Members of Iceland’s men’s handball team pose on the podium after receiving the silver medal during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Photo by Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images.
LONDON—Many exciting things happened to the Icelandic men’s handball team when it won the silver medal at the Beijing Olympics four years ago. Some 40,000 people crowded the streets of Reykjavik to greet the players when they returned home. Eighty-five percent of the population of 320,000 watched the handball final on television, and a water-usage study by a local utility company revealed that in the final moments, virtually nobody in the entire country went to the bathroom.
The players became instant celebrities. “Everyone knows who we are,” said Gudmundur Gudmundsson, the coach, after his team beat Argentina in the preliminary round of this year’s Olympics competition. Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, the president of Iceland, said, “Handball, for us, has become not just a sport but the core of the national spirit.”
The team even made it into a local museum. That would be the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which was moved several years ago to immortalize the victorious handball players in an unusually raunchy sculpture called The Icelandic National Handball Team. The sculpture consists, basically, of a bunch of silver penises pointing at the ceiling in a kind of wild-mushrooms-waving-in-a-field effect.
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Bill of Rights Institute “The mission of the Bill of Rights Institute is to educate young people about the words and ideas of America’s Founders, the liberties guaranteed in our Founding documents, and how our Founding principles continue to affect and shape a free society. It is the goal of the Institute to help the next generation understand the freedom and opportunity the Constitution offers.”
Alaska is the largest of the United States, but among the least populated. The 49th state to join the Union (January 3, 1959), Alaska contains Point Barrow, the northernmost point of the U.S. and Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. About one-third of the state lies within the Arctic Circle and its westernmost point is only 50 miles (80 km) from Russia. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867 for about $7 million or two cents an acre. Its name comes from the Aleut word “alakshak”, meaning peninsula. – Provided by Reference.com
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New Fossils Indicate Early Branching of Human Family Tree
Meave Leakey and Fred Spoor collected fossils close to the site where the new face, designated KNM-ER 62000, was found.
Fossil by fossil, scientists over the last 40 years have suspected that their models for the more immediate human family tree — the single trunk, straight as a Ponderosa pine, up from Homo habilis to Homo erectus to Homo sapiens — were oversimplified. The day for that serious revision may be at hand.
The discovery of three new fossil specimens, announced on Wednesday, is the most compelling evidence yet for multiple lines of evolution in our own genus, Homo, scientists said. The fossils showed that there were at least two contemporary Homo species, in addition to Homo erectus, living in East Africa as early as two million years ago.
Uncovered from sandstone at Koobi Fora, badlands near Lake Turkana in Kenya, the specimens included a well-preserved skull of a late juvenile with a relatively large braincase and a long, flat face, which has been designated KNM-ER 62000 (62000 for short). It bears a striking resemblance to the enigmatic cranium known as 1470, the center of debate over multiple lineages since its discovery in the same area in 1972.
More HERE.
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‘Jews screamed like geese when they were shot’: Chilling interview with ‘Nazi war criminal who was member of mobile murder squad’
Jonas Pukas, then aged 78, was investigated by New Zealand government in 1992
Was member of Lithuanian Police Battalion during war
World premiere of Nazi Hunter documentary tomorrow
A suspected Nazi war criminal described how Jews ‘screamed like geese’ when they were shot, in a documentary set to be shown for the first time.
Jonas Pukas, a 78-year-old Lithuanian immigrant, even laughed as he said Holocaust victims ‘flew in the air’.
He gave the disturbing police tape interview at his home in New Zealand in 1992 and the audio from it forms part of the film Nazi Hunter, which will be screened tomorrow.
The meeting was conducted by then Detective Wayne Stringer, who was investigating a list of 47 possible war criminals that the New Zealand government had received from the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
Pukas died in 1994 at the age of 80.
Read all HERE.
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Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank, took five centuries to accumulate its wealth — and three years to gamble it away. Its fall from grace is a disaster for its home city of Siena, which relied on distributed profits from the bank. Now the picturesque Tuscan city is trying to come to terms with the new reality.
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Valentina still has exactly 22 hours before her future comes to an end. She has to drop off papers at the Italian Football Federation by 6 p.m. tomorrow to register her club in Serie A, Italy’s top soccer league. It would be a triumph, a well-earned conclusion of a season in which the female football team of the Italian city of Siena qualified for promotion into the country’s highest league for the first time.
Dropping off the papers in Rome on time wouldn’t have been the problem, but the €17,000 ($21,000) registration fee was. The club’s traditional sponsor had backed out, due to “an internal decision,” as had been explained in the fax, written on letterhead with the Monte dei Paschi Foundation’s logo of three beehives at the top.
Valentina Lorenzini is the coach, masseuse and organizer of the soccer club Siena Calcio Femminile. She is a stocky 43-year-old who refuses to believe that it’s over, that something has finally come to an end in her city. “We won and we can’t be promoted,” she says. “How sick is that?”
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Cutting Violent Viewing Improves Kids’ Sleep
Limiting preschoolers’ exposure to violent videos and other mature media content can make bedtime go better. Researchers found that youngsters exposed to only non-violent and age-appropriate “healthy media” are about 20 percent less likely to have sleep problems than those allowed to view violent media. For about a year, kids of parents instructed to limit their children’s media exposure to age-appropriate content had fewer sleep disruptions. By 18 months, however, problems began to reappear, perhaps because parents were becoming more lax in what they allowed their kids to watch.
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Armed Citizen in TX Stops Shooting Spree and Saves Cop by Making 150+ Yard Shot With a Pistol
This is a pretty amazing story. An armed private citizen assisted a police officer who was pinned down by the gunfire of a madman who had just killed 3 people and could have killed many more. Amazingly the concerned citizen, Vic Stacy, did so by taking a shot of 150+ yards using only a pistol.
