Last week, a teenage girl's legs were severed above the ankle while on the Superman Tower of Power ride at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom.

A Swiss company called Intamin made the ride 14 years ago. Intamin has installed a total of 70 rides around the globe since 1979. According to Intamin, a steel cord snapped loose just as the ride reached its highest point. Eyewitnesses said the cord snapped again and moved in front of the ride as it descended. It's still unknown why the cord broke loose in the first place. I feel terrible for that little girl.



Unlike traditional roller coasters, the Superman Tower of Power is a "free fall" type ride. According to the park's web site, the ride lifts passengers 177 feet (54 meters) straight up, then drops them 154 feet (47 meters), reaching a speed of 54 mph (87 kph). Luckily the "Superman Tower of Terror" has been shut down indefinitely while park officials investigate what caused the accident.

The girl is reported to be in stable condition. Her friends describe her as "pretty" and "popular." Hopefully the first responders knew what they were doing and put the feet on ice and sent them along with her to the hospital. Unfortunately, she probably has a lifetime of surgeries and rehab ahead of her. I hope she gets a giant multi-million dollar settlement from Six Flags. Poor kid. That totally, totally sucks.

Here's a video of the Superman ride. The video was taken before the severed leg incident. The ride used to be called "Elevator" before being renamed "Superman Tower of Power."




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Pop Quiz: What killed more Americans last year? Spinach or marijuana? I'll give you a hint, Popeye is more at risk than Snoop.

According to an article in the Miami Herald, not only is marijuana statistically less likely to kill you (remember all those E. coli lettuce outbreaks last year?), but it's becoming more mainstream - especially in traditional "white-collar" settings.



For example, the author of the Miami Herald article recently attended a backyard barbecue in Miami's Upper Eastside where a group of middle-age, middle-class folks tamely sipped berry cocktails and beers. Among them: a couple of lawyers, a couple of city administrators and an arts administrator. Somewhere between the skirt steak and the apple pie, somebody lit a joint and passed it around.

Nobody blinked. Even in mainstream, white-collar settings, smoking marijuana can be commonplace and unremarkable, like having a little wine with dinner.

Once a stamp of the arty, the marginal and the counterculture, today marijuana's popularity cuts across social boundaries. Yet several high-profile marijuana arrests have recently made headlines, highlighting the hazy double standard that exists around an illegal, potentially harmful drug that continues to encroach into the mainstream:

• In March, Lawrence Korda, 59, a Broward Circuit Court judge, was charged with openly smoking marijuana in a park in Hollywood. Korda completed a drug and alcohol program to erase the misdemeanor charge, and must take monthly random drug tests for six months and perform 25 hours of community service.

• Last month, Utpal Dighe, 31, a prosecutor in the Miami-Dade state attorney's office, was fired after police charged him with buying marijuana from a street dealer in Coconut Grove.

• Also last month, Ricky Williams, 30, erstwhile superstar running back for the Dolphins, probably ended his Miami career by testing positive for marijuana for the fifth time.

For good or ill, people from all walks of life smoke weed. In fact, 40.1 percent of all Americans 12 years old and up admit having tried marijuana at least once -- and 6 percent acknowledge having used it in the past month, federal drug surveys show. The FBI says 786,500 people were arrested for it in 2005, the latest figures available.

One group at least modestly turning away from marijuana is middle- and high-schoolers, ages 12 to 17. The percentage who have used pot at least once dropped from more than 20 percent in 2000 to about 17 percent in 2005, federal researchers say.

''I don't know if more people are smoking or more people are admitting it,'' said Betsy Wise, a Miami stand-up comic. Wise recently started to freelance for a New York ad agency. She confided in a co-worker that a friend was delivering pot brownies to the office -- and told him to help himself.

[Via miamiherald.com]

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