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Stanley Watras, Radon man
Stanley Watras was an employee at Limerick nuclear power plant who set off the radiation alarms on his way to work in 1984. Other employees searched his house and found that he had radon poisoning in his basement that was unrelated to the nuclear power plant.
It was calculated that about 100,000 Bq/m³ (2,700 pCi/L) was contaminating his house and the risk of living there was equal to that of smoking 135 packs of cigarettes a day. This was the first time evidence of the danger of radon exposure was found. After this, standards were set and most homeowners began concerning themselves with radon levels.
Frank & Pfeffer
Things can get a little testy when you’re crammed into a small living space for months on end while hiding from the Nazi’s. This was the case with Anne Frank and Fritz Pfeffer. Of all the stressful relationships precipitated by living in such close proximity with each other for two years, the relationship between Anne and Pfeffer was one of the most difficult for both, as her diary shows.
In November, 4 months into the Frank familys hiding, they were joined by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and friend of the family. Anne wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to, but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live in such confined conditions. After sharing her room with Pfeffer, she found him to be insufferable and resented his intrusion, and she clashed with Auguste van Pels, whom she regarded as foolish.
Pfeffer was added to the 2 families already hiding int he secret annex after in inquiring to Miep Giess, one of the office workers who brought the hidden families food and supplies, on a place to hide. He had thought the Franks escaped to Switzerland, as was the rumor they had left before going into hiding and was surprised to see them in the attic when he arrived. Anne and Pfeffer (pronounced “Feffer” which makes for a pimp name) shared a room under the logic that Anne was just a child, so that was the best matchup, but they clashed due to Anne going through puberty while sharing a room with a middle aged man and they argued over who got to use the desk in the room, among other things. I mention the desk thing though because Pfeffer was annoyed at the very premise that Anne would need to use the desk for her silly girlish writings while he was conducting “important work” like studying Spanish and writing letters to his girlfriend – the latter, admittedly being personally important, but a case of dramatic irony nonetheless, considering the massive importance Anne’s writings would become.
Pfeffer is given the pseudonym Mr Dussel (meaning “Mr Nitwit”) in Anne’s Diary. Mr Dussel is played by comedic actor Ed Wynn in the 1959 movie:
Charlotta married Pfeffer posthumously in 1950, with retrospective effect to 31 May 1937. She had become estranged from his son Werner but both were united in their defense of Pfeffer after the publication of Anne Frank’s diary in 1947, feeling that Anne’s portrait of him—and of the pseudonym she had chosen for him, Mr. Dussel, which in German is “Mr. Nitwit”—was injurious to his memory. Otto Frank tried to placate them by reminding them of Anne’s youth and of the unflattering portraits of some of the other people in hiding. The subsequent exaggerations of this portrait in the 1955 play and 1959 movie led Charlotta to contact the screenwriters Albert Hackett and his wife Frances Goodrich to complain that they were libelling her deceased husband, who was depicted as ignorant about Jewish traditions. The Hacketts replied that their script did not mirror reality and that to inform a non-Jewish audience of the significance of Judaic ceremonies one character had to be ignorant of them. Charlotta pointed out that her husband was far from unbelieving and a master of Hebrew, but the character of “Mr. Dussel” remained unchanged.
Embittered by the unrepresentative portrait, she severed her links with Otto Frank and Miep Gies as Anne’s fame grew in the decades after the war, and refused requests to be interviewed about her memories of him.
Werner remained in touch with Otto and had the opportunity to meet Miep shortly before he died of cancer in 1995, to thank her for her attempt to save his father’s life. The meeting between Miep and Werner was recorded for the documentary film Anne Frank Remembered.
A collection of letters written by Pfeffer to Charlotta and a box of photographs of him were rescued with some of Charlotta’s possessions from an Amsterdam flea market after her death in 1985.
DEATHS:
On the morning of August 4th 1944, the secret attic was stormed by the German Security Police following a tip-off from an informer who was never identified and all the families were deported to concentration camps.
