The person who has lived the most
is not the one with the most years
but the one with the richest experiences.
~ Rousseau
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Image Credit & Copyright: VegaStar Carpentier
Explanation: What stands between you and the Sun? Apparently, as viewed from Paris last week, one visible thing after another. First, in the foreground, is the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, built in the late 1800s and located on the highest hill in Paris, France. Next, well behind the basilica's towers in the above image, are thin clouds forward scattering sunlight. Finally, far in the distance and slightly buried into the Sun's surface, are sunspots, the most prominent of which is sunspot region AR 1512 visible near the disk center. Since the time that this sunset image was taken, the sunspot region on the far left, AR 1515, has unleashed a powerful solar flare. Although most particles from that flare are expected to miss the Earth, sky enthusiasts are on watch for Sun events that might cause bright auroras in an invisible thing that stands between you and the Sun: the Earth's atmosphere.
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Journey to the Center of the Galaxy http://youtu.be/t7GgqHIGbKw
Explanation: What wonders lie at the center of our Galaxy? In Jules Verne's science fiction classic A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Liedenbrock and his fellow explorers encounter many strange and exciting wonders. Astronomers already know of some of the bizarre objects that exist at our Galactic center, including like vast cosmic dust clouds, bright star clusters, swirling rings of gas, and even a supermassive black hole. Much of the Galactic Center is shielded from our view in visible light by the intervening dust and gas, but it can be explored using other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The above video is actually a digital zoom into the Milky Way's center which starts by utilizing visible light images from the Digitized Sky Survey. As the movie proceeds, the light shown shifts to dust-penetrating infrared and highlights gas clouds that were recentlydiscovered to be falling toward central black hole.
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IT'S FULL OF STARS | A digital painting that imagines what the sky really looked like when Van Gogh painted "Starry Night." Find out more about Alex Ruiz's painting here.
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Best weather report of the year ~
makes our 90 degree heat wave seem not-so-bad.
Here's a weather report for the apocalypse: "On WTVR CBS 6 in Richmond, VA, weatherman Aaron Justus provides the last weather forecast you'll ever need."
Satan called....
He wants his weather back
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Satan called....
He wants his weather back
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How to Take Photos of Fireworks
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Trivia Tidbit:July 2nd is a special day for another reason. In non-leap years, it is the midpoint of the year — there are 182 days before it and 182 days after it. (This was not true in 1776 because that was a leap year.)
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nescience
n. ignorance; lack of knowledge
n. ignorance; lack of knowledge
agnoiology
n. the study of ignorance
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n. the study of ignorance
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In 1927, Hungarian physiologist Albert Szent-Györgyi isolated a substance in lemons and oranges that seemed to prevent scurvy. He couldn’t identify it chemically, so he called it “ignose,” meaning “I do not know.”
When the editors of the Biochemical Journal asked for a different name, Szent-Györgyi suggested “godnose.” Finally they settled on “hexuronic acid.”
It turned out to be vitamin C.
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"Chicago has changed a lot since the last time we were here. I'm having a hard time calling the Sears Tower the Willis Tower. It just feels wrong. It's like calling the Olive Garden an Italian restaurant." -Conan O'Brien
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"Denmark is charging a fat food tax on cheese, meat, and oil. Here, we call that the Denny's Grand Slam breakfast." -Jay Leno
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"A TSA screener in Kansas City is facing criticism for giving a pat-down to an 8-month-old baby. You don't pat down a baby! You stick him in a tray and run him through the X-ray machine." -Jimmy Fallon
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This is one of the best tips I have received in a long time!
Thank You Cindy
Saving berries from Molding
The key to preventing moldy berries...
Berries are delicious, but they're also kind of delicate. Raspberries in particular seem like they can mold before you even get them home from the market. There's nothing more tragic than paying $4 for a pint of
local raspberries, only to look in the fridge the next day and find that fuzzy mold growing on their insides. Well, with fresh berries just starting to hit farmers markets, we can tell you that how to keep them fresh! Here is a tip I'm sharing on how to prevent them from getting there in the first place:
Wash them with vinegar.
When you get your berries home, prepare a mixture of one part vinegar (white or apple cider probably work best) and ten parts water. Dump the berries into the mixture and swirl around. Drain, rinse if you want (though the mixture is so diluted you can't taste the vinegar,) and pop in the fridge. The vinegar kills any mold spores and other bacteria that might be on the surface of the fruit, and voila!
Raspberries will last a week or more, and strawberries go almost two weeks without getting moldy and soft. So go forth and stock up on those pricey little gems, knowing they'll stay fresh as long as it takes you to eat them.
You're so berry welcome!
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Our six-year-old daughter, Terra, has a need to ask questions...lots of questions. Finally, one day, my wife had it.
"Have you ever heard that curiosity killed the cat?" my wife asked.
"No," replied Terra.
"Well, there was a cat, and he was very inquisitive. And one day, he looked into a big hole, fell in, and died!"
Wide-eyed, Terra whispered: "What was in the hole?"
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A job applicant was asked, "What would you consider to be your main strengths and weaknesses?"
"Well," he began, "my main weakness would definitely be my issues with reality--sometimes I have a little trouble telling what's real from what's not."
"Okay," said the interviewer. "And what are your strengths?"
"I'm Batman."
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5 New Uses For Eggshells
Though there's lots to love about an egg, it turns out the shells are actually the incredible part. They can be used for a variety of different garden uses, among other purposes. Here are some new uses for eggshells.
Though there's lots to love about an egg, it turns out the shells are actually the incredible part. They can be used for a variety of different garden uses, among other purposes. Here are some new uses for eggshells.
Fertilizer
Did you know that eggshells are predominately made of calcium carbonate -- the active ingredient in lime -- as well as other nutrients for plants? Eggshells make a great natural fertilizer of sorts. Whether you break the shells up and sprinkle them on top of a plant, or mix a few into potting soil, your plant will thank you.
Did you know that eggshells are predominately made of calcium carbonate -- the active ingredient in lime -- as well as other nutrients for plants? Eggshells make a great natural fertilizer of sorts. Whether you break the shells up and sprinkle them on top of a plant, or mix a few into potting soil, your plant will thank you.
Coffee Or Tea Stain Remover
Do you have a cup or travel mug that has been stained by your favorite warm beverage? Grind up some eggshells and drop them in the drinkware filled with warm water. Let it sit over night, and the egg shell will absorb the stain.
Do you have a cup or travel mug that has been stained by your favorite warm beverage? Grind up some eggshells and drop them in the drinkware filled with warm water. Let it sit over night, and the egg shell will absorb the stain.
Seed Starter
Remember how we said that egg shells make great fertilizer? Use egg shells to start seeds. Fill the egg shell half with soil and the seed, then plant directly into the ground (or into the pot). As the plant develops and the shell breaks down, it provides the seedling with plenty of nutrients.
Remember how we said that egg shells make great fertilizer? Use egg shells to start seeds. Fill the egg shell half with soil and the seed, then plant directly into the ground (or into the pot). As the plant develops and the shell breaks down, it provides the seedling with plenty of nutrients.
Sidewalk Chalk
For whatever reason, everyone loves drawing on the sidewalk (or driveway) with chalk. Did you know that you can use egg shells as part of the recipe for an easy-to-make sidewalk chalk? Suite 101 has a really simple recipe that you can make with your kids.
For whatever reason, everyone loves drawing on the sidewalk (or driveway) with chalk. Did you know that you can use egg shells as part of the recipe for an easy-to-make sidewalk chalk? Suite 101 has a really simple recipe that you can make with your kids.
Slug Repellant
Summertime is slug time. If you don't want them around your garden (and who does?) simply sprinkle crushed eggshells around gardens and pathways. Slugs won't cross the crunchy barrier.
Summertime is slug time. If you don't want them around your garden (and who does?) simply sprinkle crushed eggshells around gardens and pathways. Slugs won't cross the crunchy barrier.
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Happy 4th of July, American friends! Here’s a little chemistry lesson on where the colors in fireworks come from.
Is that not enough for your sponge of a brain? Then here’s a more detailed video on explosive chemistry from Byte Size Science!
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.--Plato
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Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer.--Julian Casablancas
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Have we lost our connection to wonder? Have we set the bar so low for ourselves that we now believe revolution lies in improving a click through rate from .08% to .1%?--Jaffer Ali, from 'Are We Becoming Small?'
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Rare Early America Map By Martin Waldseemueller Found In Germany (PHOTOS)
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Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.--Friedrich Engels
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Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.~ Marcus Aurelius
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One day Steve's mom was cleaning his room. In the closet, she found a bondage S&M magazine.
This was highly upsetting to her.
She hid the magazine until his father got home.
When Steve's father walked in the door, she irately handed the magazine to him, and said, "THIS is what I found in your son's closet."
He looked at it and handed it back to her without a word.
After an uncomfortable minute of silence she finally asked him, "Well, what should we do about this?"
Dad looked at her and said, "Well I DON'T think we should spank him."
This was highly upsetting to her.
She hid the magazine until his father got home.
When Steve's father walked in the door, she irately handed the magazine to him, and said, "THIS is what I found in your son's closet."
He looked at it and handed it back to her without a word.
After an uncomfortable minute of silence she finally asked him, "Well, what should we do about this?"
Dad looked at her and said, "Well I DON'T think we should spank him."
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"The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved." --Russell Lynes
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The National Debt...DAMN..phrom phlax
We hear the number, trillion, tossed around like a reporter at a scientology gathering.
How much is a trillion? How Big is a Trillion?
In the U.S., one trillion is written as the number "1" followed by 12 zeros (1,000,000,000,000). One year of clock time = (60sec/min) x (60 min/hr) x (24 hr/da) x (365.25 da) = 3.16 x 107 sec
One trillion seconds of ordinary clock time = ( 1012 sec)/( 3.16 x 107 sec/yr) = 31,546 years!
Six trillion seconds equals 189,276 years. Now, as an aside, along with the nearly six trillion miles in the light-year, you might be interested to know that there are nearly five trillion dollars in the current U.S. national debt. Is it any wonder that our politicians in Washington are concerned?
(An interesting bit of trivia: If one were to count the national Debt at the rate of one dollar per second, he or she would have to use a mechanical counter to click off the digits. Why? Because, if he or she counted in the usual way, saying "one, two, three, …" etc., there would be numbers whose names are so large, that it would take more than a second of clock time to pronounce them. For example: "Nine hundred and ninety nine billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine," takes about 8 seconds to pronounce.)
Courtesy of:
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“If a man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles.” — Ben Franklin
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Deal drugs in New York City. An interesting 20-minute biopic offers some insight into the life, and a few suggestions for success in the business.
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Late in life Arthur Conan Doyle pursued an interest in the possibility of spiritualism and existence beyond the grave. He was widely criticized for this, but a writer to the Graphic raised a redeeming point:
Although we may misbelieve mediums and
With doubt and suspicion our minds may be filled,
Sherlock Holmes, we must grant, reappeared in the Strand
A number of times after having been killed.
With doubt and suspicion our minds may be filled,
Sherlock Holmes, we must grant, reappeared in the Strand
A number of times after having been killed.
Indeed, Holmes had returned against his creator’s wishes. “I never thought they would take it so much to heart,” Conan Doyle once wrote of Holmes’ death. “I got letters from all over the world reproaching me on the subject. One, I remember, from a lady whom I did not know, began ‘You beast’.”
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"A new book about why women have sex claims that women's reasons differ from pleasure to obligation to even 'feeling sorry for the guy.' After hearing this, men everywhere said, 'Whatever...'" -Conan O'Brien
"A new book about why women have sex claims that women's reasons differ from pleasure to obligation to even 'feeling sorry for the guy.' After hearing this, men everywhere said, 'Whatever...'" -Conan O'Brien
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Do it yourself HIV test is approved by the FDA
A new H.I.V. test for home use that gives quick results was approved on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration, giving Americans the first chance in the epidemic’s 30 years to learn in the privacy of their own homes whether they are infected.The test…called OraQuick, uses a cheek swab and gives results in 20 to 40 minutes, so it is as easy to use as a home pregnancy kit…
Each year about 50,000 Americans become infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, and about a fifth of the 1.2 million Americans who are now infected do not know it, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Getting an infected person onto antiretroviral drugs early lowers by as much as 96 percent the chances that he or she will pass the virus on to someone else, studies have shown, so treatment has become a form of prevention that could shrink the epidemic…
Testing for AIDS has been more fraught with controversy than testing for any other disease because of the unique history of the epidemic….Being tested for AIDS was seen as tantamount to a public disclosure that one was homosexual or a drug addict, so maintaining privacy became paramount….
Any positive test needs confirmation in a doctor’s office, the FDA said. It approved the test not to replace medical testing but because many Americans never get tested at all. The hope is that the home test will encourage infected people to seek medical care earlier, helping save lives and slow the spread of the epidemic.
The article makes only one silly point. The presumption that people will be testing because they think they may have contracted HIV.
Wrong. I’ll bet the majority of tests taken by those who decide on their own – are sexually active and just checking up to make certain they haven’t bumped into the wrong bed by mistake. Think about it.
Thanks, Ed
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"New York had the warmest May on record. It's so hot these days that the ice at the oyster bar is shrinking at an alarming rate." -David Letterman
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"A new study found that women gain more weight after marriage, but men gain more weight after a divorce. Yeah, the divorce usually takes place after men point out that women gained more weight after marriage." -Jimmy Fallon
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"A wiseguy named Jimmy the Weasel in the witness protection program kept committing crimes so they kicked him out of the program. Who could've predicted that you couldn't trust a guy called 'The Weasel.'" -Craig Ferguson
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Micah and Steve, two good ole boys from South Carolina, were sittin' on the front porch drinking beer when a large truck hauling rolls and rolls of sod went by.
"I'm gonna do that when I win the lottery," said Micah.
"Do what?" asked Steve.
"Send my grass out to be mowed," answered Micah.
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"A new study found that women gain more weight after marriage, but men gain more weight after a divorce. Yeah, the divorce usually takes place after men point out that women gained more weight after marriage." -Jimmy Fallon
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"A wiseguy named Jimmy the Weasel in the witness protection program kept committing crimes so they kicked him out of the program. Who could've predicted that you couldn't trust a guy called 'The Weasel.'" -Craig Ferguson
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Micah and Steve, two good ole boys from South Carolina, were sittin' on the front porch drinking beer when a large truck hauling rolls and rolls of sod went by.
"I'm gonna do that when I win the lottery," said Micah.
"Do what?" asked Steve.
"Send my grass out to be mowed," answered Micah.
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Make sure you read the subject line before playing this video. You won't understand the language, but the expressions are priceless.
Thanks Mike ~
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You've done it again Ursa.
Happy Whale Spurts Rainbow out of Its Blowhole
(I can do this)
I love to see me in print teeheehee...
I know you do, Phlax your pithy comments amuse me
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The Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado was the most destructive in the state's history. A satellite image reveals the devastation
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/07/heres-what-110-million-in-fire-damage-looks-like/?
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Baobab trees stud the brown plains of Africa like uprooted, upside-down oaks. These bizarro beasts are growing in Botswana. The biggest baobabs may be
thousands of years old. Photo courtesy of Flickr user prezz.
Here a few of the most celebrated, most famous and most outlandish trees of the Earth.
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The Chemistry of Fireworks
If you’re taking the family out to see a big fireworks display for the Fourth of July, you will want to understand how they work before you go. Dr. John A. Conkling explains the chemistry behind the pyrotechnics. -via Bytesize Science
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Scientists working at the world's biggest atom smasher near Geneva, Switzerland, plan to announce tomorrow that they have gathered enough evidence to show that the long-sought 'God particle' answering fundamental questions about the universe almost certainly does exist.
Scientists at CERN are planning to gather Wednesday morning to hear the latest about the decades-long search for a subatomic particle that could help explain why objects in our universe actually weigh anything. The buzz is that they're closing in on the elusive Higgs particle.
Scientists at CERN are planning to gather Wednesday morning to hear the latest about the decades-long search for a subatomic particle that could help explain why objects in our universe actually weigh anything. The buzz is that they're closing in on the elusive Higgs particle.
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An animated timeline of all Formula 1 cars from 1950 to 2012.
