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November 22 The Best Day EverMonday (Nov 20) was the best ski day ever!
*for some reason, images are refusing to display today, so here are the links to the images. You can memorize the captions and then recite them to yourself as you look at the photos.
The day started with snow dumping from the sky so hard that on the first run down, I have no idea where I went. Kendra reckons it was not a run, but a rocky chute beside Whitehorn, which, if visible, probably would look deadly. Luckily I couldn't see where I was.
The snow kept falling from big purple clouds until early afternoon, at which point the sky opened up and the sun came out, making the untracked snow sparkle. Yes, untracked snow, because in spite of the deep powder and perfect temperature, nobody was on the hill that day.
 Kendra sets out from summit to make some first tracks...at 3 in the afternoon!
I set a personal best by skiing over a clump of five trees at once, which nicely filled my clothes up with snow, and also enjoyed my biggest crash in a few years on the last run of the day when I inexplicably lost my footing and bounced and tumbled about 25 metres, giving myself mild whiplash (or something that involves a sore neck) and once again filling myself with snow.
 The site of the crash. Observe the scarcity of tracks in the snow below! October 23 Useful InformationChewing gum while chopping onions will keep your eyes from watering.
Men are 6 times more likely to be hit by lightning than women.
Apples supposedly keep you awake in the morning as effectively as caffeine.
Low-carb diets may make you mentally ineffective. (stupid)
There have been 92 cases of nuclear bombs being lost at sea.
The moons is moving away from the Earth. At one time, it occupied 1/3 of the sky, and it will eventually escape.
Most burglaries take place at 10 or 11 in the morning - when a house is most likely empty. Your house is 10 times more likely to catch fire than to be buglarized.
Light has mass. About 2 kg of light hits the Earth every day. (solar sailing)
Drivers kill more deer than hunters.
Liquid Tide detergent glows under a blacklight and is much cheaper than blacklight paint.
The average housewife walks 15 km per day around the house.
Each year, 2400 left-handed people die from using right-handed equipment. Right-handed people live an average of 9 years longer.
Bayer, producer of Aspirin, marketed heroin in 1897.
Think twice before trying "old-fashioned remedies"...Ketchup was sold as medicine in the 1830's! (Buckley's!)
"News" is originally an acronym for North, East, West and South.*
The IRS procedures manual has instructions for collecting taxes after a nuclear war.
Diamonds were not given as engagement rings until the 1930's.
Only 55% of Americans know that the Sun is a star.
Parrots bite harder than humans, which bite harder than crocodiles.
A cubic metre of water weighs 1000 kg. (1 tonne)
Car airbags kill 1 person for every 22 that they probably saved.
Half of the people on Earth have never talked on the phone.
*Not true, as somebody pointed out - sorry, I dropped the ball here - News is nouvelles in French, which I knew - obviously derived from the word "new"...that's what I get for trying to fatten up my list with "facts" from some ancient book. The rest of them are true, except possibly that only 55% of Americans know the Sun is a star, and the car airbags one - statistics are subjective. But the rest I have checked, or learned on my own from trustworthy sources! [11.04.2005] September 20 The Cat Came BackMy sister is a veterinarian.
She works at a horse clinic near Nanton, Alberta. A few days ago, a woman came to check on her horse, and left her pet rottweiler in the car with her cat. Responsible pet owner that she was, she left the window open a little bit so the animals had fresh air.
Naturally, the cat escaped. It climbed out the window and prowled around the barn and generally had a wonderful time, and eventually wandered back to the car and hopped in.
It must have smelled different from being around horses, or maybe the rottweiler was just jealous that it couldn't escape too; either way, as the cat leapt in the window of the car the rottweiler caught it in the air and killed it instantly.
 The woman who owned the pets - responsible pet owner that she was - felt she must immediately discipline the dog so that he didn't do it again, so she snatched up the dead cat by the legs and proceeded to beat the rottweiler over the head with it.
She then walked back into the vet clinic carrying the dead cat and asked my sister if they could incinerate it later. My sister said sure, and handed it to a technician, telling her to just leave it on the fence post so everyone would see it, and someone could add it to the "burn pile" later.
