Saturday, May 27, 2006
Egg came first - Eggsperts agree
It's a question that has baffled scientists, academics and pub bores through the ages: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.
Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life.
25 worst tech products of all time
Here are the top ten …. from worst to less worse:
1. America Online (1989-2006)
2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
7. Microsoft Bob (1995)
8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
9. Pressplay and MusicNet 2002
10. Ashton-Tate dBASE IV (1988)
The complete list (qand an explanation for each)
Tricks of the trade
Here are just a few:
Short order chef: Making toast? Start the toaster before you start looking for the bread, unwrapping it, and slicing it. That'll give the toaster a few seconds to warm up before you put the bread in, and your toast will be done that much sooner.
Hockey player: Are your hockey skates giving you blisters? Pick up some produce bags from the grocery store and put them over your socks before you lace up the skates. They serve as a frictonless surface that will prevent your feet from getting blisters, and also make the skates very easy to take off after you're finished playing.
Winter pick-up truck driver: It's difficult to drive a pickup truck on slick winter roads because the light back end will fishtail. Shovel the snow from your driveway into the truck bed. You'll weigh down the back end and clear your driveway. When it warms up enough to not need the extra weight, the snow will melt and there's no clean up.
Photographer: When taking a photo of a portrait subject, count down 3-2-1-Cheese!, take one shot, and then take another shot immediately after. The smile in the first picture will often look stilted and posed, but there is usually a moment a split-second later when the model will relax and his smile will look much more natural.
Artist: If your magic marker is running dry, tape a string to the bottom of it and spin it over your head in a big circle. A few times around will generate enough centrifugal force to push any remaining ink to the tip.
Warning: There is usually a lot more ink left in a "dry" marker, so make sure the lid is on security before you start and remove it carefully when you are finished.Delivery driver: Plot your course ahead of time and make it a close to a circle as possible, so when you are done with your deliveries you are near the beginning of your route. Then, when driving the route, remember that it's much faster to go clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, as you will have many more right-turns than left.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Testimony
If you ever testify in court, you might wish you could have been as sharp as this policeman.
He was being cross-examined by a defense attorney during a felony trial. The lawyer was trying to undermine the policeman's credibility....
Q: "Officer -- did you see my client fleeing the scene?"
A: "No sir. But I subsequently observed a person matching the description of the offender, running several blocks away."
Q: "Officer -- who provided this description?"
A: "The officer who responded to the scene."
Q: "A fellow officer provided the description of this so-called offender. Do you trust your fellow officers?"
A: "Yes, sir. With my life."
Q: "With your life? Let me ask you this then officer. Do you have a room where you change your clothes in preparation for your daily duties?"
A: "Yes sir, we do!"
Q: "And do you have a locker in the room?"
A: "Yes sir, I do."
Q: "And do you have a lock on your locker?"
A: "Yes sir."
Q: "Now why is it, officer, if you trust your fellow officers with your life, you find it necessary to lock your locker in a room you share with these same officers?"
A: "You see, sir -- we share the building with the court complex, and sometimes lawyers have been known to walk through that room."
The courtroom erupted in laughter, and a prompt recess was called.
Cool stuff for the car nut
The spinner will rotate in the exhaust stream. At high engine speeds the spring-loaded spinner is also pushed out of the exhaust tip, giving a visual indication of the revving engine. For a variety of cars with electronic fuel injection engine control, the SPINNER EXHAUST TIP has the beneficial effect to eliminate the initial hesitation of the engine under rapid acceleration.
Get yours $44.95 here.
Dog diets after dining on donuts and beer
MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. -- An extremely overweight dog is being rehabilitated after being fed a diet of beer and doughnuts.
The scale-busting diet was not illegal in Arizona, reported NBC Phoenix station KPNX-TV.
But now she's getting slimmer as a swimmer.
Melissa Amato is fostering the dog, who can barely support her own weight. So she works out in the water at an animal rehabilitation center.
After just five sessions, she has dropped 7 pounds and can spend almost 20 minutes burning calories in the pool.
