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The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Saturday, December 4, 2010

The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift
Today's horoscope says:
Instead of following your usual routine today, why not mix it up?
Make new choices in your everyday decisions and you will be amazed at the things that can start happening.
Take your coffee a new way, try a vegan lunch, travel a new route home -- this new way of doing will create a new way of thinking, and possibly even a new way of being.
It sounds nutty, but it is true.
Your biggest transformation could start with a left turn instead of a right one.

Some of our readers today have been in:
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Sittard, Limburg, Netherlands
Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Paris, Ile-De-France, France
Bilbao, Pais Vasco, Spain
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Mechelen, Antwerpen, Belgium
Wasaga Beach, Ontario, Canada

as well as Serbia, Bangladesh, Greece, Scotland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Wales, Singapore, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Croatia, Pakistan, Romania, Finland, Korea,  Argentina, Vietnam, Egypt, Russia, Indonesia, Puerto Rico, Brazil and in cities across the United States such as Ypsilanti, Boca Raton, Baton Rouge, Walla Walla and more.

Today is:
Today is Saturday, December 4, the 338th day of 2010.
There are 27 days left in the year.

Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:
National Cookie Day
and
National Dice Day.

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

President Obama's Weekly Address

With President Obama visiting troops in Afghanistan, Vice President Biden delivered this week’s address, in which he said Congress must extend both the middle class tax cuts and unemployment insurance this year. The combined economic blow of raising taxes on the middle class and cutting two million Americans off of unemployment insurance would wind up costing the country hundreds of thousands of jobs. And, to say that during these challenging times, we cannot afford to provide a lifeline to millions of Americans, but we can afford to give tax cuts to the wealthiest two percent is not just bad economic policy, it is also wrong.
 
Remarks of Vice President Joe Biden
As Prepared for Delivery
Weekly Address
December 4, 2010
Hi, this is Joe Biden.  I’m filling in for President Obama this weekend because he’s on his way back from Afghanistan, where he was spending some time with the brave men and women of our Armed Forces.

It’s tough to be far from home during the holidays, especially in a warzone, so he wanted to be there in person to thank them on behalf of all Americans for their service and the sacrifice each one of them are making.  And here at home, the First Lady and my wife Jill have made supporting military families a priority.  These families are also making difficult sacrifices for our country, and they deserve our admiration and gratitude as well.

Our service members and their families are always on our mind, even as the President and I are working on other issues that all American families are deeply concerned about: accelerating our recovery, growing our economy, strengthening our middle class, and getting our friends and neighbors back to work.

In recent months, we’ve seen encouraging signs on that front.  After shrinking for four straight quarters, our economy has now grown five straight quarters.  After nearly two years of job loss, our economy has created more than one million private sector jobs just this year.

And after teetering on the brink of liquidation last year, our auto industry is posting healthy gains, assembly lines are running again, and American manufacturing is getting up off the mat and fighting its way back.

Still, Friday’s jobs report was a sobering reminder of that. While we saw another month of job growth in November, it just wasn’t enough.

That underscores why it’s so important to get going without delay on two things that will have the most impact in growing the economy.

One: we’ve got to extend the tax cuts for the middle class that are set to expire at the end of the month.  If we don’t, millions of middle-class families will see a big bite out of their paychecks starting January 1.  And that’s the last thing we should let happen.  After a decade in which they lost ground, middle class families can ill-afford a tax hike – and our economy can’t afford the hit it will take if middle class families have less money to spend.

And the second thing we’ve got to do is extend unemployment insurance for Americans who have lost their jobs in a tough economy.  Without unemployment benefits, families can’t spend on basic necessities that are grown, made, and sold by other Americans.

Together, the economic hit caused by raising taxes on the middle class, and denying two million Americans unemployment insurance, will wind up costing us hundreds of thousands of more jobs.  It just isn’t smart.

And, cutting unemployment insurance is not only not smart, it’s not right either.  It would mean telling millions of our neighbors who are out of work today through no fault of their own, that they’re on their own.

That’s no message to send in the season of hope.  We all know someone who’s hit a rough patch.  When that happens in America, we help him get back up on his feet.  That’s who we are.  That’s the American way.

So I just don’t agree with the folks who’ve said we can’t afford a lifeline for Americans who lost their jobs during the worst recession in generations, but we can afford to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans.  That’s bad economic policy, and it’s also just simply wrong.