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Click to enlarge
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That’s One Heck of A Kiss
This incredibly romantic clip is part of an IMAX documentary called Dolphins. I don’t know about you guys, but I think it would be worth seeing for this scene alone!
Via Laughing Squid
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My wife was screaming at me: "Leave! Get out of this house!" she ordered.
As I was walking out the door she yelled, "I hope you die a slow and painful death!"
So I turned around and replied, "So now you want me to stay?
ANSWER: Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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As I was walking out the door she yelled, "I hope you die a slow and painful death!"
So I turned around and replied, "So now you want me to stay?
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QUOTE: "Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body."
HINT: (1809-1894), American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author.
HINT: (1809-1894), American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author.
ANSWER: Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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- The classics are those books about which you usually hear people saying: 'I'm rereading...', never 'I'm reading....'
- The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.
- The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual's or the collective unconscious.
- A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.
- A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.
- A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.
- The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the languages and customs) through which they have passed.
- A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.
- Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.
- A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.
- 'Your' classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it.
- A classic is a work that comes before other classics; but those who have read other classics first immediately recognize its place in the genealogy of classic works.
- A classic is a work which relegates the noise of the present to a background hum, which at the same time the classics cannot exist without.
- A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.
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A visual A-Z of the hidden treasures of language.
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E.O. Wilson's Advice to Young Scientists
"What is crucial is not that technical ability, but it is imagination in all of its applications."
In his recent TEDMED talk, legendary Harvard sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, regarded as one of the greatest scientists alive, offers a taste of his forthcoming book, Letters to a Young Scientist. (A play, of course, on Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.) Wilson touches on a number of points previously explored as essential in science and other creative and intellectual endeavors – the benefits of balancing expertise with broad, cross-disciplinary curiosity, the importance of embracing failure and the unknown, the role of intuition and the imagination, the idea that we're wired for science.
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RANDOM TIDBITS
Ryman Auditorium was long the home of the Grande Ole Opry, but the structure wasn't originally built for that purpose. When it opened in 1892, it was called the Union Gospel Tabernacle.
In 1950, a young man took the stage at the Grand Ole Opry and exhibited the banjo prowess that allowed him to win a national competition on the instrument. That 17-year-old was future Hee-Haw star Roy Clark.
The radio show known as The Grand Ole Opry began life in 1925 as the WSM Barn Dance. A couple years later, when announcer George "Judge" Hay described the show's music as "grand ole opry" in contrast to "grand opera," the name stuck.
Many of the most popular women ever to perform at the Grand Ole Opry aren't as recognizable by their real names. This list includes Sarah Cannon (Minnie Pearl), Christina Ciminella (Wynonna Judd), Eileen Edwards (Shania Twain), Mary Penick (Skeeter Davis), and Brenda Webb (Crystal Gayle).
NWhen the show moved to the Opry House at Opryland in 1974, workers cut out a circular, 6-foot section of the original dark oak stage at Ryman Auditorium and installed it in the middle of the new stage floor so that new artists could perform on the same floor as legends from decades past.
Elvis Presley signed a contract to play a series of shows at the Grand Ole Opry beginning on October 2, 1954. However, management cancelled his booking after his first show because they felt his music wasn't suited for their audiences. The King never returned to the Opry stage.
Ryman Auditorium was long the home of the Grande Ole Opry, but the structure wasn't originally built for that purpose. When it opened in 1892, it was called the Union Gospel Tabernacle.
In 1950, a young man took the stage at the Grand Ole Opry and exhibited the banjo prowess that allowed him to win a national competition on the instrument. That 17-year-old was future Hee-Haw star Roy Clark.
The radio show known as The Grand Ole Opry began life in 1925 as the WSM Barn Dance. A couple years later, when announcer George "Judge" Hay described the show's music as "grand ole opry" in contrast to "grand opera," the name stuck.
Many of the most popular women ever to perform at the Grand Ole Opry aren't as recognizable by their real names. This list includes Sarah Cannon (Minnie Pearl), Christina Ciminella (Wynonna Judd), Eileen Edwards (Shania Twain), Mary Penick (Skeeter Davis), and Brenda Webb (Crystal Gayle).
NWhen the show moved to the Opry House at Opryland in 1974, workers cut out a circular, 6-foot section of the original dark oak stage at Ryman Auditorium and installed it in the middle of the new stage floor so that new artists could perform on the same floor as legends from decades past.
Elvis Presley signed a contract to play a series of shows at the Grand Ole Opry beginning on October 2, 1954. However, management cancelled his booking after his first show because they felt his music wasn't suited for their audiences. The King never returned to the Opry stage.
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US Government Insists: Mermaids Aren’t Real
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a scientific agency of the United States government, would appreciate it if you’d stop talking about mermaids. Why? Because “No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.” Then what are we paying you for? Get back to work. Link -via Slate
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University Sues Overachieving Student for Lost Income
By Miss Cellania on Jul 3, 2012 at 12:00 pm
< img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-69883" title="essen" src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/essen-150x122.jpg"; alt="" width="150" height="122" Marcel Pohl was a student at the School of Economics and Management in Essen, Germany. But not for long -he passed 60 examinations and graduated in three semesters, when the normal course is 11 semesters. You’d think the school would be proud, but they are suing Pohl for €3,000, which is the tuition payments we would have made if he stayed as long as other students!
“When I got the lawsuit, I thought it couldn’t be true,” Pohl, who now works for a bank in Frankfurt, told the Bild newspaper. “Performance is supposed to be worth something.”Pohl completed his turbo degree by dividing up all the simultaneous lectures with two friends and then swapping notes. At the same time, he completed an apprenticeship in a bank.“We didn’t get any freebies, and we agreed our plans in advance with the school,” Pohl said.“We’re always against slow students,” said his lawyer Bernhard Kraas. “But when someone hurries and finishes early, suddenly he has to pay. That can’t be right.”
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On Feb. 11, 1979, 27-year-old Scott Moorman and four friends set out from Hana, Maui, for a daylong fishing expedition aboard the Sarah Joe, a 16.5-foot fiberglass motorboat. They did not return. The Coast Guard searched for five days, and private searches continued much longer, but no trace of them was found.
Nine and a half years later, in 1988, marine biologist John Naughton discovered a wrecked boat with Hawaiian registry on Taongi, the northernmost coral atoll in the Marshall Islands, 2,300 miles west of Hawaii. It was the Sarah Joe, and nearby, under a pile of stones and a driftwood cross, were the bones of Scott Moorman. How he came there, who buried him, and what became of the others remain unknown.
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Taco Bell Delivered 10,000 Tacos to Alaska by Helicopter
So, we've been keeping tabs on the most important food news this century AKA the Taco Bell hoax-turned-PR-spectacle in the remote town of Bethel, Alaska. But if you didn't know, here's the synopsis:
9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics
Beaver-Testicle Tea
So, we've been keeping tabs on the most important food news this century AKA the Taco Bell hoax-turned-PR-spectacle in the remote town of Bethel, Alaska. But if you didn't know, here's the synopsis:
Last month, residents of Bethel, Alaska (pop. 6,000) were super excited to hear the news that Taco Bell is going to open a restaurant there. That turned out to be a hoax, much to their disappointment.
Taco Bell caught wind of the news, and said that they'd come to the rescue.
And now, they did. In a big way:
As far as customer service stunts go, this one was pretty epic: A helicopter sent to a remote Alaska town bearing a Taco Bell truck, itself bearing ingredients for 10,000 Doritos Locos tacos.
Tiffany Hsu of the Los Angeles Times has the story and video clip: Link
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9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics
So now that scientists have discovered the elusive Higgs boson, what's left in physics? Don't worry, science geeks - there are a lot left for you to work on.
Natalie Wolchover of Life's Little Mysteries put forth the 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics. For example:
What is dark matter?
Evidently, about 84 percent of the matter in the universe does not absorb or emit light. "Dark matter," as it is called, cannot be seen directly, and it hasn't yet been detected by indirect means, either. Instead, dark matter's existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation and the structure of the universe. This shadowy substance is thought to pervade the outskirts of galaxies, and may be composed of "weakly interacting massive particles," or WIMPs. Worldwide, there are several detectors on the lookout for WIMPs, but so far, not one has been found. [If Not Dark Matter, then What?] Link
Evidently, about 84 percent of the matter in the universe does not absorb or emit light. "Dark matter," as it is called, cannot be seen directly, and it hasn't yet been detected by indirect means, either. Instead, dark matter's existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation and the structure of the universe. This shadowy substance is thought to pervade the outskirts of galaxies, and may be composed of "weakly interacting massive particles," or WIMPs. Worldwide, there are several detectors on the lookout for WIMPs, but so far, not one has been found. [If Not Dark Matter, then What?] Link
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Teenager Refused Family Tradition of Getting Breast Implants
< img class="imageleft" src="http://static.neatorama.com/images/2012-06/teen-refuse-breast-implant.jpg"; alt="" width="150" height="1Every family has a black sheep. Meet Britney Marshall, a 14-year-old teenager who is bucking the family tradition of getting breast implants: Mrs Marshall, a 53-year-old mother-of-nine, believes the teenager is going through a “funny phase”. The mother and her four other girls, of Kirkby in Ashfiield, Notts, boast a total of £50,000 worth of silicone breasts, the Daily Mail reported. Mrs Marshall has had four operations since 1996, which have increased
her bra size from 34B to 32GG while daughters Emma, 30, Terri, 27, Tara, 26, and Ripley, 21 have also had enhancements. But Britney said: “I’m too young to be thinking about having a boob job – I just want to work hard at school. I believe a girl should do what she wants and at the moment I don’t want to get a boob job. Link
(Photo: John Robertson) | See also the story over at The Daily Mail [Must I say this, warning: there will be boobs]
her bra size from 34B to 32GG while daughters Emma, 30, Terri, 27, Tara, 26, and Ripley, 21 have also had enhancements. But Britney said: “I’m too young to be thinking about having a boob job – I just want to work hard at school. I believe a girl should do what she wants and at the moment I don’t want to get a boob job. Link
(Photo: John Robertson) | See also the story over at The Daily Mail [Must I say this, warning: there will be boobs]
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A little bird builds a nest, but it has a slight problem.
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Don’t Bother with Positive Thinking, Do Positive Actions Instead!
Want to be happy? Don't try to think yourself happy, just smile instead (regardless of how you feel). Want to boost your will power? Tense up.
Countless self-help books advocate that you think yourself rich/thin/happy, but that won't work according to author Richard Wiseman. Instead of positive thinking, he said in his new book Rip It Up, the best thing is to do positive action, as he explained in this article in The Guardian:
HAPPINESS: Smile This is the granddaddy of them all. As Laird's study demonstrated, smile and you will feel happier. To get the most out of this exercise, make the smile as wide as possible, extend your eyebrow muscles slightly upward, and hold the resulting expression for about 20 seconds.
WILLPOWER: Tense up As Hung's experiments show, tensing your muscles boosts your willpower. Next time you feel the need to avoid that cigarette or cream cake, make a fist, contract your biceps, press your thumb and first finger together, or grip a pen in your hand.
DIETING: Use your non-dominant hand When you eat with your non-dominant hand you are acting as if you are carrying out an unusual behaviour. Because of that you place more attention on your action, do not simply consume food without thinking about it, and so eat less.
PROCRASTINATION: Make a start To overcome procrastination, act as if you are interested in what it is that you have to do. Spend just a few minutes carrying out the first part of whatever it is you are avoiding, and suddenly you will feel a strong need to complete the task. Link
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What Makes America the Greatest Country in the World?
In the premiere of HBO's new Aaron Sorkin series The Newsroom, news anchor Will McAvoy played by Jeff Daniels was asked "what makes America the greatest country in the world." To which he replied that it isn't.
There's absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. We're seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number 4 in labor force, and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies."
The topic of why America is/isn’t the greatest country in the world (why, just in time for July 4th) is definitely controversial. In a series about American exceptionalism, Todd Leopold of CNN remarked that despite the
United States not being number 1 in several objective measures, acknowledging that the country isn’t the greatest in the world is "the third rail of American politics."
United States not being number 1 in several objective measures, acknowledging that the country isn’t the greatest in the world is "the third rail of American politics."
Good luck in saying that aloud, however. Forget Social Security. The third rail of American politics is acknowledging we may not be the greatest country in the world.
"If you can think of a politician who can say consistently ‘We’re not No. 1; we’re not No. 1,’ then I’d be very surprised,"says Melvyn Levitsky, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and former ambassador to Brazil.
But why can’t we acknowledge the problems? Isn’t that the first step toward fixing them?
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Healthy Living from Health.com
http://health.chtah.net/a/tBP9IPuBFYNexB8kA1DCFNC1E0K/top2
23 SUPERFRUITS YOU NEED NOW
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http://health.chtah.net/a/tBP9IPuBFYNexB8kA1DCFNC1E0K/top2
23 SUPERFRUITS YOU NEED NOW
http://health.chtah.net/a/tBP9IPuBFYNexB8kA1DCFNC1E0K/top23
You've heard of Superfoods, but what about Superfruits? Those deemed "super" are
packed with antioxidants, fiber, vitamins and minerals, and other nutrients that
can help you live longer, look better, and prevent disease.
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Rocks
packed with antioxidants, fiber, vitamins and minerals, and other nutrients that
can help you live longer, look better, and prevent disease.
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Rocks
Last night, redditor welcometocrazy drew a comic strip out of boredom. It stars two rocks, which may have been a reflection on a point of view that even more boring. However, the response was so positive that she started a blog and promises to post a new comic every week. Link
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Beaver-Testicle Tea
Oral contraceptives didn’t start with The Pill. Ancient recipes for preventing pregnancy contained all kinds of natural ingredients for desperate people. Their effectiveness varied, and none are recommended.
Modern testing has revealed that other herbs and plants recommended by ancient authors, such as cow parsnip and the wild yam called Barbasco root, contain chemicals that can influence hormone levels. Of course, not all oral contraceptives had to contain plant matter: Native women in today’s New Brunswick brewed tea out of preserved beaver testicles, which could have provided androgen to influence their hormonal balance and decrease fertility.
Read about other historical birth-control schemes at Discoblog. Link
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Welcome to the London 2012 Olympic Games
The BBC has produced this animated title sequence for their London Olympic Games coverage. -via the Presurfer
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Say goodbye to Tuvalu, because, according to climate scientists, the raising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next several hundred years, even if we made drastic cuts to emissions today:
... even if the most ambitious emissions cuts are made, it might not be enough to stop sea levels rising due to the thermal expansion of sea water, said scientists at the United States' National Centre for Atmospheric Research, U.S. research organisation Climate Central and Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Melbourne.
"Even with aggressive mitigation measures that limit global warming to less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial values by 2100, and with decreases of global temperature in the 22nd and 23rd centuries ... sea level continues to rise after 2100," they said in the journal Nature Climate Change.
This is because as warmer temperatures penetrate deep into the sea, the water warms and expands as the heat mixes through different ocean regions.
Even if global average temperatures fall and the surface layer of the sea cools, heat would still be mixed down into the deeper layers of the ocean, causing continued rises in sea levels. Link
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Sonic Booms Shatter Supreme Court Windows
The Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Plaza) in Brasilia, Brazil, is that nation’s governmental seat, and the home of the world’s largest continuously-flown national flag. The flag is replaced every month with ceremony. On Sunday, that ceremony included a flyover by two Mirage 2000 fighter jets. Rarely do supersonic planes fly low enough to be seen for a display like this. What could possibly go wrong?
Although nobody was injured the fighter flew so low and fast that the shock wave they generated broke almost all the windows of Supreme Court glass facade. In a statement, Brig Ar Kanitz Marcelo Damasceno, chief of the Center for Social Communication of the Força Aérea Brasileira (FAB), said that the Brazilian Air Force Command has initiated the investigation of the incident and will compensate the damage caused.
See a video of the flyover at The Aviationist. Link -via Geekosystem
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The Cop Who Can’t Be Fired
R.I.P., Count de Badass
A Line Millions of People Long
Photo via Steve McCurry's Simple Act of Waiting
Cracking the head of handcuffed suspect, beating juveniles, hiding cocaine in his police car, calling in sick to go on vacation, and even arrested and jailed over and over again? Not enough to get this Florida cop stay fired. Meet Sgt. German Bosque, the cop who can't be fired:
Opa-locka has the dubious distinction of employing the cop who can’t be fired. Though the city keeps on trying.
