A Blogwork 0range - Entries from April 2006

04/28/06 Man Drives Chip-Loaded Van Into Barracks

Man Drives Delivery Van Loaded With Potato Chips Into Pa. Police Barracks, Authorities Say

Posted by SM in The Brown Menace at 13:55 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

04/28/06 The Brown Menace is Red II

Potato reps dine with Chinese president:

EVERETT -- Two state potato representatives got a chance to be a part of history last week.

Washington State Potato Commission Chairman Randy Mullen and Director of Trade Matt Harris were able to participate in the friendship luncheon welcoming China's President Hu. Respected dignitaries and representatives of major Washington state businesses were also in attendance.

Further evidence that the potatoes are in league with the commies.

Posted by Trench in The Brown Menace at 12:31 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

04/28/06 Did you know...?

The Beardmore Glacier is over five miles wide at its mouth. If glaciers are "frozen rivers" then the Beardmore is the widest "river" in the world.

The surgeon on Ross' Erebus and Terror voyages, Robert McCormick, also served on the Beagle. That small surveying brig carried fellow naturalist Charles Darwin on the research journey that led to his publication of "Origin of Species".

The first black man to sail to Antarctica was Peter Harvey. Working on the Nathaniel B. Palmer's Hero, he was one of the five crewmen on the historic voyage of discovery in 1820-21.

George Bernard Shaw named the classic of Antarctica adventure stories. "The worst Journey in the World" has been continuously in print since 1922. Apsley G.B. Cherry-Garrard was assistant zoologist on Scott's last expedition. He accompanied Bowers and wilson to Cape Crozier to retrieve Emperor penguin eggs. G.B. Shaw was a friend living in a nearby village. Cheery reported he asked Shaw: "What shall I call this book? It was the worst journey in the world but I can't come up with a title." Shaw exclaimed: "That's it!"

A Scott sledge was used to hual food in a blizzard in New Zealand in 1939. The sledge was used originally on an expedition to the South Pole and was on exhibit for 26 years in a museum in Dunedin. It was used to carry food to a radio station isolated by the worst snowstorm in the city's history. The rescuers got within a quarter mile of the station and were met by the station staff on a hill overlooking Dunedin.

Cows came to Antarctica with Byrd. In 1933, Admiral Byrd took three Guernseys aboard the Jacob Ruppert supply ship to provide fresh milk for the expedition. They required sand and straw for bedding and a two-year supply of hay, beet pulp, grain and brand. At Little America there was a Cow Barn complete with an electric milking machine. One cow contacted frostbite aboard ship on the return voyage and had to be destroyed. The cattle returned after 22,000 miles of sea travel with a new bull calf christened "Iceberg", born just outside of the Antarctic Circle.

Shackleton trained for Antarctic expeditions in Norway. Camping at Lake Finse in 1914, the explorer tested his air-propelled sledge, motor crawler and round tents on the nearby glacier.

Posted by SM in Humor at 08:54 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

04/28/06 Happy Birthday

It was one year ago today that we got this party started. One year later we have 791 entries, 3268 comments, and 766010 characters used in all the entries.

Great job everyone.

Posted by Trench in Site News at 08:54 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

04/27/06 Did you know...?

In the Dry valleys tiny ponds of water exhibit microscopic life in the summer. Miniature wingless insects hide in patches of moss and lichens.

A beard-cutting machine was part of Amundsen's gear. This was useful to prevent ice from accumulating on beards from frozen breath. A tooth extrator was also taken and had to be used during the course of the journey.

The penguin is the most highly specialized of all birds for marine life. With wings that resemble flippers, a penguin can swim as fast as 25 m.p.h. in pursuit of fish, squid and shrimp. When on land, it fasts.

Mt. Erebus was named for the flag ship of Captain James Ross in 1841. It is a fitting name for a volcano that reaches perhaps a hundred kilometers into the earth. In the Greek myth, Erebus is the personification of primeval darkness, born together with "Nyx" (night) from the primordial Chaos. Erebus was the dark region beneath the earth through which the shades passed to the realm of Hades below.

Antarctica has more ice and snow than all the glaciers and snow fields of the rest of the world combined.

Frank Wild participated in five "heroic age" journeys. He was with Scott on the Discovery, with Shackleton on the Nimrod, Endurance and Quest and with Mawson's 1991-14 expedition. Born in 1874 in Yorkshire, he died of pneumonia in 1930 in South Africa where he was an unsuccessful cotton farmer.

Cpt. Cook's boyhood home is bi-hemispherical. The Great Navigator was born in Marton, Yorkshire. His farmhouse cottage was dismantled in 1934 and shipped to Australia where it was re-erected in Melbourne's Fitsroy Gardens.

