Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Summer Travel Idea: how about hunting real pirates?

This is like the movies Westworld, Gamer or the game Manhunt, only this isn't fiction. It's real and real messed up. A Russian entrepreneur with a fleet of luxury yachts is offering a pirate safari - as in hunting pirates - as in hunting real people.

Piracy is bad, okay, but in the world of rich-guy asshole ideas, this is at the top.

His plan is to lure pirates to his ships and then allow the pay-to-play mercenaries the chance to "fight back" - guaranteeing at least one attack. The excursion takes patrons from Djibouti along the coast of Somali to Mombasa in Kenya where hunters spend $5,790 a day patrolling the waters, looking for action. Supposedly, the ships taunt the pirates by coming close to the coast at a speed of five nautical miles.

Ammo is $12 for 100 rounds and an AK-47 rental is $9 a day. A grenade launcher goes for $175 a day and a reeling machine gun is $475 a day. For those hunters who like to dish it but can't take it, there are ex-special forces there to protect them from potential harm.
One Russian yachtsman despises the pay to kill vacation. "They are worse than the pirates," said Russian yachtsman Vladimir Mironov. "At least the pirates have the decency to take hostages, these people are just paying to commit murder," he continued.

Text and photo via Digital City

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

'The London Hammer' - is probably not as old as claimed

An alert reader made a comment on this story and pointed out this find might not be that old. Click here to read why. Then you decide.

Original Post...

Every once in a while archaeologists (and sometimes regular Joes) make some remarkable discoveries. Stunned, they are often unable to explain what it is they’ve found, how it came into existence, or ascertain its value. Here is one item that archaeologists believe should have never existed given the discerned age/period of it's creation.

In June 1936 (or 1934 according to some accounts), Max Hahn and his wife Emma were on a walk when they noticed a rock with wood protruding from its core. They decided to take the oddity home and later cracked it open with a hammer and a chisel. Ironically, what they found within seemed to be an archaic hammer of sorts. A team of archaeologists checked it, and as it turns out, the rock encasing the hammer was dated back more than 400 million year; the hammer itself turned out to be more than 500 million years old. Additionally, a section of the handle has begun the transformation to coal. Creationists, of course, were all over this. The hammer’s head, made of more than 96% iron, is far more pure than anything nature could have achieved without an assist from modern technology.

photo and text via ZME Science

Do you wonder about the meanings of your dreams?

There are deep meanings of dreams that we can find in our nightly trip away from reality. Most people find their dreams to be unintelligible scrambles of mixed messages and cryptic symbols from things they encountered in their day. The subconscious mind is a much more remarkable machine than it is given credit for. Precognitive dreams are dreams that are designed by your subconscious mind to make you feel a certain way or even tell you something.

Disturbing dreams are often linked to tragic or traumatic incidents in your life. Situations involving trust can cause you to have bad dreams. However, a disturbing dream can also be tied to a significant risk you are taking. It is possible you are realizing just how bad a particular situation could become. Some dreams might just be reflecting your fundamental fears but others could be warning you that action is needed to prevent the worst from happening.

Because our minds often work differently from person to person, it can be difficult to gauge the meaning of a particular symbol appearing in the dreams of one person to the next. However, there are many inherently similar common dream symbols with distinctive and sometimes surprising meanings. In order to help you understand some of the hidden meanings in dreams, here are eight commons symbols which appear in dreams and their different meanings.

Click here to read about them.

text via Mind Cafe

photo via Google Images

I take exception at the term 'reverse discrimination' that has been used in this case

What does reverse discrimination mean?

I'll tell you what it implies: the term suggests that normally white people are racists, but in this case (reverse) it's saying the whites were discriminated against. What's wrong with just using the word discrimination? A racist can come in any color. Someone who discriminates against others can come in any color. Race is still, and will always be, a matter of controversy in this country. Anyone can be discriminated against.  It doesn't matter if you are white, brown, yellow, or black.

What matters is that we do away with any kind of discrimination in the work place or at home. One of the things that came out in this case, is the fact that Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor had her decision overturned. How that plays out remains to be seen. Another troubling thing that's come up is how some city governments err on the side of minorities (out of fear of lawsuits) when it comes to the workplace. There might have been a time when this kind of thing was acceptable, but that time has passed. Today it should be about true equality among ALL of the races in America.  

Photo by Jessica Hill / Associated Press

Here' some backround on the ruling from the Los Angeles Times...

Ruling for white firefighters may alter hiring

The Supreme Court says white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were the victims of illegal discrimination when the city tossed out their test results and denied them promotions.

Goering had one thing right: use fear to control people

image via dvmx.com

Monday, June 29, 2009

Naked ex-mayor, Mark Musselwhite, arrested at campsite

  Another Republican acting badly. I have friends who are Republican and they must be turned off with the latest rash of GOP badboys in the news. If it isn't an incumbent Republican Governor it's a Republican ex-mayor.

The thing that get's me is that all of these GOP poster boys have been church-goers - Musselwhite served as a deacon at the First Baptist Church of Gainesville.

  I'm really not picking on members of the GOP, but they are sure providing the scandals lately. I know that there are Democrat hypocrites out there too. Just like their GOP counterparts. It's just that lately the GOP has been - shall we say - newsworthy?