The aquatic therapy is just the beginning of Sessa's personal training. She'll move on to other workouts when she's ready.
It may take a year before she sheds all of the pounds.
Is this skydiver lucky... or unlucky
You decide.
First he loses his chute completely… then he finds his reserve chute and glides into power lines.
Man catches 1,262 lbs hammerhead shark
FT. MYERS, Florida- A Port Charlotte fisherman caught a great hammerhead shark near Boca Grande on Tuesday that could be a new world sport fishing record. Fisherman Bucky Dennis was alone on his boat when the animal took the bait, a 25-pound stingray. Dennis said it took five hours to land the great hammerhead shark after it towed their fishing boat 12 miles from Boca Grande Pass. The female great hammerhead was measured at 14.5 feet long and 1,262 pounds, with its hammer measuring more than three feet across.
209 pound 6 year old kid
If there is a 'face of child obesity', it is six-year-old, 15-stone Dzhambulat Khatokhov. Sheer size has made this boy from a poor Russian family a hero in his home town and an object of fascination in the west.
Just sitting down in Dzhambulat Khatokhov's house sucks you straight into his empty world. "There is not a single piece of furniture that he has not broken," his mother, Nelya, laments as I perch on a stool barely held together by a quiver of nails.
Six-year-old Dzhambulat is 4ft 7in (1.4m) tall but weighs a staggering 15 stone (95kg or 209 pounds) . Since he was three, he has been touted as the biggest child in the world. But the sparsely furnished flat in which Nelya, 38, lives with the boy-phenomenon known as "Dzhambik" and his superlative-free, skinny brother Mukha, 14, confirms that fame does not always go hand in hand with fortune.
Dzhambik is so big that there isn't room for much else in his life. He is hostage to the attention that his enormousness brings him. People feed him; people talk about how big he is. He takes great pleasure in throwing his weight down on to his only real piece of furniture, a steel-framed bed, grinning as it groans under his weight. At times, he is a walking test of how people view obesity - is he tragically out of control, Benny Hill-funny, or happily rotund? Does he himself know or even care?
Two old rednecks....
Two OLD rednecks are sitting on a porch rocking. They see a dog in the front yard licking himself. One old guy says, "Boy I tell ye what, I shore do wish I could do that!. The other guy looks at him in all seriousness and says, "Boy! That dog would BITE YOUUUUUU!!!!"
Think you're having a bad day?
If you don't laugh out loud after you read this you are in a coma!
This is even funnier when you realize it's real! Next time you have a bad day at work, think of this guy, Rob a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in
Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 on FM dial in
Hi Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother.
Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all.
Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.
As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater.
This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.
Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt
I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically Needless to say I aborted the dive.
I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.
When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.
So, next time you're having a bad day at work..think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt
Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job."
Whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, "Is this a jellyfish bad day?"
May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!!
Thanks Phyllis
Thursday, May 25, 2006
More Jack Bauer Facts
Jack by popular demand…
- Only Jack Bauer can fly a plane from the luggage compartment.
- If everyone on "24" followed Jack Bauer's instructions, it would be called "12".
- Once, someone tried to tell Jack Bauer a "knock knock" joke. Jack Bauer found out who was there, who they worked for, and where the goddamned bomb was.
- Jack Bauers calender goes from March 31st to April 2nd, no one fools Jack Bauer.
- 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.
- Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas.
- When life gave Jack Bauer lemons, he used them to kill terrorists. Jack Bauer fucking hates lemonade.
- Jack Bauer played Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun and won.
- Jack Bauer sleeps with a pillow under his gun.
- Jack Bauer was never addicted to heroin. Heroin was addicted to Jack Bauer.
- If Rosa Parks was in Jack Bauer's seat, she'd move to the back of the bus.
- Killing Jack Bauer doesn't make him dead. It just makes him angry.
- Jack Bauer could strangle you with a cordless phone.
- Jack Bauer doesn't miss. If he didn't hit you it's because he was shooting at another terrorist twelve miles away.
