Man's love runs deep in search for ring

• Talk about determined. This guy takes the prize…

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A New Zealand man has been dubbed the Lord of the Ring after he searched and found his wedding ring more than a year after it slipped off his finger and sank to the sea floor.

The ring was lost for 16 months in the harbor of the country's capital city, Wellington, before Aleki Taumoepeau found it shining on the sea floor, the DominionPost newspaper reported Thursday.

"The whole top surface of the ring was glowing," Taumoepeau, an ecologist, said.

Taumoepeau had been married for just three months when he lost the wedding ring while conducting an environmental sweep of the harbor.

He roughly marked the spot where the ring had flown from his finger, but was unable to find it despite returning to the area many times.

Taumoepeau's wife offered to buy another ring, but he refused, pledging to find the ring.

But, equipped with new global satellite based coordinates and offering up a quick prayer, he found the ring after an hour's search.

"I couldn't believe that I could see the ring so perfectly," Taumoepeau said.

He said those with him on the boat at the time the ring flew off his finger had likened it to a similar, slow motion shot from The Lord of the Rings, much of which was filmed in Wellington by local director Peter Jackson.

(Reporting by Michael Dickison; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Technorati Tags: wedding rings

Odd friends in animal land

These guys are just chillin’…to see more odd parings click here to visit “Let’s Be Friends.”

Technorati Tags: bird,mouse

Have you ever made money by selling a beat-up old vehicle?

Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 08/23/2009 01:30:12 AM PDT

I'd like to tell you about my 1989 Ford Aerostar cargo van.

It's the only vehicle, new or old, that ever made me money. I never in my wildest dreams thought the $800 I paid for it three years ago would turn a tidy profit of $3,700!

That old Aerostar was reliable, handy, had back doors and a sliding door on the side. It was white, but if you looked real hard at the sides you saw a discoloration that read Corona Beer. A decal was there until the company peeled it off when I bought the van. I used white spray paint to complete the disguise.

The farthest I ever drove it was in the week I bought it. My wife and I went to Napa Valley for a winery tour. Our friends there got a good laugh at my “Krispy Kreme” van, but I was pleased by the way it ran.

Click here to read the rest of this column at The Times-Standard

Rat-eating plant discovered in Philippines

A carnivorous pitcher plant that eats rats and insects has been discovered in the Philippines and named after Sir David Attenborough.

Click here to read the whole story via The Telegraph

Don’t like reading? Read on…

Just because you don’t enjoy reading a good book, doesn’t mean there aren’t many other uses for all of those books piled up in the attic.
Click here to see more ideas.

William Calley apologizes for My Lai massacre

By Dick McMichael - Special to the Ledger-Enquirer
William Calley, the former Army lieutenant convicted on 22 counts of murder in the infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, publicly apologized for the first time this week while speaking in Columbus.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

In March 1968, U.S. soldiers gunned down hundreds of civilians in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. The Army at first denied, then downplayed the event, saying most of the dead were Vietcong. But in November 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh revealed what really happened and Calley was court martialed and convicted of murder.
Calley had long refused to grant interviews about what happened, but on Wednesday he spoke at a Columbus Kiwanis meeting. He made only a brief statement, but agreed to take questions from the audience.

He did not deny what had happened that day, but did repeatedly make the point — which he has made before — that he was following orders.

Make a shirt from a dollar bill

Start with a relatively clean, crisp bill. It will make it much easier. All folds should be sharply creased. It helps to go over the fold with a fingernail on a flat, hard surface.

This is the finished product. You can do it with the following steps from Stumble

As vets await checks, VA workers get $24M bonuses

Outside the Veterans Affairs Department, severely wounded veterans have faced financial hardship waiting for their first disability payment. Inside, money has been flowing in the form of $24 million in bonuses.

By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer

In scathing reports this week, the VA's inspector general said thousands of technology office employees at the VA received the bonuses over a two-year period, some under questionable circumstances.

It also detailed abuses ranging from nepotism to an inappropriate relationship between two VA employees.
The inspector general accused one recently retired VA official of acting "as if she was given a blank checkbook" as awards and bonuses were distributed to employees of the Office of Information and Technology in 2007 and 2008. In some cases the justification for the bonuses was inadequate or questionable, the IG said.

Click here to read the rest

Reuters Photo above – A veteran walks through the lobby at the last reunion for World War II Veterans of the 10th Mountain Division.

Smokers decide to Grow Own Tobacco

By JIM CARNEY, The Akron Beacon Journal

AKRON, Ohio (AP) -- Standing on brown earth on a flat field hundreds of yards from the nearest road, Don Carey is surrounded by tiny plants.

He walks along a three-quarter-acre plot in a desolate spot in this rural township in northeastern Portage County and looks at the thousands of tobacco plants he is growing.Carey, 49, decided in April, when federal taxes on tobacco skyrocketed, to grow his own."I thought it was an April Fools' joke," he said of the tax increase that sent taxes on roll-your-own tobacco up 2,153 percent.

There is something "fundamentally wrong about picking on the smokers all the time," said Carey, whose experiment with growing tobacco comes as President Barack Obama last week signed the strongest anti-smoking bill in history.

The measure gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco for the first time.A general contractor who lives in Peninsula, Carey has been a cigarette and cigar smoker most of his adult life.But when April 1 came and he read that taxes on tobacco products increased, he took action.Carey went on the Internet and found places where he could purchase tobacco seeds.

Within about a week, he had received 40 types of seeds and his life as a tobacco farmer was planted."This project is something of an experiment to identify varieties of tobacco suitable for growing in our climate," Carey said.

Read the rest via http://hubpages.com/hub/Tobacco-Growing-and-Curing-at-Home

Note: Photo is not of Don Carey referred to in this article.

Like at the snout on this guy! And those ears! He's so odd that he's cute...kinda of.

The long eared jerboa is a nocturnal mouse-like rodent found in the deserts of China and Mongolia. It has a long tail, long legs and extremely large ears. Being such a rare creature, it is in danger of extinction

source The Telegraph