Congress must extend these needed unemployment benefits before it goes home for the year.  And it must bolster economic growth by preserving tax cuts for our middle class.  I’m glad that the House of Representatives voted to do that this week, and I call on the United States Senate to do the same.

Look, there’s no doubt these are tough times.  But we are slowly but surely fighting our way back, moving forward.  And we’re going to keep fighting – to grow this economy, to strengthen our middle class, and to restore the American Dream.  That’s my pledge to you.

And hey, one last thing – since the President will be back to record this message next week, let me take this chance to say from my family to yours: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, have a great Holiday season and an even better New Year.

Thanks, and enjoy the weekend.

Midwinter's Eve: YULE

Our Christian friends are often quite surprised at how enthusiastically we Pagans celebrate the ‘Christmas’ season. Even though we prefer to use the word “Yule”, and our celebrations may peak a few days before the twenty-fifth, we nonetheless follow many of the traditional customs of the season: decorated trees, caroling, presents, Yule logs, and mistletoe. We might even go so far as putting up a ‘Nativity set’, though for us the three central characters are likely to be interpreted as Mother Nature, Father Time, and the baby Sun God. None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows the true history of the holiday, of course.

In fact, if truth be known, the holiday of Christmas has always been more Pagan than Christian, with its associations of Nordic divination, Celtic fertility rites, and Roman Mithraism. That is why John Calvin and other leaders of the Reformation abhorred it, why the Puritans refused to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it (to them, no day of the year could be more holy than the Sabbath), and why it was even made illegal in Boston! The holiday was already too closely associated with the birth of older Pagan Gods and heroes. And many of them (like Oedipus, Theseus, Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Dionysus, Apollo, Mithra, Horus, and even Arthur) possessed a narrative of birth, death, and resurrection that was uncomfortably close to that of Jesus. And to make matters worse, many of them predated the Christian Savior.

Ultimately, of course, the holiday is rooted deeply in the cycle of the year. It is the winter solstice that is being celebrated, seedtime of the year, the longest night and shortest day. It is the birthday of the new Sun King, the Son of God—by whatever name you choose to call him. On this darkest of nights, the Goddess becomes the Great Mother and once again gives birth. And it makes perfect poetic sense that on the longest night of the winter, “the dark night of our souls”, there springs the new spark of hope, the Sacred Fire, the Light of the World, the Coel Coeth.

That is why Pagans have as much right to claim this holiday as Christians. Perhaps even more so, since the Christians were rather late in laying claim to it, and tried more than once to reject it. There had been a tradition in the West that Mary bore the child Jesus on the twenty-fifth day, but no one could seem to decide on the month. Finally, in 320 C.E., the Catholic fathers in Rome decided to make it December, in an effort to co-opt the Mithraic celebration of the Romans, the Yule festival of the Saxons, and the midwinter revels of the Celts.

There was never much pretense that the date they finally chose was historically accurate. Shepherds just don’t “tend their flocks by night” in the high pastures in the dead of winter! But if one wishes to use the New Testament as historical evidence, this reference may point to sometime in the spring as the time of Jesus’ birth. This is because the lambing season occurs in the spring and that is the only time when shepherds are likely to “watch their flocks by night”—to make sure the lambing goes well. Knowing this, the Eastern half of the church continued to reject December 25, preferring a “movable date” fixed by their astrologers according to the moon.
Thus, despite its shaky start (for over three centuries, no one knew when Jesus was supposed to have been born!), December 25 finally began to catch on. By 529, it was a civic holiday, and all work or public business (except that of cooks, bakers, or any that contributed to the delight of the holiday) was prohibited by the Emperor Justinian. In 563, the Council of Braga forbade fasting on Christmas Day, and four years later the Council of Tours proclaimed the twelve days from December 25 to Epiphany as a sacred, festive season. This last point is perhaps the hardest to impress upon the modern reader, who is lucky to get a single day off work. Christmas, in the Middle Ages, was not a single day, but rather a period of twelve days, from December 25 to January 6. The Twelve Days of Christmas, in fact. It is certainly lamentable that the modern world has abandoned this approach, along with the popular Twelfth Night celebrations. Of course, the Christian version of the holiday spread to many countries no faster than Christianity itself, which means that “Christmas” wasn’t celebrated in Ireland until the late fifth century; in England, Switzerland, and Austria until the seventh; in Germany until the eighth; and in the Slavic lands until the ninth and tenth. Not that these countries lacked their own midwinter celebrations.

