“I feel ashamed that I couldn't notice the alarm bells set off by my own body," he said. "But with the goal to win another title with a new record, I couldn't stop my training so close to the competition. "I was continuing my training and bearing with the pain but finally I destroyed my jaw." But he said he still wanted to go to the competition in New York. "I want to be the pride of my mother," he said in the blog entry posted Sunday.
Link to the Daily Telegraph
Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in a North Texas park.
Officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park say the massive mosquito trap is a big attraction for some visitors, while others won’t go anywhere near it.
“At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. “Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”
Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or could be the result of a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.
“I’ve been hearing from entomologists from Ohio, Kansas, British Columbia — all over the place,” said Mike Quinn, an invertebrate biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department who first posted photos online.
Herbert A. “Joe” Pase, a Texas Forest Service entomologist, said the massive web is very unusual.
“From what I’m hearing it could be a once-in-a-lifetime event,” he said.
Link to article
Originally posted 2007-08-30 17:31:02.
“Be not deaf cockered dismal dreaming clotpole!”
Link to generator
A two-year-old girl from Hampshire has become the youngest ever female member of British Mensa.
Georgia Brown, from Aldershot, Hampshire, astounded experts by scoring 152 in an IQ test – putting her in the top 2% of the population for her age.
Psychologist Joan Freeman, who tested Georgia, said she thought the toddler could have scored even higher but needed a nap after 45 minutes of work.
Link to article
A professional puzzle inventor has solved what he considers the oldest riddle of them all – Stonehenge.
Bruce Bedlam, 56, has built a scale model of the ancient stone circle as he believes it was originally constructed – as a round building.
He believes that the Wiltshire monument was created with a large, domed roof made from wood and covered in wooden tiles.
Bruce believes the siting was significant and the sun would enter the interior at every solstace through one of the ten doors.
Link to article
Link to YouTube
The ultimate Irish breakfast review site – dedicated to breakfasts in Dublin, Ireland, but also providing general information about breakfasts from Ireland and around the world. We want submissions of breakfast reviews (ideally accompanied by a photo) to the email address below. Reviews can be for breakfasts at home, out, away or maybe you just want to suggest a breakfast location. If you eat it in the morning, send it in and we will post it.
Link to rashersandeggs
Shek Kip Mei Estate, Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estate, is composed of 100 rooms, each closet-like in size at only 100 square feet and built in response to a devastating fire in the 1950s that left thousands homeless. In a new series of photographs called “100 x 100,” Michael Wolf captures the residents of this housing complex who are almost enveloped by the diminishing space around them, their belongings stacked to the ceiling.
Link to article and slides
Things were going well until the barman added the fourth pint.
Link to scaryideas and more cellphone pictures
Link to more pictures
Link to The Onion. Previously on Puppies and Flowers: the iPhone shuffle
Originally posted 2007-06-25 15:59:19.
A MOBILE phone salesman from Wales has stunned the judges of a British talent show with his rendition of an opera classic.
Paul Potts, 36, sang Nessun Dorma – made famous by Luciano Pavarotti – for the judges on Britain’s Got Talent TV show, who are searching for an act to perform in front of the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance and win $A250,000.
Link to article and clip
LUXEMBOURG glugs more than 15.5 litres of alcohol per person in a year, more than any other country. One explanation is that the duty on alcohol is relatively cheap in the tiny nation, encouraging booze tourism from its more heavily taxed neighbours. No such explanation for the Irish, however, who quaff 13.7 litres a year, according to the World Health Organisation. European countries, with their cultural acceptance of alcohol, tend to dominate the top places. In America, where stricter minumum-age requirements apply, the average person drinks 8.6 litres a year.
Source The Economist
“If you walk up and your pants drop, you get a fine,” he added. “They’re better off taking the pants off and just wearing a dress.”
Link to article
Not only was Rome not built in a day, but a digital model took 10 years to construct. A team of archaeologists, architects and computer specialists from Italy, the United States, Britain and Germany has just unveiled a sprawling 3D digital simulation of the ancient city as it appeared at the height of its development as the capital of the Roman Empire.
Link to c|net article
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) — A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago.
Link to CNN article
Look out Sister Boom Boom.
Link to calendars
Note: According to this wikipedia entry on Iver Johnson, President William McKinley and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were killed by Iver Johnson revolvers.
This vintage ad ran in Harper’s Weekly (1904). Found at LiveJournal.
Two "ace" sniffer dogs who have performed sterling service combating drug trafficking in Thailand's Chiang Rai airport have been given their marching orders for urinating on luggage and "sexually harassing" female passengers, the Bangkok Post reports. Mok and Lai had apparently been "plucked from obscurity" as part of a cunning King Bhumibol Adulyadej plan to use strays as police dogs. They were deployed at said airport close to the border with Laos and Myanmar, but quickly attracted numerous complaints from the public due to their uninhibited behaviour. Mok's former handler, Police Lieutenant Colonel Jakapop Kamhon, explained: "Both were just as good as foreign dogs trained for use in drug missions. But they were stray dogs, so their manners were worse than those of foreign breeds. "He [Mok] liked to pee on luggage while searching for drugs inside. He also liked to hold on to women's legs." Mok and Lai have been reassigned to farm duties, including "herding chickens and pigs", the Bangkok Post confirms. ®
Link to The Register
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