BMEWS
 
Death once had a near-Sarah Palin experience.

calendar   Friday - December 31, 2010

to all our friends and bmews surfers, good wishes for a happy new year ..

Well, we made it through another year.  Drew introduced me to what he referred to as the workings under the hood of bmews. I wasn’t looking forward to that but he assured me that nothing would go wrong. Just keep in mind he said, that you’re entering a dark cave full of gun powder with only a match for illumination.
That’s Drew’s idea of reassurance and putting one at ease.  Scared the hell outta me but I couldn’t chicken out and so entered the cave once. And hey ...
I came out without taking down the blog site.  Will wonders never .... How ‘bout that? Can’t imagine what the next test will be like but I’m looking for a blog union.

This year has been rewarding in many ways but most especially I think, cos we’re all still here. Still fussing and bitching and often angry at the turn of political events, but we’re communicating.  And thanks to a number of bmews regulars, managing to get quite a few laughs in spite of the things that cause us to see red.
I’m still convinced that a few of you actually do write TV scripts. And if ya don’t you damn well should.

So then ... there isn’t anything else to say except to thank again all of you who have taken the time to make comments and have been regulars for so long.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU IN THE USA, AND AROUND THE WORLD.

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Posted by peiper   United States  on 12/31/2010 at 04:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
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Happy Hogmanay!

A Guid New Year t’All



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What, you didn’t think New Year’s celebration was a Scottish thing? You figured it was some modernized carryover from Saturnalia and earlier pagan festivals of sun return? Well, you’re probably right, but when midnight hits and the music plays, what will you be singing?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and auld lang syne
For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup o kindness yet, for auld lang syne.

An auld auld song merely transcribed by the grrrrrreat Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1788, though evidence shows that the song had been around for at least 80 years before then.

And the proper Scottish way to celebrate the end of the year? Why, to get drunk, eat a whole lot, get drunker, go outside and dance and sing, drink some more, set off fireworks, and then run around with torches and swing balls of fire throughout the town!

“In Scotland, New Year’s is called Hogmanay. And it is a time when people who can inspire awe in the IRISH for the amount of ALCOHOL that they drink decide to RAMP IT UP a notch.”

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The Scots know how to throw a party, and it doesn’t get any bigger than during New Year’s Eve celebrations. The Hogmanay festivities start early – a whole day early – with a spectacular torchlight procession along the Royal Mile. Wrap up warm, down a wee dram and join the thousands of flame-wielding locals marching from Parliament Square at 6.30pm through Edinburgh’s streets, accompanied by the wail of bagpipes, before congregating for a dramatic fireworks display over Calton Hill.

In a country not known for its balmy weather, the celebrations continue – mostly outdoors – for the next three days. New Year’s Eve itself is given over to a raucous street party, a ticketed event with staged live music and hordes of people dancing into the early hours. Other events include an outdoor ceilidh and a candlelit concert in St Giles’ Cathedral, although these are likely to be sold out in advance.

Ignore the hangover and head out again on New Year’s Day, when there are more concerts (K T Tunstall is headlining) and street festivals lasting until the 2nd, when, finally, the locals pack up and call it a day.

Nobody is really sure where the word “hogmanay” came from. It could be French, it could be Flemish, it might even be Scandanavian. The fire part of the party certainly has Viking roots. But the name is all Scottish these days, and so is the party. It’s a national holiday, and when the calends end properly, it’s a 4 day national holiday!

1 January and 2 January remain public holidays in Scotland and Hogmanay still is associated with as much celebration as Christmas in Scotland. Most Scots still celebrate Ne’erday with a special dinner, usually steak pie. When Ne’erday falls on a Sunday, 3 January becomes an additional public holiday in Scotland; when Ne’erday falls on a Saturday, both 3 January and 4 January will be public holidays in Scotland; when Ne’erday falls on a Friday, 4 January becomes an additional public holiday in Scotland.

4 days of drunken revelry? Now that’s a party!

Historians believe that we inherited the celebration from the Vikings who, coming from even further north than ourselves, paid even more attention to the passing of the shortest day. In Shetland, where the Viking influence was strongest, New Year is called Yules, from the Scandinavian word.

It may not be widely known but Christmas was not celebrated as a festival and virtually banned in Scotland for around 400 years, from the end of the 17th century to the 1950s. The reason for this has its roots in the Protestant Reformation when the Kirk portrayed Christmas as a Popish or Catholic feast and therefore had to be banned. Many Scots had to work over Christmas and their winter solstice holiday was therefore at New Year when family and friends gathered for a party and exchange presents, especially for the children, which came to be called hogmanay.

There are traditions before midnight such as cleaning the house on 31st December (including taking out the ashes from the fire in the days when coal fires were common). There is also the superstition to clear all your debts before “the bells” at midnight.