Sgt. German Bosque of the Opa-locka Police Department has been disciplined, suspended, fined and sent home with pay more than any officer in the state. He has been accused of cracking the head of a handcuffed suspect, beating juveniles, hiding drugs in his police car, stealing from suspects, defying direct orders and lying and falsifying police reports. He once called in sick to take a vacation to Cancún and has engaged in a rash of unauthorized police chases, including one in which four people were killed.
Arrested and jailed three times, Bosque, 48, has been fired at least six times. Now under suspension pending yet another investigation into misconduct, Bosque stays home and collects his $60,000-a-year paycheck for doing nothing.
Before he was ever hired in Opa-locka 19 years ago, Bosque, whose nickname is GB, was tossed out of the police academy twice and fired from two police departments. Each time he has faced trouble he has been reinstated with back pay. He boldly brags about his ability to work a law enforcement system that allows bad cops to keep their certification even in the face of criminal charges.
Julie K. Brown of Miami Herald has the story: Link
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R.I.P., Count de Badass
Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld passed away at the age of 88. He was a man of many talents, particularly (1) escaping captivity and (2) killing Nazis. During World War II, while in the French Resistance, he did a lot of both. Here’s just one of the many episodes featured in his obituary:
Instead he faked an epileptic fit and, when the guard opened the door to his cell, hit him over the head with a table leg before breaking his neck. (“Thank Goodness for that pitilessly efficient training,” he noted). After putting on the German’s uniform, La Rochefoucauld walked into the guardroom and shot the two other German jailers. He then simply walked out of the fort, through the deserted town, and to the address of an underground contact.Once there, however, he found that joining the rest of his escape line was impossible, as checks and patrols had been stepped up. Then the man harbouring him, whose sister was a nun, suggested that La Rochefoucauld slip into her habit. Thus dressed, he slowly walked through the city, eventually knocking on the door of Roger Landes, code-named Aristide, a bilingual Briton whom he hoped would take care of his return to England. In fact, Aristide’s orders were to hide La Rochefoucauld. D-Day was days away, and he was, by his own admission, “the last of their worries in London”
A Line Millions of People Long
Photo via Steve McCurry's Simple Act of Waiting
Think that you're queueing in the longest supermarket checkout line ever? Well, at least you're not in this line of millions of people waiting to bathe in the Ganges river, as photographed by Steve McCurry. What an amazing sight! Alice Yoo of My Modern Met wrote:
The Kumbh Mela is a mass Hindu pilgrimage that's been called the world’s largest act of faith, the greatest show on earth and the largest gathering on the planet. In 2001 it was held in Allahabad, India where the India government estimates that about 70 million people came to bathe in the holy river Ganges where it meets with the also holy Yamuna river. Bathing in the holy waters at this particular time is said to wash away your karmic debt or cleanse you from your sins. It's literally a shortcut to spiritual liberation. In this particular photo, it shows people traversing temporary pontoon bridges built along the Ganges River to facilitate movement. Fascinating.
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Not So Useless After All: The Appendix’s Function is to “Re-Boot” the Digestive System
Appendix, the "useless" organ that has been the butt (heh) of jokes for ages (like the function of the appendix is to rupture, thus ensuring your doctor would be able to pay for his summer vacation - bursting with laughter yet?), turns out not to be so useless after all:
The US scientists found that the appendix acted as a "good safe house" for bacteria essential for healthy digestion, in effect re-booting the digestive system after the host has contracted diseases such as amoebic dysentery or cholera, which kill off helpful germs and purge the gut.
This function has been made obsolete by modern, industrialised society; populations are now so dense that people pick up essential bacteria from each other, allowing gut organisms to regrow without help from the appendix, the researchers said.
But in earlier centuries, when vast tracts of land were more sparsely populated and whole regions could be wiped out by an epidemic of cholera, the appendix provided survivors with a vital individual stockpile of suitable bacteria. Link
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Tough times never last, tough people do.
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Road Rules
Haters gonna hate: Super moonwalking man.
Hypoxia: When the brain is deprived of adequate oxygen supply.
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What’s Your State Food?
Girls, just to let you know...
if you get them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
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A partially deaf gentleman was extolling the virtues of his new hearing aid. "It's marvelous," he enthused to a friend. "Since I acquired it I can hear the birds chirping on the hearth. I can also hear clearly a conversation being held in an apartment a full block away!"
"You don't say," said his friend. "What kind is it?"
The proud owner consulted his wristwatch and answered, "Twenty minutes after two."
Ingredients
2 1/3 cup(s) (plus more for dusting) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon(s) baking
powder
1 1/4 teaspoon(s) salt
1 stick(s) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon(s) vanilla extract
3/4 pound(s) strawberries, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup(s) confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoon(s) strawberry jam
1 tablespoon(s) sanding sugar
A woman goes out shopping with her husband and spots a pair of boots she absolutely loves. The husband says: ”"Not a chance love, they'’re way too expensive”."
Later on in bed, the wife is just falling asleep when the husband tries his luck
and places his hand on her hip. She turns to him and says. ”"I don’t think so love.
If you'’re not prepared to shoe the horsethen you sure as hell aren’'t riding it."”
A girl realized that she had grown hair between her legs. She got worried and asked her mom about that hair.
Her mom calmly said, - "that part where hair has grown is called Monkey, be proud that your monkey has grown hair". The girl smiled.
At dinner, she told her sister, - "my monkey has grown hair".
Her sister smiled and said - "that's nothing, mine is already eating bananas" .
Mom fainted...
What the manager found when he arrived at work
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ANSWER: Elizabeth Bowen. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rights group objects to animal psychics --*
BERLIN - A German animal rights group said it is concerned about the dignity of animals being used as soccer-predicting psychics by media outlets. The Tierschutzbund animal rights group said the Euro 2012 tournament has led TV and radio stations to overuse the psychic animal gimmick, which was inspired by Paul the octopus, a cephalopod that made headlines with a string of successful World Cup predictions in 2010, the BBC reported Wednesday. "These days, everybody who has an animal seems to put it in front of a camera," said Marius Tunte of Tierschutzbund. "Every station has its own animal." The group said it was particularly upset about an Internet radio station using a python named Aldo to make predictions by choosing between two rats representing different teams. "Unnecessary suffering is being inflicted purely for the sake of enjoyment," the group said.
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Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.--Aristotle
How to Look Your Best the Morning After
Osama Cave Memo
===============
Hi guys. We've all been putting in long hours, but we've really come
together as a group, and I love that. Big thanks to Omar for putting
up the poster that says "There is no I in team," as well as the one that
says "Hang In There, Baby." That cat is hilarious.
However, while we are fighting a jihad, we can't forget to take care of
the cave. And frankly, I have a few concerns.
First of all, while it's good to be concerned about cruise missiles, we
should be even more concerned about the scorpions in our cave. Hey, you
don't want to be stung and neither do I, so we need to sweep the cave
daily. I've posted a sign-up sheet near the main cave opening.
Second, it's not often I make a video address, but when I do, I'm trying
to scare the most powerful country on earth, okay? That means that while
we're taping, please do not ride your razor scooter in the background.
Just while we're taping. Thanks.
Third point, and this is a touchy one. As you know, by edict, we're not
supposed to shave our beards. But I need everyone to just think hygiene,
especially after mealtime. We're all in this together.
Fourth: food. I bought a box of Cheez-Its recently, clearly wrote "Osama"
on the front, and put it on the top shelf. Today, my Cheez-Its were gone.
Consideration. That's all I'm saying.
Finally, we've heard that there may be American soldiers in disguise
trying to infiltrate our ranks. I want to set up patrols to look for
them.
First patrol will be Omar, Muhammed, Abdul, Akbar, and Richard.
Love you lots.
Osama
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Peeling boiled potatoes
This is really great, I am going to try it the next time I want mashed potatoes or potato salad!
If you take the time to watch this, you will not only be glad you did, but you will forward this to all your daughters, sisters, moms, etc... I haven't tried it yet, but I will! Just when you thought you knew everything about boiling potatoes ...To all who love making potato salad but hate peeling the boiled potatoes, here is the solution for easy peeling. This will BLOW your mind. Well, we do learn something new every day. I wish I had known about this thirty years ago. Peeling the cooked potato was the least desirable part in making a potato salad. Enjoy.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7375897927147969009#
Custom Made Mermaid Tails
<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70186" title="mermaidtails" src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mermaidtails-500x333.jpg"; alt="" width="500" height="333" />
A man went to the police station wishing to speak with the burglar who had broken into his house the night before.
"You'll get your chance in court," the desk sergeant told him.
"No, no, no!" replied the man. "I want to know how he got into the house without waking my wife. I've been trying to do that for years!"
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You're Getting Older When...
Everything hurts and what doesn't hurt, doesn't work.
06:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
All your favorite music is in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart.
You feel like the morning after when you haven't been anywhere the night before.
You frequently find yourself telling people what a loaf of bread USED to cost.
An "all nighter" means not getting up to pee!
At the breakfast table you hear snap, crackle, pop and you're not eating cereal.
Getting lucky means you find your car in the parking lot.
Happy hour is a nap.
You keep repeating yourself
You look forward to a dull evening.
You move something to a more logical location and then can only remember where it used to be
You hear your favorite song on an elevator.
You quit trying to hold your stomach in, no matter who walks into the room.
You realize you've reached your sexpiration date.
You have more hair growing out of your ears than you have on your head.
You sink your teeth into a steak and they stay there.
You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it going.
You have more patience, but it is actually that you just don't care anymore.
You have too much room in the house and not enough in the medicine cabinet.
You and your teeth don't sleep together.
You don't care where your wife goes, just so you don't have to go along.
You enjoy hearing about other people's operations.
It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired.
The little gray-haired lady you help across the street is your wife.
The pharmacist has become your new best friend.
People call at 9 PM and ask, "Did I wake you?"
Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
It takes two tries to get up from the couch
You answer a question with "Because I said so!"
You consider coffee one of the most important things in life.
You begin every other sentence with, "Nowadays..."
You can live without sex, but not without glasses.
06:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
All your favorite music is in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart.
You feel like the morning after when you haven't been anywhere the night before.
You frequently find yourself telling people what a loaf of bread USED to cost.
An "all nighter" means not getting up to pee!
At the breakfast table you hear snap, crackle, pop and you're not eating cereal.
Getting lucky means you find your car in the parking lot.
Happy hour is a nap.
You keep repeating yourself
You look forward to a dull evening.
You move something to a more logical location and then can only remember where it used to be
You hear your favorite song on an elevator.
You quit trying to hold your stomach in, no matter who walks into the room.
You realize you've reached your sexpiration date.
You have more hair growing out of your ears than you have on your head.
You sink your teeth into a steak and they stay there.
You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it going.
You have more patience, but it is actually that you just don't care anymore.
You have too much room in the house and not enough in the medicine cabinet.
You and your teeth don't sleep together.
You don't care where your wife goes, just so you don't have to go along.
You enjoy hearing about other people's operations.
It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired.
The little gray-haired lady you help across the street is your wife.
The pharmacist has become your new best friend.
People call at 9 PM and ask, "Did I wake you?"
Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
It takes two tries to get up from the couch
You answer a question with "Because I said so!"
You consider coffee one of the most important things in life.
You begin every other sentence with, "Nowadays..."
You can live without sex, but not without glasses.
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It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.--Marcus Aurelius
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Guidelines adopted by director Chuck Jones in making Warner Bros.’ Road Runner-Wile E. Coyote cartoons, from Jones’ 1999 memoir Chuck Amuck:
- The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “beep-beep!”
- No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or the failure of the Acme products.
- The Coyote could stop anytime — if he were not a fanatic. (Repeat: “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.” — George Santayana)
- No dialogue ever, except “beep-beep!”
- The Road Runner must stay on the road — otherwise, logically, he would not be called road runner.
- All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters — the southwest American desert.
- All materials, tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
- Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
- The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
“The Road Runner and Coyote cartoons are known and accepted throughout the world,” Jones wrote. “Perhaps the lack of dialogue is one reason. If you want to laugh, you can do so at any time, whether in Danish, French, Japanese, Urdu, Navajo, Eskimo, Portuguese, or Hindi. ‘Beep-Beep!’ is the Esperanto of comedy.”
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The most disrespectful block in NBA history.
Honesty shouldn't go unrewarded.
The future is ours.
Cute pandas playing on a slide.
Stephen Hawking: "Higgs discovery has lost me $100".
Watermelon vs. Rubber Bands.
Carrot party.
NASA: Tour of the Moon.
Honesty shouldn't go unrewarded.
The future is ours.
Cute pandas playing on a slide.
Stephen Hawking: "Higgs discovery has lost me $100".
Watermelon vs. Rubber Bands.
Carrot party.
NASA: Tour of the Moon.
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I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. --Gilda Radner
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From the humor site NewsBiscuit, a brilliant set of security guidelines for naming your first pet, so that when your bank uses "what was the name of your first pet," in order to verify your identity, you will be safe.
Banks are now advising parents to think carefully before naming their child’s first pet. For security reasons, the chosen name should have at least eight characters, a capital letter and a digit. It should not be the same as the name of any previous pet, and must never be written down, especially on a collar as that is the first place anyone would look. Ideally, children should consider changing the name of their pet every 12 weeks.Expectant mothers have also been advised to choose carefully where they give birth. Anywhere that has a place name is best avoided. These are listed on maps, which are freely available on the Internet.
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While the EU whimpers on the way down into recession, Iceland gradually turns around
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Haters gonna hate: Super moonwalking man.
Hypoxia: When the brain is deprived of adequate oxygen supply.
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Most Notorious Ways People Have Exploited Google's Algorithm
As we all know, Googles Panda and Penguin algorithm updates have thrown webmasters and search engine consultants for a loop, making the tried and tested methods they use to bump sites up the rankings ineffective, if not downright obsolete. Of course, these updates are just the latest volley in the constant battle between Google 'which tries to provide users with relevant results to searches' and those who seek to get their sites to the top by any means necessary. So in the spirit of mischief, let's check out the most notorious ways in which people have exploited Googles algorithm
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As we all know, Googles Panda and Penguin algorithm updates have thrown webmasters and search engine consultants for a loop, making the tried and tested methods they use to bump sites up the rankings ineffective, if not downright obsolete. Of course, these updates are just the latest volley in the constant battle between Google 'which tries to provide users with relevant results to searches' and those who seek to get their sites to the top by any means necessary. So in the spirit of mischief, let's check out the most notorious ways in which people have exploited Googles algorithm
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Before the youth of America fooled around at drive-ins and necked on Lover's Lane, they coupled in canoes. Boatloads of them. In the early 1900s, canoes offered young guys and gals a means of escape to a semi-private setting, away from the prying eyes of their pious Victorian chaperones
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We live in a society and a culture and an economic model that tries to make everything look right. Look at computers. Why are they all putty-colored or off-fucking-white? You make something off-white or beige because you are afraid to use any other color - because you don't want to offend anybody. But by definition, when you make something no one hates, no one loves it. --Tibor Kalman, Famous graphics designer (Colors magazine)
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Making of Underwater Nightclub NYC / TechnoMarine
Bar Refaeli Under Water
Original song by RevelDay, Guy Mentesh &Yahel Doronunder.me & Bar Refaeli are proud to present this third clip in a series of stunning under.me videos. Celebrating the summer, this special under water clip is accompanied by original sound track making it the third music track on the under.me playlist.
Bar Rafaeli's Under.Me
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The British physicist whose theories led to the discovery of the Higgs boson has admitted he has “no idea” what practical applications it could have. Prof Peter Higgs said the so-called ‘God particle’, which is the building block of the universe, only has a lifespan of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second.
He refused to be drawn on whether the discovery proved there was no God, stating the name ‘God particle’ was a joke by another academic who originally called it the ‘goddamn particle’ because it was so hard to find…
Asked if he had ever had any doubts over the last 48 years, he said: “The existence of this particle is so crucial to understanding how the rest of the theory works that it was very hard for me to understand how it couldn’t be there.”