The caliber and gun are unknown, but Stacy mentions a “magnum bullet” which could mean a .357 or .44. Stacy landed multiple shots on the shooter and this allowed the police officer to also land shots with his AR-15 while the suspect was distracted.
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Izaak Walton (Born this date in 1593)
A friend and fishing companion of John Donne, Walton wrote one of the most famous and frequently reprinted books in the English language, The Compleat Angler; or, the Contemplative Man’s Recreation. The book not only describes the strategies and techniques of fishing, it also draws a picture of peace and simple virtue that was Walton’s protest against the civil wars taking place at the time. Though the book was first published in 1653, Walton continued to add to it—for how long?
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Looking for God—and my mother—on the television.
The Trinity Broadcast Network is the largest religious-programming channel on American television. It was founded by Paul and Jan Crouch with the help of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. By the time Daddy started watching it, mid-summer 1995, Jim and Tammy Faye had long since fallen to scandal of both a sexual and financial variety, but Paul and Jan carried on. Jan looked like Tammy Faye’s sister, down to the mascara that turned to black rivulets when she cried on camera, which she did often. Her hair was a sprawling mess, sometimes tinted pink, sometimes purple. Paul was a silver-haired, unexceptional-looking man with an outdated mustache, who spoke of his growing number of broadcast satellites as if they were his warrior-angels in hand-to-hand combat against the Devil.
The day Daddy introduced me to Trinity, I was in the computer room, typing my little rhyming poems, which were as angry as death-metal lyrics. I was fifteen years old. He hollered, “Come in here and look at this!” with a lilt in his voice as if he’d seen something too funny to be missed. When I stepped into the recessed living room—an extension to the original trailer—he told me to sit down.
“You need to watch this man.”
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The Top 10 Most Difficult Books
Back in 2009, The Millions started its “Difficult Books” series–devoted to identifying the hardest and most frustrating books ever written, as well as what made them so hard and frustrating. The two curators, Emily Colette Wilkinson and Garth Risk Hallberg, have selected the most difficult of the most difficult, telling us about the 10 literary Mt. Everests waiting out there for you to climb, should you be so bold. If you can somehow read all 10, you probably ascend to the being immediately above Homo sapiens. How many have you read? What books would you add? Let us know in the comments!
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Jordan wants the United States to believe that Islamists, headlined by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Action Front (IAF) party, are the most dangerous opposition in the kingdom. Yet this is pure fiction, a ruse that exploits Western fears of an Islamist takeover while justifying the authoritarian monarchy’s preference for shallow political reforms cloaked in the language of democracy. In truth, nearly two years of protests have exposed the more perilous threat to the Hashemite kingship to be a new generation of tribal opposition. Led by popular youth movements, these grass-roots activists demand that King Abdullah honor past promises to deliver true change, such as a fairer elections law and the elimination of corruption. Left unattended, this unprecedented wave of dissent will create a major crisis for the regime.
Tribal youth opposition began in February 2011, when demonstrations rocked the small town of Dhiban. These groups have since mobilized hundreds of protest events on a weekly basis, including dabke song-and-dance performances, impromptu street protests drawing dozens of people, organized marches attracting hundreds, and contentious acts like blocking highways and harassing government motorcades. That such agitation has spread across Jordan’s rural governorates, where many tribal communities reside, flies in the face of academic stereotypes. Whereas urban opposition groups like the IAF draw strength from the Palestinian majority, concentrated in sprawling Amman, the East Bank minority, exemplified by the tribes, is supposed to be the regime’s loyal bedrock. The reality is more complex. Tribal youth activists respect the institution of monarchy, but they have lost trust in this monarch and all of his appointed cabinets. Amman may still be a hotbed of opposition, but the most spirited Friday protests now erupt in the northern and southern tribal areas outside the capital.
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The beginnings of life: Chemistry’s grand question
Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German,Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family,some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”.
Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.com’s Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de,Scitable and Scientific American’s Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse interpretations of beginnings – from scientific examples such as stem cells to first time experiences such as publishing your first paper. You can also follow and contribute to the conversations on social media by using the #BeginScights hashtag.
Charles Darwin was a chemist. Granted, he made no notable contributions to chemistry. But in a 1871 letter to his friend Joseph Hooker he had the following to say:
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New atmospheric compound tied to climate change, human health.
New Primate Fossils Discovered – Science News – redOrbit.
Gallery: Curiosity Highlights | joebowman.
Study finds clients want real love from sex workers | ScienceBlog.com.
Study finds a new pathway for invasive species – science teachers | e! Science News.
FBI raids homes in search of “anti-government literature”, page 1.
Image: Mount Tongariro erupts.
Listening to crops: Researcher is developing a sensor to detect when plants are under attack.
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From Athens to London – Olympic Summer Games Posters from 1896 to 2012
In this article you will find every official poster of the Summer Olympic Games from 1896 to 2012.
Let the games begin!
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Aug. 9, 1854: Thoreau Warns, ‘The Railroad Rides on Us’ .
New Kenyan fossils shed light on early human evolution | e! Science News.
Hyenas that think outside the box solve problems faster | e! Science News.
Can thinking that you are fat make you fat? | ScienceBlog.com.
Early human ancestors had more variable diet.
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Literature Project – Free eBooks Online
Literature Project is a collection of free classic books, poems, speeches, and plays. For each piece of literature, we offer a free online eBook that can be easily read and searched. In addition, each online book includes links to a downloadable eBook version. We also offer Text-to-Speech software that can be downloaded from our site.
Our mission is to provide resources for the appreciation of electronic literature. We care about digital content and eBooks because we care about the environment. Save a tree and read an eBook. You can help save our planet.
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Originally posted 2012-08-09 11:11:41. Republished by Blog Post Promoter