With the rest of the group and two of their protectors, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler, Pfeffer was taken to the Nazi headquarters in Amsterdam-South, then to a prison for three days before being transported to Westerbork on 8 August. Pfeffer was taken to the Punishment Barracks with the others, where he undertook hard labour, until he was selected for deportation to Auschwitz on 3 September. He was separated from the others on arrival on 6 September and sent to the men’s barracks, where he was reunited with Otto Frank. On 29 October he was transferred with 59 other medics to Sachsenhausen and from there to Neuengamme concentration camp on an unknown date, where he died on December 20th 1944 of according to the camp’s records, enterocolitis, a catch-all term that covered, among other things, dysentery, which was a common cause of death in the camps.
In March 1945, a typhus epidemic spread through the camp and killed approximately 17,000 prisoners. Witnesses later testified that Anne died of the disease 3 days after her sister. They stated that this occurred a few weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops on 15 April 1945, although the exact dates were not recorded.
999999999
It is 09:09:09 on 09/09/09.
September has 9 letters. Wednesday has 9 letters.
It’s the 252nd day of the year, added together that equals 9!
Coincidence? Nein!
10 years ago on 9/9/99 was even Ninier.
DJ AM’s Final Destination
On September 19, 2008, after having performed at a college event with frequent collaborator Travis Barker, Goldstein was seriously injured when a Learjet he was traveling in crashed on takeoff in West Columbia, South Carolina. The crash killed both crew members and two other passengers, and critically injured Goldstein and Barker. They were both transported to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia, and were both listed in critical condition. According to reports, Goldstein suffered burns on his hands and part of his head. His ex-girlfriend, singer Mandy Moore, with whom he was still close, flew to be by his side at the Georgia hospital where he was staying. Goldstein was released from the hospital on September 26, 2008, a spokeswoman told AP.
Adam Goldstein was found dead at his New York City apartment at 210 Lafayette Street at around 5:20 p.m. on Friday, August 28, 2009. He was 36 years old. Friends called the police, who along with paramedics broke into the apartment and found Goldstein’s body. Sources say the cause of death may have been accidental drug overdose.
Statements by a New York law enforcement official to the Associated Press indicate that drug paraphernalia was found in the apartment, but no signs of foul play. A rep for Goldstein released a statement: “Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein was found deceased this afternoon in his New York City apartment. The circumstances surrounding his death are unclear. Out of respect for his family and loved ones, please respect their privacy at this time.”
On what should have been a fun-filled day at the races, Nick O’Bannon has a horrific premonition in which a bizarre sequence of events causes multiple race cars to crash, sending flaming debris into the stands, brutally killing his friends and causing the upper deck of the stands to collapse on him. When he comes out of this grisly nightmare Nick panics, persuading his girlfriend, Lori, and their friends, Janet and Hunt, to leave… escaping seconds before Nick’s frightening vision becomes a terrible reality. Thinking they’ve cheated death, the group has a new lease on life, but unfortunately for Nick and Lori, it is only the beginning. As his premonitions continue and the crash survivors begin to die one-by-one–in increasingly gruesome ways–Nick must figure out how to cheat death once and for all before he, too, reaches his final destination.
Why are lesbians called dykes?
The origin of the term is obscure, and many theories have been proposed. The OED dates the first recorded use of dike, dyke in 1942, in Berrey and Van den Bark’s American Thesaurus of Slang. But the term bulldyker, from which dyke may be a shortened form, was first printed in 1920s novels connected with the Harlem Renaissance. For example, in the 1928 novel Home to Harlem, Claude McKay wrote: “[Lesbians are] what we calls bulldyker in Harlem. … I don’t understan’ … a bulldyking woman.” (The term is unattested in the OED.) From the context of the novel, the word was considered crude and pejorative at the time. There are several theories concerning the origin of bulldyker. One is that it arose as an abbreviation of morphadike, a dialect variant of hermaphrodite, a common term for homosexuals in the early twentieth century. This in turn may be related to the possible late-nineteenth century use of dyke (meaning ditch) as slang for the vulva. Bull is also a common expression for “masculine” or “aggressive” (as in “bullish”), so bulldyke implied “masculine woman.” According to another theory, bulldyker was a term used for bulls whose purpose it was to impregnate cows. Just as the word “stud” was first used for such a purpose and was later used for sexually promiscuous men or for others in reference to a man who was successful with women, the terms “bulldyker” and “bulldagger” were also taken from their original context and used for the same purpose. A man who was a great lover or successful with women was called a “bulldyker.” “Bulldyking woman” and “bulldyker” became terms for women who looked like a “bulldyker,” a male stud, and were assumed to perform the role, as well.
