FW: Superman 'may end US citizenship', says Action Comics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13237795
 
Superman intends to give up his US citizenship, a story in the new issue of Action Comics declares.
 
"I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of US policy," the character says in a story that sees him flying to a Tehran protest.

Adopted by an American family, Superman decides he is better-off serving the world.
 
Though he only talks about his plans to give up citizenship, the story has been criticised by commentators worldwide.
 
The superhero, originally from the fictional planet Krypton, does not clearly renounce his citizenship in the issue.
 
Action Comics co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio said: "Superman announces his intention to put a global focus on his never ending battle, but he remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy from Smallville."
 
The disputed story sees the hero standing silently at the protest, wanting to show demonstrators that they are not alone.
 
Superman's announcement comes after accusations from Iran's government that he has caused an international incident, in the nine-page story written by David Goyer.
 
"'Truth, justice and the American way' - it's not enough anymore," Superman says, "The world is too small, too connected."
 
This is not the first time a comic character has distanced himself from US policy.
 
In the 1970s, Marvel Comics' Captain America swapped his identity for that of the character Nomad at the time of the Watergate scandal.
 
 
 
 

International Elvis

# 1
Hungarian Park to be Named after Elvis Presley
 
In belated appreciation for his "sincere sympathy," Elvis Presley will be named a citizen of Hungary and have a small park named after him by the Budapest city council.
 
In January 1957, three months after Hungarians rose up and sought independence from the Soviet Union, the King expressed concern for the Eastern European nation while making his last appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Elvis also sang a gospel standard, "Peace in the Valley" by Thomas A. Dorsey, to reflect his feelings for Hungarians' plight after their uprising which was crushed by the Red Army.
 
Budapest mayor István Tarlós told the media that a plot near the Margaret Bridge will be called Elvis Presley Park. The decision followed another in March which resulted in the King being named an official Hungarian.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hungarys_capital_names_small_park_after_elvis_presley_for_his_support_of_1956_revolution/2011/04/27/AF9l1vxE_story.html
 

# 2
Graceland Replica Opens…in Denmark
 
Fans of Elvis Presley living in Europe need not travel to Tennessee to get a glimpse of Graceland.
 
A replica of the King's home has been built in Randers, Denmark, although this Graceland is actually twice the size of the original so it can house a shop, restaurant and museum.
 
Graceland Randers contains nearly 6,000 Elvis items, including his high school class photo, a pair of shoes he wore in 1956, copies of his FBI files, records from his personal collection and one of his Bibles. Its founder, Henrick Knudsen, expects 50,000 visitors a year.
 
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13091099

Let's set the record straight, shall we ?

Dear Icebergs, Sorry to hear about the global warming. Karma's a bitch. Sincerely, The Titanic Dear America, You produced Miley Cyrus. Bieber is your punishment. Sincerely, Canada Dear Yahoo, I've never heard anyone say, "I don't know, let's Yahoo it."  Just saying. Sincerely, Google Dear Windshield Wipers, Can't touch this. Sincerely, That Little Triangle Dear girls who have been dumped, There are plenty of fish in the sea. Just kidding! They're all dead. Sincerely, BP Dear jf;ldsfa/kvsmmklnn, Please lknvfdmv.xvn. Sincerely, Stevie Wonder Dear Nickleback, That's enough. Sincerely, The World Dear Skin-Colored Band Aids, Please make one for every skin color. Sincerely, Black people Dear Scissors, I feel your pain.....no one wants to run with me either. Sincerely, Sarah Palin Dear Osama Bin Laden, Marco.... Sincerely, United States Dear Batman, What was your power again? Sincerely, Superman Dear Ugly People, You're welcome. Sincerely, Alcohol Dear Mr. Gump WTF are you talking about? There's a little diagram on the lid of chocolates that tells you EXACTLY what you're gonna get.... Sincerely, Jenny Dear Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream within a dream within a dream within another dream.... What now? Sincerely, Leonardo Di Caprio Dear World, Please stop freaking out about 2012. Our calendars ends there because some Spanish d-bags invaded our country and we got a little busy ok? Sincerely, The Mayans Dear White People, Don't you just hate immigrants? Sincerely, Native Americans Dear iPhone, Please stop spellchecking all of my rude words into nice words. You piece of shut. Sincerely, Every iPhone User Dear Giant Spider on the Wall, Please die. Please die. Please die. Please die. CRAP! Where did you go? Sincerely, Terrified Dear Trash, At least you get picked up... Sincerely, The Girls of Jersey Shore Dear Dr. Phil, Look man, there's only room for one fake doctor in this world and I was here first. Sincerely, Dr. Pepper

ect: Let's set the record straight, shall we ?
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:24:29 -0400