Alaskan huskies were brought to McMurdo in 1956-57. With sleds and drivers, the dogs were used in case of an aircraft crash in remote areas inaccesable to air rescue. Fed on raw seal meat, the smell of dogs permeated the clothes of their trainers. The odor was so strong that the men had to be isolated from the rest of the camp -living, eating and sleeping with their dogs.

Posted by SM in Humor at 08:44 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

04/26/06 While I'm on the subject

Seems as though Florida even tried to consume David Copperfield.

Posted by Joker in In the Headlines at 09:14 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

04/26/06 Did you know...?

Antarctic Maps were drawn three centuries before its "discovery" in 1818. Piri Reis' map, painted on a gazelle skin in 1531, was rediscovered in the Old Imperial Palace's library in Constantinople in 1929. Reis, in his own writing on the chart, noted he was not the originator of the map, but he copied from ancient sources. The Oronteus Finacus map of 1531 was included in Mercator's Atlas of 1569. In 1737, Philipp Buache published a map showing demensions beneath the ice not verified until 1958, when a comprehensive seismic survey was completed during the International Geophysical Year.

Paul Siple first came to Antarctica as a Boy Scout? Winner of a nationwide Scouting contest, he was 19 years old during Byrd's 1928 expedition. His skills with dog handling persuaded Byrd to allow him to join the winter team. Trained in taxidermy, Siple skinned seals on the mess table, providing meat to the cook for dinner, and sent the pelts to the American Museum of Natural History. Losing his first flock, he kept 14 Emperors and 6 Adelies alive for American zoos on an experimental diet of seal meat and blubber.

Nataniel B. Palmer, a young sealing Captain, discovered Antarctica 177 years ago (November 17, 1820). A few weeks later he was scouting seal rookeries when he encountered the two-ship Russian expedition sent by Alexander I for the specific purpose of discovering the Southern Continent. Although disappointed, the Captain of the Vostok, Fabion G. von Bellingshausen, congratulated Palmer and named the peninsula Palmerland.

Hitler and Goering send Dornier flying-boats to Antarctica to claim the continent for Germany. Marker poles with swastikas were thrown out onto the ice to demonstrate land claims of the Third Reich.

The C-5 Galaxy aircraft can carry four helos or eight Greyhound buses as cargo.

Mt. Erebus is the tallest point of Ross Island. It is also the only active volcano in Antarctica.

Entombed under Antarctica's ice are mountains, hundred mile long lakes, and deep troughs.

The Ross Ice Shelf is equal in area to France.

Posted by SM in Humor at 09:13 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

04/26/06 Because I just had to pass this on...

Isn't it so true?

It gets annoying after about 10 seconds. Be prepared to close the window.

Posted by Alyric in Humor at 08:49 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

04/26/06 Florida

Florida cops really seem to like those tasers...

Parents: Student Shocked 3 Times Over Cell Phone

Fla. Woman In Wheelchair Dies After Police Taser Shock

You know the more I read from Florida, the more I never ever want to visit that place. I don't care if the weather is nice, or whatever kinds of tourist attractions they may have. Florida to me is becoming less about where old folks go to die and more like one of the most screwed up places on the planet. Just carpet bomb it, follow it up with a small army of landscapers to fill in the craters and make the place look pretty again. After the landscapers finish up, roll in there with a hoarde of contractors to begin building. Fresh start I say, and you create more jobs in the process. Plus you get rid of all those friggan gators.

Is it my imagination or are the cops really stepping up on the use of those tasers? More power to em.

Posted by Joker in In the Headlines at 07:54 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

04/25/06 Is there a sturgeon in the house?

Fish jumps in boat and smacks woman's face

I couldn't help but share this one. Smacking some one in the face with a fish has always been a dream of mine...

Posted by Joker in Humor at 12:56 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

04/25/06 Did you know...?

Jules Dumont d'Urville, in addition to exploring the coast of Antarctica, discovered the statue Venus de Milo and brought it to France.

The South Magnetic Pole was east of Ross Island in 1600. It has moved roughly northwest at the rate of 6-9 miles per year, and is now in the Dumont d'Urville Sea.

The first people to winter on the Ice were in a British-funded team under the leadership of Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink, a Norwegian. The 10 men (three British, five Norwegian, and two Finns) lived in two huts (called Camp Ridley) at the base of Cape Adare from March 1899 to January 1900.

On March 12, 1842, the Erebus and the Terror, James Clark Ross's ships, collided in a storm in a field of icebergs, crippling the Erebus. Three days later, both ships were repaired enough to continue the voyage.

