And here we go again.  Earlier this week, Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus bit the dust as well.  Not a good week to be a female pop musician, apparently; they’re dropping like flies.  Earlier this year there were a rash of these fake celebrity deaths as well, as the likes of Eminem and Jeff Goldblum took the spill.

     These have been something of a staple since the inception of the internet, but since the week when we lost Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed McMahon, it seems like we’re getting one every few days.

     So why is it?  Are we just a sad, morbid society who sits and waits for our celebrities to fall?  I think it’s simpler than that.  We bore far too easily.  We don’t want to be troubled with the mundane everyday happenings; apparently war, genocide, and major political meltdown all over the damn place aren’t nearly interesting enough.  We need to create our own fantasy news.

     So go on, as you were.  Just another false alarm here.  You have to feel bad for the next celebrity who really goes, though.  The way the media and internet cry wolf, no one’s going to believe it.

     Ah, the Republicans have their newest subject to bitch about.  The evil fascist Liberal Obamanation flagship Newsweek has published a picture of everyone’s favorite conservative princess in something less that a conservative outfit.  Cries of sexism have already begun to erupt; by morning Rush Limbaugh and his clones will have people thinking it was Obama’s idea, and that he hates women.

     Come on, guys.  This is the Bimbo you went out and snagged as a last ditch effort to stop the Obama train, hoping to parade her around enough to woo some of Hillary’s core base.  You pranced her around on television for all of us to see,somehow not expecting us to realize along the way that she is borderline retarded.

     You guys are upset because she’s portrayed this way?  Stop it.  She is a bimbo.  If you guys are gonna pick a fight for the week, does it have to be this one?  It drives me nuts when she’s in the news.  For all of their faults, Rush and his crew are far too smart to believe a word they spew while extolling her virtues; it reminds me of the Father’s day my then 5 and 8 year old kids made me pancakes… when they asked how they were (God bless ‘em, they were horrible) i gritted my teeth and lied my Daddy ass off. 

     You guys made this mess; don’t get mad at the world for mocking it.  No one’s attacking women; just this retarded one.

It is alleged that the defendant, 16 at the time, provided Shelby with the alcohol. Although the media is reporting that the parents of the defendant frequently allowed their daughter to drink alcohol to learn moderation, authorities have not brought charges against the parents, since they reportedly told the girls there was to be no drinking on this particular night.

During the trial, District Attorney Eric Anderson argued that the defendant did not reach out to her parents, other adults, or friends that Shelby was in a “perilous predicament.” Anderson makes a rather simple argument that the defendants parents obviously allowed drinking; so, all she needed to do was wake her parents up and alert them that Shelby was ill. The defense argued that the defendant did not know that her friend was in danger and did not know the symptoms of alcohol poisoning. The judge is scheduled to make a ruling late next week.

My Opinion:

There are laws in place that prohibit underage drinking for a reason. These children often do not understand the implications to themselves when it comes to drinking. Obviously, Shelby didn’t understand the implications or she wouldn’t have drank to the point of alcohol poisoning. So, if teens don’t understand the implications to themselves, how are they supposed to understand the implications for someone else drinking alcohol?

How many teenagers could tell the difference between drinking too much, vomiting, passing out, and waking up with a hangover vs. the signs and symptoms of alcohol poisoning?

How do you charge a 16 year old underage girl with giving another 17 year old underage girl alcohol? 

Prosecuting this teenage girl is essentially sending the message to other teens that you should be responsible enough to know and report the signs of someone that has drank to the point they might have alcohol poising, but there isn’t any personal responsibility to know that if you yourself choose to drink too much, you might get alcohol poisoning.

Shelby sadly opted to drink too much. It would have been life saving if her friends would have recognized that she had alcohol poisoning and needed medical attention. However, the defendant not recognizing and reporting Shelby’s condition isn’t what actually killed Shelby. Shelby choosing to drink excessively is what killed her. Her parents and the community are obviously looking for someone to blame instead of using Shelby’s decision to drink too much as a message that underage drinking is dangerous and one can not depend on others around them to always be wiser than they are.

     Perhaps we just live in a fantasy world fueled by media, or perhaps we as the TiVo nation simply have an attention span so short that we have to manufacture our own news. Whatever the reason, the stories of celebrities who have cheated death in this manner is entertaining.  It’s what we do, right?