In Another Mother Tongue, Judy Grahn proposed that the word bulldyke might have arisen from the name of the Celtic queen Boadicea, but this theory is implausible.
That “Dike” is the name of the ancient Greek goddess of moral justice, and that its use to denote a wall or bank built to contain water or enclose a separate land dates back to the 1st millennium BCE, shows a very long, deeply rooted history of positive meaning applicable to women and to woman’s power, despite the modern day suggested etymology of a misstatement of the Greek term “hermaphrodite.”
Why do dogs sometimes eat poop?
Coprophagia, or “poop eating”, is a behavior often observed in dogs. Hofmeister, Cumming, and Dhein (2001) wrote that this behavior in dogs has not been well-researched and prepared a study.[1] In a preliminary paper, they write that there are various hypotheses for this behavior in canines, although none have been proven:
* Dogs might want attention from their caretakers.
* They might have anxiety or stress or worry about being punished for bad behaviors.
* They had been punished for having defecated in the past, and attempt to clean up out of fear of being punished again.
* Dog are, by nature, scavengers, and this might be within the range of scavenger behavior.
* They may be trying to prevent the scent from attracting predators.
* The texture and temperature of fresh feces approximates that of regurgitated food, which is how mothers in the wild provide solid food to their pups.
* Feces (particularly cat feces) contain protein; overfeeding can also increase the quantity of undigested matter in the feces.
* The coprophagia may be due to assorted health problems, including:
* Pancreatitis
* Intestinal infections
* Food allergies, leading to malabsorption
* The dogs might be hungry, such as when eating routines are changed, food is withheld, or nutrients are not properly absorbed.
* Carnivores may sometimes eat or roll in the feces of their prey to ingest and exude scents that mask their own.
Another hypothesis is that dogs want to investigate the diet of their opponents and get more acquainted with their smell.
Some veterinarians recommend adding meat tenderizer to dog food, as this makes the feces taste excessively bad to dogs. Several companies produce food additives that can also be added to the animal’s food to make feces taste bad. Often, these food additives will contain Capsicum Oleoresin, which gives off a repugnant odor making the fecal matter undesirable to the dog.
Lessons from history: flinch to live
John Sedgwick is a perfect example that you shouldn’t allow aggressive superiors to intimidate or shame you into risky behavior.
Sedgwick (September 13, 1813 – May 9, 1864) was a teacher, a career military officer, and a Union Army general in the American Civil War. His death at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House is often considered a well known tale of irony.
Sedgwick fell at the beginning of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, on May 9, 1864. His corps was probing skirmish lines ahead of the left flank of Confederate defenses and he was directing artillery placements. Confederate sharpshooters were about 1,000 yards (910 m) away and their shots caused members of his staff and artillerymen to duck for cover. Sedgwick strode around in the open and was quoted as saying, “What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”
Although ashamed, his men continued to flinch and he repeated, “I’m ashamed of you, dodging that way. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” Just seconds later he fell forward with a bullet hole below his left eye.
Source: Crocker III, H. W. (2006). Don’t Tread on Me. New York: Crown Forum. pp. 219.
1901: published article by a 14-year-old student describes the world of 2001
In the year 1901 Arthur Palm, a fourteen-year-old student from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, published an article in his school newspaper (the Excelsior) describing the world of 2001. Below is an excerpt of his article as featured in the book Yesterday’s Future: The Twentieth Century Begins (Voices of the Wisconsin Past).
“How it may appear a hundred years hence, when modern inventions have been carried to their highest point of development that even Edison would feel jealous of the great inventions in the year 2001. In the year 2001 you will see sky-scrapers sticking far above the clouds over 200 stories high. On the streets there will not be any room for street cars, so they will build lines way up in the air, and there will be landings fastened to the high skyscrapers, where the people will wait for the cars. The carlines will have different kinds of names and you will see the name “Manhattan Air Line” many hundreds of feet above the ground. You see air-ships and carriages fastened to balloons for the transportation of the people through the air, and you will often see collisions in the clouds. In one of the sky-scrapers on the 119 story you will see a sign, ‘Old People Restored to Youth by Electricity, While You Wait.'”