Thanks, ED
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Stop calling it "The God Particle!"
We've heard the rumors. Now for the news physics nerds have been waiting for: the "official" discovery of the Higgs Boson.
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In the world of science, the excitement doesn't mount much higher than the frenzy yesterday around the announcement that scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher may have found the 'God particle.' The discovery is called a boson, a class of sub-atomic particle, but the description stopped just short of confirming that it's the long-sought Higgs boson particle. While there are still questions to ask and research to do to confirm it is indeed the Higgs boson, physicists see massive implications to the discovery.
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Some almanacs like to give each month a special full moon name. Other almanacs like to reference full moons relative to seasonal markers, as defined by equinoxes and solstices. Is one way better than the other? No. Both have their roots in folklore. Here's a list of common North American full moon names, by month and by season.
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What’s Your State Food?
Yum Sugar recently came out with a list of official dishes for each U.S. state. Oregon, for example, is Marion berry pie. California, has Cobb salad listed as the food of choice. How do you feel about your state food? Does it suit your home or do you think another dish would have been more appropriate? Link
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RE: Tortoise Sex
What the fuck! Is that a penis? And why is it way over there?
What a time saver it would be, to have a penis that could double as a toilet plunger.
Thankee Ursa
Thankee Phlax
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It is our task, both in science and in society at large, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong and to make our unpredictable dreams come true. ~ Freeman Dyson
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Girls, just to let you know...
if you get them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
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Every time I find out the meaning of life, they change it.
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Life is a great bundle of little things.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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Dubstep Dispute
Irish-American painter William Harnett (1848–1892) produced works of such startling verisimilitude that his Still-Life Five Dollar Bill, below, got him arrested for counterfeiting. The judge advised that “the development and exercise of a talent so capable of mischief should not be encouraged.”
Join this crew of droids as they solve their differences the only way dubstep robots know how. A 3d animated short set to an excerpt from Nostalgia's 'Knights of Cydonia.'
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Irish-American painter William Harnett (1848–1892) produced works of such startling verisimilitude that his Still-Life Five Dollar Bill, below, got him arrested for counterfeiting. The judge advised that “the development and exercise of a talent so capable of mischief should not be encouraged.”
To be fair, Harnett was not representing his work as currency — the Secret Service was on the trail of an even more ambitious artist.
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Counterfeiting was a lot harder in the old days.
In the 1880s, Emanuel Ninger, known as “Jim the Penman,” drew $50 and $100 bills by hand, spending weeks on each one. Fifty bucks was a lot back then, about $2,000 in today’s money, so the effort was worthwhile. This also meant that his “work” ended up in the hands of rich people, and he actually gained a perverse following who realized the forgeries’ value as works of art.
He drew this note in 1896, just before the Secret Service nabbed him. He’d left a note on a wet bar, and the bartender saw the ink run. Ninger served six months and was forced to pay restitution of $1. He never forged again.
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QUOTE: "Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."
HINT: (1856-1941), Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.
ANSWER: Oliver Wendell Holmes.
HINT: (1856-1941), Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.
ANSWER: Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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A partially deaf gentleman was extolling the virtues of his new hearing aid. "It's marvelous," he enthused to a friend. "Since I acquired it I can hear the birds chirping on the hearth. I can also hear clearly a conversation being held in an apartment a full block away!"
"You don't say," said his friend. "What kind is it?"
The proud owner consulted his wristwatch and answered, "Twenty minutes after two."
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Never replicate a successful experiment. -- Fett's Law
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Voice Mail.
Never answer your phone if you have voice mail. People don't call you just because they want to give
you something for nothing - they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That's no way to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail. If somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour when you know they're not there - it looks like you're hardworking and conscientious even though you're being a devious weasel.
you something for nothing - they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That's no way to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail. If somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour when you know they're not there - it looks like you're hardworking and conscientious even though you're being a devious weasel.
If you diligently employ the method of screening incoming calls and then returning calls when nobody is there, this will greatly increase the odds that the caller will give up or look for a solution that doesn't involve you. The sweetest voice mail message you can ever hear is: "Ignore my last message. I took care of it".
If your voice mailbox has a limit on the number of messages it can hold, make sure you reach that limit frequently. One way to do that is to never erase any incoming messages. If that takes too long, send yourself a few messages. Your callers will hear a recorded message that says, "Sorry, this mailbox is full" - a sure sign that you are a hardworking employee in high demand.
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Why do women pay more attention to their appearance than to improving their minds?
Because most men are stupid, but few are blind.
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Because most men are stupid, but few are blind.
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Check out the Brighton Swimming Club, taken in 1863!
I say, we look rather dashing in these top hats Edward! Yes, quite!
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Como
artisanal bread, or rustic loaf
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Strawberry Hand Pies
Yields: 6 pies
Ingredients
powder unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine 2 1/4 cups flour, baking powder, and 1 teaspoon salt. Using a pastry blender or 2 knives, cut butter into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse sand. Add 1 egg yolk, 1/2 cup chilled water
- Meanwhile, make filling: In a medium bowl, combine strawberries, confectioners’ sugar, and jam, plus remaining flour, vanilla, and salt. Set aside.
- In a small bowl, beat remaining yolk and 1 tablespoon water for egg wash; set aside. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/2-inch thickness. Using a 3-inch round cookie cutter, cut dough into 6 rounds.
- Roll 1 round into a 6-inch circle. Spoon a heaping 2 tablespoons filling onto half of circle, leaving 1/2-inch border. Brush the edges with egg wash, then fold dough over filling. Using a fork, crimp the edges to seal hand pie. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking pan. Repeat with remaining dough rounds and filling.
- Using a toothpick, poke a few holes in the top of each pie. Brush with remaining egg wash and sprinkle each pie with 1/2 teaspoon sanding sugar. Bake
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Later on in bed, the wife is just falling asleep when the husband tries his luck
and places his hand on her hip. She turns to him and says. ”"I don’t think so love.
If you'’re not prepared to shoe the horsethen you sure as hell aren’'t riding it."”
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Close To Home
Explore the stars of the zodiac constellations, and their neighbors, in an interactive model of near space! Zoom from Earth outward and see the position and distance of those celestial bodies as they reside in three-dimensional space. It’s sort of like flying a spaceship through your web browser.
Of course, it’s the height of humanity’s hubris to assume that our particular perspective on the stars and the shapes we assign to them allow us any particularly special place in the universe.
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The Military is Developing the Lightning Weapon
We told you that scientists were able to control lightning bolt with laser. Now, we learn that (surprise!) the military has developed a lightning-based weapon:
The technology -- known as laser-induced plasma channel -- is designed to seek out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them.
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How Tomatoes Lost Their Taste
It's no secret that supermarket tomatoes are grown for their looks and not for their taste, but how where exactly did growers go wrong in developing taste tomatoes?
Science has the answer, and the culprit is how we love that uniform red color:
Sometime before 1930, somewhere in America, a tomato grower noticed a plant that was producing distinctive fruit. These fruit turned red from stem to tip in a uniform way. They didn't have any of those bothersome green shoulders.It was a new mutation, and plant breeders saw it as the next big thing.They called it the "uniform ripening" trait. In 1930, the agricultural experiment station in Fargo, N.D., released a new tomato variety containing this mutation. The variety was called All Red. [...]The researchers discovered that this natural tomato gene, when it works properly, produces those green shoulders on tomatoes. The darker green color comes from the chlorophyll in plant structures called chloroplasts, which is what converts sunlight into sugars for the plant. In fact, those dark green shoulders were making those old tomatoes sweeter and creating more flavor.The uniform-ripening mutation disabled this gene.
Dan Charles of NPR's All Things Considered has the story: Link
Previously on Neatorama: Tasty Tomatoes
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The Evolution of the Web is an interactive graphic that plots the timelines of various browsers, codes, and components of the internet, from 1991 to 2012. Click on a stream to get more information about whatever it represents. This screenshot is just a small portion of the large graph. Link -via Simply Left Behind
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The UK’s Most-Complained-About Advertisements of All Time
The Telegraph has a compliation of the ten advertisements (print and televised) which have generated the most complaints to the official watchdog. The subject matter is generally predictable: misleading content, sex (contraception, abortion, nudity), violence, verbal and physical child abuse, religion, and climate change.
Oh, and also one about a cat being kicked by a blind person.
The advertisement which generated the most complaints, however, was a 2005 promotion for Kentucky Fried Chicken which featured people talking (singing) with their mouths full of food; this was viewed as encouraging bad manners among young persons. Would you object to your children viewing this ad? Is it more offensive than the other topics?
The other nine most-offensive ads are listed and embedded at the The Telegraph. Link
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How To Make Your Own Amazing GIFs
Have you ever wondered how people create such amazing looking art GIFs, and want to make your own?
Master of GIF animation Anthony Holden has shared his secrets for creating amazing GIF artwork with the interwebs, so now you can create some awesome animated GIF art of your very own!
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Catnip: Egress to Oblivion?
An educational film by Jason Willis.
Catnip is all the rage with today’s modern feline, but do we really understand it?Is it a source for harmless kicks, or a potentially crippling addiction? Is it a tool to expand one’s consciousness, or a downward spiraling path that can eventually lead to insanity?
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Her mom calmly said, - "that part where hair has grown is called Monkey, be proud that your monkey has grown hair". The girl smiled.
At dinner, she told her sister, - "my monkey has grown hair".
Her sister smiled and said - "that's nothing, mine is already eating bananas" .
Mom fainted...
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Dumb crook of the day
What the manager found when he arrived at work
Yes – and then he was taken to jail.
Thanks, Ed
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Glass is something that frequently gets overlooked as a recyclable because it is just so abundant. Silica is most commonly found in nature as sand and it is a principal component of most types of glass.
However, glass still requires a large amount of energy to produce. The Glass Packaging Institute states recycled glass uses only two-thirds the energy needed to manufacture glass from raw materials.
And unlike some other products, like paper, glass can be recycled indefinitely.
However, glass still requires a large amount of energy to produce. The Glass Packaging Institute states recycled glass uses only two-thirds the energy needed to manufacture glass from raw materials.
And unlike some other products, like paper, glass can be recycled indefinitely.
* For every ton of recycled glass, 1.2 tons of raw materials are not required and after taking into account transport and processing needed to recycle glass, nearly 700 pounds of carbon dioxide is saved per ton of glass melted for the purposes of making bottles and jars.
* Recycled glass isn't just used for making more bottles - it can be turned into fiberglass (which is also used in house insulation), and as a component of bricks. Glass can be recycled indefinitely.
* Recycled glass isn't just used for making more bottles - it can be turned into fiberglass (which is also used in house insulation), and as a component of bricks. Glass can be recycled indefinitely.
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I am sometimes strong and sometimes weak, but I am nobody's fool. For there is no language that I cannot speak, though I never went to school. What am I?
ANSWER: An echo.
ANSWER: An echo.
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QUOTE: "Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do."
HINT: (1899-1973), Irish novelist and short story writer.
ANSWER: Elizabeth Bowen. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BERLIN - A German animal rights group said it is concerned about the dignity of animals being used as soccer-predicting psychics by media outlets. The Tierschutzbund animal rights group said the Euro 2012 tournament has led TV and radio stations to overuse the psychic animal gimmick, which was inspired by Paul the octopus, a cephalopod that made headlines with a string of successful World Cup predictions in 2010, the BBC reported Wednesday. "These days, everybody who has an animal seems to put it in front of a camera," said Marius Tunte of Tierschutzbund. "Every station has its own animal." The group said it was particularly upset about an Internet radio station using a python named Aldo to make predictions by choosing between two rats representing different teams. "Unnecessary suffering is being inflicted purely for the sake of enjoyment," the group said.
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Making Minute Physics
Behind the scenes of YouTube science magic
Ever wanted to go behind the scenes of your favorite science YouTube channels? MinutePhysics is at the top of the heap when it comes to clear, fun, effective science lessons in easy-to-digest bites. It’s alsoone of my absolute favorites.
Here’s Henry from MinutePhysics talking to Sixty Symbols’ Brady Haran about how a few markers, a broken camera and a microphone can teach the world about physics.
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The words of Douglas Adams (of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame) narrate this story about the evolution of books from tablets of stone to tableaus on paper to tablet computers. Of course, being a very smart guy, Douglas Adams presciently predicted the rise of digital storytelling a more than a decade before the first real e-reader. Here’s Adams’ 1993 story animated by UK illustrator Gavin Edwards. (↬ Brain Pickings)
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RANDOM TIDBITS
A single drawing or inscription on a wall, door, or other surface is technically a graffito. Graffiti is the plural form of this word and the one most commonly used today in both the singular and plural contexts.
The cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album depicts two buildings at 96/98 St. Mark's Place in Manhattan. Those visiting the location may be surprised to see five-story buildings because those on the cover only had four stories. The photo was specially cropped to "remove" one of the floors so that the image would fit squarely on the album cover.
Statistics reveal that more than half the graffiti that crops up in major cities is put there by teenage boys.
Since Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury passed away in 1991, "fans" have scrawled thousands of items of graffiti on the brick walls in front of his mansion in the Kensington area of London. In fact, the walls have been pressure-cleaned so many times that the brickwork is beginning to deteriorate.
Most laws requiring persons to be 18 years of age to buy spray paint were initially enacted to cut down on graffiti. Today, those same laws serve a second purpose: to help curtail incidents of "huffing" or the purposeful inhaling of aerosols.
The cast of George Lucas's 1973 motion picture American Graffiti included four actors who would go on to become sitcom stars later that decade: Ron Howard (Happy Days), Mackenzie Phillips (One Day at a Time), Suzanne Somers (Three's Company), and Cindy Williams (Laverne & Shirley).
A single drawing or inscription on a wall, door, or other surface is technically a graffito. Graffiti is the plural form of this word and the one most commonly used today in both the singular and plural contexts.
The cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album depicts two buildings at 96/98 St. Mark's Place in Manhattan. Those visiting the location may be surprised to see five-story buildings because those on the cover only had four stories. The photo was specially cropped to "remove" one of the floors so that the image would fit squarely on the album cover.
Statistics reveal that more than half the graffiti that crops up in major cities is put there by teenage boys.
Since Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury passed away in 1991, "fans" have scrawled thousands of items of graffiti on the brick walls in front of his mansion in the Kensington area of London. In fact, the walls have been pressure-cleaned so many times that the brickwork is beginning to deteriorate.
Most laws requiring persons to be 18 years of age to buy spray paint were initially enacted to cut down on graffiti. Today, those same laws serve a second purpose: to help curtail incidents of "huffing" or the purposeful inhaling of aerosols.
The cast of George Lucas's 1973 motion picture American Graffiti included four actors who would go on to become sitcom stars later that decade: Ron Howard (Happy Days), Mackenzie Phillips (One Day at a Time), Suzanne Somers (Three's Company), and Cindy Williams (Laverne & Shirley).
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A coworker stormed into my friend's office, yelling, "Did you tell Joan I was a bitch?!"
Stunned, my friend sputtered, "No! I don't know how she found out."
Stunned, my friend sputtered, "No! I don't know how she found out."
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"A new Nielson survey found that Washington, D.C. has the most 25-34-year-olds in the country who make over $100,000 a year. They're called hookers." -Jimmy Fallon
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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.--Henry David Thoreau
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Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last. --Marcus Aurelius
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The human mind isn't a terribly logical or consistent place. Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn't make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people.-- Jim Butcher, Turn Coat
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There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.--Sartre
The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.--Henri Bergson
The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.--Henri Bergson
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Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.--Aristotle
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Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. - Erich Fromm
<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-69835" title="lego-cd-case-1" src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/lego-cd-case-1.jpeg"; alt="" width="500" height="375" />
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. - Erich Fromm
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What is a man's idea of protected sex?
A padded headboard.
A padded headboard.
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Elegant ideas for an elegant home. These vinyl wall decals are available from the Cut N Paste Etsy shop.
Science-influenced wall decals should have a place in every home.
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Next Summer Blockbuster: Mandelbrot 3D!!
