue of scientists wanting to go onboard ExoMars.

"Now we have a scientific mission as much as a technological mission, meaning that the ExoMars 2008 is heavier, is more complex and is more costly."

The increased cost may present real problems for some countries, however.

In particular, the UK, which had signed up to be a lead partner on the mission, now faces having to find tens of millions of euros extra to maintain its position on the project.

Research centre

Next week, the British government will unveil a new space strategy. It has made clear its desire to increase its Esa contributions, and to host a specialist Esa research centre, most probably one that investigates space robotics.

Detailed legal work on that centre is being conducted now and the facility itself could be approved at the Esa Council meeting at ministerial level in The Hague on 25-26 November.

Mr Dordain said he had been encouraged lately by the UK's attitude, which in the past he has described as "anomalous" because of the nation's relative reluctance to get involved in the agency compared with Germany, France and Italy.

"The UK is the second richest country in Europe and the sixth [largest] contributor in Esa," he told BBC News.

"And this is all the more an anomaly because there are a lot of capabilities in the UK; there is a fantastic scientific community, there are good industrial capabilities and it is a pity that the British government is not taking more benefit from these assets."

Mr Dordain was speaking here in Florida after the launch of the Columbus science laboratory to the International Space Station, one of the voluntary Esa programmes in which the UK currently refuses to get involved.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Weirdest Things Found in Sewers and Drains

At one time, the only things you worried about finding in sewers were alligators, but Roto-Rooter — the international plumbing and drain company — has rescued everything from guns, illegal drugs, GI Joe dolls, live cats, electric razors, currency, coins, snakes, prosthetic eyeballs, iPods and even an unexploded Civil War cannon shell from toilets, drainpipes and trenches over the past several years. Sewers have even served was watery graves for some misfortunates.

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Photo Beothuk

The 5 top weird things that go flush from a 2007 survey from the company’s 5,000 field technicians throughout North America include:

1. Hold On to Your Choppers
Rock Hill, South Caroline — in June, a frantic customer told the service technician, “I desperately need your help, I dropped my teeth down there.” Roto-Rooter recovered the man’s dentures intact and in great shape. The man said he intended to use them again — but only after a good cleaning.

2. The Manssierre
Plainfield, Illinois — Like something from a Seinfeld series, a technician went to a commercial business and cabled a toilet in the men’s restroom that was exclusively for male employees. He discovered the cause of the clog was a training bra.

3. Caught with His Pants Down (the Drain)
Toledo, Ohio — On June 6, 2007, Ottawa County Jail personnel attempted to unclog a stubborn toilet block unsuccessfully in one of the jail cells. A Roto-Rooter service technician determined the source of the clog as a pair of orange prisoner pants. The jailbird who would have been released merely 4 days after he clogged his toilet pleaded no contest to criminal mischief and was sentenced to another 30 days.

4. Diamonds — a Girl’s Best Friend
Grand Rapids, Michigan — on December 8, a Roto-Rooter tech used a fiber optic sewer camera and coat hanger taped to a cable to recover a $7,000 diamond engagement ring that was unintentionally flushed down the toilet. The customer complained about the price but his wife hastily intervened and tipped the plumber $20 above his fee.

5. Fresh Air? Not Down There!
Erie, Pennsylvania — December 18th, a Roto-Rooter plumber retrieved a large electric plug-in air freshener caught in the toilet flange that connects the toilet to the drainpipe in the floor which had been flushed down the toilet. The plumber reported that the air freshener proved ineffective against sewer gases coming out of the pipe.

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Photo Beothuk

Alligator Myths
Sewer alligator stories were once thought to be an urban legend dating back to the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, based on reports of alligator sightings in rather unorthodox locations, particularly in New York City.

But in 1935, Teddy May, the city’s Superintendent of Sewers, witnessed a large number of alligators — most about 2 feet (61 centimeters) long — to be living within pipes that emptied into the trunk lines below major streets.

Although the story of the ‘Sewer Gator’ in New York City is well known and various versions have been told and built up over the decades, recent reports validate that the stories are much more than urban myth.