     But upon further investigation, it would appear there is actual serious documentation:

video proof

more proof

the motive

     It all makes sense, if you look at it.  New tour, dying career, fear of failure.  All it took is dying to suddenly make him one of the most loved people in the world again.  So, according to online sources, expect a ‘revival’ from the King of Pop in the near future.  In the meantime, he will continue to stay hidden in the most exclusive of resorts, with a few other fairly well known artists; namely Elvis, 2pac, and Biggie Smalls.

BASE-jumping has nothing to do with jumping to base. They all come down eventually anyhow. The apronym BASE is short for building-antenna-span (bridge)-earth and gives the list of objects jumpers jump from, not where they land. (And an apronym is an acronym that forms a previously existing word.) The time to open the parachute is extremely short and the sport is therefore considered far more dangerous than parachuting from a plane or sky-diving.

BASE-jumping evolved out of sky-diving, but due to the lower height of the starting point for BASE-jumping the jumper never reaches terminal velocity. Higher airspeed allows better body control as well as faster opening of parachutes. The short time span allotted to the BASE-jumper makes the sport more risky than jumps from higher up.

The first base-jump was recorded in 1912 in New York from the Statue of Liberty, but the name was given to the sport was invented in 1981. 1912 is also the date of the first death, when tailor Franz Reichelt tested his newest invention, the coat parachute. There are two further jumps on record for 1913 after which a 50 year interval occurred. In 1965 the first jump after the interval was executed in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy.

BASE-jumping gained a wider audience and world view in 1976 when the opening sequence of the James Bond movie “The Spy Who Loved Me” showed a jump from Mount Asgard in Canada.

While some countries have forbidden BASE-jumping, others allow it upon review of a submission for permission, and some such as Switzerland, France, Italy, and Norway allow it from well-known and clearly defined rock formations. The stunt in Zurich which led to the death of the jumper was a permitted jump.

One of the world’s most famous jumping sites is in the Lauterbrunnen-Valley in Switzerland which has developed as one of the main jumping sites in the world. On the flip side, the deaths reported from jumps in that region are also the world’s highest. Until April 2009, 133 deaths from BASE-jumping activities had been recorded, of which 19 (or over 15 percent) in Lauterbrunnen-Valley.

Ueli Gegenschatz was reckoned one of the leading BASE-jumpers in the world with over 1,500 jumps to his credit. In an interview prior to the Zurich stunt he said that the risk of BASE-jumping was calculated and in no way suicidal. He might gain entry into the next edition of Famous Last Words. According to eye-witnesses he was knocked unconscious by the fall but regained consciousness still on site. His first reaction was an apology for a bungled jump.

The jump from the 88 meter (270 ft.) high Sunrise building was the start for a publicity campaign for Red Bull Mobile. Red Bull’s classical advertising slogan in German is “Red Bull makes you grow wings.” Red Bull and Sunrise have cancelled the publicity campaign immediately following the accident.

Gegenschatz died on Friday from the injuries he sustained during the incident.

The deaths are unnecessary, but to be honest now we are there we would cause a lot more problems for ourselves and actually insight war if we pulled out now.

Ultimately this will turn into a world war, that is just a matter of time. except to be honest I expect it will most likely turn into an overtly religious war rather than anything else.

The weapons of mass distruction (nuclear, chemical or otherwise) in most cases are detectible, and as a result, would only be used under extreme circumstances by either side.

At a time when we are looking at removing a large amount of capacity around our own WMDs, there is constant talk of other countries increasing their WMD capacity.

Chasey, the regimes may seen evil and kneiving to us, but in most countries this is the norm. We are attacking the countries we currently are attacking purely on the basis of terrorist threat. Of course that doesn’t mean just taliban and al’qeada, but many other extremist terrorist cells that don’t get a mention on a daily basis as they are taken out a lot closer to home.

It’s very rare over recent months that we hear about terrorist raids happening at home, but they happen almost daily taking out people that could cause a lot more damage than just taking out half of London. Physically taking out a few million people doesn’t have a major impact on a countries mental health. They look at things which we rely on. Electricity, Gas, Telephone Lines, Internet, Radio Communications, etc…which would have a much more profound effect on all of us.

