Quick history of the South

   

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Choosing a Wife

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Choosing A Wife  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
man wanted to get married. He was having trouble choosing among three
likely candidates. He gives each woman a present of $5,000 and watches
to see what they do with the money.

 

 

The
first does a total make over. She goes to a fancy beauty salon gets her
hair done, new make up and buys several new outfits and dresses up very
nicely for the man. She tells him that she has done this to be more a
attractive for him because she loves him so much.
The man was impressed. 

 

 

The
second goes shopping to buy the man gifts. She gets him a new set of
golf clubs, some new gizmos for his computer, and some expensive
clothes. As she presents these gifts, she tells him that she has spent all the money on him because she loves him so much.

Again, the man is impressed.

The
third invests the money in the stock market. She earns several times
the $5,000. She gives him back his $5,000 and reinvests the remainder
in a joint account. She tells him that she wants to save for their
future because she loves him so much.

Obviously, the man was impressed

The man thought for a long time about what each woman had done with the money he’d given her.

Then, he married the one with the
biggest boobs.

Men are like that, you know. < BR>
There
is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on
Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large
elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely
no recollection of what to do with them.

If you don’t send this to five OLD friends right away there will be five fewer people laughing in the world

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Random Darwin Awards

Darwin Award Winners

Well-Trained

2002 Darwin Award Nominee

(21 March 2002, Kentucky) In his youth, the man had whiled away many an
afternoon hopping trains and riding them fifteen or twenty yards down
the rails before leaping back off. But by the time he was twenty years
old, he had apparently lost the knack. While demonstrating the trick to
friends, our hero tried to hop a southbound train, but failed to notice
the simultaneous approach of a northbound train, and was struck and
killed.

Star Wars

2006 Honorable Mention

(2006, England) Two people, 17 and 20, imitated Darth Vader and made
light sabres from fluorescent light tubes. That’s right, they opened up
fluoresceent tubes, poured gasoline inside, and lit the end… As one can
imagine, a Star Wars sized explosion was not far behind.  Both participants
survived to confess to their creative, but stupid, filmed reenactment.

Darwin notes, "17 is legal driving age.  Old enough to pump gas is old
enough to know better.  For more information, consult the Rules and read the discussion
in the Philosophy Forum."

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10 Things You Mistakenly Thought You Knew about the Romans

Here’s an interesting post by Classics Professor Mary Beard on her blog A Don’s Life at The Times of London on-line.

Here are 10 things you thought you knew about the Romans but didn’t. 10 myths about the Romans exploded…!

1) JULIUS CAESAR’S LAST WORDS WERE ‘ET TU BRUTE’
Well, only in Shakespeare’s version of the assassination. Probably our best ancient source is Suetonius and he records the words as (in Greek) “kai su teknon” – or “you too my child”. What this means, in fact, isn’t so clear. If it is has a question mark, it smacks of quizzical, dying desperation. Give it an exclamation mark and it becomes a threat (“they’ll get you too kid…”).

2) ROME WAS BUILT ON SEVEN HILLS.
Some serious miscalculation here. Palatine, Aventine, Capitoline, Janiculan, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Pincian, Vatican. That’s 10 for a start. Though it all depends I suppose, on what you call a hill.

3) ROMANS HAD ‘VOMITORIA’ TO BE SICK IN BETWEEN COURSES AT LAVISH DINNERS
Sorry. This is an old one, But vomitoria were the exit routes which spewed people out of the amphitheatres.

4) ROMAN MEN DRESSED IN TOGAS
OK sometimes they did. But it was very formal wear – and it’s a bit like saying ‘Englishmen wear dinner jackets’. Actually you’d have seen all kinds of dress on the Roman street, from tunics to trousers — and, just to confuse things, prostitutes in togas. (Here’s a neat article which sets this one straight.)

5) NERO FIDDLED WHILE ROME BURNED
Not if you mean that he sat around ineffectually twiddling his thumbs while the city went up in flames. Actually what Nero did was fiddle in another sense: he played the violin (or so it was said).

Five more after the jump. . .

6) THE PLEBEIANS WERE THE ROMAN POOR
OK Romans, just like us, did sometimes use the word ‘plebeian’ or ‘plebs’ for the ‘great unwashed’ (literally ‘sordida plebs’). But in the strict sense both ‘plebeian’ and ‘patrician’ were old hereditary divisions of the Roman people. These may once have signalled the poor/powerless versus the rich/powerful. But by the time of the later Republic there were enormously rich plebeians – like Marcus Licinius Crassus, the plutocrat who famously said that you couldn’t be counted as rich if you couldn’t raise your own private army.

7) GLADIATORS SAID ‘HAIL CAESAR, THOSE ABOUT TO DIE SALUTE THEE’ BEFORE EACH SHOW
This favourite phrase is actually attested only once in classical antiquity – and not at a gladiatorial show. It was apparently spoken by the participants at a mock naval battle laid on outside Rome by the emperor Claudius. I tried to lay this particular myth to rest in the book on the Colosseum I wrote with Keith Hopkins – but not with much success I fear.

8) WHEN THE ROMANS FINALLY DESTROYED CARTHAGE IN 146 BCE, THEY PLOUGHED SALT INTO ITS SOIL — TO MAKE IT COMPLETELY BARREN
This is slightly trickier ground, but I know of no ancient writer who says this. It’s a view that got common currency thanks to an article by B Hallward in the first edition of the Cambridge Ancient History – and he gives no ancient reference.

9) THE ROMANS WERE MUCH SMALLER THAN US
Depends on who you mean by ‘us’. The skeletons found in Pompeii and Herculaneum actually suggest that the Roman inhabitants were on average a bit taller than the modern Neapolitans.

