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September 21 Political CorrectnessTibet's spiritual leader found himself lost for words when a Czech journalist asked him what he thought about political correctness. "What do you mean?" he blinked, genuinely puzzled. His expression forced laughs from the crowd and an eloquent explanation from the journalist, but the Dalai Lama still looked stumped.
"What do you mean?" he repeated, shaking his head and turning to his assistants for help. After a lengthy discourse, the Dalai Lama straightened up but still radiated uncertainty. "I don't know... I openly express - if someone's short, I express it as short. If someone's very tall, I say very tall," he mused. "Of course, if you create embarrassment, you can't be saying this. But otherwise, black is black, white is white, yellow is yellow. And that's it." Read the news article here. Oh and btw I couldn't agree more, I'm sick of this whole political correctness thing. I wonder why people can be so offended by others simply stating a trait of their appearance or personality... October 10 Has the market crashed yet?Worried about the market crashing? Are you constantly being reminded by the media of just how fragile our economy is? Do you feel you can't handle the pressure any more? There's a perfectly good solution to that! Turn off the TV, stop reading newspapers and read a book! Or watch a movie. Or whatever. Just stop worrying, it doesn't matter how much you worry about things, nothing's going to change. With that out of the way and the real reason I wrote this post, just visit this website: http://hasthemarketcrashedyet.com/ Just check every day and that's all you need to know about the status of the market and the so-called economic crisis!! June 17 If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal
Call me an anarchist or whatever, who cares, but I've completely lost faith in what we call "democracy" these days... No matter what we do, nothing ever changes, unless it is for the worse. People in power only care about getting more power and money, and any sense of responsibility towards voters is completely gone after they are elected. It's a nice illusion for the masses though, to think that we live in a "free" society, just because we get to vote. But for how long will this go by unnoticed? I think we're approaching our limit of being served BS as a society. or not...
January 02 2007 - 50 Things We Know Now (That We Didn't Know This Time Last Year)
1. A giant fossilized claw found from an ancient sea scorpion indicates that when alive, it would have been much taller than the average man. This find, from rocks 390 million years old, suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought. 2. Skin cancer is 20 percent more common on the left side of the body. 3. Men who have only daughters have a higher risk of prostate cancer than men with at least one son, suggesting a chromosome defect. 4. Baking pizza dough at higher temperatures for longer periods enhances levels of antioxidants that researchers believe reduce a person's risk of developing cancer and heart disease.
6. People who are optimists do better in most avenues of life, whether it's work, school, sports or relationships. They get depressed less often than pessimists do, make more money and have happier marriages. 7. Scientists have figured out that a unique bacterium is what makes the sea smell like the sea. They've also found a way to capture the aroma and bottle it. 8. Minorities from low-income areas are at increased risk for having a leg amputated as a result of severe peripheral artery disease, or PAD, a type of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, of the legs. 9. A survey of 25,000 Americans found that 62 percent said they do not eat any fruit on a typical day, and 25 percent said they do not eat vegetables. All told, 11 percent ate the recommended number of servings of fruits and vegetables, it found. 10. Owls try to sound more macho by lowering the tone of their hoots. 11. Electronic noses used in the food industry and for sniffing out explosives can perform better with the addition of artificial "snot." 12. Wild herds of African elephants communicating by vibrations in the ground can determine which animal produced the vibrations. The seismic system is so sophisticated, scientists describe the elephants as having their own version of "caller ID." 13. A new species of sea anemone has been discovered in the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean, living in the unlikeliest of habitats: the carcass of a dead whale that had sunk some 1.8 miles below sea level in a region called Monterey Canyon, roughly 25 miles off the coast of Monterey, Calif. 14. Scientists have discovered particles of cocaine and marijuana, as well as caffeine and tobacco, in the air of Italy's capital. The concentration of drugs was heaviest in the air around Rome's Sapienza University, though officials warned against drawing conclusions about students' recreational habits. 15. Some people's features match their monikers so well that it makes them instantly more memorable. For example, when people hear the name Bob, they picture a large, round face, but when they hear the name Tim or Andy, they imagine someone far thinner.
18. Scientists are breeding cows that can produce skimmed milk and butter that is so soft, it spreads straight from the fridge. A team in New Zealand has identified a cow, named Marge, who naturally produces lower levels of saturated fat in her milk. 19. For small- and large-stature adults, automobile airbags may do more harm than good, new research indicates. A detailed look at crash data spanning 11 years for more than 65,000 front-seat passengers found that while airbags are "modestly" protective for people of medium stature (5-foot-3 to 5-foot-11), they appear to increase the risk of injury to people smaller than 4-foot-11 and taller than 6-foot-3. 20. U.S. military troops rarely consume all the components in MRE provisions, particularly when they are preparing for missions where reducing the amount of weight and bulk in their packs is essential. Instead, they "field strip" the rations, choosing their favorite items and tossing out the rest. 21. Fetuses are able to mount their own specific immune response to flu vaccines received by their mothers.