Pure math, pure beauty
Man, I love fractals. Fractals are an example of an infinitely repeating set of numbers, really nothing more than a mathematical description of symmetry. But when their patterns are rendered into light, our eyes convert shapes to nerve impulses, and our brains make sense of it all, why do we find them so attractive? Especially when to most people, including me, the math is pretty much a mystery.
These incredible sculptures cycle on down to infinity, their points, bulbs and peaks are the same no matter how close or far you magnify them. Above is a couple of 3-D fractal renderings from theMandelbulb Project. Whereas most fractals are 2-D representations, these more complex renderings grow like living ice sculptures or spiny corals. It’s no coincidence that we associate their shapes with living things. These fractals show up in places as unexpected as broccoli. Visit the Mandelbulb Project website if you’re into things like “awesome videos” and “holy crap that’s amazing” or “whooooooooa”. Then answer this: Why does something that’s purely mathematical strike us as so purely attractive? (Thanks to this post at Bad Astronomy for the inspiration)
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The Faroe Islands are a group of 18 islands in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, northwest of Scotland and halfway between Iceland and Norway. The Faroe Islands are undeniably beautiful: green, rugged and wind-swept. The countryside is dominated by steep mountains, vertical sea cliffs and picturesque valleys. There are over a hundred villages in the Faroe Islands. The houses are either painted in bright colours or the traditional black, whilst the roofs are often turf covered. The buildings are usually built very close to each other, which is very cosy. In most places sheep occupy the outfield throughout the whole year
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The Actual Girl From Ipanema
Everyone knows that, tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking. But did you know the actual Girl from Ipanema that inspired the Bossa Nova hit
?
?"It's the oldest story in the world," says Norman Gimbel, who wrote the English lyrics. "The beautiful girl goes by, and men pop out of manholes and fall out of trees and are whistling and going nuts, and she just keeps going by. That's universal."So reasoned composer Antônio Carlos Jobim and poet Vinícius de Moraes five decades ago. Stalled on a number for a musical called "Blimp," they sought inspiration at the Veloso, a seaside cafe in the Ipanema neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. There they remembered a local teenager, the 5-foot-8-inch, dark-haired, green-eyed Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, whom they often saw walking to the beach or entering the bar to buy cigarettes for her mother. And so they penned a paean to a vision.
Thomas Vinciguerra of The Wall Street Journal has the story, in honor of the song's 50th year anniversary: Link
At 66 years old today, Heloísa is still stunningly beautiful.
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Mathematically Correct Breakfast
If you’ve got a bagel and a knife, you too can have a mathematically correct breakfast. The motion of the knife’s cuts follows a two-twist Möbius strip. If that’s too easy, you can upgrade your cuts to one of George’s trefoil bagels, which have close infinite surface area for delicious shmear, according to math of course.
(by George Hart)
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Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
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"Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously." - Booth Tarkington
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Candies of America
Photo: Melisa Goh/NPR
What about zombies from space??
Photo: Melisa Goh/NPR
From sea to shining sea, Americans love their hometown's candies and NPR's Linton Weeks takes us on an armchair tour of specialty regional sweets that will make your mouth water:
... why do we go on reaching for regional candies? What is it about Washington state's Chukar Cherries, Kentucky's Modjeskas and New York's Sponge Candy that keeps us coming back for more? Maybe it's because of our nation's fascination with youth and childhood. Or maybe it's because in a globalized world of mass-marketed tastes, particular sweets still trigger particular memories of particular places. "If one grew up in the Midwest eating Valomilks," says Sifers, the candy-maker, "then to taste them again after many years, it indeed would take you back to the Midwest. I hear that all the time." Link
What's your favorite hometown candy?
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The Puppy Lemon Law
If you bought a car that turned out to be a lemon, you can return it to the dealership for a refund. But what about a dog? Turns out, you can if you buy a sick dog from a California seller:
The law, officially known as the Pet Breeder Warranty Act, applies to cases in which the purchased dog gets sick due to an illness or disease that existed within 15 days of purchase. It also applies if problems arise in the first year after the sale because of a congenital or hereditary condition. If you want to keep the dog, the law entitles you get your money back from the seller plus up to an additional 50% of the purchase price for veterinary costs. The law also allows you to return the dog, like a piece of merchandise, and get a refund or a different dog of equivalent value. Still, you'd be entitled to reimbursement of "reasonable" veterinary costs.Link
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Poll: U.S. trusts Obama on ET's --*
NEW YORK - Almost two-thirds of Americans said President Obama can better deal with an alien invasion from space than presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, a poll found. The "Aliens Among Us" survey -- released Wednesday by the National Geographic Channel as part of its promotion for a new series on UFOs -- found more than 80 million Americans [36 percent] are sure UFOs exist and 11 percent are pretty sure they've seen one. Sixty-five percent said if there is an invasion from outer space, Obama would be better suited than Romney to deal with it, with 68 percent of women vs. 61 percent of men agreeing with the proposition. Seventy-one percent said they think it is more likely aliens exist than it is that there are superheroes, vampires and zombies. But if there are such things as real superheroes, 21 percent said they would want the Hulk to deal with an ET invasion, while 12 percent would put their fate in Batman's hands and just 8 percent would call Spider-Man. Tech Supervisor Erin Ryder and UFOlogist James Fox -- who worked on the National Geographic Channel series "Chasing UFOs" -- said the survey results reflect what they have learned in their research for the show, NGC said in a release. The eight-part series is scheduled to premiere Friday. Kelton Research conducted the survey of a random nationwide sample of 1,114 people May 21-29, using e-mail invitations and online surveys. The margin of sampling error is 2.9 percentage points.
NEW YORK - Almost two-thirds of Americans said President Obama can better deal with an alien invasion from space than presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, a poll found. The "Aliens Among Us" survey -- released Wednesday by the National Geographic Channel as part of its promotion for a new series on UFOs -- found more than 80 million Americans [36 percent] are sure UFOs exist and 11 percent are pretty sure they've seen one. Sixty-five percent said if there is an invasion from outer space, Obama would be better suited than Romney to deal with it, with 68 percent of women vs. 61 percent of men agreeing with the proposition. Seventy-one percent said they think it is more likely aliens exist than it is that there are superheroes, vampires and zombies. But if there are such things as real superheroes, 21 percent said they would want the Hulk to deal with an ET invasion, while 12 percent would put their fate in Batman's hands and just 8 percent would call Spider-Man. Tech Supervisor Erin Ryder and UFOlogist James Fox -- who worked on the National Geographic Channel series "Chasing UFOs" -- said the survey results reflect what they have learned in their research for the show, NGC said in a release. The eight-part series is scheduled to premiere Friday. Kelton Research conducted the survey of a random nationwide sample of 1,114 people May 21-29, using e-mail invitations and online surveys. The margin of sampling error is 2.9 percentage points.
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Flat-D pads are disposable flatulence deodorizer pads that are placed on the inside of your underwear to mask the smell of farts. They are available to purchase online at Colonial Medical Assisted Devices or on Ebay by wnef2924 who is selling them as the Fart Be Gone! Flatulence Deodorizer Pads. The pads use activated charcoal to disguise gassy emissions. There is also a flatulence deodorizing pillow.
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"Europe officials say al-Qaida-trained Norwegian is ready for an attack on West"
From the Associated Press, as cited by the StarTribune: A Norwegian man has received terrorist training from al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen and is awaiting orders to carry out an attack on the West, officials from three European security agencies told The Associated Press on Monday.
Western intelligence officials have long feared such a scenario — a convert to Islam who is trained in terrorist methods and can blend in easily in Europe and the United States, traveling without visa restrictions.
Officials from three European security agencies confirmed Monday the man is "operational," meaning he has completed his training and is about to receive a target...Next step: curtailment of the civil liberties of persons with white skin; this will complement the profiling currently underway on persons of color, and pretty much complete the dermatologic spectrum.
And the reason they release this broadly vague information to the public at large? So that all of us will not only now become suspicioius of all white people, but we will also understand why we are being asked to submit quietly to authority.
It never ends...
Western intelligence officials have long feared such a scenario — a convert to Islam who is trained in terrorist methods and can blend in easily in Europe and the United States, traveling without visa restrictions.
Officials from three European security agencies confirmed Monday the man is "operational," meaning he has completed his training and is about to receive a target...Next step: curtailment of the civil liberties of persons with white skin; this will complement the profiling currently underway on persons of color, and pretty much complete the dermatologic spectrum.
And the reason they release this broadly vague information to the public at large? So that all of us will not only now become suspicioius of all white people, but we will also understand why we are being asked to submit quietly to authority.
It never ends...
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Spheres of Nostoc
Photo: Gerd Guenther/Duesseldorf, NRW, Germany
ANSWER: Mae West.
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Boys
"The big mistake men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen and all of a sudden they've reached puberty they believe that they like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't mean you like women any more at 21 than you did at ten." --Jules Feiffer
"The NYPD is apparently teaching its officers how to be more polite. It's true: last time I got frisked, the cop was like, 'Have you lost weight?'" -Jimmy Fallon
Sitting in the first row of coach class during a lengthy flight, my wife and I were able to hear a flight attendant as he pushed a wine cart down the aisle in the first-class section. "Would you care for chardonnay or burgundy?" he asked the high-paying passengers.
A few minutes later the attendant opened the curtain between the two sections, offered wine to one final first-class patron, then wheeled the same cart forward to our aisle. "Excuse me," he said, looking down at us, "would you care for a glass of wine? We have white and red."
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A minor league ballplayer, left in charge of a baby cousin, suddenly realized that he did not have the least idea how to change a diaper. Frantically, he called a friend who was luckily a father. The friend calmed down the ballplayer, then gave him the following instructions. "Place the diaper in the position of a baseball diamond, with you at bat. Fold second base over home plate. Place baby on pitcher's mound, then pin first base and third base at home plate!
Photo: Gerd Guenther/Duesseldorf, NRW, Germany
They look like they came straight out of a science fiction movie, but those are real. Gerd Guenther took that micrograph of spherical colonies of bluegreen algae Nostoc commune, and won 10th place at the 2011's Olympus BioScapes competition.
Take a look at more winning entries over at the Olympus BioScapes' website: Link- via The Big Picture
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Short Funnies
Q: What is the secret of happy and satisfied married life?
A: It is still a secret.
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Husband is the head of the family but wife is the neck, which can turn head anywhere.
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A credit card was stolen but the owner decided not to report it because the thief was spending less than his wife did.
A: It is still a secret.
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Husband is the head of the family but wife is the neck, which can turn head anywhere.
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A credit card was stolen but the owner decided not to report it because the thief was spending less than his wife did.
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No More Rats
The (N.I.H) National Institutes of Health have announced that they will no longer be using rats for experimentation. In their place, attorneys will be used. They have given three reasons for this decision:
1. There are now more attorneys than rats.
2. The researchers don't become as emotionally attached to the attorneys as they did to the rats.
3. No matter how hard you try, there are some things that even rats won't do.
1. There are now more attorneys than rats.
2. The researchers don't become as emotionally attached to the attorneys as they did to the rats.
3. No matter how hard you try, there are some things that even rats won't do.
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Do you remember the scene in the movie 'Fight Club' where the character Tyler Durden shoots himself in the mouth and survives? I always thought something like that happening was complete bullshit. That is until I read this story.
If this isn't an effective anti-drug lesson, nothing is. It seems a Florida teen who ate mushrooms and drank a tea made from mushrooms shot himself in the forehead so he could wake up from a nightmare he said he was having while awake.
17-year-old Steve Tilbury had consumed the mushrooms with some friends and he passed out after they had left his house. Tilbury later told investigators that when he woke up he felt like it wasn't real. Like he was awake in a bad nightmare and could not escape from his house.
So he made a decision only someone tripping balls would likely make, he got his father's .22-caliber rifle, went back to his own bedroom, and fired it into his own forehead.
Realizing that didn't do the trick, he wrapped a bandage around his head and walked outside where he asked a passerby to drive him to the hospital.
A deputy asked Tilbury if he wanted to kill himself and he said, "No, I just wanted to wake up from the bad nightmare. I am happy and I love my life."
If this isn't an effective anti-drug lesson, nothing is. It seems a Florida teen who ate mushrooms and drank a tea made from mushrooms shot himself in the forehead so he could wake up from a nightmare he said he was having while awake.
17-year-old Steve Tilbury had consumed the mushrooms with some friends and he passed out after they had left his house. Tilbury later told investigators that when he woke up he felt like it wasn't real. Like he was awake in a bad nightmare and could not escape from his house.
So he made a decision only someone tripping balls would likely make, he got his father's .22-caliber rifle, went back to his own bedroom, and fired it into his own forehead.
Realizing that didn't do the trick, he wrapped a bandage around his head and walked outside where he asked a passerby to drive him to the hospital.
A deputy asked Tilbury if he wanted to kill himself and he said, "No, I just wanted to wake up from the bad nightmare. I am happy and I love my life."
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Man blames caffeine for groping
SEATTLE - A Washington state school bus driver said at his sentencing hearing he groped teenage girls and women because he had consumed too much caffeine. Kenneth Sands, 51, who was charged with five counts of fourth-degree assault, told the judge at his Tuesday sentencing he had consumed too much caffeine prior to the events of Oct. 18, KOMO-TV, Seattle, reported Thursday. "That caused a psychotic episode," Sands said. "My son-in-law and daughter had never seen that kind of behavior from myself." The Lewis County sheriff's office said Sands, a driver for the Rainier School District, was attending a volleyball game in Onalaska Oct. 18 as a spectator, not a driver, when he allegedly touched a 46-year-old woman's breasts three times and grabbed her buttocks when she tried to get away from him. He also allegedly grabbed a 15-year-old girl's buttocks outside of a bus after the game and slapped a 16-year-old girl's behind as she was boarding the vehicle. The sheriff's office said Sands got onto the school bus and touched a girl in an inappropriate manner before being kicked off by the driver. Sands was sentenced to 30 days in jail for each count.
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About 7,000 years ago, high in Spain’s northern Cantabrian mountains, a pair of weary hunters took refuge in a deep cavern, never to emerge again. Until 2006, that is, when these early humans were uncovered by cave explorers.
Dating from pre-agricultural Europe, these remains predate Ötzi the Iceman by nearly two millenia. Recently, scientists were able to piece together about 1% of each caveman’s genome, using techniques right out of CSI: Iceman.
The DNA of these early Iberians does not appear related to modern Spanish and Portuguese, but rather more closely related to Northern Europeans. Certain parts of their DNA show that early Europeans from Poland and Lithuania were brethren of those as far away as Spain … truly nomadic hunter-gatherers!
These represent the earliest genome sequences of modern humans. The percentage of the genome that they sequence should go up as the team continues its work, and we’ll know even more about how the earliest humans in Europe contributed to the world we see today.
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Living Green - Go ahead and crank the AC.
It's the dead of summer, and you're driving on the highway. With gas prices still around $4 per gallon, however, you choose not to run the air conditioning because of the strain it will place on your gas tank.
Driving with the windows open will help you conserve gas. Or will it? Scroll down to find out more.
Driving with the windows open will help you conserve gas. Or will it? Scroll down to find out more.
* During highway driving running the AC doesn't make much of a difference. There would be no savings from turning off the air conditioning because opening the windows would create drag, reducing the car's normal gas mileage.
* Consumer Reports tested the theory while driving a Toyota Camry at 65 miles per hour, and found that choosing air or windows didn't make a justifiable difference.
* That's not to say that air conditioning is always the best option. The Department of Energy's website suggests that turning off the air conditioner may improve fuel economy when driving at speeds under 40 mph.
* Consumer Reports tested the theory while driving a Toyota Camry at 65 miles per hour, and found that choosing air or windows didn't make a justifiable difference.
* That's not to say that air conditioning is always the best option. The Department of Energy's website suggests that turning off the air conditioner may improve fuel economy when driving at speeds under 40 mph.
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I am two-faced but bear only one, I have no legs but travel widely. Men spill much blood over me, kings leave their imprint on me. I have greatest power when given away, yet lust for me keeps me locked away. What am I?
ANSWER: A coin.
ANSWER: A coin.
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QUOTE: "You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough."
HINT: (1893-1980), American actress, playwright, screen-writer and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades.
ANSWER: Mae West.