10) HADRIAN BUILT HIS WALL TO KEEP THE BARBARIANS OUT OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITANNIA
Only if he was a military idiot. A good proportion of it is built only in turf anyway, which wouldn’t have deterred many self respecting barbarians. Even if the rest was in stone, it is now thought much more likely that the whole thing was administrative (for customs levying perhaps) – and to help east-west communications.

And that’s only the first ten!       

Source: http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/08/10-things-you-t.html

Julia 

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Why Parents Drink

It is Friday and time to have fun and leave politics behind for the weekend.  That is unless something comes up that is important or I find interesting.  And that also means it is an Open Trackback Weekend

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  A father passing by his son’s bedroom was astonished
to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was
picked up. Then he saw an envelope, propped up
prominently on the pillow that was addressed to
"Dad." With the worst premonition he opened the
envelope with trembling hands and read the letter.

Dear Dad:
     It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m
writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend
because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you. I
have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is

so nice. But I knew you would not approve of her
because of all her piercings, tattoos, tight
motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is much older
than I am. But it’s not only the passion…Dad she’s
pregnant.

     Stacy said that we will be very happy. She owns a
trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for
the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more
children. Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that

marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone. We’ll be growing
it for ourselves and trading it with the other people
that live nearby for cocaine and ecstasy.
     In the meantime we will pray that science will
find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She

deserves it. Don’t worry Dad. I’m 15 and I know how to
take care of myself. Someday I’m sure that we will be
back to visit so that you can get to know your
grandchildren.

Love, Your Son John

P.S. Dad, none of the above is true. I’m over Tommy’s
house. I just wanted to remind you that there are
worse things in life than the report card that’s in my
center desk drawer. I love you.  Please call me when

it’s safe to come home.
–
http://TexasFred.net/

• 

 

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Here Kitty Kitty Kitty

Isn’t it so cute.  I love animals.

August 30, 2007—Triggered by body heat, a remote camera recently
captured this image of the elusive Chinese mountain cat at about 12,300
feet (3,750 meters) on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau in China’s
Sichuan Province.

A total of eight images of the feline represent the first time the
mountain cat has been photographed in the wild, said Jim Sanderson, a
cat specialist with the Wildlife Conservation Network who led the team
that snapped the rare shots. A paper about the cat will appear in an
upcoming issue of the journal Science.

Sanderson is hoping that the new images will reveal some of the
secretive habits that have kept the creature a mystery to scientists
for nearly a century.

"Pandas go for a million [U.S.] dollars a year to rent and are
very well protected by Chinese law, but there is virtually no
protection for this cat," he told National Geographic News.

"There’s no interest in its conservation because it’s poorly known, but now perhaps this will change."

National Geographic

 

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Mo -Doggie

Another Fatwa Worthy picture.

Thanks Sondrak

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Grand old Partisan

Here is another installment from the Grand Old Partisan of the great legacy of the Republicans in Civil Rights causes.  Today we salute,  Galusha Grow (R-PA).

Grand Old Partisan
salutes Galusha Grow (R-PA), born this day in 1823.  A recovering
Democrat, he switched from the Party of Slavery to the GOP in 1856
during his third term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  He was an
ally of fellow Pennsylvania congressmen David Wilmot and Thaddeus
Stevens…  Grand Old PArtisan

Also you can get the blook Back to Basics for the Republican Party, at Amazon.com.

 

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Villinous Company

I donl’t really know how to put it in words, but Cassandra at Villainous Company has got one of the best posts I have seen in  a long time.

War. And Peace.

I’ve been told I have an unhealthy obsession with war. If that is
true, and I suppose it is possible, it would not be because I love
conflict.

Not that. Never that.

It would be because I hate and fear it so.

Somewhere in her basement my mother has a black and white photograph
of me. I must have been about three years old at the time. I’m standing
with a gaggle of neighborhood children, hands on hips, one of my Mom’s
cast off purses clutched fiercely under my arm. Blonde curls and rosy
cheeks notwithstanding, I am in charge of everything; a miniature She
Who Must Be Obeyed ready to take on imaginary monsters, wayward puppies
and anything else that requires a gentle but firm talking to. But all
my bottled up sassiness was just an act.

read the whole thing.   It is great.

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August 31

1888 : Jack the Ripper claims first victim

 

Prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim of London serial
killer "Jack the Ripper," is found murdered and mutilated in
Whitechapel’s Buck’s Row. The East End of London saw four more victims
of the murderer during the next few months, but no suspect was ever
found.

In Victorian England, London’s East End was a teeming slum
occupied by nearly a million of the city’s poorest citizens. Many women
were forced to resort to prostitution, and in 1888 there were estimated
to be more than 1,000 prostitutes in Whitechapel. That summer, a serial
killer began targeting these downtrodden women. On September 8, the
killer claimed his second victim, Annie Chapman, and on September 30
two more prostitutes–Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes–were murdered and
carved up on the same night. By then, London’s police had determined
the pattern of the killings. The murderer, offering to pay for sex,
would lure his victims onto a secluded street or square and then slice
their throats. As the women rapidly bled to death, he would then
brutally mutilate them with the same six-inch knife.

The police,
who lacked modern forensic techniques such as fingerprinting and blood
typing, were at a complete loss for suspects. Dozens of letters
allegedly written by the murderer were sent to the police, and the vast
majority of these were immediately deemed fraudulent. However, two
letters–written by the same individual–alluded to crime facts known
only to the police and the killer. These letters, signed "Jack the
Ripper," gave rise to the serial killer’s popular nickname.

On
November 7, after a month of silence, Jack took his fifth and last
victim, Irish-born Mary Kelly, an occasional prostitute. Of all his
victims’ corpses, Kelly’s was the most hideously mutilated. In 1892,
with no leads found and no more murders recorded, the Jack the Ripper
file was closed.

History Channel

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