Long before the world had heard of Jesus, Pagans had been observing the season by bringing in the Yule log, wishing on it, and lighting it from the remains of last year’s log. Riddles were posed and answered, magic and rituals were practiced, wild boars were sacrificed and consumed along with large quantities of liquor, corn dollies were carried from house to house while caroling, fertility rites were practiced (girls standing under a sprig of mistletoe were subject to a bit more than a kiss), and divinations were cast for the coming spring. Many of these Pagan customs, in an appropriately watered-down form, have entered the mainstream of Christian celebration, though most celebrants do not realize (or do not mention it, if they do) their origins.

For modern Witches, Yule (from the Anglo-Saxon yula, meaning “wheel” of the year) is usually celebrated on the actual winter solstice, which may vary by a few days, though it usually occurs on or around December 21. It is a Lesser Sabbat or Low Holiday in the modern Pagan calendar, one of the four quarter days of the year, but a very important one. Pagan customs are still enthusiastically followed. Once, the Yule log had been the center of the celebration. It was lighted on the eve of the solstice (it should light on the first try) and must be kept burning for twelve hours, for good luck. It should be made of ash. Later, the Yule log was replaced by the Yule tree but, instead of burning it, lighted candles were placed on it. In Christianity, Protestants might claim that Martin Luther invented the custom, and Catholics might grant St. Boniface the honor, but the custom can demonstrably be traced back through the Roman Saturnalia all the way to ancient Egypt. Needless to say, such a tree should be cut down rather than purchased, and should be disposed of by burning, the proper way to dispatch any sacred object.

Along with the evergreen, the holly and the ivy and the mistletoe were important plants of the season, all symbolizing fertility and everlasting life. Mistletoe was especially venerated by the Celtic Druids, who cut it with a golden sickle on the sixth night of the moon, and believed it to be an aphrodisiac. (Magically—not medicinally! It’s highly toxic!) But aphrodisiacs must have been the smallest part of the Yuletide menu in ancient times, as contemporary reports indicate that the tables fairly creaked under the strain of every type of good food. And drink! The most popular of which was the “wassail cup”, deriving its name from the Anglo-Saxon term waes hael (be whole or hale).

Medieval Christmas folklore seems endless: that animals will all kneel down as the Holy Night arrives, that bees hum the 100th psalm on Christmas Eve, that a windy Christmas will bring good luck, that a person born on Christmas Day can see the Little People, that a cricket on the hearth brings good luck, that if one opens all the doors of the house at midnight all the evil spirits will depart, that you will have one lucky month for each Christmas pudding you sample, that the tree must be taken down by Twelfth Night or bad luck is sure to follow, that “if Christmas on a Sunday be, a windy winter we shall see”, that “hours of sun on Christmas Day, so many frosts in the month of May”, that one can use the Twelve Days of Christmas to predict the weather for each of the twelve months of the coming year, and so on.

Remembering that most Christmas customs are ultimately based upon older Pagan customs, it only remains for modern Pagans to reclaim their lost traditions. In doing so, we can share many common customs with our Christian friends, albeit with a slightly different interpretation. And, thus, we all share in the beauty of this most magical of seasons, when the Mother Goddess once again gives birth to the baby Sun God and sets the wheel in motion again. To conclude with a long-overdue paraphrase, “Goddess bless us, every one!”

A Klingon Christmas Carol


A Klingon Christmas play? Yes! After a run in St. Paul, A Klingon Christmas Carol is on the marquee at the Greenhouse Theater in Chicago until December 19th. Scrooge, the ghosts, and even Tiny Tim are there, albeit underneath Klingon makeup. The play, produced by the theater company Commedia Beauregard, is presented entirely in the Klingon language.
See more pictures and watch a promotional video at Kuriositas.

Is Your Bathroom Ready For Christmas?

Amaze your guests and friends with these Christmas decorations.

Ziggy

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How cold must it be to snow?

The conventional answer — 32 degrees Fahrenheit — isn't necessarily correct.  
Also: 

Meet Buffett's best friend

Meet the woman whose brilliance at bridge built a 20-year bond with the billionaire.  
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The truth be told

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Hunting Season

Two lawyers were out hunting when they came upon a pair of tracks. They stopped and examined the tracks closely.