An integral part of the Hogmanay partying, which continues very much today, is to welcome friends and strangers, with warm hospitality and of course a kiss to wish everyone a Guid New Year. The underlying belief is to clear out the vestiges of the old year, have a clean break and welcome in a young, New Year on a happy note.

“First footing” (that is, the “first foot” in the house after midnight) is still common in Scotland. To ensure good luck for the house, the first foot should be male, dark (believed to be a throwback to the Viking days when blond strangers arriving on your doorstep meant trouble) and should bring symbolic coal, shortbread, salt, black bun and whisky.

Bringing fire (coal), food, medicine (salt) and booze? Those are libations for the gods. Magic ingredients. Oh, this one goes waaaay back, yes it does.

The magical Firework display and torchlight procession in Edinburgh - and throughout many cities in Scotland - is reminiscent of the ancient custom at Scottish Hogmanay pagan parties hundreds of years ago.

The traditional New Year ceremony of yesteryear would involve people dressing up in the hides of cattle and running around the village being hit by sticks. The festivities would also include the lighting of bonfires, rolling blazing tar barrels down the hill and tossing torches. Animal hide was also wrapped around sticks and ignited which produced a smoke that was believed to be very effective to ward off evil spirits. The smoking stick was also known as a Hogmanay.

One of the most spectacular Fire ceremonies takes place in Stonehaven, just south of Aberdeen on the North East coast. Giant fireballs, weighing up to 20 pounds are lit and swung around on five feet long metal poles, requiring 60 men to carry them as they march up and down the High Street. The origin of the pre-Christian custom is believed to be linked to the Winter Solstice of late December with the fireballs signifying the power of the sun, to purify the world by consuming evil spirits.

Horry clap! Say it with me, here’s your chance: Grrrrrreat Balls o’ Fire!!

And when it’s all over, may your hangover avoid the sweet skirling of the pipes, for health’s own sake!

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/31/2010 at 03:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Holidays •  
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and heeeeers obama … happy new year all.

Happened upon this while surfing through the Telegraph’s photo feature, the favorites of the photographers.

Telegraph photographers talk about their favourite pictures of 2010

Well naturally I figured our readers might get a laugh out of this. Or apoplexy. Doubtful it will be both.

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A market trader in Sana’a, Yemen, 8 December 2010.

Julian Simmonds: “Yemen, the latest nesting ground for Al-Qaeda, was my 105th country reporting for the Telegraph, and in Sana’a, the capital, life carries on much as normal, despite the British Deputy Ambassador getting a rocket fired at her vehicle the month before. My first trip out was to a local Khat market. No sooner had I arrived at the market than I was ushered quickly away. A bomb had just gone off, which turned out to be the result of a local blood-feud. I found another market and also this man selling doctored photos of President Obama dressed as a Yemeni. A Google search of “Is Obama a Muslim?” returns over 20 million results. It seems there is as much speculation on that in Yemen as there is in Texas. Still, nice work on the Photoshop.”
Picture: JULIAN SIMMONDS


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 12/31/2010 at 02:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Obama, The One •  
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‘Rosie the Riveter’ war recruitment poster girl dies at 86 …


‘Rosie the Riveter’ war recruitment poster girl dies

Geraldine Doyle, who was the inspiration for a popular US Second World War recruitment poster featuring the slogan “We Can Do it!” has died at the age of 86.

By Nick Allen, Los Angeles

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Mrs Doyle was a 17-year-old working in a metal factory in Ann Arbor, Michigan when she featured on the “Rosie the Riveter” poster wearing a red and white polka dot bandana and flexing her bicep.

The image became a visual representation of the millions of women who worked in factories in the US during the war effort and was later adopted by the feminist movement.

Mrs Doyle’s photograph was taken by chance by a United Press International photographer and it then became the basis for the poster which was produced in 1942 by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation to raise the morale of workers.

The public soon began associating the poster with a hit song called “Rosie the Riveter” and the name stuck.

In reality, Mrs Doyle only worked at the factory for two weeks before moving to a job in a book shop and pursuing her passion for playing the cello.

SOURCE

Does anyone else wonder how it was possible for her to not know until 1984?  Just seems odd.
She wasn’t employed as a riveter for long. Bet these ladies were. Newsweek 1943

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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 12/31/2010 at 05:50 AM   
Filed Under: • OBITITUARIESUSA War-Stories •  
Comments (7) Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

calendar   Thursday - December 30, 2010

Stupid In The News

Air passenger charged after bullet primer caps ignite



Ack, just reading the headline makes me gag. What were these bullet primer caps for, his rifle gun revolver automatic thingy?


A 37-year-old airline passenger was arrested Tuesday in Miami after primer caps for bullets ignited while a baggage handler was unloading a roll-on bag, the FBI said. The tarmac incident is not believed to be terrorism-related, FBI special agent Michael Leverock said.

