Good news – the U.S. women’s Olympic beach volleyball team has no intention of covering up in London – despite new rules which allow them to.
There will be no conservative shorts or T-shirts for TeamUSA as they limber up in the shadow of London’s 10 Downing Street, as they have chosen to remain in their skimpy crop-tops and bikini bottoms.
‘We’re not uncomfortable in our bikinis,’ said team member Jen Kessy. ‘Growing up in southern California, that’s what you wear from when you’re a little kid to now in the summertime.’
Olympic officials have allowed a change to the dress code in the famously popular sport, to accommodate the religious concerns of nations who have reservations about women wearing little clothing on the beach.
And in addition, the changes to the official uniform of tight bikini’s reflect the changeable nature of the British weather, which can become cold despite it being the height of summer.
However, none of this has deterred the U.S. volleyball team.
‘I grew up on the beach, grew up in a bikini,’ said Misty May-Treanor, who prefers competing in a cheeky bikini because, ‘what you see is what you get – there’s no airbrushing.’
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Over 20,000 hold moment of silence in London for Munich 11
British Zionist Federation’s ‘Minute for Munich’ held in venues across Olympic host city
More than 20,000 people in various venues in London attended the British Zionist Federation’s “Minute for Munich” program that was promoted via social media.
A short memorial service at the Israeli Embassy that was organized by the Zionist Federation was streamed live online today, according to the London Jewish Chronicle.
About 200 people marked the Minute for Munich in Trafalgar Square, reciting memorial prayers and lighting memorial candles. Afterwards, they waved British and Israeli flags in front of media who attended the event.
“The British Jewish community is showing its solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel,” the British Israel Coalition’s Ari Soffer told the crowd, according to the Chronicle. “We should not allow this tragedy to go uncommemorated. This is a time to show our respect and remember the dead.”
The families of the victims of the 1972 Munich massacre, in which 11 Israeli Olympics athletes and coaches were murdered by Palestinian terrorists, have mounted a global campaign to get the International Olympic Committee to hold an official moment of silence at the Games.
The IOC continues to reject the call, despite its being endorsed by President Obama, GOP presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the U.S. Senate, the German Bundestag, the Canadian and Australian parliaments, about 50 members of the British Parliament, the Israeli government, Jewish organizations worldwide and about 100 members of Australia’s Parliament.
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Letter From Munich
A combination photograph shows the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches who were killed at the Munich Olympics
Into the unreal Olympic world, where inches and ounces and seconds are what traditionally matter most, the real world cruelly intruded at five o’clock three mornings ago. The first inkling most of the four thousand journalists here had of the dreadful events that should have terminated these now cheerless Olympics came just before 9 a.m. on Tuesday, at which hour we had been invited to attend a press conference with the American swimmer Mark Spitz, who, having won an unprecedented seventh gold medal the night before, has been crowned by the German press “der König von München.” Like just about everything else around here, though, his gilt had been tarnished. He had carried a pair of brand-name athletic shoes to the presentation ceremony for the third medal, and had felt constrained—probably under pressure from the United States Olympic Committee and under at least indirect pressure from Avery Brundage, the crusty American octogenarian who is retiring this year after twenty years as president of the International Olympic Committee—to make a public apology to his teammates. On my way to the conference, I glanced at the first editions of the local morning papers. They featured a queen not just of Munich but of all West Germany—the sixteen-year-old high jumper Ulrike Meyfarth, who had never cleared six feet until the previous afternoon, when she went three and a half inches above that and won a hysterically applauded gold medal of her own. Her glory was brief, for we learned during our wait for Spitz to show up that the Olympic Village had been murderously invaded. While we were reeling from that shock, Spitz arrived and gave sober, clipped answers to a few meaningless questions. He remained seated throughout the session, and a factotum explained, “Mark Spitz does not want to come to the microphone, because of the Israeli incident.” (He is Jewish, and nobody knew who, if anyone, might be the next target.) As a result, the swimmer’s responses were all but inaudible to us. It didn’t much matter, because must of the questions, dredged from the near-bottom of the sportswriters’ cliché barrel, were absurd and obviously irrelevant. Indeed, all the things that had been ceased to seem very consequential—even the prodigies of the regal Spitz himself.
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Encyclopedia of Life “The Encyclopedia of Life is an unprecedented effort to gather scientific knowledge about all animal and plant life where pictures, information, facts, and more are available for all things living in our plant and animal kingdoms.”
The first law in the American colonies regarding marijuana was a 1619 law that actually required farmers to grow the hemp plant. Once harvested, hemp was useful for clothing, sails, and rope. – Provided by RandomHistory.com
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The Big Jobs Myth: American Workers Aren’t Ready for American Jobs
What ails the American worker? Republicans and Democrats, chief executives and certain academics all say they see a mismatch between workers’ skills and employers’ needs. The data see something different.
A specter haunts the job market. You’ve witnessed it on the campaign trail. You’ve seen it on TV. It is the idea that the skills of U.S. workers don’t match the needs of the nation’s employers.
This “skills mismatch” is routinely held up to explain why the unemployment rate is still at 8.2% three years after the Great Recession officially ended, and why nearly half of those out of work have been so for more than six months. The Romney campaign affirms that the skills mismatch “lies at the heart of our jobs crisis.” In his State of the Union speech, President Obama quoted conversations with businessmen who can’t find qualified workers, and then proposed “a national commitment to train two million Americans with skills that will lead directly to a job.”
It is heart-warming to see Democrats and Republicans agree, but unfortunate that the thing they agree about may not be true.