Places to download FREE music and movies LEGALLY
sources for free, legal movie downloads:
- Free Movies and Documentaries in the Public Domain: These are all free movies that have fallen out of copyright – download away.
- OVGuide: a meta search guide to online movies.
- Movies: This enterprising website has taken the time to find and upload clips of hundreds of movies.
- Veoh Cult Classics: Night of the Living Dead, Eraserhead are all included here.
- Watch Free Movies Online: This site is full of classic movies, all free movie downloads.
- The Internet Movie Database: Movie reviews, information about upcoming movie premieres, movie clips, and more.
- AltaVista – Video Search: Search for movies and videos on the Web in virtually any format. Find free movie downloads easily and fast.
- Yahoo Search-Video: Search for videos and movies on the Web. Also includes a link to submitting your own video to Yahoo to be indexed.
- Singingfish: An audio and video search engine. Search for movies, free movie downloads, short movie clips, and always check “Staff Favorites.”
- Google Video Search: Find videos, movies, and TV programs online.
- Netbroadcaster.com: Features trailers, shorts, independent films, and more. Most of the films on this site are free, but some do require subscription access.
- Turner Classic Movies: Lots of trailers, movie clips, and background information on all your favorite classic films. A very cool site.
- Hollywood.com: Trailers, movie clips, and more.
- All Movie Guide:Comprehensive database of film synopses and reviews as well as concise actor biographies.
- Apple Movie Trailers:An extensive collection of brand spankin’ new movie trailers.
- JoBlo.com: Reviews, trailers, scripts, interviews, clips, and a lot more.
- YouTube: you can upload, watch, and search free videos here.
- YouTube, GoogleVideo, and IFilm: Nice mashup of all three services; looks like you’ll need to know exactly what video you want, however.
- Google Video of the Day: Another day, another Google Video of the Day. Varies from funny to interesting to extremely weird.
- LearnOutLoud: free streaming lectures, audio, and video.
- VideoBomb: “Video Bomb filters up the hottest videos on the internet: people submit links to the ‘Incoming!’ page and you bomb the best ones. If a video gets a lot of bombs quickly, it makes it to the front page.”
- Truveo: a video search engine that delivers pretty good results.
- Mefeedia: “Find thousands of videoblogs (video podcasts), and watch them on your computer, video iPod or PSP.”
- The Open Video Project: a shared digital video collection
- Free Documentaries: “Welcome to the Internet’s top resource for finding free documentaries.”
- SearchforVideo: SearchforVideo is a fantastic video search engine with over 6000 sources available for searching at the time of this writing. News, entertainment, viral videos – all searchable here.
(source About.com)
Free, legal music downloads:
- Amazon MP3 Store: The vast majority of the music at Amazon is for sale, but they do have a rotation of free tracks available for download.
- AmieStreet.com: Focused on promoting new and independent music, their downloads range from free to $0.98 as they grow in popularity.
- Archive.org: An enormous collection of public domain music, expired copyright tracks, as well as some free contemporary music.
- ArtistServer.com: It started off as a resource for independent electronic musicians, but is now open to all. All tracks can be downloaded for free.
- BeSonic.com: Offers over 13,000 free tracks from mostly European acts.
- BetterPropaganda.com: A music webzine covering hundreds of music labels, and offering thousands of free & legal songs for you to download.
- CCMixter.org: a site dedicated to music that you can download to remix and post your results, all under the Creative Commons license.
- Download.com: Most people think CNet’s Download.com is just about software, but they also have tens of thousands of free MP3s you can download from new as well as up and coming bands.
- Epitonic.com: A large selection of free tracks from smaller record companies that are free to download with larger releases available for purchase.
- EZ-Tracks.com: Offers over 30,000 legal downloads that are managed through a partnership with the labels. Starts you off with credit for 101 free upon registering.
- FreeAlbums.blogsome.com: A blog that posts reviews of complete albums that are available for free downloads from numerous sources.
- GarageBand.com: Independent bands can upload their music, then have it rated by users, as well as downloaded for free.
- Imeem.com: Features streaming music from all of the major labels as well as numerous smaller companies, with numerous free downloadable tracks.
- ItsFreeDownloads.com: Finding the free downloads on iTunes can be a chore, this site does the work for you and lets you know what’s free each week.
