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During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and trompe l'oeil to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.
Follow the link for some amazing pictures.
Posted by heff on Tuesday, February 16 @ 07:35:06 CST (81 reads)
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Scientology 'Touch Healers' in Haiti - FAIL!
Seems the Scientologists sent a planeload full of their whack-job followers down to Haiti to provide relief and aid. Seems also, that they had no freakin' clue what they were doing.
One girl was in designer cowboy boots. I asked her if she'd brought any sturdier footwear.
"Oh no, these'll be fine."
I asked another guy what he'd packed and he said he hadn't bothered to bring soap or toilet paper or food, but that he'd just "buy whatever I need at Port-au-Prince airport." I couldn't break it to him.
They had no place to stay, and no supplies — their idea was to use the ton of money they had to buy food to distribute when they got there. But there was no food and no water. That was the point.
...snip...
they had no-one who spoke Creole, and they brought the weirdness of touch healing into a very superstitious society.
They'd leave the tent and come into the general hospital downtown, and try healing people. One of the doctors and one of the nurses told me that the wounded started coming to them to tell them they didn't want to be treated by the people in the yellow shirts.
One nurse told me that the Scientologists actually caused harm — they gave food to people who were scheduled to go into surgery. That then led to complications in the operating theater.
Wow, what a bunch of assholes.
Posted by heff on Wednesday, February 03 @ 07:57:37 CST (77 reads)
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List of Nations the U.S. Has Bombed Since 1950
Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-1961
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Iran 1987
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1993
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
Yemen 2002
Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
Iraq 2003-present
Afghanistan 2001-present
Pakistan 2007-present
Somalia 2000-presemt
Yemen 2010
Dang, that's a lot of "nation building."
Posted by heff on Tuesday, February 02 @ 18:34:47 CST (79 reads)
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From the annals of food anthropology...
Now it can finally be said for certain that the salt bagel cannot survive in captivity.
Posted by heff on Friday, December 25 @ 15:07:57 CST (102 reads)
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Website Teaches Proper Use of Apostrophe
The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe. -F. Zappa
Apparently, some of you need a few remedial grammar lessons. I won't name names, but you know who you are.
Posted by heff on Monday, November 23 @ 19:55:27 CST (103 reads)
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Rachel Maddow Explains Why Fox Isn't News
Posted by heff on Monday, October 26 @ 08:31:08 CDT (73 reads)
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British Government Apologizes for Treatment of Alan Turing
Alan Turing, the British genius mathematician who helped crack the Nazi's enigma code and keep Europe free, ended his own life after being mercilessly persecuted and prosecuted for being gay.
A campaign started recently to get the UK to apologize for it's treatment of Turing.
Today, the prime minister released an official apology.
In the statement, British PM Gordon Brown demonstrates how to properly apologize to somebody. Not the standard political "I'm sorry if you were offended" BS, but an actual mea culpa.
Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind's darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present.
So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.
Gordon Brown
Posted by heff on Friday, September 11 @ 09:26:27 CDT (78 reads)
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Did Charlie Sheen Really Just Grill Obama About 9/11?
If this is to be believed, Charlie Sheen has some brass balls.
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with our 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, while he was out promoting his health care reform initiative. I requested 30 minutes given the scope and detail of my inquiry; they said I could have 20. Twenty minutes, 1200 seconds, not a lot of time to question the President about one of the most important events in our nation's history. The following is a transcript of our remarkable discussion.
UPDATE: To those who weren't clear on it, this is a hypothetical conversation. It has NOT taken place. (Yet?)
Posted by heff on Wednesday, September 09 @ 23:32:41 CDT (81 reads)
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Everybody knows what a cloverleaf looks like — but could you identify a volleyball, a double trumpet, or a 'spooey' if you drove on one in the course of your highway travels? These are among the distinctive designs that transportation engineers have conjured up to keep traffic flowing and motorists headed in the right direction when major roads intersect.
For your driverly edification, we've compiled photo examples of more than 20 different kinds of strange and delightful highway interchanges found both here in the US and abroad. In fact, right now stimulus dollars are being spent to build or upgrade many interchanges into one of these forms.
Posted by heff on Tuesday, May 19 @ 08:29:20 CDT (92 reads)
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The angels sang, the clouds parted, and the latest version of the Toyota Prius descended from the heavens to save mankind from its self-destruction. Really, that's just how it happened. At least that seems to be the view of some fanatics who have mistakenly concluded that Toyota is not bound by the same laws of physics or business as every other car-making entity on the planet.
Alas, the company is bound by those same laws. Fortunately, Toyota's canny engineers have developed good expertise in bending the laws of physics to their own will, even if the laws of business are currently taking a toll on Toyota's ledger, just as they are for other automakers.
Posted by heff on Tuesday, May 19 @ 08:23:39 CDT (95 reads)
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Could You Stand Being Waterboarded for 15 Seconds?
Posted by heff on Tuesday, April 21 @ 07:56:35 CDT (97 reads)
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Posted by heff on Monday, March 09 @ 12:36:29 CDT (492 reads)
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The Gunmarkets of Pakistan
Posted by heff on Tuesday, February 10 @ 17:10:52 CST (96 reads)
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List of Salmonella-Safe Peanut Butter Products
Here's a list of all food brands NOT affected by the current salmonella outbreak that has been traced to industrial supplier Peanut Corporation of America.
