Woman Dies of Allergic Reaction

Woman Dies of Allergic Reaction to the Dog She Had Sex With
By Brian Moylan, Jul 8, 2011 3:34 PM
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Facebook TwitterStumbleUpon Tumblr Close After reading this weird news story, you will never have to read another weird news story ever again. It has everything: an insane premise, crazy people, crushing irony, sex, crime, and sex crime. It seems an Irish woman died after an allergic reaction to a dog—a dog she had sex with. Yes. Really.

From Ireland, the land of geniuses like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and Bono, comes this story of a 43-year-old woman who encountered a man in a bestiality chat room and then met him at his house in Limerick. She had sex with his Alsatian dog and then had a severe allergic reaction shortly afterwards, possibly from the dog's semen. She later died at the hospital. The incident apparently took place in 2008, but medical experts just confirmed the cause of death, because the case is finally making its way to court, not because it took them this long to get over the shock of how she died. The dog owner, Sean McDonnell, is charged with "buggery" for ordering the dog to commit the act. Buggery is apparently still a crime on the books in Ireland, so thank God for that. McDonnell is thought to be the first person charged with it since it was enacted in 1861.

So, next time you hear about a man biting a dog or a delivery driver run over by his own truck, just remember this story and remind yourself it's best to stay away from the weird news.

[Image of a woman and a dog that did not have sex via Shutterstock]

How the U.S. Army is Using Social Media

One of the most interesting aspects of web technology and social media nowadays is how it's being deployed by non-techies.

Recently I had the chance to connect with the U.S. Army to find out how it is using the Web.
Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, online video and more is currently in operation at U.S. Army HQ. I spoke to Suzanne Nagel, Digital Chief Accessons Command of the U.S. Army, who walked me through how the Web is being used for recruitment and community.

We started off by discussing a blog called Army Strong Stories, which enables people to hear authentic stories from U.S. Army soldiers. A word from our sponsor: A word from our sponsor: NoSQL Now! is a new conference covering the dynamic field of NoSQL technologies, scheduled for the San Jose Convention Center, in San Jose, California, on August 23-25, 2011.

It is a vendor-neutral forum describing the diversity of NoSQL technologies and helping businesses develop objective evaluation processes to match the right NoSQL solutions with the right business challenge. Keynote speakers include Dwight Merriman, architect of MongoDB, and Mike Stonebraker, database pioneer and serial entrepreneur.Ad powered by BTBuckets Launched in 2008, the target audience of Army Strong Stories is the U.S. Army's primary recruiting target: men aged 18-24. This age group spends a lot of time online, so a blog was seen as an effective way to reach that audience. The site also reaches women in the same age group, but Nagel explained that about 80% of jobs in the U.S. Army aren't open to women (I didn't realize it was that high a number).

Real Army Stories The idea behind Army Strong Stories is to interact with the target audience and enable them to read and hear stories about army life. Soldiers are encouraged to engage with the readers, by replying to comments. The aim is to build a dialog with potential recruits, partly to disavow them of myths about army life - for example, said Nagel, the scream-in-your-face drill sergeant so often portrayed in Hollywood movies. Army Strong Stories features blog posts about anything related to army life.

It's not necessarily career based content (see the tag cloud to the right for a list of topics). I asked Suzanne Nagel whether the bloggers write about politics. She replied that generally no, however the army doesn't censor or filter content - other than for bad language. Video is a relatively new part of the site, generally featuring army staff speaking for a couple of minutes about their lives.

Army Strong Stories isn't the army's main web presence. Goarmy.com is the main recruiting website, which is used for recruiting soldiers and presenting facts about the army.

Usage so far of Army Strong Stories has been broad, said Nagel. She noted that it's not just men 18-24 who frequent the site. Regulars include bloggers' parents and other relatives. Army Social Media Of course in this day and age, it isn't all about the blog. The army uses Facebook and Twitter a lot.

It also has both an iPhone app and a mobile website, featuring the same functionality as the website. They are currently working on an iPad version and will "probably" work on an Android version in the future. Overall, the U.S. army is actively growing its digital efforts. In particular, and in common with many other organizations, over the past 5 years it has increasingly used social media.