December 2012 Archives

That's the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling, universe-exploring government agents. Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as "chrononauts" at Darpa's behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.

[...] 

According to Basiago and Stillings, Obama isn't just lying about his identity. He's lying about his military service record, too. While his political opponents in 2008 attacked him for never serving, in truth, he was concealing his participation in a hidden CIA intergalactic program hosted at a California community college in 1980.

English: Frost flowers growing on young sea ice in the Arctic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the air gets that different from the sea, the dryness pulls moisture off little bumps in the ice, bits of ice vaporize, the air gets humid -- but only for a while. The cold makes water vapor heavy. The air wants to release that excess weight, so crystal by crystal, air turns back into ice, creating delicate, feathery tendrils that reach sometimes two, three inches high, like giant snowflakes. The sea, literally, blossoms. 

If I could book passage on a boat and see a frost flower meadow burst into being, magically growing out of the empty, frosty air and spreading as far as my eyes could see, would I want to see that?

You bet I would. Who wouldn't?

A man took to putting on 70 items of clothing to avoid an extra baggage charge at an airport.

The unidentified passenger turned up at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China, described as looking like a 'sumo wrestler'.

According to Guangzhou Daily, the man's luggage exceeded the weight limit. He did not want to pay the extra baggage costs, and thus took out and wore more than 60 shirts and nine pairs of jeans.

Wanting to board a flight to Nairobi, Kenya, he was stopped by the metal detector and had to undergo a full body search.

In his numerous pockets were batteries, thumb drives and device chargers.

World population was essentially stable at around 5 million people, living mostly scattered across the globe in small hunting-gathering tribes. In the agricultural communities of the Middle East, the cow was domesticated and use of pottery became common, spreading to Europe and South Asia, and the first metal (gold and copper) ornaments were made.

Glass Beach is a protected part of MacKerricher State Park, but in 1949, it was the site of an unrestricted dump. For 18 years, people drove out to the scenic expanse of ocean 

Close-up view of the colored glass beads mixed in the sand at Glass Beach near Fort Bragg, CA (glassbeach36xy) (Photo credit: mlhradio)

cliffs, marveled at the beauty of the natural world and the majesty of the depths, and then threw all their shit in.

Eventually, California realized that dumping automobiles, appliances, toxic substances and razor sharp shards of glass into the water was probably a bad idea, and looked elsewhere for a dumping site. [...]  

Despite our obviously brilliant handling of the situation, Mother Earth had a few tricks up her sleeve, and spent the next 30 years tumbling away the jagged edges of our insensitivity and leaving behind brilliant pebbles of polished glass. As the shores grew into glimmering beaches, the state realized that people were visiting to collect the glass and to see the rainbow sands reflecting the sun, and quickly annexed it into a national park. The result? We finished up what nature graciously started, spent a few years cleaning up rusting metal hulks and all sorts of wonderfully dangerous debris (nothing says sandcastle fun like getting tetanus from a lead-filled 50s throwback), and Glass Beach is now a protected treasure that I'm dying to visit. 

Verizon has filed a patent for a DVR that can watch and listen to the goings-on in your living room. In the application, the company proposes to use the technology to serve targeted ads appropriate to whatever you're doing in the, uh, privacy of your own home--fighting, cuddling, or hanging out with your cats.

Verizon is far from the first company to think of this unassailably creepy use for a set-top box. Comcast patented similar monitoring technology in 2008 for recommending content based on people it recognizes in the room; Google proposed yet another patent for Google TV that would use audio and video recorders to figure out how many people in a room are watching the current broadcast.

[R]umors that a legendary vampire ghost has awakened are spreading fear - and a potential tourist opportunity - through the remote village [of Zarozje].

A local council warned villagers to put garlic in their pockets and place wooden crosses in their rooms to ward off vampires [...]

"Five people have recently died one after another in our small community, one hanging himself," said Miodrag Vujetic, a local municipal council member. "This is not by accident."

Sales of garlic are booming in western Serbia after the local council issued a public health warning that a vampire was on the loose.

The warning came after an old ruined mill, said to once have been the home of notorious vampire Sava Savanovic, collapsed.

Savanovic was said to have lived in the old watermill on the Rogacica river, at Zarozje village in the municipality of Bajina Basta where he drank the blood of anybody that came to mill their grain.

Tinker may be miniature -- as in a miniature horse -- but he's a big money raiser for the Salvation Army.

He uses his mouth to hold and ring a red bell, and he picks up with his mouth a "Thank You Merry Christmas" sign. He can also bow and give kisses.

Major Roger Ross, a Salvation Army commander, said Tinker is one of their biggest money raisers in the area: He brings in 10 times the amount of a regular bell ringer.

"A good kettle for a couple of hours brings in about $250, and for the same time period (Tinker and his owners) have been known to bring in $2,500," he said. "They line up to put money in the kettle."

The 13-year-old horse, who's brown, black, grey and white, has been ringing for four seasons.