 
Dear Twilight fans,
Please realize that because vampires are dead and have no blood pumping through them, they can never get it on.  Enjoy fantasizing about that.
Sincerely,
Logic

5 rock songs quoted by the Supreme Court | Constitution Daily

Folk music has long been a vehicle of social protest.  Irish partisans pushing for home rule, American revolutionaries denouncing George III, enslaved African Americans yearning for freedom, factory workers demanding the right to organize, coal miners denouncing the "company store," Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie condemning bankers and industrialists….  The list goes on.  Long before the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the twentieth century, the power of music was formidable.
 
The power of song has so pervaded our society that now it seems that even Supreme Court justices quote lines from protest songs in their decisions.  In 2008, Chief Justice Roberts (loosely) quoted Bob Dylan when he wrote "when you got nothing you got nothing to lose" in one decision, and more recently Justice Scalia quoted Dylan's the "times they are a-changing" in a 2010 decision.
 
In fact, Dylan especially, as well as many other songwriters, have often been quoted in court cases by judges, attorneys, and prosecutors.  Perhaps court officials feel an affinity for protest music because the songs tend to be rather judgmental (from Joe Hill's "The Preacher and the Slave Girl" to Bob Dylan's "Hurricane," from Woody Guthrie's "Deportee" to Neil Young's "Ohio," from Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" to The Doors' "The Unknown Soldier").
 
http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/protest-music-at-the-supreme-court/
 
 

The Last Typewriter Factory Closes

http://www.techspot.com/news/43491-last-typewriter-factory-in-the-world-shuts-down.html

Last typewriter factory in the world shuts down

By Emil Protalinski, TechSpot.com 
Published: April 26, 2011, 2:31 PM EST

Notice that they have to describe WHAT a typewriter is/was, for those who do not know

Poly Styrene, influential singer for X-Ray Spex, has died

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/04/poly-styrene-influential-singer-for-x-ray-spex-has-died.html Poly Styrene, whose clarion call, "Oh bondage, up yours!" became the rallying cry of punk feminists everywhere and foretold the Riot Grrrl movement, died Monday at the age of 53 after a long battle with cancer.  As a member of X-Ray Spex, Styrene, born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said in Kent, England, became a symbol: The sight of a teenage girl with braces, chubby cheeks, and quirky nonsequitur outfits screaming --   "Thrash me, crash me, beat me till I fall! I wanna be a victim for you all! Oh bondage, up yours!"   -- was transformative in early British punk rock; it served as an indication to both the musicians and the fans involved that the movement, which at the beginning comprised mostly of angry, jobless young men, could be a wide enough tent to support not just that disaffected male lot, but girls with their own set of complaints (including the way angry, jobless punks treated their women). About "Oh Bondage, Up Yours." It begins with Poly making a point heard round the world: "Some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard. But I say, 'Oh bondage, up yours!'" before the all-male band behind her launches into a furious set of riffs that made countless girl bands possible. The way she delivered the words -- angry but still dancing, lips barely covering her braces -- served as one great big no to oppression in all its forms; that its lyrics are so rudimentary and to the point only clarifies the song's central concern. (And perhaps even more shocking, she was able to do it while a very un-punk instrument, the saxophone, blew in call-and-response). Her fame was relatively short-lived, though. Styrene struggled with what was later diagnosed as bipolar disorder, and though she released a gorgeous, underrated solo album, "Translucence," on the United Artists label in 1980, it and subsequent releases, including a New Age album (!), Flower Aeroplane, in 2004, failed to make an impact on the general public. She had just released a highly anticipated new full-length "Generation Indigo" in mid-March. The album, produced by Youth, featured Styrene returning to her New Wave/punk rock roots. Pop & Hiss will have more on Poly Styrene's legacy in the days to come. -- Randall Roberts

Denver Post Peeps Contest

See exciting tableaus involving those ever-lovin' PEEPS
 
see the PEEPS present "Chilean Mine Peeps Rescue," "The French Revolution : Let Them Eat Peeps," "Peeps of the Caribbean," "Lady PeepPeep Arrives at the Music Awards" (yes, she's inside an easter egg),
 
...and many many others.

http://photos.denverpost.com/mediacenter/2011/04/2011-denver-post-peeps-contest-entries/

Information Overload: Practice screen etiquette

from the online article:
 
"In this day and age so many have smartphones at the hip, ready to text, tweet, upload and update every little detail of their life, as it happens. And they have to do it now! I doesn't matter if you are at dinner or at the movies. Because who knows what will happen if you don't share that awesome pic of that slice of ham that looks like Abe Vigoda?"

http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2011/apr/20/ym_cj_castillo_042411_136957/?business&local-business
 
 

Now's The Time To See The Space Station, And Here's How To Do It

For the next two weeks, the International Space Station will be one of the brightest objects in the sky.
 