Leverock would not provide details or speculate on how the bag might have gotten on the plane. He compared the primer to a “spark plug” for the bullet. The unidentified passenger, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was bound for Jamaica, was charged with transportation of hazardous materials. If convicted, he could face a sentence of up to five years.
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Hundreds of the primer caps were in a bag that ignited, and all of them went off after the first one did, Leverock said. Several hit the baggage handler’s shoes, but he was not injured. The bomb squad was among those who rushed to the scene. The incident caused four other flights to be delayed, the airport said.

Leverock said part of a shirt inside the bag was charred, but the movement of the bag is what set off the explosion.


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Oh look, primers. They come 100 to a package, with 10 packages to a sleeve. A sleeve of 1000 primers is much smaller than a loaf of bread; a package of 100 is about 1/4” high by 3” square. The packaging is designed to keep them from bouncing about. It’s also designed to minimize flash-over, should one primer ignite.

Yes, these things are tiny bits of explosives in little steel cups. It takes quite a bit of specifically directed force to set them off. Drop a handful on bare concrete and they do not go off. Ever.

I can’t say what the rules are for importing HAZMAT rated items to Jamaica via the airlines. It probably is legal, but you’d have to pay a fee, ship the things in a proper container, and put them in the baggage hold. But I can say that taking these things out of their boxes and just pouring them in a baggie buried in your carry on is a really stupid idea. They will show up on a baggage X-ray either way, so why bother? And if these were wrapped up inside a shirt in this guy’s bag, and they went off due to “baggage handling” it tells me that the gorillas handling the luggage must have clobbered that suitcase with a sledgehammer. Furthermore, there is simply no way in Hades that the igniting primers had the power to penetrate a layer or two of clothing and then the side of the carry on bag, even if that bag was a paper sack from the grocery store. No. Can’t happen. The baggage apes opened the guy’s bag and then clobbered the contents with a big hammer. Deliberately. Or else they dropped the entire luggage box 20 feet from the side of the plane down to the ground, with several tons of other luggage coming down on top of this schmuck’s bag. That’s possible, but if the primers were in a “roll on” bag - doesn’t that mean “carry on”? - then the baggage mishandlers wouldn’t be in contact with that bag in the first place. Something is fishy here, more fishy than just poor reporting.

Find out the name of the airline, and make sure you never fly with them. Whatever else, this story screams out the fact that they seriously mistreat your stuff.

Come to think of it, fire the TSA screeners involved. Baggage gets x-rayed, right? Several hundred primers poured into a baggie would show up as a great metal lump, which should have gotten their attention. A whole sleeve of primers in their original packaging would look like a 3D matrix of metal dots, which should have also been noticed. Somebody was not doing their job here.

Ok, I just followed the link and watched the video. While this was a carry on size bag, it was checked in the luggage hold. It was a two part flight from Boston to Jamaica with a changeover in Florida. The primers went off when the bag was “placed” on the tarmac. So ... a little research shows that the cargo hold of a jetliner is pressurized, but not generally heated. IIRC, aircraft pressure is set to what you’d get being 10,000 feet up on a mountain. The temperature might get down to -40. That ought to be well within the design parameters of the primers. And it’s been pretty chilly in Florida the past few days. Plus it’s not like the plane drops instantly to the ground from 32,000 feet; it takes a good 15 minutes to descend, and then another while to land, and then even longer to cruise around the airport before the plane is finally parked and unloaded. So I think we can rule out any idea that these things were made extra sensitive due to sudden changes in air pressure and temperature. ( I tried to ask CCI and Federal, but both companies are taking their winter holidays ) And that puts us right back to seriously abusive baggage handlers.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/30/2010 at 01:31 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun ControlStoopid-People •  
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‘They pointed and laughed at us,’ say homosexual pair. and who could resist? take a look.

So now people should be advised that along with ‘faggot’ - ‘fag’ - fairy and ‘queer’—“gay boys” is added to the vocabulary of no nos.

Alright now .. enough is enough.  Jeesh.  Faggots have legal partnerships in some places and marriages and of course their pride parades and then too they can adopt kids in some places or as Ms. Elton John and his husband (gak again!) have done, buy a baby.  You surely have seen that. Right?
So now folks shouldn’t use the term gay boys in any other way except as acceptance and support. To do otherwise is homophobic abuse, according to these two weird looking queens.

Hang on a minute, I may have made a mistake re. Elton John. Ah, it might be Mrs. Furnish. Ms? Miss? Mrs?  I can’t keep up to this stuff. He and his hubby have bought a baby and named it, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John.  Hey,hey. How’s that for a handle on a kid growing up. What are they gonna reply when he’s old enough to ask about mommy?  But I seriously digress.  This post is about something else.
It’s about a couple of fairies on benefits who object to being called gay boys.  I object too.  My campaign to restore a perfectly good English word to its proper place has gone nowhere.  So in addition to all the other things these folks have had delivered to them along with the apologies of most world leaders, they successfully have hi-jacked the language.