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RANDOM TIDBITS
Nathanial Currier and James Ives are best known for their Victorian Christmas scenes, but they also produced significant political cartoons and banners in their lithograph shop.
Christmas still reigns supreme as the biggest card-sending holiday, but Valentine's Day runs a close second. The top recipients of Valentine cards are teachers, followed by children, mothers, and then wives.
It takes a three-volt lithium ion battery, an analog recording chip, an amplifier, and tiny speakers to create a musical greeting card. When the card is closed, a tab slides between the two contacts and keeps the greeting silent. Such devices draw very little juice, so a musical greeting will long outlast your birthday party.
The very first Hallmark card, published in 1916, featured a verse from poet Edgar A. Guest: "I'd like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me."
According to the Greeting Card Association, four of every five greeting cards sold are purchased by women.
In 1848, a new Valentine's Day card tradition emerged: the "penny dreadful" or "vinegar valentine." These cards were printed on cheap stock and featured rhyming insults intended for spinsters and other lovelorn folks.
Nathanial Currier and James Ives are best known for their Victorian Christmas scenes, but they also produced significant political cartoons and banners in their lithograph shop.
Christmas still reigns supreme as the biggest card-sending holiday, but Valentine's Day runs a close second. The top recipients of Valentine cards are teachers, followed by children, mothers, and then wives.
It takes a three-volt lithium ion battery, an analog recording chip, an amplifier, and tiny speakers to create a musical greeting card. When the card is closed, a tab slides between the two contacts and keeps the greeting silent. Such devices draw very little juice, so a musical greeting will long outlast your birthday party.
The very first Hallmark card, published in 1916, featured a verse from poet Edgar A. Guest: "I'd like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me."
According to the Greeting Card Association, four of every five greeting cards sold are purchased by women.
In 1848, a new Valentine's Day card tradition emerged: the "penny dreadful" or "vinegar valentine." These cards were printed on cheap stock and featured rhyming insults intended for spinsters and other lovelorn folks.
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"Women should have labels on their foreheads that say, 'Government Health Warning: women can seriously damage your brains, genitals, current account, confidence, razor blades, and good standing among your friends'." --Jeffrey Bernard
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An American was golfing at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. He slices his opening drive out of bounds onto the beach, so he tees another one up and smacks it right down the middle.
The golfer turns to his old Scottish caddy and tells him that in America that is called a "Mulligan" and asks him if there is a name for it in Scotland.
The caddy replies, "AYE, we call it a three."
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The golfer turns to his old Scottish caddy and tells him that in America that is called a "Mulligan" and asks him if there is a name for it in Scotland.
The caddy replies, "AYE, we call it a three."
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Boys
"The big mistake men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen and all of a sudden they've reached puberty they believe that they like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't mean you like women any more at 21 than you did at ten." --Jules Feiffer
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The female dentist pulls out a numbing needle to give the man a shot.
"No way! No needles. I hate needles" the patient said.
The dentist starts to hook up the nitrous oxide and the man objects again.
"I can't do the gas thing. The thought of having the gas mask on suffocates me!"
The dentist then asks the patient if he has any objection to taking a pill.
"No objection," the patient says. "'I'm fine with pills."
The dentist steps out of the office and returns a moment later, "Here's a Viagra."
The patient says, "Wow! I didn't know Viagra worked as a painkiller!"
"It doesn't" said the dentist, "but it's going to give you something to hold on to when I pull your tooth."
"No way! No needles. I hate needles" the patient said.
The dentist starts to hook up the nitrous oxide and the man objects again.
"I can't do the gas thing. The thought of having the gas mask on suffocates me!"
The dentist then asks the patient if he has any objection to taking a pill.
"No objection," the patient says. "'I'm fine with pills."
The dentist steps out of the office and returns a moment later, "Here's a Viagra."
The patient says, "Wow! I didn't know Viagra worked as a painkiller!"
"It doesn't" said the dentist, "but it's going to give you something to hold on to when I pull your tooth."
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"Pseudoscience describes theories that sound like science but are actually just made up, like aromatherapy or biorhythms or love." -Craig Ferguson
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"According to a Twitter study, people are happiest on the weekends and when their workday is over. They also discovered that if you stand in front of a moving train, it will kill you." -Jay Leno
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"The NYPD is apparently teaching its officers how to be more polite. It's true: last time I got frisked, the cop was like, 'Have you lost weight?'" -Jimmy Fallon
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Sitting in the first row of coach class during a lengthy flight, my wife and I were able to hear a flight attendant as he pushed a wine cart down the aisle in the first-class section. "Would you care for chardonnay or burgundy?" he asked the high-paying passengers.
A few minutes later the attendant opened the curtain between the two sections, offered wine to one final first-class patron, then wheeled the same cart forward to our aisle. "Excuse me," he said, looking down at us, "would you care for a glass of wine? We have white and red."
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A minor league ballplayer, left in charge of a baby cousin, suddenly realized that he did not have the least idea how to change a diaper. Frantically, he called a friend who was luckily a father. The friend calmed down the ballplayer, then gave him the following instructions. "Place the diaper in the position of a baseball diamond, with you at bat. Fold second base over home plate. Place baby on pitcher's mound, then pin first base and third base at home plate!
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Build Your Own LEGO CD Case
<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-69835" title="lego-cd-case-1" src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/lego-cd-case-1.jpeg"; alt="" width="500" height="375" />
UK band Camp America recently released a new album. While I’ve never even heard of the band, I’ve gotta say, I like their idea for a limited edition cd case. These special cases come in 125 pieces with instructions on how to put them together in order to build your own CD case. Now that’s some good geek marketing.
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Lauren Luke is a British makeup artist whose tutorials have almost a half-million subscribers on YouTube. Those subscribers were horrified to see this one posted over the weekend. The video is actually a public service announcement for Luke’s “Don’t Cover It Up” campaign against domestic abuse for the Refuge organization. She also did an interview about the making of the video.
The video depicts the domestic violence situation in an eerily realistic light, ending with onscreen copy that reads: “65% of women who suffer domestic violence keep it hidden. Don’t cover it up.” London agency BBH handpicked Luke to act in the PSA to reach her 439,8930 subscribers and the many other women who routinely seek out her online content. Luke said that she felt a personal attachment to the project from being in an abusive relationship herself.
Read more about how this campaign came about at HuffPo. Link
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"[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."-- Vice President Dan Quayle
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===============
Hi guys. We've all been putting in long hours, but we've really come
together as a group, and I love that. Big thanks to Omar for putting
up the poster that says "There is no I in team," as well as the one that
says "Hang In There, Baby." That cat is hilarious.
However, while we are fighting a jihad, we can't forget to take care of
the cave. And frankly, I have a few concerns.
First of all, while it's good to be concerned about cruise missiles, we
should be even more concerned about the scorpions in our cave. Hey, you
don't want to be stung and neither do I, so we need to sweep the cave
daily. I've posted a sign-up sheet near the main cave opening.
Second, it's not often I make a video address, but when I do, I'm trying
to scare the most powerful country on earth, okay? That means that while
we're taping, please do not ride your razor scooter in the background.
Just while we're taping. Thanks.
Third point, and this is a touchy one. As you know, by edict, we're not
supposed to shave our beards. But I need everyone to just think hygiene,
especially after mealtime. We're all in this together.
Fourth: food. I bought a box of Cheez-Its recently, clearly wrote "Osama"
on the front, and put it on the top shelf. Today, my Cheez-Its were gone.
Consideration. That's all I'm saying.
Finally, we've heard that there may be American soldiers in disguise
trying to infiltrate our ranks. I want to set up patrols to look for
them.
First patrol will be Omar, Muhammed, Abdul, Akbar, and Richard.
Love you lots.
Osama
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Glossary Terms
Software Engineering Glossary of Product Terminology
NEW: Different colors from previous version.
ALL NEW: Software is not compatible with previous version.
UNMATCHED: Almost as good as the competition.
ADVANCED DESIGN: Upper management doesn't understand it.
NO MAINTENANCE: Impossible to fix.
BREAKTHROUGH: It finally booted on the first try.
DESIGN SIMPLICITY: Developed on a shoe-string budget.
UPGRADED: Did not work the first time.
UPGRADED AND IMPROVED: Did not work the second time.
The Dumpty Dictionary, Version 2.0
Software Engineering Glossary of Product Terminology
NEW: Different colors from previous version.
ALL NEW: Software is not compatible with previous version.
UNMATCHED: Almost as good as the competition.
ADVANCED DESIGN: Upper management doesn't understand it.
NO MAINTENANCE: Impossible to fix.
BREAKTHROUGH: It finally booted on the first try.
DESIGN SIMPLICITY: Developed on a shoe-string budget.
UPGRADED: Did not work the first time.
UPGRADED AND IMPROVED: Did not work the second time.
The Dumpty Dictionary, Version 2.0
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Police recruitment videos from Decatur, Georgia (top), and Newport Beach, California (Bottom). I wonder if the differences in attitude here reflect real differences in the quality of police service.
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Sea Ice Retreat in the Beaufort Sea
As the summer solstice passes in the Northern Hemisphere, long hours of sunlight warm the Arctic and melt snow and sea ice. Sea ice retreat in June is typical, but the first half of June 2012 brought unusually rapid ice loss, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported on June 19.
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"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and
intellect has intended us to forgo their use. " - Galileo Galilei
intellect has intended us to forgo their use. " - Galileo Galilei
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"Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste more like prunes than a rhubarb does.
Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know."
-- Groucho Marx
Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know."
-- Groucho Marx
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He asked me if I knew what time it was. I said, "Yes, but not right now."
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The nuclear bomb took all the fun out of war. - Edward Abbey
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Peeling boiled potatoes
This is really great, I am going to try it the next time I want mashed potatoes or potato salad!
If you take the time to watch this, you will not only be glad you did, but you will forward this to all your daughters, sisters, moms, etc... I haven't tried it yet, but I will! Just when you thought you knew everything about boiling potatoes ...To all who love making potato salad but hate peeling the boiled potatoes, here is the solution for easy peeling. This will BLOW your mind. Well, we do learn something new every day. I wish I had known about this thirty years ago. Peeling the cooked potato was the least desirable part in making a potato salad. Enjoy.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7375897927147969009#
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"Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension."-- In an Austrian hotel catering to skiers
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other say in a whole book. --Friedrich Nietzsche
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other say in a whole book. --Friedrich Nietzsche
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A lonely young lad of Eton
Used always to sleep with the heat on,
Till he ran into a lass
Who showed him her ass-
Now they sleep with only a sheet on.
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Used always to sleep with the heat on,
Till he ran into a lass
Who showed him her ass-
Now they sleep with only a sheet on.
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Pennsylvania's ZooAmerica welcomed two Roadrunner chicks in June.These chicks will grow to be 20-24 inches (50-61 cm) from tail to beak and 10-12 inches (25.5-30.5 cm) tall. A large black-and-white mottled ground bird with a distinctive head crest, Roadrunners scurry across the terrain in American deserts, as depicted in the well-known Warner Bros. cartoons. It can fly, but for only short distances as its wingspan can't keep its large body in the air for long. These chicks are members of the Cuckoo family, characterized by feet with 2 forward toes and 2 behind.
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Lick it, Stick it, and Lick it again!
Juicy Lickers are lickable & flavored temporary tattoos that come in a variety of naughty messages like “Hot!” and “Lick This” that “can be placed ANYWHERE you desire”. This promo video shows how they can be used in a real world situation. A Juicy Lickers fun pack is available for purchase at their site. They also carry a line of apparel.
…All you do is place a tattoo face-down on a moistened area of your body. Remove the backing, then LICK IT…You enjoy all the FLAVORS the tattoo has to offer!Juicy Lickers can be displayed for ALL to see, or kept PRIVATE for you and your partner to enjoy. Either way Juicy Lickers adds that extra FLAVOR to your night.
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<img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8148/7516509900_fb3606fe6b_c.jpg"; width="533" height="800" alt="iphone"/>
I made the mistake of leaving my iPhone in the car today when it was 102 degrees out. It was not happy about it.
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European sex toy, lingerie and clothing retailer Beate Uhse hired Munich-based ad agency Interone to create a unique invitation so their business clients would attend Salon International de la Lingerie in Paris. Since the invitees would be traveling on long journeys by plane or train, they created the Face Bra, a sexy but useful sleeping mask. It’s based on Beate Uhse lingerie’s top-selling product, the lace bra. Due to its popularity, the company is considering adding it to its product line.
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Residents of the small mining city of Broken Hill in the Australian outback recently woke up to find a surprise life-size LEGO forest had popped up overnight. The LEGO Forest is part of the traveling LEGO Festival of Play and will be on display near Broken Hill at the Living Desert Reserve until July 12, 2012.
The Forest consists of 15 of the iconic LEGO ‘pine’ trees scaling 4 metres in height and 15 flower sets. The LEGO Forest trees and flowers are 1:1 in ratio replicas of the original iconic pieces, but over 66 times bigger in size to make the magical play world a reality.
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In the post for the month of June, I've collected images from many places. Single images from Guatemala, Lisbon, California, Israel, Australia, Nepal and Pakistan. Small "picture groupings" from Greece (a country in the news for the challenges it faces economically), from Pakistan (attending classes at a madrasah and outside a brick factory), from China (fun in the sand and eclectic street scenes), from Spain (the Corpus Christi procession and an intimate moment on the street), from Thailand (life in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border and lessons in an Islamic school). Visual slices of life around the world. -- Paula Nelson (54 photos total)
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The western United States continues to battle a ferocious wildfire season that has seen record-breaking fires in several states. The worst of the blazes is the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado, blamed for two deaths, for forcing 35,000 residents to evacuate, and for the destruction of at lest 346 homes. The area around Colorado Springs has been declared a federal disaster area after the most destructive fire in state history. Wildfires have also destroyed property and forced evacuations in California, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and New Mexico. [Editors' note: There will be no Big Picture on the Wednesday, July 4 holiday.] -- Lane Turner (38 photos total)
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With Radiohead's Everything in its Right Place as a soundtrack and Jude Law doing a voice-over, Greenpeace tries to raise awareness on global warming and the plight of the Arctic and its inhabitants as a result of oil drilling in the area.
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“Sheer egoism… Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.”
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one.
(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.
(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
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Jul 7 - A baby bunny eating a wild flower.
Jul 7 - Kevin Olusola: Wait for it...
Jul 7 - How Arduino is open-sourcing imagination.
Jul 7 - Kevin Olusola: Wait for it...
Jul 7 - How Arduino is open-sourcing imagination.
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Man Paid Off House With Pennies Saved Over 35 Years
A penny saved is a penny earned. And if you multiply that by 62,000, you'd have enough to pay the final payment of your mortgage!
Thomas Daigle delivered a pair of boxes to the steps of Milford Federal Savings and Loan Association this April that contained more than 62,000 pennies, which he had collected for the past 35 years. [...] After he purchased the home with a mortgage from Milford Federal, Daigle made it his mission to make the final payment in pennies. He said that he just wanted to make his last payment “memorable.” Link
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The Vodka Wars – Poland vs Russia
Real World Monopoly – Then and Now
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Trivia Tidbits:
About 12% of the Earth’s surface is continually covered in snow.
Jerry Lee Lewis and televangelist Jimmy Swaggart are cousins.
Only two people actually signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4
22% of U.S. teenagers can’t name the country the United States declared its independence from.
A half-ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 25 miles long.
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Adult Scrabble
Rearrange the letters to spell out an important
part of the human body which is even more useful when erect:
part of the human body which is even more useful when erect:
P N E S I
People who wrote SPINE became doctors…
The rest are all my friends.
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They played a ball game called knatleikr:
This detail comes from a new article, ‘What the Vikings did for fun? Sports and pastimes in medieval northern Europe’, which was published last month in the journal World Archaeology. In it Leszek Gardeła of the University of Aberdeen uses saga accounts and archaeological evidence to see what men, women and children from Scandinavia and Iceland amused themselves with during the Viking-era, and found that their were several popular pastimes.
