Fascinating story regarding a squid fishing boat that floated away following last year’s earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. This Japanese craft has floated the seas since then, a rusted derelict that will, apparently, soon ground itself somewhere…
There’s something almost primal, romantic, even scary, about the concept of an abandoned ship. A story like this should appeal to me…I’ve toyed with that idea of an abandoned craft in one of my novels.
If you’re not in the mood to read the article, the video I’ve embedded below shows a photograph of the derelict craft.
One of the more recognizable, at least to me, helicopters out there is the military’s Apache attack helicopter. This video, presented on CNN, shows one of those fearsome helicopters having an equally fearsome crash in Afghanistan. As the reporters note, no one was injured in the incident (incredibly!).
Fascinating video and article from CNN concerning a possible clue to the fate of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft found in a 1937 photograph. The video of the story is first:
Consider me one of those people who are fascinated with the the multitude of “unsolved mysteries”-type stories one can run into. Perhaps chief among them is the perennial mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart back in 1937 while attempting to become the first female to circumnavigate the globe by aircraft. Discovering the fate of Ms. Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan would be a terrific story and close the book on the enduring mystery and I hope the investigators in this article and video are on the right track.
Having said that, the photograph they say may show the landing gear of the Lockheed Electra protruding from a reef is intriguing but I find it hard to completely swallow. Why did whoever took that photograph a few months after Earhart’s disappearance not notice a metal protrusion coming out of the water by the island? Granted, the image takes up a very small part of the photograph, but still, wouldn’t they have noticed something metallic shimmering close to the edge of shore? Further, and while I freely admit to being absolutely NO expert at the Lockheed aircraft, the amplified image itself looks like something of a Rorschach blotch. Is it possible the investigators are seeing what they want to see there?
I certainly don’t know, but I sincerley hope their theories turn out to be true and one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th Century is finally solved.
What truly blew me away, apart from the interesting information regarding prostitution throughout the various eras (and who it was that coined the phrase “the most ancient profession”, which over time became the more familiar “world’s oldest profession”), was the information regarding the exchange of sexual favors for items in the animal kingdom, specifically in monkeys and penguins (!).
Amazing bit of information that once again suggests that we as human beings are not as far removed from our animal “cousins” as we may think.
If you have a pet dog or cat, one of the biggest nuisances you probably face are fleas and ticks. Thankfully, the fleas we have to deal with nowadays aren’t anywhere near as fearsome as those that existed back in the age of dinosaurs!
Fascinating clip from Huffington Post regarding finding the identity behind one of the several (!) disembodied feet found in the British Columbia area:
When I first heard about the many dismembered feet found in the British Colombia area, my first thought was: Why feet? Why didn’t they find, for example, heads or legs or arms? After seeing the photograph of the boot -and assuming it is the boot which housed the dismembered foot mentioned in this story!- that particular element of the story, at least to me, a bit clearer. The boot, as shown, remains in great shape despite the passage of many years. Given it hasn’t disintegrated all that much over that time, it is logical to assume that what was inside the boot also remained in place. While the rest of a person’s body decomposes and -no other nicer way to say it- breaks apart, the foot tucked inside the boot/shoe would stay in place.
Thus, people who died in the waters of the lakes, whether their deaths were caused by natural or darker means, would have their bodies eventually decompose but their feet, trapped within their shoes, had a better chance of eventually being found.
Despite the fact that this murder occurred so very long ago, I felt a great deal of sadness reading about this unknown girl/woman (she was between 16 and 20 at the time of her death) and her fate.
Given the times this young woman was living in, around 50 A.D., and the events occurring in England, it chills me to think of the possible terrors she faced during her final days of life. One imagines she could well have been a prisoner of the advancing Roman army and, as mentioned in the article, once she outlived her “usefulness” to the invaders, she was murdered and hastily buried.
A tragic -albeit small- piece of history that nonetheless gives us a window on ancient times. Given what we know about modern warfare and its victims, stories like these makes one wonder how much we have truly advanced in all these years.
Back in the later 1980’s and for a several years afterwards, I really got into the heavy metal music of Anthrax, Stormtroopers of Death, and Megadeth. Though I tried a few other bands at that time, including the ever-popular Metallica and heavy metal favorites Slayer, the ones I really liked was that original group of three…two if you count Stormtroopers of Death as what they were, half the members of Anthrax doing an offshoot project.
Megadeth, fronted by ex-Metallica member Dave Mustaine, were in my mind sensational. While the fact that he was kicked out of Metallica resulted in plenty of “which band is better” comments among the fans, to me there was no question: Megadeth was the better group…if not the better selling and more popular one.
Mr. Mustaine certainly had his demons, including alcohol and drug use and the group went through more personnel changes than any other band I had followed. For the most part, however, it didn’t appear to hurt their music. Each successive album was quite good, at least in those early years. The band, in my opinion, released not one but two absolutely classic heavy metal albums: 1986’s Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying (their second album) and 1990’s Rust in Peace (their fourth album). Their biggest chart topper would be the album that followed Rust in Peace, 1992’s also quite excellent Countdown to Extinction.
After that came Youthanasia, a decent effort but the band was clearly slowing down and not producing music that was quite as “heavy”. Their next album, Cryptic Warnings, didn’t do all that much for me. The album after that, Risk, did even less.
The band underwent more turmoil, but in 2001 and with the release of The World Needs a Hero, I heard faint distinct echoes of what made me like the band in the first place. While the album as a whole wasn’t as good, IMHO, as some of the “classic” albums, for the first time in a while I was optimistic that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Mustaine and company (whoever he had in the band at that time) could make a comeback. For the first time in a while, I had hope.
Unfortunately, this hope seemed to be dashed permanently when news came out that Dave Mustaine suffered nerve damage to his arm in 2002 and it looked like he might never be able to play the guitar again. Mr. Mustaine went on to announce the end of the band and an era appeared over.
But, after extensive therapy, Mr. Mustaine recovered and was back to playing. Finally, after so many years, could there be a rebirth?
Well, since that time the band has released three more albums. And in the intervening years, Mr. Mustaine has changed.
A lot.
When it was announced he had become a born again Christian, I noted that his songs began to have a certain…rightward…bend. Then I heard Mr. Mustaine refused to sing some of the songs off his earlier albums. They simply didn’t fit his current mind set. His politics, too, headed right, and therefore it isn’t terribly surprising to find his endorsement of Mr. Santorum, a man who I strongly suspect would be only too happy to ban all of Mr. Mustaine’s music.
It’s a funny world we live in. I can’t help but wonder what a younger Dave Mustaine would think of the older version of himself. The personality change is about as complete as one could imagine.
Regardless, I’ve always felt that people should do whatever makes them happy, provided they do no harm to others in the process. Unfortunately, the subject matter and music in Mr. Mustaine’s latest albums just haven’t been my cup of tea. At all. I’ve given up on the hope that Megadeth might one day surprise me and release an album that stands toe to toe with their best.
Luckily, and when the mood hits me, I can still enjoy the works from the past.
Surely the world’s most famous painting is the Mona Lisa. Even if you have absolutely no interest in art at all you know of that painting, not just by name but by its subject.
In Madrid, the earliest copy of the Mona Lisa has been discovered, a piece most likely done by someone in Da Vinci’s studio concurrently with the production of his work and using the same model!