When somebody did go looking for the cat, however, it was no where to be found. Not on the fence post where it was left, not already in the burn pile, not lying around the grounds anywhere. The vets assumed it must have been eaten by one of their dogs, or maybe a coyote.
Then the phone rang. It was the owner of the rottweiler. The cat had found its way home. Apparently it had not been dead. It had survived being chomped by the dog and then used as a weapon of discipline, and had still managed, once it recovered consciousness, to find its way back home.
Why on Earth a cat would come back after being used to beat the dog that had tried to kill it is beyond me, even moreso than how an animal can find its way home.
August 10 PalindromeOkay, to alleviate the gloom of the last entry, here is the longest palindrome I know. (word/phrase that reads the same frontwards as backwards)
GO HANG A SALAMI MOM IM A LASAGNA HOG
Beat that!
This guy's name is also a palindrome. August 08 Bigfoot
Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner has killed one, and a Japanese mountaineer Makoto Nebuka determined through a linguistic study that the word “yeti” means “bear”. Whoops.
There did exist a now-extinct primate, aptly called gigantopithecus (giant ape). From a few molars and bone fragments it is thought this creature was about 10 feet tall and 1200 pounds. Early human ancestors (homo erectus) may have hunted them.
Magic BulletsOne of the theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination is that the killers may have used "magic bullets". Although this is dubious, and completely unnecessary to prove a conspiracy, magic bullets likely do exist. They are not so hard to make.
Gallium is a metal with a melting point of about 30 degrees celcius. This means it is generally a solid at room temperature, but will begin to melt if held in your hand. In other words, imbedded in a person, it rapidly turns from a solid to a liquid. It also shatters like glass with hard impact, leaving scattered pieces which would melt more quickly than a solid mass.
Although it appears to be difficult to dissolve in its pure form, it would rapidly mix with fluids in the body a probably be very difficult to find. Gallium compounds may retain its low melting point while making it easier to dissolve.
The CIA denied a freedom of information request on magic bullets, indicating that they are likely in use. However, the gallium was all my idea. It is quite probably they have access to superior materials. (We learned about gallium in grade 10)
May 04 Mad MaxismI don't know how long it's been since it came out, but people have finally stopped telling me to go see The Passion of the Christ. I still have not. Now that it is all over with, we can talk about it. If there were no such thing as Christianity, would you have liked it? If that were just some guy being killed on screen, even if the film were "The Passion of the Buddah" would it have made so much money? It was two hours of a man being tortured to death. Generally, the more you love somebody, the less inclined it makes you to want to observe his or her death, right? What about its origins? For one thing, it is not based on the Bible. It is based on the Catholic tradition of the 14 icons representing the stations of the cross. Oddly, it is evangelical Christianity, known for its rejection of traditional icons, which immediately became the film's loudest promoters. (more evidence that these people have lost touch with their own religion, roots and values) Passion readings were performed to incite people against the Jews. In fact, it is pure propaganda that the Jews were guilty of the death of Jesus while the Romans remained innocent. An outright lie - it was the Roman emperor Constantine who ordered the first 50 Bibles and consulted on their content. Gibson's account of the Stations is based on Anne Emerich's version, which is, oddly, a seemingly "female point of view" on the narrative, and is actually more brutal than Mel's. The stories in the New Testament pertaining to the trial and crucifixion utterly lack historical foundation, and the stations of the cross are not based on the Bible anyway. "The underlying structure of the passion story was suggested by prophetic scriptures taken from the Greek Bible." (Westar Institue for Religious Literacy) If you need help questioning the historical authenticity of the Bible, read the part where Jesus shows onlookers the holes through his hands and feet. You cannot crucify someone that way. The nails tear through the flesh; you have to nail bone to the the wood. But even the original text makes no actual reference to horrific violence and brutality. Mel Gibson appears to have a horrific view of Christianity, and seems to have a host of mental issues he should overcome before appointing himself a spiritual leader. Gibson himself says he used the station sof the cross to overcome addictions, but I say he just may have moved from one mental sickness to another. |
There is no such thing as the North American Sasquatch.
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