"It outshines all the stars, all the planets but Venus and actually gives Venus a run for its money," Kelly Beatty, Sky and Telescope's senior contributing editor, told Robert Siegel in today's edition of All Things Considered.
 
But if you want to get in on the action, you have to be prepared: the sightings last about a minute because the ISS is speeding at five miles per second. That lets it travel around the Earth in 90 minutes.
 
Beatty says it's worth the effort, though. Using simple binoculars, he said, you'll be able to make out the shape, because right now, the ISS is huge. It's now complete — all the pieces are where they should be — making it a shiny reflective object that's the size of a football field.
 
There's also no mistaking it, said Beatty. "The motion is very stately," he said. "You wouldn't mistake it for a meteor, because a meteor is just a momentary flash; you wouldn't mistake it for a plane, because they have blinking lights. Right now, it's a slam dunk to spot the Space Station."
 
ISS sightings for Pennsylvania:  Pick your city

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/region.cgi?country=United_States&region=Pennsylvania

Beer: Is There Nothing It Can't Do?

XXXX beer brings horse back from the dead after bout of colic   It sounds like a load of XXXX but beer saved this horse's life.
 
Diamond Mojo, a six-year-old Australian waler, had been given up for dead by his owner Steve Clibborn after being struck down with a bout of potentially deadly colic.
 
So, as desperate men do in desperate times, Steve turned to the bottle not for himself, but for his horse.
 
"I had pretty much kissed him goodbye," he said.
 
"I had spent 23 hours straight with him but nothing worked and then I remembered an old bush tale that said you could feed them beer.
 
"I don't know whether I really believed it or not but it was worth a shot and as soon as he had that beer, he burped and perked right up. So I gave him another couple."
 
Over the following days, Steve repeated the dose using Queensland's own XXXX lager until his prized endurance horse rediscovered his mojo.
 
More at: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/xxxx-beer-brings-horse-back-from-the-dead-after-bout-of-colic/story-e6freoof-1226031616394

XXXX (pronounced fourex) is a brand of Australian beer brewed in Milton, Brisbane by Queensland brewers, Castlemaine Perkins. It enjoys wide popularity in the state of Queensland, where it is commonly found on-tap in pubs and bars.
 
(thanks for the story, Sam!)

 

 

The perils of re-enacting.

 see attached cartoon

The Tilt Mechanism was an important development in Pinball.

a history of Tilt sensors used in Pinball machines.
http://www.pinball-fixers.com/PINBALL-HISTORY/tilt-mechanism.html

Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia

from The Guardian.co.uk
 
 Entire country loses internet for five hours after woman, 75, slices through cable while scavenging for copper
 

An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighbouring Armenia, it emerged on Wednesday.
 
The woman, 75, had been digging for the metal not far from the capital Tbilisi when her spade damaged the fibre-optic cable on 28 March.
 
As Georgia provides 90% of Armenia's internet, the woman's unwitting sabotage had catastrophic consequences. Web users in the nation of 3.2 million people were left twiddling their thumbs for up to five hours as the country's main internet providers - ArmenTel, FiberNet Communication and GNC-Alfa – were prevented from supplying their normal service.
Television pictures showed reporters at a news agency in the capital Yerevan staring glumly at blank screens.
 
Large parts of Georgia and some areas of Azerbaijan were also affected.
 
"It was a 75-year-old woman who was digging for copper in the ground so that she could sell it for scrap," said a spokesman for Georgia's interior ministry said yesterday.
 
Dubbed "the spade-hacker" by local media, the woman – who has not been named – is being investigated on suspicion of damaging property. She faces up to three years in prison if charged and convicted.
 
A spokesman for Georgia's interior ministry said the woman was temporarily released "on account of her old age" but could face more questioning.
 
The damage was detected by a system monitoring the fibre-optic link from western Europe and a security team was immediately dispatched to the spot, where the woman was arrested. The interior ministry said she had no accomplices.
 
