Month: February 2008

Rash Of Internet Undersea Cables Cut

Apparently, Ships Can Drag Anchors from Egypt to Malaysia | I Love Bonnie.net
As I said: 3 was quite a few. 4 is pushing it. 5 starts to make you wonder. In case you aren’t familiar with that part of the world, here’s a map that I made which shows the approximate locations of the “cuts” in the underwater cables:

We’re supposed to believe that these were most likely caused by an anchor from a ship fighting a storm. This author finds it hard to believe that this anchor was drug behind a boat from Egypt to Malaysia.

Winston Churchill Didn’t Really Exist, says British Teens

Winston Churchill didn’t really exist, say teens – Telegraph
A fifth of British teenagers believe Sir Winston Churchill was a fictional character, while many think Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and Eleanor Rigby were real, a survey shows.

The canvass of 3,000 under-twenties uncovered an extraordinary paucity of basic historical knowledge that older generations take for granted

Despite his celebrated military reputation, 47 per cent of respondents dismissed the 12th-century crusading English king Richard the Lionheart as fictional. More than a quarter (27 per cent) thought Florence Nightingale, the pioneering nurse who coaxed injured soldiers back to health in the Crimean War, was a mythical figure.

Sherlock Holmes, the detective, was so convincingly brought to life in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, their film versions and television series, that 58 per cent of respondents believe that the sleuth really lived at 221B Baker Street.

Fifty-one per cent of respondents believed that Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest, robbing the rich to give to the poor, while 47 per cent believed Eleanor Rigby was a real person rather than a creation of The Beatles.

Continue reading “Winston Churchill Didn’t Really Exist, says British Teens”

Europe’s Philosophy of Failure

Foreign Policy: Europe’s Philosophy of Failure
In France and Germany, students are being forced to undergo a dangerous indoctrination. Taught that economic principles such as capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, unhealthy, and immoral, these children are raised on a diet of prejudice and bias. Rooting it out may determine whether Europe’s economies prosper or continue to be left behind.

The deep anti-market bias that French and Germans continue to teach challenges the conventional wisdom that it’s just a matter of time, thanks to the pressures of globalization, before much of the world agrees upon a supposedly “Western” model of free-market capitalism. Politicians in democracies cannot long fight the preferences of the majority of their constituents. So this bias will likely continue to circumscribe both European elections and policy outcomes. A likely alternative scenario may be that the changes wrought by globalization will awaken deeply held resentment against capitalism and, in many countries from Europe to Latin America, provide a fertile ground for populists and demagogues, a trend that is already manifesting itself in the sudden rise of many leftist movements today.

Your Eye Is Slower Than Your Brain

   

This is not a test – just a phenomenon. All readings are explained.
Read out loud the text inside the triangle below.
btimage5.gif
More than likely you said, ‘A bird in the bush,’! And. …….
If this IS what YOU said, then you failed to see
That the word THE is repeated twice!
Sorry, look again.

Next, let’s play with some words.
What do you see?
btimage0033333.jpg
In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter).
It’s all very physiological too, because it visualize the concept that good can’t exist without evil
(or the absence of good is evil).
Now, what do you see?


btimage7.gif

You may not see it at first, but the white spaces read the word optical,
The blue landscape reads the word illusion.
Look again!
Can you see why this painting is called an optical illusion?
___________________________________________________ Continue reading “Your Eye Is Slower Than Your Brain”

Murder Rates Plummet

How Low Can the Crime Rate Go? – TIME
It was less than two decades ago that the country’s crime wizards were warning of a unprecedented, bloody spike as a super-predator generation — kids armed with equally menacing weapons and attitudes — inflamed gang and drug wars; murders hit over 2,000 in New York and nearly 1,000 in Chicago during the early 1990s. Many theories for the decline over the past decade and more have been floated; from the Freakonomics suggestion that legalizing abortion effectively wiped out a population of would-be criminals, to the decline of the crack epidemic, to an increase in law-abiding immigrants, to savvier police work, technology and just plain economics.

The FBI recently reported that homicides fell by 6.5% in the country’s biggest cities — those with populations of one million and up — through the first six months of 2007, and by about 1% across the U.S. Violent crime, overall, was off by about 2%. Even more astoundingly, New York City ended 2007 with 496 murders, the lowest number since 1963 [when statistics were first collected] — spurring New York magazine to ask the provocative question, “What would it take [for the murder rate] to go all the way to zero?” Chicago, bruised by enough scandal to unseat its superintendent of police, still managed to record just 443, the fewest since 1965 and the fourth straight year of logging under 500 murders.

Buried WMD Scoop – WSJ.com

Buried WMD Scoop – WSJ.com

Now that ’60 Minutes” has broadcast their interview with Saddam’s interrogator the inconvenient implications have been ignored by the media. It is easy to 2nd guess the Iraq war in hind-site and assume that since no WMDs were found and the occupation mismanaged that there was never a credible threat in the first place. This interview should remind us why the US Senate voted unanimously under Bill Clinton’s presidency that “Regime Change” was the stated policy of the United States. From the transcript:

Mr. Piro: “The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there.”

Mr. Pelley: “And that was his intention?”

Mr. Piro: “Yes.”

Mr. Pelley: “What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?”

Mr. Piro: “He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program.”

Mr. Pelley: “Chemical, biological, even nuclear.”

Mr. Piro: “Yes.” Continue reading “Buried WMD Scoop – WSJ.com”

No Fat people Allowed To Dine In Public Law Proposed

Junkfood Science: No fat people allowed: Only the slim will be allowed to dine in public!
It has actually happened. Lawmakers have proposed legislation that forbids restaurants and food establishments from serving food to anyone who is obese (as defined by the State). Under this bill, food establishments are to be monitored for compliance under the State Department of Health and violators will have their business permits revoked.

House Bill 282 was introduced in the 2008 Mississippi legislative session on Friday by Representative W.T. Mayhall, Jr., a retired pharmaceutical salesman with DuPont-Merk. Its co-authors are Bobby Shows, a businessman, and John Read, a pharmacist.

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Photo?

biroswns_600x800.jpgSimply brilliant – the incredible 10ft ‘photographs’ drawn with a ballpoint pen | the Daily Mail
The stunning pictures, measuring up to 10ft high, were drawn by a rising star of the art world, Juan Francisco Casas.

Casas, 31, can use up to four 14p ballpoint pens for a canvas and his works are already a sell-out at exhibitions.

Formerly a traditional painter, Juan began the drawings three years ago based on photographs of nights out with his friends. Here is a Gallery of his work