For example, a ball game called knattleikr was played, which involved at least four men throwing a ball, chasing and running, and sometimes also involved a bat. Gardeła relates that in the saga of Egill Skallagrimsson, a game was arranged that brought people from around the district to watch. The story goes that “Egill, who must have been under 12 years old, was competing against an 11-year-old boy named Grımr, who seems to have been much stronger. At some point Egill lost his temper and struck his opponent with a bat, but was immediately seized and dashed to the ground. After complaining about these events to his friend Þorðr Granason, Egill took an axe and drove it into Grimr’s head.”Other pastimes, like wrestling in the water and stone-lifting, are mentioned at the Medievalists.net link.
For example, a ball game called knattleikr was played, which involved at least four men throwing a ball, chasing and running, and sometimes also involved a bat. Gardeła relates that in the saga of Egill Skallagrimsson, a game was arranged that brought people from around the district to watch. The story goes that “Egill, who must have been under 12 years old, was competing against an 11-year-old boy named Grımr, who seems to have been much stronger. At some point Egill lost his temper and struck his opponent with a bat, but was immediately seized and dashed to the ground. After complaining about these events to his friend Þorðr Granason, Egill took an axe and drove it into Grimr’s head.”Other pastimes, like wrestling in the water and stone-lifting, are mentioned at the Medievalists.net link.
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Augmented Reality Girlfriend
I weep that I went through my teenage years with nothing remotely like this technological marvel: The character chosen to show off this augmented reality girlfriend tech is [Hatsune Miku], a voice synthesizer personified as a doll-eyed anime avatar. [Miku] is an immensely popular character in Japan, with thousands of people going to her concerts, so choosing her for this augmented reality girlfriend project was an obvious choice. The build details for this hack are a little sparse, confounded by the horrible Google Translate results of the blog linked in the YouTube description. From what we can gather from the video and this twitter account, the build is based on an ASUS Xtion Kinect clone and a nice pair of video goggles. Link -via Nerdcore
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From Henry Fowler’s immortal 1906 Modern English Usage, a table of commonly confused terms:
“So much has been written upon the nature of some of these words, and upon the distinctions between pairs or trios among them, that it would be both presumptuous and unnecessary to attempt a further disquisition,” Fowler
wrote. “But a sort of tabular statement may be of service against some popular misconceptions.”
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It's not the same as vegetarian or vegan: Enter the Vegivore. The term, coined 18 months ago by New York magazine, describes a new kind of eating, and one that you may well already enjoy. Unlike vegetarians and vegans... the Vegivore does not restrict his or her diet. Vegivores don’t hate meat – far from it – they just love vegetables. You’re a Vegivore if you like the roast potatoes, buttered carrots and Yorkshire pudding as much as the beef. (It's spelled both as "vegivore and vegievore" at the link. But apparently not "veggievore.")
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15 Funny Celebrity Photobombs
Since celebrities get their pictures taken all the time, it only stands to reason that people will take the opportunity to join in the fun as often as they can …and the resulting pictures are going to be shared, you betcha! Unreality has a collection of 15 of the funniest. Link
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Next to "heartbreaking" in the dictionary? Appears this photograph.
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Custom Made Mermaid Tails
<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70186" title="mermaidtails" src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mermaidtails-500x333.jpg"; alt="" width="500" height="333" />
Etsy seller Monika Naumann makes mermaid tails that you can wear while swimming! These stunningly realistic looking Mermaid Tails were inspired by my 3 daughters and their love of all things Mermaid! They are created to fit your unique size and include a comfortable, durable and sturdy custom made mono-fin. They are made to SWIM IN as the material used is top of the line swim fabric. Colour currently available are; green, red, blue, orange and fushia-pink. All colours are all very sparkly and reflective, and look beautiful, when worn in and out of the water. Make a girls Mermaid dreams a reality with a gorgeous custom made tail. A special and unique gift that will bring happiness and fun times to all who wear it!
Link -via Laughing Squid
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Artificial Conversation
Conversational ‘bots programmed to respond to whatever a person says, but that gets a little weird when they talk to each other. Cleverbot has a collection of odd conversations between chatbots, avatars, and artificial intelligence programs. Link-via b3ta
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All 135 Space Shuttle Launches Simultaneously
McLean Fahnestock’s Grand Finale was a finalist in this year’s Vimeo Awards, and I’d say that it deserves that honor. His video shows all 135 space shuttle launches at the same time. He provided a particularly tasteful and moving treatment of the Challenger‘s final mission.
-via Kottke | Director’s Website
Goose-bumps
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I’m Farming and I Grow It
The Peterson Farm Brothers sing about where your dinner comes from. The lyrics are at the YouTube page. -via Metafilter
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Rock painting, ca. 6000 B.C.E.© Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis
Aboriginal "x-ray style" figure.
Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia.
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The crew was all set to air a show about how hackable and trackable RFID chips that are found in many credit cards are, when some big name advertisers stepped in to shut it down. In this undated video, Adam Savage of Mythbusters talks about how the MB's crew sat down for a conference call with Texas Instruments to discuss the tech behind the chips, and were surprised to find also on the line were chief legal reps from Visa, Discover, and American Express. The Discovery Channel was told if the show about RFID chips aired, the major credit card companies would pull all advertising from the cable network.
Guess who won that battle? Suffice to say, there was no Mythbusters episode about RFID chips.
Video at the link. I blogged this topic in 2009 and again in 2011 (with an excellent video).
Addendum: Reader Irf found a story at cnet in which Adam Savage back-pedals a bit on his claims above.
Addendum: Reader Irf found a story at cnet in which Adam Savage back-pedals a bit on his claims above.
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Sequence of images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captures the Sun’s July 6th X-flares – the highest possible solar flares – in different ultraviolet wavelengths.
Need more Suntasticness? There’s a video of these flare events here that you’ll really want to watch.
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off-the-wall vacation suggestions: 7 Weird Tourist Destinations.
Body Parts: Who Prefers What was a review of actual research from the Annals of Improbable Research.
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader had a look at The Golden Age of Quackery.
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A long journey for the man for whom the Boson is named
he shined like a star which still illuminates the path to science for many young Indians. Ed
I like that
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Internet Pranksters Campaign to Send the Rapper Pitbull to Alaska
This is a 15 foot Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake – the largest ever caught on record, in fact. This snake was found Near the St. Augustine outlet, in a new KB homes subdivision just south of Jacksonville FL.
Someone at Walmart had the brilliant idea of trying to popularize the company's social media site by holding a contest: whichever Walmart store has the most likes will get a visit from rapper Pitbull.
The thing is, they didn't count on the Interweb weighing in:
The campaign to send Pitbull to Kodiak, Alaska, needless to say, is winning: LinkWalmart's Facebook campaign for Energy Sheets, a caffeinated equivalent to Listerine strips, promises to send rapper Pitbull to the Walmart store with the most likes on Facebook. But what happens if the Walmart store with the most likes is on a tiny Alaskan island, accessible only by plane or ferry?The campaign to send American rapper Pitbull to the Alaskan island Kodiak was hatched by David Thorpe and Jon Hendren, two writers of the comedic Internet culture website Something Awful, on June 29.
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S’more Martini
This martini contains chocolate vodka, marshmallow vodka, marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate chips! Oh yes, you’ll need a small blow torch for the finishing touch. Find the complete recipe at Instructables. Link -via Laughing Squid
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The Amusement Park Being Swallowed by the Sea
Blackgang Chine amusement park opened on the Isle of Wight in 1843, which makes it Britain’s oldest amusement park. But it’s been relocated several times due to collapsing cliffs, and the sea is still eroding the land underneath it! Read the story of Blackgang Chine, and see plenty of pictures, at Environmenal Graffiti. Link
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Uncle Sam points out the problems we have when we buy cheap products from China.
“Buy, Buy American Pie” was written and performed by the Capitol Steps. Visit them at www.CapSteps.com
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Lampshades Made from Recycled Corrugated Cardboard
<img src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/lamp3-500x381.jpg"; alt="" title="lamp3" width="500" height="381" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70202" />
<img src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/lamp4-500x375.jpg"; alt="" title="lamp4" width="500" height="375" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70203" />
<img src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/lamp3-500x381.jpg"; alt="" title="lamp3" width="500" height="381" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70202" /><img src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/lamp4-500x375.jpg"; alt="" title="lamp4" width="500" height="375" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70203" />
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The origin of Oregon may be the most hotly debated of the state names.
Here’s a few of the competing explanations (and I may have even missed a few):
- Derived from the French ouragan (“hurricane”) and the state named so because French explorers called the Columbia River le fleuve aux ouragans (“Hurricane River”) due to the strong winds in the Columbia Gorge.
- Derived from oolighan, a Chinook name for the eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), a smelt found along the Pacific coast and prized as a source of food for Native Americans in the area.
- Derived from the Spanish orejón (“big ears”), which early Spanish explorers reportedly used to refer to local natives.
- Derived from Ouragon, a word used by Major Robert Rogers in a 1765 petition asking the British government to finance and supply an overland search for the Northwest Passage. As to where Rogers got the word, it could have come from an error on a French-made map from the early 1700s, where the Ouisiconsink (“Wisconsin River”) is misspelled “Ouaricon-sint,” and broken so “Ouaricon” sits on a line by itself or it might have been derived from the Algonquian wauregan or olighin, which both mean “good and beautiful” (and were both used in reference to the Ohio River at the time).
- Derived from the Shoshone words Ogwa (river) and Pe-On (west) and picked up from the Sioux, who referred to the Columbia as the “River of the West,” by American explorer Jonathan Carver.
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In Florence, Oregon, in 1970, a dead sperm whale (reported to be a gray whale) was blown up by the Oregon Highway Division in an attempt to dispose of its rotting carcass. The explosion threw whale flesh over 800 feet (240 m) away.
For some unknown reason Bits & Pieces ran this old favorite story of Oregonians & Fire Departments worldwide ~ it is used as an amusing training (what not to do) video.
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What’s in your backyard?
This snake has probably been alive since George Bush Sr. was President.
Now just ask yourself these questions:
Now just ask yourself these questions:
What has this snake been feeding on and where are its offspring?
More pics & stats at the link.
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There and Back Again: How Does the Internet Work?
There and Back Again: How Does the Internet Work? Superb video from the World Science Festival that explains how the internet really works. Hint: It’s cats. I mean PACKETS. Packets, not cats. Ride along with a piece of data as it travels from keyboard to server and back! (by worldscifest)
psydoctor8 replied to your video: There and Back Again: How Does the Internet Work? …
right. packets of cats. Packets of cats sound either very illegal or very adorable.
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Bizarre Israeli and American Vortex Beams transmit 2.5 terabits per second. The Vortex Age has begun
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NASA calls this newly released photo of Mars "the next best thing to being there"
It’s the “next best thing to being there.” At least, that’s what NASA said about this new, 360-degree panoramic view of Mars released yesterday. The image is a composite of 817 photographs taken by NASA’s Opportunity rover, which celebrated its 3,000th day on the Red Planet on Monday.
You’re doing great, little guy. You’ll have a friend up there soon.
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The 75 year old man and his young, knockout wife were shopping in an upscale jewelry boutique when the man's oldest friend bumped into him. Eyeing the curvaceous blonde bending over the counter to try on a necklace, the friend asked "How in the hell did YOU land a wife like that?"
The old man whispered back, "Easy. I told her I was 90!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Patriot - Fireworkshttp://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7785
Benjamin and some of his fellow followers who are fighting the British pay a surprise visit at a party where some of the British soldiers and Colonel's are. They blow up a ship and some party-goers think it's just fireworks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q: Why do mermaids wear seashells?
A: Because B-shells are too small and D-shells are too big.
Q: What's big & round at the bottom, pointy on the top; and has ears?
A: A mountain; what, you never heard of mountain-ears.
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<img src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/hot-dogs-500x332.jpg"; alt="" title="hot dogs" width="500" height="332" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70131" />
Domino Soldiers
Steampunk Da Vinci Cupcake
Soviet hydrofoil Burevestnik (Stormbringer), with two airplane turbine engines.
Photo: foto.cheb.ru
You can check to see whether your computer is infected by going to DNS Changer Check-Up which is run by DCWG. If you see a green background your computer is OK. Had your computer been infected with DNS changer malware you would have seen a red background.
Kinetic Rain
The old man whispered back, "Easy. I told her I was 90!"
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RANDOM TIDBITS
The Liberty Bell sounded from the tower of Independence Hall on July 8, 1776, summoning citizens to gather for the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence by Colonel John Nixon.
June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress, looking to promote national pride and unity, adopted the national flag. "Resolved: that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."
The first Independence Day celebration west of the Mississippi occurred at Independence Creek and was celebrated by Lewis and Clark in 1805.
The origin of Uncle Sam probably began in 1812, when Samuel Wilson was a meat packer who provided meat to the US Army. The meat shipments were stamped with the initials, U.S. Someone joked that the initials stood for "Uncle Sam". This joke eventually led to the idea of Uncle Sam symbolizing the United States government.
In 1941, Congress declared 4th of July a federal legal holiday. It is one of the few federal holidays that have not been moved to the nearest Friday or Monday.
The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence did not sign at the same time, nor did they sign on July 4, 1776. The official event occurred on August 2, 1776, when 50 men signed it.
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The Liberty Bell sounded from the tower of Independence Hall on July 8, 1776, summoning citizens to gather for the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence by Colonel John Nixon.
June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress, looking to promote national pride and unity, adopted the national flag. "Resolved: that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."
The first Independence Day celebration west of the Mississippi occurred at Independence Creek and was celebrated by Lewis and Clark in 1805.
The origin of Uncle Sam probably began in 1812, when Samuel Wilson was a meat packer who provided meat to the US Army. The meat shipments were stamped with the initials, U.S. Someone joked that the initials stood for "Uncle Sam". This joke eventually led to the idea of Uncle Sam symbolizing the United States government.
In 1941, Congress declared 4th of July a federal legal holiday. It is one of the few federal holidays that have not been moved to the nearest Friday or Monday.
The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence did not sign at the same time, nor did they sign on July 4, 1776. The official event occurred on August 2, 1776, when 50 men signed it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Patriot - Fireworkshttp://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7785
Benjamin and some of his fellow followers who are fighting the British pay a surprise visit at a party where some of the British soldiers and Colonel's are. They blow up a ship and some party-goers think it's just fireworks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q and A Quickies
Q: Why do mermaids wear seashells?
A: Because B-shells are too small and D-shells are too big.
Q: What's big & round at the bottom, pointy on the top; and has ears?
A: A mountain; what, you never heard of mountain-ears.
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Dog Hot Dogs
<img src="http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/hot-dogs-500x332.jpg"; alt="" title="hot dogs" width="500" height="332" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70131" />
Mayumi has a great idea for adding some humor to your backyard cookouts. To make these dog hot dog buns, all you have to do is shape the dough before baking and add black beans for the eyes and noses.
Link -via That’s Nerdalicious!
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Domino Soldiers
http://youtu.be/gFYMiAgrCUE
A precision military drill team impresses the crowd at a parade in Belarus. Well done! -via Buzzfeed
A precision military drill team impresses the crowd at a parade in Belarus. Well done! -via Buzzfeed
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Steampunk Da Vinci Cupcake
Hold on to your monocle and top hat, Steampunk lovers! Mike's Amazing Cakes baked up this idea of bringing Leonardo da Vinci's drawings into cupcake form, sprinkled with a little steampunk magic.
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Higgs Boson, Explained by Cartoonshttp://vimeo.com/41038445
All right, so you all know that scientists at CERN have discovered the Higgs boson. But what exactly is the Higgs boson? Jorge Cham of PhD Comics to the rescue! Here's a fantastic animated video clip on Vimeo that will make you into a particle physics expert in a jiffy.
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Hey Physics … What Now?!
Dark Matter Animated
Now that that pesky Higgs boson has been all but confirmed, what question will now keep physicists up at night?
Dark matter and dark energy, although their effects have been observed, remain … well, dark. CERN and labs around the world will continue to explore these strange phenomena, which make up as much as 95% of the cosmos. Jorge Cham from PHD Comics (who also did this mighty fine Higgs ‘toon) put together this animation to explain what it is, what it does, and why it’s the next big frontier in Stuff We Don’t Know™ What else would you like to see physics answer? (↬ Open Culture)
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Without the work of intellectual giants like Einstein, Newton and Darwin, we might still be in the dark ages. But how many scientists still read the dust-ridden texts where these luminaries first expounded their theories?