The cable is owned by the Georgian railway network. It is heavily protected, but landslides or heavy rain may have exposed it to scavengers.
 
Pulling up unused copper cables for scrap is a common means of making money in the former Soviet Union. Some entrepreneurs have even used tractors to wrench out hundreds of metres of cable from the former nuclear testing ground at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan.

 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access

Google prank

Latest Google prank, for smartphones only.
 
Bring up Google search, enter "tilt" (or "askew"), hit the search button.

THE VICTOR BORGE COLLECTION

http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Victor_Borge_Collection_Singles

Biography at top of page.

Downloadable audio files at bottom of page.

Do they have? ... Do they have? ...

YES, they have " Phonetic Punctuation." 

 

 

Big Wheel Defeats Bus in Race for the Ages

from WSJ blog:

 
Nobody has ever accused of the M42 bus of speed or efficiency. The much maligned crosstown route has for two consecutive years been honored as New York City's slowest bus. But never before has the M42 suffered the indignity of losing a race to an adult pedaling a "big wheel"-style tricycle.
 
Mark Malkoff, a 35-year-old comedian and filmmaker from Astoria, Queens, embarrassed the bus in a head-to-head race over a one-mile track extending from 10th Avenue to Madison Avenue on 42nd Street. It wasn't even close: Malkoff finished in 12 minutes and 42 seconds, the bus needed 15 minutes and 20 seconds to move one mile.
 
The gripping race was captured by Malkoff's video crew. The footage features trash talking from a grown man on a toddler's bike wearing a neon safety vest. "Bus driver," the comedian yells at one point, "you think you're so cool because you have windshield wipers and can control the doors!"
 
full @ http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2011/04/06/big-wheel-defeats-bus-in-race-for-the-ages/

Star Wars humor

just in case you've never seen this one...

---

STAR WARS Quotes That Sound Incredibly Dirty Out Of Context :

- Get in there you big furry oaf! I don't care what you smell!

 
- Luke, at that speed do you think you'll be able to pull out in time?

- Put that thing away before you get us all killed.

- You've got something jammed in here real good.

- Look at the size of that thing!

- I thought that hairy beast would be the end of me.

- Size matters not. Judge me by my size, do you?

- There's an awful lot of moisture in here.

- Possible he came in through the south entrance.

- Control, control! You must learn control!

- Hey! Point that thing someplace else.

- I never knew I had it in me.

- There is good in him, I've felt it.

- Hey, Luke, thanks for coming after me — now I owe you one.

- Back door, huh? Good idea!

- She's gonna blow!

- Pull out! You're not doing any good back there!

- YAHOOOOO! You're all clear, kid. Now let's blow this thing and go home.

- Ohhh... I thought they smelled bad on the *outside*.

- You came in THAT thing? You're braver than I thought.

- I've felt him.

- It didn't go in... just impacted on the surface.

- Aren't you a little SHORT for a Stormtrooper?

- This little one's not worth the effort.

- He has too much of his father in him. - That's what I'm afraid of.


 
 

Chemical, sawdust, newspaper mix used to plug leak at nuclear plant

MacGuyver is on the case !
 
Chemical, sawdust, newspaper mix used to plug leak at nuclear plant
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-cnn-plug-hole-leak,0,1828551.story

 
 

OMG not exactly new. [ from "How To Do Everything" ]

The initialism "OMG" is one of the 900 new additions to the Oxford English Dictionary.
 
When they started looking for its origins, they expected it'd go back 20 years or so. So it was something of a surprise when they found "OMG" in a 1917 letter from a British Admiral to Winston Churchill. He actually wrote:

I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis. OMG!
 

He then explained:

(Oh! My! God!)
 

That last part is no longer necessary. Anyway, if somebody calls you out for using OMG, just tell them you're citing a 1917 letter to Winston Churchill.
 
You can listen and subscribe to HTDE here. Also on HTDE this week: how to use Pandora effectively, undo an awkward first impression, and more.

Why Men Aren't Allowed to Take Phone Messages

 

WHY MEN AREN'T ALLOWED TO TAKE PHONE MESSAGES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best. April Fool's Joke. Ever

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_swiss_spaghetti_harvest/
 
On April 1, 1957 the British news show Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil."
 
The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show's highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, "For those who love this dish, there's nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti."

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fool's Day hoaxes of all time. It is also believed to be the first time the medium of television was used to stage an April Fool's Day hoax