“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”
– H. L. Mencken
An 17th-century English merchant ship, The Merchant Royal, was lost at sea off Land's End, Cornwall in rough weather on September 23, 1641. On board were at least 100,000 pounds of gold (nearly one billion USD in today's money), 400 bars of Mexican silver (another 1 million) and nearly 500,000 pieces of eight and other coins, making it one of the most valuable wrecks of all times.
In 2008, the wind industry said it employed about 85,000 people. Solar employment stood at about 93,000 in 2010. Two years—and a nine fold increase in solar power—later, solar employment had increased just 28%.
Government officials from the Benghazi fiasco have been warned by the government not to make themselves available to Congressional inquiry. CNN obtained one email to CIA employees: "You don't jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well." What?!
A small group of anti-clerical dissidents from Iran called the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq or MEK has been bombing and assassinating in Iran for years and joined Saddam's war against Iran years ago. They have been a source of good espionage within Iran for the U.S., despite being on the terrorist list until last year. Since the Iraq war they have been in camps in Iraq, one called Camp Ashraf, one Liberty. Now that Shiite presence in Iraq's government is growing, the MEK is less welcome. This month 50 were killed by Iraqi troops at Ashraf--or so the MEK claim. Don't worry, the U.N. is investigating.
Pope Francis likes Dostoevsky! "I love very much Dostoevsky and Hölderlin," he said in an interview in "America." "I remember Hölderlin for that poem written for the birthday of his grandmother that is very beautiful and was spiritually very enriching for me. The poem ends with the verse, 'May the man hold fast to what the child has promised.' "
Who was.....Anna Politkovskaya?
Echidnas belong to the family Tachyglossidae in the monotreme order of egg-laying mammals. The four species, together with the platypus, are the only mammals that lay eggs. The echidnas are named after a monster in ancient Greek mythology. They live in Australia and New Guinea.
Gehad el-Haddad, a top Muslim Brotherhood official and aide to ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, was employed by the Clintons from August 2007 to August 2012, when he left to work full-time for Morsi's regime.
Winston Churchill's mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, had a snake tattooed across her wrist.
According to the new book "Finding Florida" by T. D. Allman, the story about Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth was entirely fabricated by none other than the fiction writer Washington Irving (who also invented 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.')
Golden Oldie:
Equality under attack: Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the brains of men and women show women have far greater capacity for communicating with and evaluating people than men do. Women have between fourteen and sixteen areas of the brain to evaluate others' behavior versus a man's four to six areas. The female brain is organized for multitracking -- the average woman can juggle between two and four unrelated topics at the same time. She can talk about several unrelated topics in the one conversation and use five vocal tones to change the subject or emphasize points. Most men can only identify three of these tones and often lose the plot when women are trying to communicate with them. Vision is a factor too. Most men's close-range and peripheral vision is far poorer than women's.
shibboleth: n. 1. The use of a word or pronunciation that distinguishes a group of people.
2. A slogan, belief, or custom that's now considered outmoded. ETYMOLOGY: According to the Book of Judges in the Bible, the Gileadites used the Hebrew word shibboleth (ear of corn; stream) to identify the fleeing Ephraimites who couldn't pronounce the sh sound. 42,000 Ephraimites were slaughtered. Earliest documented use: 1382. Sometimes language can be really, really important. There are some other savage examples: The Parsley Massacre (Haiti), The Battle of the Golden Spurs (Belgium) and The Sicilian Vespers (Sicily).
Euthanasia carried out by doctors is legal in three European countries, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Medical euthanasia, have more than doubled over the decade to 2012. One explanation for the steep rise of Dutch cases is the introduction last year of mobile euthanasia units allowing patients to be killed by voluntary lethal injection when family doctors refused.
After the First World War, Germany introduced a new currency called the Rentenmark, backed not by gold but by land. When the new currency was introduced on November 15,1923, Germany found itself in the curious position of having two official currencies -- the old Reichsmark and the new Rentenmark -- circulating side by side, issued by two uniquely parallel central banks
AAAAAAaaaaaaaannnnnnddddd....a picture of an echidna
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