Imagine losing the internet, phone lines, television and the radio all at the same time. How would people get the word out about problems and what people need to do? Physicologically it would leave the country in a state of paralisation and a country wide panic would quickly follow. Even the police TETRA radio system is vaunrable thesedays, with masts in easily accessible locations (unlike the old radio systems that required the masts to only be mounted on police buildings.) which means that they could be taken down in a very short space of time with terrible consequences.

Well what do you think?

I was just getting over the shock of reading that Steve Tyler quit Aerosmith when I learned that veteran politico Lou Dobbs was leaving CNN. I was brought up to believe that nothing on God’s green earth happens without a reason. And am I the first writer to notice how quickly Dobbs ditched his cable news show when Aerosmith had an opening for a lead singer? Obviously, Dobbs wanted Aerosmith to know he was available to step in for the iconic but problematic front man.

And Steve Tyler is obviously jaded after putting in 30+ years with the same job, and ready to answer the clarion call of CNN to ‘walk this way’ into Dobbs’ old 7 PM spot. Think of what adventures would await these two if they just swapped jobs.

In an era where news channels strive to be controversial (witness Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left), CNN’s objective reporting is being left in the lurch. Yuppies on the make have it tuned in to convince their dates that they are responsible men of substance. Politicians watch it because they are expected to, yet at least half of them would rather take in Road Runner cartoons.

Steve Tyler would be a ratings boon; he projects more energy sitting in a chair than most anchors would doing backflips. He could make the most tedious bits of news entertaining. Americans of all political stripes would gladly switch off their reality show reruns to catch Tyler’s take on the news. So what if he makes a few gaffes. Viewers would tolerate, even anticipate that, and it’s a small price to pay for getting to spend an hour watching this proven entertainer do his thing. It would certainly beat listening to Dobbs’ curmudgeonly browbeating of any news event that didn’t go his way.

For Tyler, this gig is tailor-made. He wouldn’t have to worry about falling off stage and breaking something, as happened during his last tour. And if he needed to cancel some ‘dates’ CNN would have a substitute on call, perhaps Ozzie Osbourne or Gene Simmons.

Alright, passing the silk scarf to Dobbs might seem a stretch, but I’m convinced he’s ready for it. Dobbs left CNN because he wants to express himself. Reading between the lines, I am convinced that Dobbs meant artistic expression. I think the reason he’s been a sourpuss all these years is that he’s a frustrated rocker. So don’t expect a Geritol-laced, downbeat rendition of ‘Love in an Elevator’ from this guy.

I’ll give you the fact that Dobbs probably can’t sing, but neither could Linda McCartney and that did not stop her from appearing with Sir Paul and Wings. There are electronic gadgets out there that would allow Dobbs to Milli Vanilli his way through the first tour, or until his pipes had thawed sufficiently for the real deal. And stage presence? I predict that as soon as Dobbs hears Aerosmith’s fat backbeats and Steve Perry’s scintillating lead guitar riffs, he’ll be all over the stage.

Of course, the group will allow him to do a stage rant or two, probably about illegal aliens, as long as it doesn’t totally wreck the party mood.

Face it, folks. This is an opportunity not to be squandered.

Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr

It was a terrible day for our country when one of their own opened fire and killed 13 soldiers and wounded 31 others . Many of them were returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Others were preparing to leave for these countries. Those soldiers returning from the war were probably experiencing the first feeling of safety they had felt for many months when they were taken by surprise and shot down in a flurry of bullets coming from two pistols held in the hands of one of their own personnel.

“A lot of people are angry because they feel this could have been prevented,” said Spc. Brian Hill, a 25 year old soldier from Nashville,Tennessee, who was injured in Iraq and walks with a cane. “Somebody should have been paying attention.” The finger pointing has already begun in Washington. The shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a military psychiatrist came to the attention of authorities long before last Thursday’s massacre at Fort Hood.

Communications have come to light that Hasan was in direct contact with an Imam who praised Hasan on Monday on his web site, saying the Army psychiatrist “did the right thing” in attacking soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasan’s outspoken views and declining stability have been noted but government officials said they gave no evidence he was likely to engage in violence. Officials said Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of a combinations of factors, including his outspoken opposition to U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim. Hasan was shot down by military police and is at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. He is in critical but stable condition and is able to talk. Hasan’s family have hired a lawyer.