Robert Falcon Scott's first voyage to the Antarctic, in 1901-1904, began poorly: The expedition's ship, Discovery, was found to be leaking on the voyage from Britain to New Zealand.

The first newspaper on Antarctica was the South Polar Times, published by Scott's expedition each month. Ernest Shackleton was the editor and printer. Submissions were solicited from all members of the group.

The South Polar Skua is found farther south than any other bird in the world? Some have been observed by explorers on the ice sheet, and even at the geographic South Pole. The skua has a strond homing instinct. Five nesting birds were tagged, flown to the South Pole and released. Ten days later one of these birds had returned to it's nest after an 800 mile flight over barren, featureless terrain.

McMurdo has a winter garden? Salads were served every lunch and dinner from March through September from this oasis. The winter population of 155 people missed only 5 days of home-grown "freshies". A crop of 680 lbs. of lettuce, 70 lbs. of tomatoes, 51 lbs. of cucumbers, 62 lbs. of peppers and 25 lbs. of herbs were grown without soil. A nutrient-rich solution produced a constant harvest in our hydroponic greenhouse.

Posted by SM in Humor at 09:13 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

04/24/06 Potatoes strike in Tasmania

Potato harvesters dig up WWII mortar bomb:

A team of potato harvesters in northern Tasmania dug up more than they bargained for at the weekend - a World War II mortar bomb.

Army bomb disposal experts were flown from Melbourne to the Campbell Town farm and declared the rusty three kilogram bomb to be a harmless practice round.

Major Danny Rowe says they are called out to Tasmania on average once a month and only 10 per cent of bombs are found to be live.

"Some of the areas around here were used during the war and post war as practice ranges, for troops that were billeted down in Tasmania, so some of these areas have old ammunition on them that have been fired during the war," he said.

"This one will go away and be scrapped at a scrap metal yard."

They think it's from a WWII practice range but we know better don't we?

Posted by Trench in The Brown Menace at 13:56 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

04/24/06 The weekend movie...

In my double movie weekend I was able to catch a rare gem. Normally video game adaptions of movies don't really seem to do to well, especially when the likes of Uwe Boll gets his grubby little paws on them. "Silent Hill" is a rare exception to the game to movie equals bad type of scenario.

Borrowing its ideas heavily from the series of games "Silent Hill", the plot outline is pretty much this. Rose and Christopher have an adopted daughter Sharon, she suffers from horrible nightmares, sleepwalking and blackouts yet she always seems to mention the place Silent Hill. Rose quietly takes Sharon with her one night to find the mysterious town of Silent Hill. After she has an accident while nearing the town and blacking out, she wakes up to find Sharon missing and begins her frantic search through the town to find her. The town of Silent Hill is truly it's own character in the film, with the bleak atmosphere of washed out grey and raining ash the whole place seems claustrophic even while running through the streets. When the air raid sirens all hell breaks loose, literally. The walls and landscapes twist, rot and rust. Metal seems to be everywhere, chain link fences and iron plates. Hideous wretched creatures shamble forth from no where to visually assault the viewer. One of the most memorable of these creatures is Pyramid Head (as he is known in the game). He drags behind him a massive sword that more appropriately resembles a chunk of flat iron with an edge. What he does to one victim is truly amazing and will not soon be forgotten by one such as myself. The movie follows Rose and her frantic search for her daughter and the evils she discovers about the town of Silent Hill.

This movie easily walks away with a five out of five. The story is pretty amazing in itself, just like the video game series of Silent Hill, you never really know what is going on or why it's happening. Although in the movie they do go a little farther to try to tie it up for you. Many of the characters are rather memorable and they don't get lost in the shuffle of all that goes on in the movie. There are some truly solid parts where the sense of dread and apprehention are palpable. And if none of these other reasons sway you to see this movie, just go and look at the visuals. Nuff said.

Posted by Joker in Movies and film at 11:38 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

04/24/06 Did you know...?

"Nasophilia" is the arousal from the sight, touch, licking or sucking of a partner's nose.

England is smaller than New England.

Jimmy Hoffa's middle name was Riddle.

Billy goats urinate on their own heads to smell more attractive to females.

Giraffes sleep only five minutes at a time, for a total of about 20 minutes a day.

Iolani Palace, in Hawaii, is the only royal palace in the United States.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...)
The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... "goodnight, sleep tight."

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month . which we know today as the honeymoon.

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice

Captain John Davis aboard the Huron out of New Haven, Connecticut, may have made the first landing on Antarctica at Hughes Bay, on the Antarctic Peninsula, on February 7, 1821, on a sealing trip. The next known landing on the continent was at Cape Adare in Victoria Land on January 18, 1895, 74 years later.

Posted by SM in Humor at 11:09 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)