The first lawyer announced, "Those are deer tracks. It's deer season, so we should follow the tracks and find our prey."

The second lawyer responded,"Those are clearly elk tracks, and elk are out of season. If we follow your advice, we'll waste the day."

Each attorney believed himself to be the superior woodsman, and they both bitterly stuck to their guns.

They were still arguing when the train hit them.

Latest Rapture Forecast

They keep changing the date, but I think this one is accurate: Nashville billboards claim Jesus will return May 21, 2011.
billboardThere are 24 shopping days left till Christmas. And 171 days left until Jesus' second coming.
That's the message on 40 billboards around Nashville, proclaiming May 21, 2011, as the date of the Rapture. Billboards are up in eight other U.S. cities, too.
Fans of Family Radio Inc., a nationwide Christian network, paid for the billboards. Family Radio's founder, Harold Camping, predicted the May date for the Rapture.

The Rapture is going to be a great day for God's people but awful for everyone else, said Allison Warden, 29, who orchestrated Nashville's billboard campaign. She's a volunteer with WeCanKnow.com, a website set up by followers of Family Radio. She and other fans designed the billboards, along with T-shirts, bumper stickers and postcards to get Camping's predictions out.
If you want to see just how stupid humans can be, visit their web site: We Can Know.

(Warning: visiting the site will cause uncontrollable fits of laughter accompanied by loss of bladder control followed by a overwhelming sense of foreboding as you realize these lunatics actually think this junk is real and you wonder how any supposedly human is so stupid.)

Man sees strange lights over Missouri town

A News 4 viewer doesn't know what he saw in the sky from the Wal-Mart in Cuba, Missouri.
(Must be some of that rapture nonsense they were talking about in the previous post.)

Awesome Pictures

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Fire devastates forest in Israel

The largest fire in the country's history prompts an unprecedented call for international help.  
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Kim Jong-Il Looking At Things


Kim Jong-il, the dear leader of North Korea likes to look at things. 
This website has lots of photos of Kim Jong-il looking at things
In the picture above he's looking at corn.
Mentally ill people do such things.

Shoe

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Portrait

Mark Twain (pen-name of Samuel Clemens) (born 30 November, 1835; died 21 April, 1910), pictured above in an 1850 photograph by G. H. Jones
‘It was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere, and very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out over the land, flooding the woods and fields for miles into the interior; and in places, to a depth of fifteen feet; signs, all about, of men’s hard work gone to ruin, and all to be done over again, with straitened means and a weakened courage. A melancholy picture, and a continuous one;—hundreds of miles of it. Sometimes the beacon lights stood in water three feet deep, in the edge of dense forests which extended for miles without farm, wood-yard, clearing, or break of any kind; which meant that the keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great distance to discharge his trust,—and often in desperate weather. Yet I was told that the work is faithfully performed, in all weathers; and not always by men, sometimes by women, if the man is sick or absent. The Government furnishes oil, and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month for the lighting and tending. A Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a month.’

—from Life on the Mississippi (1883)
Mark Twain (pen-name of Samuel Clemens) (born 30 November, 1835; died 21 April, 1910), pictured above in an 1850 photograph by G. H. Jones
‘It was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere, and very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out over the land, flooding the woods and fields for miles into the interior; and in places, to a depth of fifteen feet; signs, all about, of men’s hard work gone to ruin, and all to be done over again, with straitened means and a weakened courage. A melancholy picture, and a continuous one;—hundreds of miles of it. Sometimes the beacon lights stood in water three feet deep, in the edge of dense forests which extended for miles without farm, wood-yard, clearing, or break of any kind; which meant that the keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great distance to discharge his trust,—and often in desperate weather. Yet I was told that the work is faithfully performed, in all weathers; and not always by men, sometimes by women, if the man is sick or absent. The Government furnishes oil, and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month for the lighting and tending. A Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a month.’
—from Life on the Mississippi (1883)

Ten Great Years


A few years ago I found myself explaining to some kids (tweens) at a Paul McCartney concert how relatively short the Beatles career as group was, compared to, say, The Rolling Stones. Seeing this only reinforces how fleeting those years were.  Artist Maxim Dalton is selling a limited edition (500) of this giclée print.

Abbey Road ... before they crossed the street

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Gylne Tider


This very long promo for Norwegian show Gylne Tider  (Golden Times) features a bunch of people I haven't thought of in a while, green-screened onto a Santa Monica beach background, covering The  Beatles' "Let It Be." It made me feel simultaneously amused, perplexed, and old.