OK, Here’s their sad story and I just know readers will weep at the injustice of it all. Kleenex at the ready girls.


Jobcentre staff accused of calling homosexual couple ‘gay boys’ as they collected their benefits

By Daily Mail Reporter


* ‘They pointed and laughed at us,’ say homosexual pair
* Steve Mellor started claiming benefits due to long-term illness made worse by stress

Jobcentre bosses are investigating claims that staff taunted a couple with homophobic abuse during weeks of discrimination - calling them ‘gay boys’.

Steve Mellor, 23, and Roy Pearson, 28, say they were victimised for being homosexual whenever they went to claim their benefits.

The Department for Work and Pensions is now looking into claims that staff abused them and labelled them with the derogatory term.

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Mr Mellor and Mr Pearson have only been claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and housing benefit together since mid-November.

They say they have been verbally abused and deliberately given less help than others because of their sexuality.

Mr Mellor, who had to start claiming benefits because of a long-term illness made worse by stress, wrote to the centre last week.

He said: ‘When we went in on Wednesday to find out about Christmas payments, we got no help whatsoever, so we started walking away

‘Comments then came from staff such as “those two gay boys always come in for information” while they pointed and laughed at us.’

Well of corth you got laffed at thilly perthin. Have you looked in a mirror? What’s not to laff at?

Mr Mellor said the abuse started when they declared themselves a couple to the centre, in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and had no trouble when they claimed benefits separately.

Mr Pearson, who left his job as a care worker in October, said: ‘The way we have been treated has been getting worse since we announced we were a couple.

‘You just don’t expect this in 2010.’ The pair have been living together for five months.

They also claim a Jobcentre worker told them he was trained to ‘deal’ with people like them.

That claim is denied by the DWP, but it confirmed it was investigating.

A DWP spokesman said: ‘Jobcentre Plus is committed to treating all individuals fairly and equally regardless of their sexual orientation.

‘We will not tolerate discrimination and will take any allegations seriously. We are aware of this complaint and are investigating.’

ODD PERTHON SOURCE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 12/30/2010 at 01:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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docs mis diagnose …. man loses his … ah …. it got cut off in error. OUCH!

Somethin’ tells me this might be the end story of the year. Perhaps the decade? Scares one off doctors and the medical profession.  There are stories that pop up all year long about unfortunates who go through hell, some have amputations, only to find a mistake has been made.  For example, a kid with broken bones and missed at the ER. ??? How’s that happen?  One fellow you may recall, as reported here, had a broken back so the story went. And that was mis-diagnosed.
But this case .... well ..... ?

Swede told he had cancer and forced to have penis amputated following a YEAR of mis-diagnosis

By Daily Mail Reporter


An elderly Swedish man has had to have his penis amputated after doctors misdiagnosed his condition.

Rather than being the urinary tract infection doctors had thought, he had contracted cancer, and medics had missed the signs for over a YEAR.

As the disease had been undetected for so long, the cancer had taken hold and doctors were left with no option other than to lop off his manhood.

The sexagenarian originally visited his local clinic in Blekinge, southern Sweden, in September 2009 for treatment on what he was told was an infection.

When he returned in March 2010 complaining of foreskin irritation, the doctor on duty at the time diagnosed the problem as a simple case of inflammation, the local paper, Blekinge Läns Tidning (BLT), reported.

After three weeks passed without the prescribed treatment alleviating the man’s condition, he was instructed to seek further treatment at Blekinge Hospital.

But it took five MONTHS before he was able to schedule an appointment at the hospital.

When he finally met with doctors at the hospital, the man was informed he had cancer and his penis would have to be removed.

It remains unclear if the man would have been able to keep his penis had the cancer been detected sooner.

But the matter has been reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden.

Two years ago Philip Seaton also suffered a similar fate when went to be circumcised at a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, but awoke to find his penis had been amputated.

Mr Seaton filed a lawsuit against the doctor who performed the procedure and the anesthetist, claiming mental anguish and pain.

He also said he has lost the enjoyment of life, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says doctors only received consent to perform a circumcision and that Mr Seaton did not consent to his penis being removed.

His lawyer, Kevin George, said the organ was cut off after cancer was found, but that doctors only had consent to remove the foreskin.

Mr George said: ‘Sometimes you have an emergency and you have to do this, but he could very easily closed him up and said, “Here are your options. You have cancer,” and the family would have said, “We want a second opinion. This is a big deal.“‘

SOURCE


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Posted by peiper   United States  on 12/30/2010 at 12:14 PM   
Filed Under: • Health and SafetyHealth-Medicine •  
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calendar   Wednesday - December 29, 2010

Well, duh

The Ohio Supreme Court today dealt a fatal blow to local efforts to regulate firearms, concluding that a more permissive state law should trump restrictions on guns in cities.