Thanks to the internet, you no longer have to hunt down these yellowing tomes in a moldy library vault. Here's the story of 9 famous publications that spun the scientific world off its orbit.
Thanks to the internet, you no longer have to hunt down these yellowing tomes in a moldy library vault. Here's the story of 9 famous publications that spun the scientific world off its orbit.
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Soviet Hydrofoil: Rocket of the Riverways
Soviet hydrofoil Burevestnik (Stormbringer), with two airplane turbine engines.
Photo: foto.cheb.ru
We've covered the Soviet's Ekranoplan before in our feature Bigger is Better: 7 Insane Soviet Projects, but that's not the only hydrofoil vehicles they built. Dark Roasted Blend has a feature of the "rockets of the riverways" that will make you pine for the good ol' days of the Cold War: Link
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The FBI's temporary Internet servers will go dark Monday, leaving thousands of unsuspecting malware-infected individuals without online access. It started in 2007, when a group of hackers - six Estonians and one Russian - allegedly started masquerading as Internet advertisers who were paid by the click. They created a piece of malware, called DNS Changer, that tampered with the DNS, redirecting millions of Internet users to sites they didn't search for.
Once the FBI got around to fixing the problem in 2011, it realized it couldn't simply shut down the rogue servers because infected computers would be left without a functioning DNS, leaving them virtually Internet-less. So it set up temporary servers to give malware-infected Internet users time to fix their computers. And time runs out on Monday, July 9.
Once the FBI got around to fixing the problem in 2011, it realized it couldn't simply shut down the rogue servers because infected computers would be left without a functioning DNS, leaving them virtually Internet-less. So it set up temporary servers to give malware-infected Internet users time to fix their computers. And time runs out on Monday, July 9.
You can check to see whether your computer is infected by going to DNS Changer Check-Up which is run by DCWG. If you see a green background your computer is OK. Had your computer been infected with DNS changer malware you would have seen a red background.
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“In scientific inquiry, often the answer to one simple question fortuitously explains the answers to many others; they may even answer questions that have yet to be conceived. Powerful ideas unify concepts or phenomena that were previously thought to be unrelated.”
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Kinetic Rain
If you’re ever in Singapore’s Changi Airport, check out Art+Com’s “Kinetic Rain.” This art installation consists of 608 aluminum and copper balls suspended from steel cables. Computer controls move them in a dance through the air, forming patterns and shapes. The video is mesmerizing.
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(07/05/12) Why make passwords hard to remember, when this approach is so simple & secure?
(07/03/12) Wow! If you put all earth's water in one place, it'd look like this
(07/02/12) "So damn attractive." The Physics Book: From the Big Bang to Quantum Resurrection
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Random Facts:
The first public Fourth of July event at the White House occurred in 1804.
The first public Fourth of July event at the White House occurred in 1804.
Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on Independence Day, July 4, 1826.
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Why can't Frankenstein have children?
Because his nuts are on his neck.
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Because his nuts are on his neck.
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We were staying in Ballater, a small town on Deeside in Scotland. In the town was a tiny shop which sold tourist attractions and picture postcards, and in its minute window was a very fine specimen of smoky quartz material. Buying a postcard, I said to the proprietor, ‘That’s a fine group of smoky quartz in your window’ and had this reply in very broad Scotch:
‘That’s no smoky quartz, that’s topaz. It’s a crystal. You can tell crystals by the angles between their faces. If you’re interested I’ll lend you a book on the subject.’
I knew enough (crystals being rather in my line) to be sure it was smoky quartz, and on return to base looked up a book on Mineralogy which said ‘Smoky Quartz, also known as Cairngorm, is called Topaz in Scotland.’
– Sir W.L. Bragg, quoted in R.L. Weber, A Random Walk in Science, 1973
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Those of you who are looking for my weekly meditation, I apologize. Instead of sitting down in front of my computer, I took my granddaughter's turtle (Herman) outside to play in the grass.
I sat quietly watching him as he sniffed at the air and located the direction he wanted to proceed. He proceeded so confidently, with his head held high. He continued across the green grass until he reached a cross road. Go towards the creek, go to the next building or go to the willow tree.... he sat for a long time sniffing and deciding. When he decided .... his decision was to turn around and go back. On the way he found himself a nice little divet in the grass and crawled into to bury himself in the grass. He spent the next almost 5 minutes getting comfortable in his nice little space, inching forward into the tightly compacted sod.
Once settled he relaxed into the space and I followed his lead. I sat upon the grass, both my feet and and hands comfortably resting in the lush green blades. I allowed myself to connect with him with the grass. As he moved forward getting comfy, I found myself knowing the smell of the cool sweet earth deep within the matted roots. I felt myself digging deeper and feeling the individual roots and the small ones living within the grassy jungle. My front claws pulling me forward as my nose pushed through the tall grass stalks.
It was a good day to connect with Turtle. I am grateful to Herman for helping me to remember the touch, smell and feel of earth mother. I am honored he allowed me to be part of his journey.
Until the daylight - In love and laughter,
I sat quietly watching him as he sniffed at the air and located the direction he wanted to proceed. He proceeded so confidently, with his head held high. He continued across the green grass until he reached a cross road. Go towards the creek, go to the next building or go to the willow tree.... he sat for a long time sniffing and deciding. When he decided .... his decision was to turn around and go back. On the way he found himself a nice little divet in the grass and crawled into to bury himself in the grass. He spent the next almost 5 minutes getting comfortable in his nice little space, inching forward into the tightly compacted sod.
Once settled he relaxed into the space and I followed his lead. I sat upon the grass, both my feet and and hands comfortably resting in the lush green blades. I allowed myself to connect with him with the grass. As he moved forward getting comfy, I found myself knowing the smell of the cool sweet earth deep within the matted roots. I felt myself digging deeper and feeling the individual roots and the small ones living within the grassy jungle. My front claws pulling me forward as my nose pushed through the tall grass stalks.
It was a good day to connect with Turtle. I am grateful to Herman for helping me to remember the touch, smell and feel of earth mother. I am honored he allowed me to be part of his journey.
Until the daylight - In love and laughter,
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It's hot. We all understand that. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that more than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week. But that still doesn't justify violence, especially against your air conditioning repair man.
Repairman Sean Hickman had gone to the home of Deltona, Florida resident Stan Nguyen to repair a unit. When Hickman began explaining what was wrong with the unit to Nguyen, the homeowner became angry and refused to pay.
Hickman said he attempted to give Nguyen an invoice for the work; at that point Nguyen pulled out a gun and pointed it at the ground, attempting to fire the weapon. Fortunately, the weapon's safety was on and it did not fire.
But then Nguyen removed the safety and that's when Hickman took cover behind his van. Hickman called for help and said Nguyen was pointing the gun in his direction and threatening to shoot him if he tried to leave.
Well, people get touchy about their air conditioning when it is a hundred degrees outside.
No one got shot in this instance. Nguyen was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The AC unit still isn't working.
Repairman Sean Hickman had gone to the home of Deltona, Florida resident Stan Nguyen to repair a unit. When Hickman began explaining what was wrong with the unit to Nguyen, the homeowner became angry and refused to pay.
Hickman said he attempted to give Nguyen an invoice for the work; at that point Nguyen pulled out a gun and pointed it at the ground, attempting to fire the weapon. Fortunately, the weapon's safety was on and it did not fire.
But then Nguyen removed the safety and that's when Hickman took cover behind his van. Hickman called for help and said Nguyen was pointing the gun in his direction and threatening to shoot him if he tried to leave.
Well, people get touchy about their air conditioning when it is a hundred degrees outside.
No one got shot in this instance. Nguyen was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The AC unit still isn't working.
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Man allegedly stole $755 worth of melons --*
HOKOTA, Japan - Police in Japan said they arrested a 69-year-old man accused of stealing $755 worth of melons from a farm. Police said a CCTV camera recorded the man entering a greenhouse at the Hokota, Ibaraki Prefecture, farm twice June 26 to steal the 30 valuable melons, Japan Today reported Monday. Investigators said they are looking into whether the man stole fruit from any other farms after 79 melons were recovered from his home.
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Which level are you at?
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The Numbers of the Beast
OK, we all know that 666 is the Number of the Beast.
But did you know that:
660 - Approximate number of the Beast
DCLXVI - Roman numeral of the Beast
666.0000 - Number of the High Precision Beast
0.666 - Number of the Millibeast
/ 666 - Beast Common Denominator
666 ^ (-1) - Imaginary number of the Beast
1010011010 - Binary of the Beast
6, uh... what was that number again?
- Number of the Blonde Beast
1-666 - Area code of the Beast
00666 - Zip code of the Beast
1-900-666-0666: - Live Beasts! One-on-one pacts! Call Now!
Only $6.66/minute. Over 18 only please.
$665.95 - Retail price of the Beast
$699.25 - Price of the Beast plus 5% state sales tax
$769.95 - Price of the Beast with all accessories and
replacement soul
$656.66 - Walmart price of the Beast
$646.66 - Next week's Walmart price of the Beast
Phillips 666 - Gasoline of the Beast
Route 666 - Way of the Beast
666 F - Oven temperature for roast Beast
666k - Retirement plan of the Beast
666 mg - Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
6.66 % - 5 year CD interest rate at First Beast of Hell
National Bank, $666 minimum deposit.
Lotus 6-6-6 - Spreadsheet of the Beast
Word 6.66 - Word Processor of the Beast
i66686 - CPU of the Beast
666i - BMW of the Beast
DSM-666 (revised)
- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast
668 - Next-door neighbor of the Beast
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OK, we all know that 666 is the Number of the Beast.
But did you know that:
660 - Approximate number of the Beast
DCLXVI - Roman numeral of the Beast
666.0000 - Number of the High Precision Beast
0.666 - Number of the Millibeast
/ 666 - Beast Common Denominator
666 ^ (-1) - Imaginary number of the Beast
1010011010 - Binary of the Beast
6, uh... what was that number again?
- Number of the Blonde Beast
1-666 - Area code of the Beast
00666 - Zip code of the Beast
1-900-666-0666: - Live Beasts! One-on-one pacts! Call Now!
Only $6.66/minute. Over 18 only please.
$665.95 - Retail price of the Beast
$699.25 - Price of the Beast plus 5% state sales tax
$769.95 - Price of the Beast with all accessories and
replacement soul
$656.66 - Walmart price of the Beast
$646.66 - Next week's Walmart price of the Beast
Phillips 666 - Gasoline of the Beast
Route 666 - Way of the Beast
666 F - Oven temperature for roast Beast
666k - Retirement plan of the Beast
666 mg - Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
6.66 % - 5 year CD interest rate at First Beast of Hell
National Bank, $666 minimum deposit.
Lotus 6-6-6 - Spreadsheet of the Beast
Word 6.66 - Word Processor of the Beast
i66686 - CPU of the Beast
666i - BMW of the Beast
DSM-666 (revised)
- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast
668 - Next-door neighbor of the Beast
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The scene was Mount Olympus, where Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, had thrown a party for a pair of visiting Roman deities -- Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, and Janus, the two-faced god of doors and beginnings. Everyone overdid it, more or less. Ceres at one point was staggering and turning in circles; Janus, equally submerged, was trying to dance with her. Bacchus feared that the pair might fall over, so he went to
steady them. .... This marked the first time that a whirled Ceres was held with a double-header.
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steady them. .... This marked the first time that a whirled Ceres was held with a double-header.
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"The future will be better tomorrow." - J. Danforth Quayle, former U.S. Vice-President
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"I've been working under operation code named duck and cover for so long now I can neither confirm nor deny whether I can recall if I'm allowed to confirm nor deny my own existance. Now does that make any sense to you?" -- Bob the Psychopath, DAAS Kapital
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That Takes Skill
A man went to the police station wishing to speak with the burglar who had broken into his house the night before.
"You'll get your chance in court," the desk sergeant told him.
"No, no, no!" replied the man. "I want to know how he got into the house without waking my wife. I've been trying to do that for years!"
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Q and A Quickies
Q: What's the difference between chopping up a lawyer and chopping up an onion?
A: You cry when you chop up an onion!
Q: What do you do when you are born with two navels?
A: Give one to the navel reserve.
Q: Why did the pig go to the casino?
A: To play the slop machine!
Q: How do you take a pig to hospital?
A: By Hambulance!
Q: What's the difference between chopping up a lawyer and chopping up an onion?
A: You cry when you chop up an onion!
Q: What do you do when you are born with two navels?
A: Give one to the navel reserve.
Q: Why did the pig go to the casino?
A: To play the slop machine!
Q: How do you take a pig to hospital?
A: By Hambulance!
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Random Facts:
In 2010, not only does the United States have a central bank, but it also runs our economy and issues all of our currency. The Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since 1913 and it has been used to create the biggest mountain of government debt in the history of the world.
The 50 wealthiest members of Congress saw their collective fortunes increase by 85.1 million dollars to $1.4 billion in 2009.
In 2010, not only does the United States have a central bank, but it also runs our economy and issues all of our currency. The Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since 1913 and it has been used to create the biggest mountain of government debt in the history of the world.
The 50 wealthiest members of Congress saw their collective fortunes increase by 85.1 million dollars to $1.4 billion in 2009.
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“To describe different phenomena, physicists use various units. PASCALS, for example, measure the pressure applied to a certain area. COULOMBS measure electric charge (that can occur if said area is a synthetic carpet). DECIBELS measure the intensity of the trouble the physicist gets into because he didn’t take off his shoes first.”Abstract City – Christoph Niemann’s clever and amusing visual essays
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Husband ( A Computer Teacher) vs. Wife -
Hubby: "Hi dear. I'm logged in"
Wife: Have you brought the grocery?
Hubby: Bad command or file name
wife: But I told you before you left?
Hubby: Erroneous syntax. Abort, retry, cancel?
Wife: What about my new Watch?
Hubby: Variable not found
Wife: Ok! give me your credit card. I will do shopping myself
Hubby: Sharing violation. Access denied
Wife: It was a big mistake to marry an idiot like you
Hubby: Data type mismatch
Wife: You are pathetic
Hubby: By default
Wife: What about your salary?
Hubby: File in use. Try Later
Wife: Who was in the car this morning?
Hubby: System is unstable. Press ALT + CTRL + DEL to reboot
Wife: What is the relation between you and your receptionist?
Hubby: only user with WRITE permission
Wife: Tell me now. What is my value in this family ?
Hubby: Unknown virus
Wife: Do you love me or your computer or you're just being funny ?
Hubby: Too many parameters !
Wife: I will go to my father's house.
Hubby: This program has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated
Wife: I'll leave you forever
Hubby: Close all programs and logout and then login as another user
Wife: It's useless talking to you
Hubby: Shutdown the computer
Wife: I'm going
Hubby: It's now safe to turn off your computer
Wife: Have you brought the grocery?
Hubby: Bad command or file name
wife: But I told you before you left?
Hubby: Erroneous syntax. Abort, retry, cancel?
Wife: What about my new Watch?
Hubby: Variable not found
Wife: Ok! give me your credit card. I will do shopping myself
Hubby: Sharing violation. Access denied
Wife: It was a big mistake to marry an idiot like you
Hubby: Data type mismatch
Wife: You are pathetic
Hubby: By default
Wife: What about your salary?
Hubby: File in use. Try Later
Wife: Who was in the car this morning?
Hubby: System is unstable. Press ALT + CTRL + DEL to reboot
Wife: What is the relation between you and your receptionist?
Hubby: only user with WRITE permission
Wife: Tell me now. What is my value in this family ?
Hubby: Unknown virus
Wife: Do you love me or your computer or you're just being funny ?
Hubby: Too many parameters !
Wife: I will go to my father's house.
Hubby: This program has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated
Wife: I'll leave you forever
Hubby: Close all programs and logout and then login as another user
Wife: It's useless talking to you
Hubby: Shutdown the computer
Wife: I'm going
Hubby: It's now safe to turn off your computer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ursa ~
ursarodinia@aol.com
ursarodinia@aol.com
Are you paying over $5 per pack of cigarettes? I'm buying my cigarettes from Duty Free Depot and this saves me over 70% on cigs.
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