A trapper reported an abundance of the reptiles in sewers in Ormond Beach, Florida, as he told WFTV that they were using the sewer to travel through the city after sighting the first one with its tail sticking out from a sewer pipe in October 2005.

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Trapper Joe Borelli Jr. tapes the mouth shut of an alligator.
Photo Times / Boyzell Hosey

The St. Petersburg Times reported a 9 foot, 10 inch alligator was found at Lakeshore Mobile Home Park in St. Petersburg in June 2006.

And the Huston Press tells of a 600 pound gator that was so fat it couldn’t spin around in a 3 foot wide drain in Texas, May 2006.

More Bizarre Sewer Objects
Beothuk of Calgary, Alberta in Canada recently compiled a collection mostly from the Edmonton, Alberta Project he was involved in, stating he’s even found bullets at a prison in Saskatchewan.

They looked for drugs that were flushed quite a few times, and a coworker was called in for a murder investigation, checking to see if the wife “disposed of a certain body part.”

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Things he found at work which now reside on his dashboard. Photo Beothuk

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Pulled out of a line in Edmonton, Alberta, Beothuk said this jaw is about the same
size as a human’s, which scared them a lot when they saw it. Photo Beothuk

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Details of a Calgary sewer manhole lid. Photo Beothuk

New York City Sewer Finds
But the best place to see Manhattan’s byproducts — what gets stuffed down its sinks, flushed down its toilets and washed from its gutters — cannot be found in tour guides, but at the Manhattan Grit Chamber, which strains solids from much of the borough’s sewage as it flows underground to the Wards Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.

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Manhattan Grit Chamber. Photo NY Times

“This is where it all winds up,” said John Ahern, who oversees the chamber.

Sewage flows by gravity to 1 large main where it’s cleaned of toxins and released as purified water into the river.

To keep the tunnel clear, grit and other solid materials must be strained before the sewage enters. That’s where the chamber comes in.

At the Manhattan chamber, sewage enters through a 12 foot wide main and flows into a basement room. The sediment is collected by an arm that sweeps the bottom of the canal and empties into buckets that automatically rinse the grit and lift it up to the ground floor, where it’s deposited in metal bins.

John Ahern says the list of things he’s seen and seen strained from New Yorkers’ sewage provide enough fodder for a 1-man show.

In a bin of screenings, there were mostly rags, soiled paper towels, condoms, rubber gloves, MetroCards, dental floss and tampon applicators — that and a dead rat. There is no demure way of describing other contents.

“Sometimes you find money.” he said, looking into the bins. “We get a lot of stuffed animals, anything kids throw down the toilet.”

“We get a lot of turtles and fish. We’ve had a canoe come in here; it got caught on the screen. We’ve had pieces of telephone poles, Christmas trees, you name it — mattresses, dead dogs. We got a live dog once.”

And yes, the sewers sometimes become a grave for the unfortunate.

“We’ve had a few dead bodies.” he said. “We got a homeless woman, but it’s mostly men. Once we had a guy who was shot. The last one we had was a homeless guy, a few years ago in the Bronx. They go into the manholes to look for jewelry and money, and then they get overcome with gas, go unconscious and die down there.”

Watery Graves
And New York isn’t the only city with sludge-filled watery graves for the misfortunate.

A woman in Germany put an end to her troubled marriage by chopping up her husband and flushing parts of him down the toilet, authorities in Brisbane said on January 9 2008.

“You won’t find him, I’ve flushed him down the toilet’, is what she told [her children],” said Andre Hartwich, a spokesman for police in the western city of Duesseldorf.

The children, who reported their father missing before Christmas, told police the marriage was “steeped in hatred.”

The woman had previously attempted to poison her husband, and on one occasion she had seriously injured him with a hammer. Police were shocked that the long-suffering husband had never reported these incidents.

On the night that the man was last seen, neighbors reported hearing the toilet being constantly flushed. Police are working on the assumption that the woman had chopped up her husband’s body into small pieces, disposing of some in garbage bins and flushing the rest of the body down the toilet.

Police forensic experts were able to detect traces of blood in the living room, hall and bathroom.