In a 5-2 ruling, the state’s top court struck down Cleveland’s assault-weapons ban and registration requirement for handguns.

Cleveland was the last city to press for tougher local firearms regulations after the Supreme Court voided a smaller town’s law against guns in public parks in 2008.

In that ruling, as in today’s, justices said lawmakers were within their rights when they enacted a uniform set of gun regulations for the entire state in 2007.

Cleveland had argued that the state law infringed on its home-rule authority.

Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, the author of today’s majority opinion, noted that the Constitution allows for general laws to regulate public safety.

“The city acknowledges that its firearm ordinances are an exercise of municipal police power,” Stratton wrote.

Chief Justice Eric Brown and Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, the court’s two most liberal justices, dissented. They contended that lawmakers couldn’t simply wish away municipalities’ home-rule authority.

“Home rule” be damned. The way America works, or at least the way it has worked since mid-1865, is that the precedence of laws is top down. Federal law trumps state law. State law trumps local law. That’s all there is to it.

States can make laws about things that the Federal government has no laws about. Counties and towns can make laws about things that neither the states nor the feds have laws about.

So if the federal government has a law that says “guns are Ok in national parks”, they are legal in all national parks, even the ones in Ohio, including any that might be in Cleveland. If Ohio has a law that says “guns are Ok in state parks” that applies to all state parks in Ohio. It doesn’t apply to any national parks in Ohio, and it certainly doesn’t apply to any state parks in Florida. Cleveland can go and write a “no guns in public parks” law and have it stick only if the folks in Columbus wrote their law specifically excluding town and county public parks. But they didn’t. They merely said “public parks”, so, ipso facto, that means all parks in Ohio that are not federal (national) parks.

So of course it infringes on the city’s home-rule authority, because the city was flexing that authority where it had none. And they did this even after another city’s similar law was struck down, which was after the state made a new set of state laws on the subject? Major exercise in stupid there Cleveland. Duh. Thanks for wasting more taxpayer money.

Whoever it was on this court who voted in favor of Cleveland’s ban (Brown and Pfeifer) ought to be kicked off the bench. If you don’t even understand the basic legal power hierarchy, you have no business at all being a judge. By their logic my [hypothetical] personal belief that I should have the legal right to own a 10lb block of C-4 explosive and a 5 kilo bag of killer marijuana as long as I carry them with me at all times ought to trump any town, county, state, or even federal law that says otherwise. Those laws infringe on my personal space, so it’s OK for me to ignore them! Hey, as much as I desire personal liberty, that’s just not how the world works. And they don’t see this? Dudes, you are so fired.

We see this same can of crap every year or two in Philthydelphia. Those guys are forever writing some dumbass gun law for the city that gets overturned by the state. Because the state already has gun laws that cover everything, so there are no blank spots left for local gun laws.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/29/2010 at 05:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun ControlJudges-Courts-Lawyers •  
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is this the world’s tallest eye candy?

6’9” ... WWWWOW!

Looks good to me.  I think tall women are pretty sexy. Acres and acres of leg. What’s not to like?
Came across this in the Telegraph on line while looking for a lost story. So I googled her and found that most of the photos are all duplicates.

OK, Here’s the question for ya.
A female model or ... a guy in drag?  Someone suggested that. I looked again but don’t see that. Do you? Looks real here.

MODEL SIX FOOT NINE INCHES TALL

The model thought to be the world’s tallest has revealed that she also wrestles smaller men for $400 (£260) an hour.

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Amazon Eve, who is from Turlock in California and stands at 6 feet 9 inches, is a full-time model and actress. But she will wrestle when asked.

Amazon Eve originally gave up on an acting career after producers in Los Angeles kept casting her as a monster or alien but now she is hoping for major movie roles

She said: “My fans love me to pick them up and carry them. It’s a form of domination because I am actually physically bigger than my fans. My standard clients are 5’8” or shorter, professional and are well educated.

It’s more popular in Asia and Europe as in the US it’s kind of frowned upon. It’s a bit of a stigma of shame, for the men not to always be stronger, superior, taller than a woman.”

Eve is 31 and completely dwarfs all other models. She originally gave up on an acting career after producers in Los Angeles kept casting her as a monster or alien. Now she is hoping for major movie roles. “I’d be a great movie villain – the bad girl – I could do a role like Jaws in one of the old James Bond films.”

Eve has to hunt around to find size 14 high-heel shoes and large clothes to fit her giant frame. She said: “I make everybody look short, but when I’m alone, I look like a regular girl. I’m proportionate. It’s only when I stand next to somebody that it looks unusual.”

SOURCE

Here’s a few other pix I found on Google.

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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 12/29/2010 at 01:38 PM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
Comments (7) Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Stoners For Global Warming?

Like, wow man, the total irony.

I was bopping through the news this morning, looking for something interesting to post on, when I found an article at FoxNews on indoor gardening.