Why do you get a hangover

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A three-day holiday detox

This simple vegetarian plan will help you recover from too much celebrating.  
Also: 

Tax credits for home upgrades

Some improvements can save on energy costs and lower your IRS liability — but you need to act fast.
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Ways you're wasting money

Changing your oil every 3,000 miles or leaving ceiling fans on can needlessly waste money.  
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Student's debt: $200,000

Kelli Space borrowed $200,000 to earn a bachelor's degree — a move she now regrets.  
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Odds and Sods

Mike and Terri Karsten really like good bread. In fact, they like bread so well they built a wood-fired brick oven in their backyard just to bake really good bread.

Alaska had its Bridge to Nowhere. It's starting to look as though Minnesota and Wisconsin might be planning the bridge to never.

After the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals received an anonymous complaint about the New York Police Departmenta s method of trapping mice, they contacted the police commissioner over the mouse emergency.

Nazi Scientists Proposed Creating a Giant Space Mirror to Burn Enemy Nations


An issue of Life magazine published on July 23, 1945 includes an article about a secret weapon proposed by some Nazi scientists toward the end of World War II. It was a huge mirror that, if placed in orbit, would focus sunlight on enemy nations and burn them:
Plausible schemes to build a station in space were engineered on paper long before the war. European rocket enthusiasts, including Dr. Hermann Oberth, who may have been the designer of the V-2, had planned to use the space station not as a weapon but as a refueling point for rockets starting off on journeys into space. … The only major obstacle: constructing a rocket powerful enough to reach a point where a space station could be built. If the modern German scientists had been able to make such a rocket, they might have ben able to set up their sun gun. Whether the sun gun would have accomplished what they expected, however, is another matter.”
The German idea of using the sun as a military weapon is not new. There is an ancient legend that Archimedes designed great burning mirrors which set the Roman fleet afire during the siege of Syracuse, in which Archimedes later died. This legend, and the German plan for building may be proved physically impossible by a simple axiom of optics. This is that light cannot be brought to a sharp, pointed focus with lenses or mirrors unless it comes from a sharp, pointed source. Since the sun appears in the sky as a disk and not as a point, the best any optical system can produce is an image of this disk. At very short focal lengths, the image is small and hot but as the focal length is increased the image becomes progressively bigger and cooler. At the distance the Germans proposed to set up their mirror (3,100 miles) the image of the sun cast on the earth would be about 40 miles in diameter and not hot enough to do any damage.

Is that a mirror or a 2-way glass?

Mirror or glasssHow can you tell when you are in a room, restroom, motel etc. with a mirror or a 2-way glass?
Here’s how: I thought it was quite interesting!  And I know in about 30 seconds you’re going to do what I did and find the nearest mirror.
Do you know how to determine if a mirror is 2-way or not?  A policewoman who travels all over the US and gives seminars and techniques for businesswomen passed this on.
When we visit toilets, bathrooms, hotel rooms changing rooms, etc., how many of you know for sure that the seemingly ordinary mirror hanging on the wall is a real mirror, or actually a 2-way mirror (i.e., they can see you, but you can’t see them)?  There have been many cases of people installing  2-way mirrors in female changing rooms.  It is very difficult to positively identify the surface by looking at it.
So, how do we determine with any amount of certainty what type of mirror we are looking at?
Just  conduct this simple test: Place the tip of your fingernail against the reflective surface and if there is a GAP between your fingernail and the image of the nail, then it is GENUINE mirror. However, if your fingernail DIRECTLY TOUCHES the image of your nail, then BEWARE! IT IS A 2-WAY MIRROR!
“No Space, Leave the Place”.  So remember, every time you see a mirror, do the “fingernail test.”  It doesn’t cost you anything.
REMEMBER:   No Space, Leave the Place.

Man claims new Droid 2 smartphone exploded next to his ear

A Cedar Hill, Texas resident claims that his brand-new Motorola Droid 2 exploded next to his ear, when he was trying to make a call. Aron Embry reported hearing a "popping sound" come from his Droid 2, although he felt no pain at first. He did, however, begin feeling blood dripping onto his neck. 

B.C.

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New TSA Guidelines

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Considering the joke they are now these make sense.