 From The Atlantic Journal-Constitution...    

   By Alexis Stevens

  A former mayor found sitting naked and holding a beer at a Rabun County campsite told police he wasn’t the same naked man seen walking around earlier.

Mark Musselwhite, 43, said he was hot and had been in the creek, according to a Georgia Department of Natural Resources incident report. He apparently didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.

Musselwhite, of Gainesville, was arrested last weekend after being confronted by state DNR authorities. He was charged with public indecency.

“He told me he was the ex-mayor of the city Gainesville and he was a very political person,” DNR Ranger Brandon Walls wrote in the report.

Walls and a deputy sheriff went to the campsite Saturday evening after a complaint of a man walking naked in Earls Ford Road, according to the report. Musselwhite appeared to be intoxicated, and several alcoholic beverages were at the campsite, Walls said.

Walls said he had spoken to Musselwhite earlier in the day regarding an ATV the former mayor was driving.

“He looked at us and said hello,” according to the report.

Musselwhite then asked why he was being visited.

“I said the complainant had specifically said his campsite, and the fact that he was still nude made me think it was him,” Walls wrote.

Musselwhite denied that he was the nude man identified in the complaint.

An unidentified female was also at the campsite.

Musselwhite, a Republican, was elected to the City Council in 2000. He served on the council for six years, including as mayor of the town. In 2006, he lost a bid for a state Senate seat.

Musselwhite previously served as deacon of First Baptist Church in Gainesville.

image via The Atlantic-Journal Constitution

Life is full of illusions...like this one for example

(Quote) "This illusion has been doing the rounds this week (see Bad Astronomy and Richard Wiseman for a couple of science blogs I like that picked it up), but it's so good I thought it needed to be posted here also.
Look carefully at the image below. Do you see a couple of spirals, one blue and one green? Well, take a closer look - in actual fact, the blue and green are actually the same color!

Don't believe me? Copy the image and open it up in PhotoShop or Paint and take a closer look....
You will notice that the orange curves move through the "green" spirals, but not the blue. And the purple curves don't move through the green.

(left)If we blow this picture up even more, we can see that the colors are becoming more and more similar.

(Above)The blue and green appear to be different colors because our brain works out colors by comparing them to other surrounding colors and it does a bit of mixing. When we look at the "blue" spiral, we also take in the purple curves moving through it. This makes it look more blue. When we look at the "green" spiral, we take in the orange curves, which makes it look more green.
I know that's not a great explanation, so I'd be happy to hear a better one!" (End Quote)

 All text and images via Mr Science Show

Sotomayor's decision reversed by Supreme Court today

By Dave Stancliff

Political pundits are salivating this morning with the news that one of Sotomayor's rulings was overturned.

In a ruling today, the Supreme Court said white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race.

This comes as a reversal for her at a time when she is the high court nominee. Sonia Sotomayors decision, while an appeals court judge, is coming back to haunt her at an inconvient time..

According to the Washington Post...

According to USA Today...

According to the Associated Press...

Thus far, nearly everyone has been in favor of Sotomayors appointment. Her confirmation process has been smooth, with just little bumps in the road.

Does that change now with this new ruling?

I suspect that it'll cause people to pause...but she'll get the job in the end.

image via Google Images

Last Unscathed Republican Politician To Be Placed Under Protected Custody

From the Smirking Chimp this morning...

This is Patrick Noony (Last Remaining Virtuous Republican)

Saying that they "weren't taking any chances," Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation to place Patrick Noony, a Bakersfeild, CA supervisor, in the witness protection program at an undisclosed location until late 2012.

"The scandals are killing us," admitted Steele. "Sex, drugs, promiscuity or just plain foot in mouth disease. You'd think we're Democrats. We've got to do everything possible to make sure we have someone who can run without dropping they're drawers and sticking his foot in his mouth. Then again, if we could get a guy who could actually get his foot into his mouth he wouldn't be getting into real trouble."

Republicans and conservatives like Mark Sanford, John Ensign, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, David Vitter, Bobby Jindel, George Allen have been faced with a string of embarrassing incidents leading to a scarcity of plausible nominees."

"Come the next presidential election Patrick just might be the only credible Republican candidate left," admitted Steele. "We're desperate to keep him pristine until READ THE REST OF THE RNC PLIGHT HERE...

Sunday, June 28, 2009

National warranty extension robocallers finally stopped by federal court

By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 06/28/2009 01:27:17 AM PDT

Have you noticed those “warranty extension robocalls” have stopped?

Do you wonder why?

I got several calls each day for months and tried to stop them. I filed with the National Do Not Call Registry -- and was on the verge of writing a scathing column about the hapless Federal Trade Commission (FTC) because they couldn't seem to stop those calls.

I was about to gather the local villagers and hand out burning torches as soon as I found the location of the boiler room for those robocalls! It seemed that nothing less than an all-out assault on these fiends would do.

Click here to read the rest.

image via Google images

Trump's Lowest Grift Ever Saved for Holy Week

This is a story about how the devil's puppet, aka Donald Trump, mocked Christianity by selling a book combining the Bible, the Constitu...