How to Build a High-Tech Indoor Garden This Winter

The dark days of winter are upon us, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on gardening until the spring. Grow lamps are becoming increasingly popular in gardening circles these days. And new breeds of low-power lights make them affordable options for those looking to keep a kitchen stocked with green herbs through the winter months, or those just looking to jump start their seedlings for next spring.

Before going any further, we need a quick scientific crash course. Plants need fairly intense light to grow, and the intensity of light in measured in a factor called lumens. The higher the lumen value of a bulb, the stronger the light and the better your plants will grow. For noticeable growth, you’ll want a bulb that puts out at least 4,000 lumens, and some bulbs can produce upwards of 40,000 lumens.

But a light’s intensity isn’t the only thing you have to look for; the temperature of the light is also important, a value measured in kelvins. Temperature in this case refers to the color of the light: the bluer, or colder the light, the higher the kelvin value. The warmer, or redder the light, the lower the value.

... and so on. Who is he kidding? And how did this article sneak in? It’s instructions on how to build a grow room. For your flowers, of course. And your “green herbs”. Uh huh. He goes on a bit about the different kind of bulbs out there and how well they work for growing plants. Incandescent (very poor), fluorescent (poor), etc., up to HID lamps (awesome). I think he wanted to write that the newest LED bulbs were the be-all and end-all, but they aren’t. Not yet. They don’t use much electricity, and they can be built to emit specific frequencies of light, but they simply don’t put out anywhere near enough light. And yet ... neither this author nor any other has really taken a look at the latest generation of Cree LEDs. I think they are the wave of the future, but the thing about the future is that it isn’t here yet.

What is the Cree LED? This is not the little red light on your coffee pot. These little 1/4” bitches are awesome! They generate an extraordinary amount of light. I’ve got a digital flashlight that uses one of them, and at the two highest settings it’s a weapon. The painfully bright light will shut your eyes down, causing near temporary blindness. 630 lumens for several hours from 8 AA batteries. Other flashlights drive these LEDs even harder, and produce 900-1000 lumens but with shorter battery life. Imagine a few of these as reflector lamps run off of low voltage transformers. Still, even 630 lumens - about the same light output as a regular 40 watt lightbulb - from something the size of the head of a carpet tack, that needs only 12 volts, is might impressive. 16 of them on a 1” square lamp would light up a barn while using perhaps 32 watts of electricity.

[ HUGE amounts of redacted writing here, as Drew decided he didn’t really want this post to be a lesson on how to build a grow room and a step by step guide to light usage, placement, intensity, and purpose over the life cycle of short season plants. Like those “green herbs”. Uh huh. ]

Once upon a time this was all semi-secret underground information. But thanks to the internet, today it’s just a mouse click or two away, and you can read all sorts of scientific papers on indoor gardening, starting with the original ones, done by the Department of Defense back in the late 50s, who envisioned vast underground bunkers filled with people waiting for the Nuclear Winter to end and the post-apocalyptic radiation levels to fall, and knew that those people would need to eat. So they went out and figured out just what kind of light, how much and how many hours of it per day, what ambient temperature, what N-P-K soil additives, and even what CO2 levels would produce the most efficient plant growth. Many other studies have been done since then, and now all sorts of data is easily available.

What about the stoners dude?

You can’t spend very much time looking up information on building an indoor greenhouse before you run across carbon dioxide. It’s the greenhouse gas you want in your greenhouse. Plants breath the stuff, duh. And a good greenhouse is a fully controlled environment, right down to the air itself. And ... surprise, surprise! ... it turns out that plants LOVE CO2! They adore it. Hell, they literally live for it. And study after study after study shows that significantly higher levels of the stuff promotes plant growth. Those studies also show that when the CO2 levels get really high, plants need higher temperatures to get the most out of it. And more light and water too, and eventually more fertilizer. A rich moist brilliant almost-hot hothouse environment.

Currently, the most recent CO2 level measurement from Hawaii is 388.59 PPM. For optimum plant growth, the ideal indoor greenhouse level is 1500 PPM, more than 4 times higher than current world conditions. In regular sunlight, plants really want levels 5 times higher than what’s outside. 500% more. Just to attain their full potential. Other studies have shown that plants can live in atmospheres with as much as 10,000 PPM of CO2, even though levels over 2500 PPM are lethal for people.

This is pretty much common knowledge across dozens, if not tens of thousands, of Grow Pot In Your Closet websites. And just as many nominally upstanding horticultural ones, a few of which I’ve linked to in this post.

So there it is, in digital black and white. The truth is out there. More carbon dioxide plus warmer temperatures equals more plant growth. More plant growth equals higher crop yields. Left leaning stoner hippies already know this, and go to great lengths to make it happen for their crop of bud. Higher crop yields mean more food ( or more “green herbs” ) for more people. More food for more people means less hunger and starvation. So why is anyone unhappy about a possible slight increase in global temperatures or CO2 levels? I’d call it cause for celebration! More food for everybody, let’s eat!