- Jamendo.com: Artists upload their albums under Creative Commons, allowing new listeners to discover their work. Although free, there is the opportunity to donate to the performers of your choice.
- Last.fm: While most people know Last.fm for its streaming and social aspects, they offer a weekly chart of downloadable free mp3s.
- LegalTorrents.com: Proving that not all BitTorrent activity is illegal, LegalTorrents is filled with completely legal material.
- Live Music Archive: Part of Archive.org, features thousands of live performances by smaller bands as well as the likes of the Grateful Dead and Jason Mraz.
- MetalHordes.com: A band promotion site focusing on various forms of heavy metal, and allowing bands to upload mp3s users can download for free.
- MP3.com: Besides their paid section, MP3.com does offer a large selection of free tracks from acts small and large alike.
- MP3.com.au: Focusing on Australian bands, mp3.com.au offers a repository for bands to upload their music for people to download and try for free.
- MP34U: Works in conjunction with Muzic.com, this site finds sources of free music & legal music from all over the Web.
- MP3Raid.com: Searches multiple sources to bring you approximately a million free song downloads.
- Muzic.com: A sister site to MP34U, wherein the artists upload their tracks themselves, and muzic.com helps them promote their work.
- Purevolume.com: Allows independent musicians to set up profiles for themselves, stream their music and gives them the option of enabling their work for free downloads.
- Ruckus.com: Ruckus provides free music to people with .edu email addresses, and requires you to renew your licenses for DRM once a year.
- SoundClick.com: Offering a mixture of signed and unsigned artists the opportunity to set up profile pages and either stream their music or offer it up for free downloads.
- SpiralFrog.com: Major release albums and tracks available for the price of just watching some advertisements.
- Stereogum.com: Daily free mp3s from various artists, as well as rotating free albums.
- TuneShout.com: A site for independent artists to promote themselves. Artists can upload tracks either for free or at a user cost of $0.89.
- We7.com: We7 offers mp3 downloads for free, but they do have advertisements attached to them. If you want them without the ads, they do offer a paid alternative.
(source Mashable)
Yogi Berra
Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra (born May 12, 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a former Major League Baseball player and manager. He played almost his entire career for the New York Yankees and was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. Arguably the most beloved baseball player since Babe Ruth, Berra was one of only four players to be named the Most Valuable Player of the American League three times, and one of only six managers to lead both American and National League teams to the World Series.
Berra, who quit school in the eighth grade, has a tendency toward malapropism and fracturing the English language in highly provocative, interesting ways. Simultaneously denying and confirming his reputation, Berra once stated, “I didn’t really say everything I said.”
He picked up his famous nickname from a friend, Bobby Hofman, who said he resembled a Hindu holy man (yogi) they had seen in a movie, whenever Berra sat around with arms and legs crossed waiting to bat, or while looking sad after a losing game.Years later, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Yogi Bear was named after Berra, something Berra did not appreciate after he started being periodically addressed as “Yogi Bear.”
Some of the best Yogi-isms:
* As a general comment on baseball: “Ninety percent of this game is half mental.”
* On why he no longer went to a popular St. Louis restaurant: “Nobody goes there no more, it’s too crowded!”
* “It ain’t over till it’s over.” – After Berra’s 1973 Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs by 9½ games in the National League East; the Mets rallied to win the division title on the next-to-last day of the season.
* When giving directions to his New Jersey home, which was equally accessible via two different routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
* On being the guest of honor at an awards banquet: “I’d like to thank all those who made this night necessary.”
* “It’s like déjà vu all over again”. Berra explained that this quote originated when he time and again witnessed Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit back to back home runs in the Yankees’ seasons in the early 1960s.
* “You can observe a lot by just watching.”
* “It’s tough making predictions, especially about the future”
* “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”
* On a trip to Cooperstown, to attend a dinner, Phil Rizzuto commented to Yogi, “I think we’re lost.” To which Yogi responded “Yeah, but we’re making great time.”
* When told by a queen visiting New York on a particularly humid day that he appeared “quite cool,” Yogi innocently responded “Thanks; you don’t look so hot yourself.”
* When asked if he wanted a personal pizza cut into 4 or 8 slices, Yogi responded with “Better cut it into 4, I don’t think I could eat 8.”
* “It’s not the heat, it’s the humility.”