23. A race of 36 million-year-old, extinct giant penguins (over 5 feet tall) marched to equatorial South America during a time when the world was much warmer than it is now. Remains of the penguins found on the southern coast of Peru challenge previous conceptions about penguin evolution and expansion.
25. Fish use the threat of punishment to maintain stability in their social order. Small goby fish at Lizard Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef use the threat of expulsion from the school as a powerful deterrent to keep subordinate fish from challenging those more dominant. 26. Ape-men ancestors began walking on two legs 6 million years ago because it used far less energy than clambering on all fours. 27. Some office printers emit a dangerous amount of toner in the air, possibly causing health concerns ranging from respiratory irritation to cardiovascular problems. Some of these floating microscopic particles may be carcinogens. 28. Yawning may be a kind of low-tech air conditioning for the brain. 29. Onions contain a sulfur-based antioxidant that binds with harmful toxins in the brain and flushes them out of the body, helping to prevent memory loss. 30. The Asian Cyprian honeybee kills its nemesis, the Oriental hornet, by smothering with other honeybees as a mob, causing the hornet to asphyxiate. 31. Sex among African bat bugs is a violent affair. During copulation, males of the species pierce the abdomens of their mates with their genitals and ejaculate directly into their blood.
36. Ultra-hardy bacteria species collectively known as "extremophiles" have been discovered in NASA "clean rooms" used by scientists and engineers who are assembling spacecraft. 37. Fruit flies love the carbon dioxide fizz from beer. The insects have special taste receptors that are sensitive to the gas. 38. Overweight women who face employment weight bias could be victims of sex discrimination. Women are 16 times more likely than men to report weight discrimination in the workplace. 39. The mangrove killifish, found in the Caribbean, can modify its biological makeup so it can breathe air and live in trees for months at a time. 40 Two-thirds of women older than 40 are the primary providers for their families. 41. A derivative of broccoli-sprout extract protects the skin against the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. 42. The first prehistoric fish that made its way onto land saw a full range of colors, including wavelengths of light that human eyes cannot see. 43. It takes business people twice as long to enter text messages on an iPhone as on conventional cell phones. 44. A survey of tendencies among approximately 1,000 car owners age 18 and older showed that U.S. men and women demonstrated an equal interest in upgrading the quality of their tires and wheels. Women who responded to the survey tended to spend less than men when doing so.
45. The therapeutic, relaxing effect on the arteries provided by drinking a few cups of ordinary black tea is wiped out if milk is added to the drink. 46. About two-thirds of students play video and computer games - 82 percent of male students and 59 percent of female students. Only about one quarter said they play games often with someone of the opposite sex. 47. Infants born to mothers who eat fruits while breastfeeding will be more receptive to eating those foods later in life. 48. While lunging toward krill and fish with an open mouth, a single-fin whale can engulf up to 2,900 cubic feet of the ocean soup, which is almost equal to the volume of a large school bus. 49. The parasitic jewel wasp uses a venom injected directly into a cockroach's brain to inhibit its victim's free will and its motivation to walk. Unble to fight back, the "zombie" cockroach can be pulled into the wasp's underground lair, where an egg is laid in its abdomen. The larva later hatches and eats the still living but incapacitated cockroach from the inside out. 50. Mercury has an Earthlike molten core that wobbles like a raw egg does when spun on a countertop. October 09 Bush CountdownBy counting down to Bush's last day in office - January 20, 2009 - you can indeed make the time pass more quickly. Try it!!
Hmmm.... Great idea to make one for Tassos as well but the truth is he's probably not going anywhere 
Well, at least Bush is leaving...   August 24 Lost moon landing footage and Pink FloydHow, you may ask, are these related... First of all, in case you didn't know, NASA admitted recently (last week) that they had lost the original moon landing footage. They still have the copy (the one we got to see on TV), which is of a much lower quality than the original, but the high quality one is lost... With the story all over the news, they had to start a formal search for the missing tapes and admit to the world that they had no clue as to where the original moon landing film was...
Now, where does Pink Floyd and more specifically Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon fit in? Apparently, rock video director Peter Clifton had ordered the reel in 1979 for a rock film he was making about Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon but forgot he had it until seeing a news report on television recently...
This is not the end of it however. We are talking 700 tapes here, of which only 2 have been recovered...
Of course some would say the moon landing was faked and that losing images of a hoax is not such a big deal but I'm not going to go into that, I really wouldn't know...
 July 25 Stop the warI've tried to stay out of it for as long as I could... I can't any more... This is a disgrace! We need to come together and fight back, we can't just pretend we don't see what's taking place practically next door... (I do live in Cyprus...)
Personally, I'll try and get more involved. If you have any thoughts of what we could do please let me know... There must be more people out there who feel like this...
What really made me tick today is reading about Bush banning stem cell research because fetuses are human beings too and we cannot discriminate against them based on size and location? Of course, how thoughtful of him... How about all the people dying every day in the Middle East? Is it ok to discriminate against them because they are not in the correct locaton (i.e. US and US-friendly nations)? Yes of course it is... That's Bush logic for ya... [I'm going to argue about stem cells here btw... this is not what this post is about...]
Please guys, any suggestions are welcome...
Just a few sites to get us started:
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