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/29/2010 at 12:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and DiscoveriesClimate-Weather •  
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defend France from creeping “Islamisation” … Hourra, Marine Le Pen …

image HOURRA Le Pen. Bravo!

It’s all up hill for the lady but give her this. She has the brass where the men are supposed to.

Maybe she has nothing to lose by saying out loud what many feel deep inside.  She has a further problem ... the sins of the father being visited on the daughter.
Her dad it has to be said, has given the impression that he’s a bit further to the right then many find comfortable.  I think (but not sure) he’s questioned the Holocaust numbers. Not exactly something that will endear a politician to enough voters to win the day.  He has appeared anti-semitic from what I’ve been led to believe.  Honestly though ... I have never paid that much attention to him because I’ve had other things to do and think about. And he isn’t really that much in the news anymore. At least not over here.  I haven’t read or heard any of his speeches, only whatever the press here may have reported on.

So the lady will have a battle on her hands no doubt.  And even if it’s true that her dad is not exactly someone who would want to be my friend, that doesn’t mean he has everything wrong.  And it doesn’t mean he has no sincere worries about and love for his own country, given the rate of immigration that swells French cities and disrupts the social order.  Only a left wing liberal loony tune would believe that the vast majority of islamists truly want to become French, and accept the laws and the traditions and customs of that country.  Not at all. They’d like if possible, to over run France, introduce Sharia law and put women where they believe women belong.  Always pregnant, always covered head to foot and always walking behind whatever man is controlling her. That’s their natural law, their natural custom and their tradition. Oh yes, and so are ‘honor killings’ and arranged marriages. That’s what islamists would like for the west. All of the west.
Miss Le Pen is apparently unwilling to dig her own and her country’s cultural grave.  She may lose any election she runs in but she will not be silenced. She will be heard. BRAVO MARINE Le PEN!


National Front’s Marine Le Pen to prove formidable rival to Nicolas Sarkozy

Marine Le Pen has promised to defend France from creeping “Islamisation” days before she is expected to take over from her father as head of the National Front party.

By:  Henry Samuel in Paris

The 42-year-old is seen as a potentially dangerous threat to President Nicolas Sarkozy if chosen to succeed Jean-Marie Le Pen in a mid-January party congress almost 40 years after he founded the party.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Miss Le Pen, said: “The progressive Islamisation of our country and the increase in political-religious demands are calling into question the survival of our civilisation.”

“We are fighting against Islamism, not Islam”, she said.

“Islamism is the will to impose Shariah for all as civil, political and religious law. We Western societies are fighting against Islamism all around the world. We have sent our kids to Afghanistan to be killed to fight against Islamism, and we don’t have the right in France through words and political action to fight it? That seems totally absurd to me,” she said.

Miss Le Pen said examples of creeping Islamisation included pork being taken off the menu in certain French schools, the fact that 22 Quick fast food restaurants were offering exclusively Halal burgers. She also claimed that Muslim communities were receiving hidden French government funds to build “increasingly ostentatious mosque-cathedrals” or ones funded by Saudi Arabia.

MORE ON Le PEN


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 12/29/2010 at 11:03 AM   
Filed Under: • FRANCE •  
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A life, in passing

Another Marine Reporting, Sir



I just learned that my friend Doc F’s dad passed away just after Christmas. He was 84. I’d only met the old fellow a couple times, but he was sharp, smart, and had an opinion about everything. I didn’t see him at Doc’s Christmas party, and learned that he was in the hospital for some routine surgery. Complications from that, I’m guessing. That’s how it goes sometimes.

I remember how we were out on the back deck broiling up some steaks after a summer shower put an end to our scientific reloading experiments playing with guns that day. A few beers and a scotch or two while the meat cooked, while we talked about sports, those idiots in DC, and ways to smooth his grandson’s friend’s efforts to join the Corps. The boy had some issues, I don’t remember what, something stupid, like one tattoo more than the number allowed. Or maybe he’d just moved, and found himself shuffled from one recruiter to another and falling in the cracks. That doesn’t matter. (that young man is now in uniform somewhere over in Sandland) It was just a bunch of guys, 18 to 83, hanging out, shooting guns and the breeze, having drinks, bitching about the military and politics and our nation’s foreign policy and the the rancid ROE laid on our troops these days. That got old Tom talking about his hitch in the Marines. As a young kid, maybe not even actually 18, he’d slogged across a bunch of islands in the Pacific in WWII, fighting the Japanese. 65 years after the fact, the horror, intensity, and burning hatred of the enemy; those times were still as fresh in his mind as if they’d happened a week ago. And so was his pride in their victory, and his anger and angst that time and politicians seemed to have frittered so much of it away.

