Over at Redux, user Skidmark compiled a video playlist of "Bizarre Sports in the World." The videos include the likes of Chessboxing, Bog Snorkeling (shown), and Buzkashi, "a bizarre kind of polo in which players on horseback must grab a headless goat." "Bizarre Sports in the World" 
“Restored and remodeled by the Spanish modernist architect Antoni Gaudi in the years 1905–1907, Casa Batllo is now one the most overlooked buildings by the tourists who visit Barcelona. Although it is a museum now, Gaudi designed it for for a wealthy Barcelona Aristocrat. The local name for the building is Casa dels ossos (House of Bones), and indeed it does have a visceral, skeletal organic quality.”
From Unusual Things.
“In Africa, The kid-powered Playpump solves critical water issues during recess.
If we get thirsty here in the U.S., we just turn the tap on and let it run till it’s nice and cold—even in the wilderness, all we have to do is drop in a tablet and take a sip. But the truth is that over one billion people worldwide don’t have the same access to clean water. Over 6,000 people per day die from drinking water filled with chemicals, bacteria, and disease.
PlayPumps wants to change that: By installing 4,000 of their patented water systems around the world, parched people in impoverished places like Africa could soon simply just turn the tap like us. The best part? Their pumps work by utilizing the power of children at play.
The process is simple: Kids on a playground spin a multi-colored merry-go-round with their hands. This hand-pushed merry-go-round drives an underground pump that pushes water into a 2,500-gallon storage tank on stilts above ground. The water filters in the tank, and users operate a tap connected to the tank, which they can use to fill bottles.”
Read more at The Daily Dirt.
First, the judges helped the detention centers land a county contract worth $58 million. Then their alleged scheme was to guarantee the operators a steady income by detaining juveniles, often on petty stuff.Many of the kids were railroaded, according to allegations lodged with the state Supreme Court last year by the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, an advocacy group.
In asking the court to intervene in April, the law center cited hundreds of examples where teens accused of minor mischief were pressured to waive their right to lawyers, and then shipped to a detention center.
One teen was given a 90-day sentence for having parodied a school administrator online. Such unwarranted detentions left "both children and parents feeling bewildered, violated and traumatized," center lawyers said.
"Very few people would stand up" to the Luzerne judges, according to the law center's executive director, Robert G. Schwartz.
It appears the inhabitant of the humble flat fled in a hurry and shrivelled bread rolls still lay in a string bag.Grocery brands from the Socialist state filled the kitchen...
A wall calendar showed August 1988 and an empty bottle of Vita Cola, Marella margarine, Juwel cigarettes and a bottle of Kristall vodka were in the kitchen.
Plastic crockery and aluminium cutlery completed the picture of a bygone state.
The only foreign product to be found was a West German bottle of deodorant.
A zinc bath stood upright against a wardrobe. There was no toilet in the flat - the occupant used one on the landing.
According to Mr Aretz, documents and letters in the flat suggest the occupant was a man aged 24 who was in trouble with the East German authorities, and who left in a hurry some time before the Wall came down in November 1989.
Sarkozy also announced a ninefold rise in the state's support for newspaper deliveries and a doubling of its annual print advertising outlay amid a swelling industry crisis.Sarkozy argued in a speech to publishers that the measures are needed because the global financial crisis has compounded woes for a sector already suffering from falling ad revenues and subscriptions.
[A] growing number of economists say the unrest proves that it is not the exchange rate but years of sweatshop wages and income inequality in China that have distorted global competition and stifled domestic demand. The influential Far Eastern Economic Review headlined its latest issue “The coming crack-up of the China Model”.Yasheng Huang, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said corruption and a deeply flawed model of economic reform had led to a collapse in personal income growth and a wealth gap that could leave China looking like a Latin American economy.
Richard Duncan, a partner at Blackhorse Asset Management in Singapore, has argued that the only way to create consumers is to raise wages to a legal minimum of $5 (£3.50) a day across Asia – a “trickle up” theory.
The instability may peak when millions of migrant workers flood back from celebrating the Chinese new year to find they no longer have jobs. That spells political trouble and there are already signs that the government’s $585 billion stimulus package will not be enough to achieve its goal of 8% growth this year...
A legal advocate for migrant workers, Xiao Qingshan, told a tale of violent intimidation by the state in collusion with unscrupulous businessmen.
On January 9, Xiao said, 14 security officers from the local labour bureau broke into his office, confiscated 600 legal case files, 160 law books, his computer, his photocopier, his television set and 100,000 yuan in cash.
“That evening I was ambushed near the office by five strangers who forced a black bag over my head and then threw me into a shallow polluted canal,” he said. His landlord has since given him notice to quit his rented home.
Xiao said he was defying bribery and threats to speak to the foreign media because he wants international businesses to know what is really happening in “the workshop of the world”.
Imbolc is a holiday with a variety of names, depending on which culture and location you’re looking at. In the Irish Gaelic, it’s called Oimelc, which translates to “ewe’s milk.” It is a precursor to the end of winter when the ewes are nursing their newly born lambs. Spring and the planting season are right around the corner.
Although Imbolc isn't even mentioned in non-Gaelic Celtic traditions, it's still a time rich in folklore and history. According to the Carmina Gadelica, the Celts celebrated an early version of Groundhog Day on Imbolc too – only with a serpent, singing this poem:
Among agricultural societies, this time of year was marked by the preparation for the spring lambing, after which the ewes would lactate (hence the term "ewe's milk" as "Oimelc"). At Neolithic sites in Ireland, underground chambers align perfectly with the rising sun on Imbolc.