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YOU KNOW OUR WORLD IS SAFE WHEN YOU SEE WORLD LEADERS IN ACTION
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US to Station Forces in Poland for First Time | Military.com.
‘Tear It Up’ by Delta Spirit – Free MP3 | Music News | Rolling Stone.
Andy Capp: The Full Story. | MetaFilter.
Anxiety More Common in the Western World, Depression in East | Psych Central News.
Santiago Calatrava At The Hermitage In Russia (INTERVIEW, IMAGES).
Support For Stricter Gun Laws Has Dropped and There’s A Lot Of People To Blame – TIME.
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Signs Found of Mysterious Neanderthal ‘Sister Species’ – Evidence lives on in the DNA of modern-day Africans: scientists
Newser – Newly discovered bits of “foreign DNA” in modern Africans indicate that a mysterious doomed “sister species” may have walked the earth with Neanderthals and humans, according to scientists. The DNA doesn’t resemble DNA from any modern-day humans, nor from Neanderthals, whose DNA sometimes shows up in modern-day Europeans. “We’re calling this a Neanderthal sibling species in Africa,” said Joshua Akey of the University of Washington. He believes human interbreeding occurred with the mystery species 20,000 to 50,000 years ago when Neanderthals were waning in Europe, and modern humans were beginning to spread out from Africa, reports the Washington Post.A skull with unusual features found in Nigeria could be a remnant from the vanished species, notes the Post. Many scientists are not surprised that another species—and even others—existed and died out in the shadow of us. But others are skeptical, particularly because of the dearth of fossil and archaeological evidence. Stanford paleoanthropologist Richard Klein told the New York Times that it’s irresponsible for geneticists to publish findings on the origin of humans without trying to reconcile them with fossil and archeologial evidence.
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Has the Meaning of Nothing Changed?
When most quantum cosmologists say the universe sprang from “nothing,” they don’t really mean nothing.
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I care about nothing. Meaning I care about the ongoing argument about the meaning of nothing, not that I don’t care about anything. One has to be careful in discussing nothing.
Anyway, I care particularly about the eternally vexing question: “Why is there something rather than nothing.” In other words, why does the universe exist at all?
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Challenges
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Adam Levin: 5 Ways to Become a Credit Adult.
UV radiation threatening marine life (Science Alert).
BBC News – The landmark buildings that never were.
Exploring Personality Psychology.
Photographer Carsten Peter gets up close to erupting volcanoes
Einstein’s right: Higher you live, faster you age .
BBC News – Protected tropical forests’ biodiversity ‘declining’.
Sunbeds raise skin cancer risk by 90%
Aesop’s fable experiment highlights how differently children and crows learn about the world.
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ALL the major religions place great importance on compassion. Whether it’s the parable of the good Samaritan in Christianity, Judaism’s “13 attributes of compassion” or the Buddha’s statement that “loving kindness and compassion is all of our practice,” empathy with the suffering of others is seen as a special virtue that has the power to change the world. This idea is often articulated by the Dalai Lama, who argues that individual experiences of compassion radiate outward and increase harmony for all.
As a social psychologist interested in the emotions, I long wondered whether this spiritual understanding of compassion was also scientifically accurate. Empirically speaking, does the experience of compassion toward one person measurably affect our actions and attitudes toward other people? If so, are there practical steps we can take to further cultivate this feeling? Recently, my colleagues and I conducted experiments that answered yes to both questions.
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Storms Threaten Ozone Layer Over U.S., Study Says
Strong summer thunderstorms that pump water high into the upper atmosphere pose a threat to the protective ozone layer over the United States, researchers said on Thursday, drawing one of the first links between climate change and ozone loss over populated areas.
In a study published online by the journal Science, Harvard University scientists reported that some storms send water vapor miles into the stratosphere — which is normally drier than a desert — and showed how such events could rapidly set off ozone-destroying reactions with chemicals that remain in the atmosphere from CFCs, the now-banned refrigerant gases.
The risk of ozone damage, scientists said, could increase if global warming leads to more such storms.
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Medicaid expansion in U.S. states found to cut death rates | Reuters.
‘Tear It Up’ by Delta Spirit – Free MP3 | Music News | Rolling Stone.
Inside the Quest to Put the World’s Libraries Online – Esther Yi – The Atlantic.
The Killers – “Runaways” Video – Stereogum.
Hunter gatherer clue to obesity.
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Mutineers’ Descendants See Swell
After mounting a mutiny against Captain William Bligh and setting him adrift along with those members of the crew who remained loyal to him, the remaining crew of the HMS Bounty sailed to Tahiti and settled there in 1789. To avoid arrest, the mutineers eventually fled to Pitcairn Island, taking their Tahitian companions with them. Their descendants, who now inhabit nearby Norfolk Island, have one of the lowest rates of myopia in the world, and scientists believe studying them could help identify the genetic causes of short-sightedness.
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Bugs Bunny Makes His Debut (This day in 1940)
Though an unnamed bunny appeared in Merrie Melodies cartoons in the 1930s, the true Bugs Bunny was born with the 1940 release of “A Wild Hare,” in which a clever, mischievous Bugs plays pranks on his hapless nemesis, a hunter named Elmer Fudd. Bugs went on to become one of the most well-known and beloved cartoon characters of all time, perhaps second only to Mickey Mouse. “A Wild Hare” was nominated for an Oscar the same year that another cartoon introduced what pair of cartoon rivals?
Originally posted 2012-07-27 10:52:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