Image via Wikipedia

Even as President Obama honored the dead at Fort Hood the investigation intensified in Washington. Questions are being asked about whether officials at several agencies had failed to coordinate as they tracked the suspects activities or to react to warning signs in the months before the attack. Hasan came to the attention of two joint Terrorism Task Forces in December as he corresponded by email as many as 20 times with radical imam Anwar al-Awlaqi, who has exhorted followers in the United States, Great Britain and elsewhere to pursue violent jihad.

President Obama called each fallen soldier by name and spoke of each soldier’s interests, his family and how the victim lived rather than how he died. He pledged to the crowd that the killer will be met with justice in this world and the next. The president spoke of the tranquility and liberty that we enjoy at home and and how the 13 gave their lives for it. After the ceremony the president and first lady walked along the row of boots and placed a commander-in-chief’s coin by each picture.

The saddest and most heartfelt moments were when the role was called and the silence that followed when each of the dead soldiers names were called.

http://socyberty.com/issues/military-suicide/

http://newsflavor/world/middle-east/soldiers-die-in-iraq-due-to-contractors-shoddy-work/

http://thrifter.com/usa-canada/illinois/kennesaw-mountains-unknown-soldier/

http://newsflvor.com/world/usa-canada/honoring-our-soldiers/

A new ‘possible’ site for Atlantis may have been discovered off the coast of southern Greece.  A team of archaeologists and marine geologists from Greece and England’s University of Nottingham have been working together to ‘fathom’ (sorry couldn’t resist the nautical term me hearties!) whether this underwater city, known as Pavlopetri, could have been the basis for the great myth of Atlantis. 

Dr Jon Henderson from the University of Nottingham has confirmed that the site dates back around 5,000 years which would have been when Homer was Greece’s ‘best selling author’.  It’s been a fantastic find as its size and the detail within the ruins are ‘unprecedented’ according to our experts out there in Greece.

Jon Henderson has stated that there’s ‘no doubt’ it’s the oldest ‘undersea town’ in the world.  It has remains dating way back to 2800 BC.  I know you’re all going to be sending me comments saying that this isn’t the case; that there are older undersea ’sites’, but this is the first one that is set out as a planned town.

The site takes up about 30,000 sq metres and it’s thought it was probably swallowed by the ocean around 1000 BC.  It was apparently discovered about 40 years ago by a British oceanographer but it wasn’t until now, with all our modern digital techonology, that a real dig and a dive could be undertaken to survey the whole of the site.

But it was only due to the settlement’s location in a protected bay that so much detail still remains and the current exploratory works have shown the lay-outs of courtyards and streets which themselves have revealed tombs and religious buildings as well as numerous pieces of pottery.  Our intrepid investigators also unearthed (or unsea-ed!) ceramics dating way back to the end of the stone age which is why they believe the site dates right back to around 5000 BC.

9,000 sq metres of new buildings were discovered as was a possible ‘megaron’ which (as I’ve been led to believe by these extremely knowledgeable Anglo Greek experts) was a huge structure with a large rectangular hall and would have been used by the elite.  This would of course elevate the status of the town.

It’s a really exciting find as it gives such a fantastic insight into the Mycaenae people who were around in this area of Greece at the time and who liked nothing more than a good old fisticuffs with all and sundry – being a nation of warriors rather than merchants.

Nobody so far has any idea why this wonderful town disappeared under the ocean but the most obvious causes would be due to a rise in sea level, a tsunami or an earthquake.  But whatever the reason for its demise it’s certainly caused a stir in the local town of Neapolis.

This find is the first underwater city discovered in Greece which predates the time Plato wrote about Atlantis and as our digitally equpped divers continue with their exploratory work it’s going to be interesting to hear what else is discovered down in the depths!