Police say teenager swallowed bag of cocaine

A Framingham teenager fought with officers as they tried to prevent him from swallowing a bag of what appeared to be cocaine, police said.

Art Taylor, 18, swallowed the small bag but was arrested on several other charges after police pulled him over on Union Avenue at, police spokesman Lt. Ron Brandolini said. "He made a quick movement to the centre console, and there was small baggie with a white powder in it," Brandolini said.


"He immediately made a movement to put it in his mouth." An officer tried to stop him, but Taylor kept pushing his arm away. The officers dragged Taylor from the car, and he started fighting with them in the middle of the road. By the time officers handcuffed him, Taylor had swallowed the bag, Brandolini said.

Taylor pleaded not guilty at his Framingham District Court arraignment yesterday and was released without bail. He is due back in court Jan. 6 for a pretrial conference.

What it's like to be a cocaine submarine captain

A former Columbian narco-sub pilot anonymously recounts his life captaining a homebrewed semi-submersible filled with millions of dollars' worth of cocaine, at gunpoint all the while:

At around 8 p.m., the tide was high and the night sufficiently dark as the ocean water tugged at the submersible. A speedboat pulled the vessel out to sea, where the crew started the engines. They accelerated to 12 knots and set off on a 270-degree course heading west, toward the open ocean. The guard provided by the drug mafia for each transport, armed with a revolver and an assault rifle, stood at the door to the engine room. It was incredibly hot in the submersible, where the engines remove oxygen from the air and enrich it with carbon monoxide, despite ventilation pipes. "You constantly feel like you're suffocating," says Alonso. "Every four hours, we reduced the speed from 12 to six knots. Then we opened the hatch in the front for exactly one minute, let some fresh air in and accelerated again." The four-man team worked in shifts, while Alonso kept monitoring the route. Once they were in the open ocean, the man with the assault rifle gave him a piece of paper showing the target position. Their instructions were to arrive there on a specific day and at a specific time.
Each of the men tried to sleep after his shift, but the stench and the noise on board made this impossible. They had to drink copious amounts of water to make up for the buckets of sweat constantly running off their bodies. Their main source of nourishment was condensed milk, the Peruvian "Leche Gloria" brand. The stench from fecal matter, which couldn't be disposed of during the trip, soon became almost unbearable.

Chillin' the immune system out

Chillin' the immune system out (Image: Jeff Carroll/Agstock USA/SPL)
Cannabis is a double-edged sword: by dampening the immune system, it provides relief from inflammatory diseases, but this also increase the risk of infections.

'Vegetarian' Defined

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Daily Funny

A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs for her husband.

Suddenly, her husband burst into the kitchen.

'Careful,' he said, 'CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh my gosh! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my gosh! WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK! Careful. CAREFUL! I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never! Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the! salt. USE THE SALT! THE SALT!'

His wife stared at him.

'What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?'

The husband calmly replied, 'I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving.'

Female driver's secret weapon

A housewife turned daredevil says she has an important skill her male competitors don't.  
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Runner's incredible finish

Holland Reynolds had more than a state title in mind when she forced herself to finish a grueling race. 
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Non Sequitur

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Group Rope Jumping


This seems to be the newest craze in Russia: Group Rope Jumping. A group of people tied together, daring fate, jumping from a bridge on a frozen river.

Calcio Fiorentino

A Bruising, Anarchic And Exhilarating Spectacle Of Sport
 

Calcio Fiorentino. Does that ring any bells in terms of sports? It's almost certainly not one you played at school but it has weathered the centuries well and is still played in its home town of Florence, Italy.

It has been played since the sixteenth century. The game - Calcio for short - must be the original extreme sport. And boy, oh boy, is it extreme.

Unusual Sportswomen Of The Past

 

At the turn of the last century women in the western world were finding a voice, both collectively and individually. As the Victorian era lapsed in to memory and the Edwardian Era commenced many women chose to pursue sports. Some women chose to flaunt convention and compete in sports that, even today, are not thought of as traditional women sports.

Some of these vintage pictures from the Edwardian Era (and just beyond) may surprise you. Yet these few representatives are surely testament to a greater percentage of the women of the past who were unafraid to pursue their sporting ambitions in a still male dominated world.

Believe it or not

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Ducklings vs the Wind


Hint: the Wind wins.

Being a baby photographer ain't easy

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Being an animal baby photographer is another whole level of 'not easy'.