He never talked about his career or all the community service things he’d been involved in for decades. Or how he’d set high standards for himself and met them, and then passed them on to the 5 kids he raised so that they were all successful in life. Like I wrote, I only met the guy once or twice. What impressed the heck out of me was that, generations after the fact, with just the flip of a conversational switch, he was still part of the Big Green Machine. Once in, never out.

Semper Fi, old Marine.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/29/2010 at 10:33 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily LifeMilitary •  
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stephanie seymour … showcased eye candy ….

I shouldn’t be running eye candy so close to my other eye candy BUT ...

See, here’s what happened. I was looking for something when I found this W W O W! Wasn’t even looking for it but hey. The Mail insists on putting these little small enough to be seen photos on the right side of their news page. Clever ppl the folks at the Mail. Even if sometimes they’re juvenile in their approach to a story and even tho it often seems like they don’t research too close. On the other hand, they have a couple of great writers. So there I was confronted by this.
Now tell me ...  what would you have done?  Exactly. And that’s why I’m posting these. Gosh, nature can be so good at times.

STEPHANIE SEYMOUR

image image image

image imageimage

And if you touch click Stephanie, you’ll get to see more of her ....

image


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Posted by peiper   United States  on 12/29/2010 at 08:14 AM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
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calendar   Tuesday - December 28, 2010

Bowling Blahs

I had a rancid time last night. Bowled poorly, and no matter what I did, it didn’t work. Only time I got any strikes was when I did something wrong. And I got pissed. Frustrated. Grumpy. Not that I shot anyone, beat anyone up, yelled, screamed, or abused the alley’s equipment. I was just sour so I went and sat by myself. Guess that’s not allowed.

So now I’m a problem. I’m probably on double secret probation or something. I had to be talked to. After all, when I went to write down the scores and found that both the pencils provided to us had broken points, and then I had to scribble out one of the scores I wrote down because the other team wasn’t bowling in the same order as what was on the score card (that’s allowed, but decent folks will change the order of the names on the scorecard. And bowling pencils have no erasers) Arrgh. I squeezed the pointless pencil so hard that it broke in two. And then I threw them in the garbage when I went up to the front desk to get new ones. And we all know that the next step right after that is Columbine, with extra explosives.

That’s me, in need of anger management therapy. Prozac at least. Maybe the rubber room.

Yesterday I got a phone call from the wife of my team captain on the Tuesday league. Team Loser. G is really sick, and in the hospital for a week now with “ammonia” she tells me, cranial palsy, and diabetes. He’s on oxygen. That’s all she could tell me. Cranial palsies - the muscles that control the movement of your eyes go haywire - are often caused by diabetes and usually subside once the diabetes is under control. But the guy got to be in his mid 60s before the diabetes struck, so I have no idea how long it will take to stabilize him. Not to mention the pneumonia. So I don’t think he’ll be back to bowling anytime soon. Sad. Maybe we can get a sub this week, but he was out last week too; if he gets behind in his dues he gets pulled. That’s the rules, but I can’t say if they will be applied or not. If he’s out, then we have a vacancy, which puts us at an even further disadvantage.

And on the Monday league, I just made contact with our other teammate who has been absent all season. We’ve kept a slot open for her, running with a vacancy and taking a weekly beating, because she was involved in some kind of management training for her job. The idea was that she’d be back at Christmas, thereabouts. The few emails I sent her in the fall all got “very busy, can’t talk” responses, so I backed off. Now she says she’s in the middle of getting a divorce, and her mother is in, and has been in, the hospital for long term care, so she isn’t coming back. Ever. That’s so sad. But a divorce doesn’t happen overnight, nor does long term care. We all know “Mom”; she bakes stuff and brings it to league while her daughter bowls. I know these kind of life events take absolute priority, but am I bad for thinking she could have spared us just one thought a few months ago and made a call or sent a text message? Especially since she’s Vice President of the league? We could have found another bowler ages ago.

And ya wonder why I get frustrated?  Well, aside from this mess, and the typical laziness of all the other bowlers on the other teams - who have been in the league for 10-20 years and yet have no idea how to enter scores, write them down, make score corrections or anything like that, but why haven’t I put their guy’s absentee score in YET?? - I get frustrated because it’s a competitive activity, and I am a very competitive person. I don’t mind losing too much, but I hate when a) we lose because I’m screwing up and b) they win because suddenly their 200+ average bowler, who has been plodding along the whole game, suddenly can manage 5 or 6 strikes in a row at the end of the game to pull them ahead. I hate being played with. Bowl your best and beat us, fine. But being on the dirty end of “tactical” bowling really chaps my ass. And I see this kind of “strategery” all the time. I bowl my best every time I hit the lanes. Sometimes my best sucks chunks, sometimes I’m covered in roses. But it’s always the best I can do. I don’t shave points and then pull off just enough “miracle” to save the day.

Sometimes it’s no fun at all.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/28/2010 at 01:30 PM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
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