So, to the screwed up world of Hamas, firing rockets at civilians in Israel for 8 years, committing terrorist attacks even longer, hiding among civilians when sending rockets, and promoting hatred toward the Jews on TVs, the media and schools is not a war-crime, while teaching about the Holocaust is? This makes me say,”What the f**k?! This is the “legitimate resistance” organization that Israel is asked by at least much of the world to negotiate with? Yet Hamas’s apologists and whitewashes will dismiss this, just as they dismiss Hamas’s terrorism, their refusal to recognize Israel’s basic right to exist, and their Islamo-Fascist policies, on the basis that Hamas was democratically-elected. Well, isn’t that lovely? Guess who else was democratically elected? Adolf Hitler!

This just makes me hate Hamas even more. Make no mistake about it. Hamas represents a form of evil. If Hamas is not evil, then I don’t know WHAT THE HECK is evil!

Hamas would rather teach the Palestinians about the “crimes” of the Israeli “occupation”. Yet too bad that the crimes form Hamas’s Islamo-Fascist policies is incomparably worse than anything Israel ever did to the Palestinians. For one thing, form 1967-the Oslo “peace” process, thanks to Israeli policies, the quality of life improved. Under Israeli rule, the Palestinian economy became modernized into the 20th century. The West Bank and Gaza were the fourth-fastest growing economies. Basic necessities such as stoves, refrigerators, electricity and toilets became nearly universal. Televisions also became nearly universal. Israel improved the water supply. Under Israeli rule, universities and public schools were established, a lot of the time with the funding of the Israeli government and/or Jewish donors. Israeli policy also at least nearly exterminated the diseases in the territories. Plus, the Arabs in the territories had better access to health care. So the Israeli “occupation” actually saved Palestinian lives. The roadblocks and other restrictions of movement didn’t even come until the second intifada, when there was a terror uprising on Israel, with more terrorist attacks on Israel than ever before. In fact, after Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War, the restrictions were taken down. Arabs could come into Israel; while Jews could go into the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, the Israeli settlements actually helped the territories economically. Where the settlements were established was where there were more Palestinian shops and more Palestinian homes. The Palestinian businessmen and women saw what was in their business’s interest, not on the ethnic group of the customers or whether it was Jewish or Arab money.

I think you’d get the point. As I said, what Hamas is doing in Gaza is far worse than anything Israel did. After all, a little while before Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, the Al-Hayat reported that Hamas passed a new bill. According to the bill, “drinking to making wine will be subjected to 40 lashes… drinking and harassing the public will be punishable by 40 lashes and three months in jail”. The bill stated that those “engaging in games of chance, offending religious beliefs and defaming others’ character” would also be whipped. That bill also stated that “any Palestinian found guilty of raising a weapon against Palestine in favor of the enemy; countering Palestine’s interests in a negotiation with a foreign government; and placing Palestine’s existence in danger by committing an act of aggression against a foreign country… will be sentenced to death”. You can even see Hamas’s Islamo-Fascist policies here. After being democratically-elected, Hamas tried to shove these Islamo-Fascist policies down the thoats of all of the Palestinians. Since the illegal coup in 2007, Hamas lost power in the West Bank, which remained under the control of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah. Hamas used their power in Gaza to impose Islamo-Fascist rule. As a result, Gaza right now is an Islamo-Fascist hell hole.

This just goes to show the hypocritical stupidity behind Hamas’s statements. They claim that it’s more important to teach about Israel’s “crimes” toward the Palestinians; despite the fact that Israel just seeks to defend itself and that Hamas is far worse to the Palestinians. Apologists and whitewashers of Hamas wine about Hamas not getting a chance to govern because of Israel and America. Yet Israel and America [as well as the EU] have sought to get Hamas to end its terrorism, to recognize Israel’s basic right to exist and to get Hamas to choose the course of peace and co-existence with Israel instead of continuing the terror struggle against Israel. Yet Hamas instead chose to continue the terror war on Israel, continued to be opposed to peaceful coexistence with Israel and fired more rockets. Hamas continued to promote hatred of Jews and Israel and continued to promote terrorism against Israel. Hamas still uses their TVs, media and schools to teach call for the murder of Jews, the destruction of Israel and for terrorism on the Jewish state, as well as to call for the establishment of an Islamo-Fascist caliphate. Yet, in the twisted world of Hamas, none of this is a war-crime; but teaching about the Holocaust is. And Israel is expected by much of the world to negotiate with Hamas and to give Hamas a “chance” to govern. It’s like asking the black community to negotiate with the KKK and to give them a “chance” to govern.