- In 96 hours, Jack Bauer has killed 93 people and saved the world 4 times. What the hell have you done with your life?
- Tony was once shot in the neck, rushed to the hospital, underwent emergency surgery and was back on the job in just a few hours. Jack Bauer still can't believe that pussy went to the hospital first.
- When someone asks him how his day is going, Jack replies, "Previously, on 24..."
- Osama bin Laden's recent proposal for truce is a direct result of him finding out that Jack Bauer is, in fact, still alive.
- Jack Bauer's favorite color is severe terror alert red. His second favorite color is violet, but just because it sounds like violent.
- When Jack Bauer goes to the airport and the metal detector doesn't go off, security gives him a gun.
- Jack Bauer doesn't take fingerprints, he takes fingers.
- Kim Bauer was an accident. Not even the pill can stop Jack Bauer.
- Never use the phrase, "I feel half dead," around Jack Bauer; he never leaves a job unfinished.
- There are no such thing as lesbians, just women who never met Jack Bauer.
- You know Jack Bauer loves Audrey when he willingly gives up the opportunity to torture her.
- Jack Bauer teaches a course at Harvard entitled: "Time Management: Making the Most Out Of Each Day."
- Jesus died and rose from the dead in 3 days. It took Jack Bauer less than an hour. And he's done it twice.
- When President Palmer quit to start doing Allstate commercials, it took him 43 takes before he could stop saying, "You're in good hands with Jack Bauer".
- When Batman is in trouble, he turns on the Jack Bauer signal.
- Jack Bauer can get McDonald's breakfast after 10:30.
- People with amnesia still remember Jack Bauer.
- When Jack Bauer was a child, he made his mother finish his vegetables.
- Jack Bauer got Hellen Keller to talk.
- When the boogie man goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Jack Bauer.
- Finding Nemo would have been vastly more exciting had Jack Bauer been looking for him.
- G.I. Joe has Jack Bauer action figures.
- If Jack Bauer misspells a word, your dictionary is wrong.
- Henderson's men actually took cover behind a water tank. Unfortunately, when Jack Bauer wants an explosion, water turns into natural gas.
- If Jack Bauer was gay, his name would be Chuck Norris.
- Jack Bauer literally died for his country, and lived to tell about it.
- You can lead a horse to water. Jack Bauer can make him drink.
- When Jack Bauer pissses into the wind, the wind changes direction.
- If you're holding a gun to Jack Bauer's head, don't count to three before you shoot. Count to 10. That way, you get to live 7 seconds longer.
- During the commercials, Jack Bauer calls the CSI detectives and solves their crimes.
- If Jack Bauer shot you while quail hunting, it wouldn't be an accident.
- Jack Bauer makes onions cry.
- Jack Bauer tells Bob Barker when the price is right.
- Jack Bauer often stands in front of his microwave and yells "WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME" while waiting for his Top Ramen to cook.
- Jack Bauer can leave a message before the beep.
- During the 18 months Jack Bauer was believed dead, CTU saved over $1 billion on ammunition.
- When Jack Bauer turns on an Xbox the screen just says "You Win" and turns itself off again.
- Explosions do not kill Jack Bauer, they just get stuff out of his way.
- Jack Bauer's family threw him a surprise birthday party when he was a child. Once.
- In one episode, there was an assassin who had the ability to throw Jack Bauer to the ground and break his rib. I hate how unrealistic 24 is sometimes.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Little did he know fear itself fears Jack Bauer.
- Jack Bauer once ate an entire bottle of sleeping pills. They made him blink.
- The "Smoothie" was invented when Jack Bauer needed information from a banana.
- Oil and Water don't mix, unless Jack Bauer tells them to.
- Nobody says 'hit me' when Jack Bauer deals Blackjack.
- Jack Bauer does not sleep. The only rest he needs is what he gets when he's knocked out or temporarily killed.
- If O.J. ever met Jack Bauer, he'd confess.
- Jack Bauer came up with the idea to can and sell his own urine, that product is known as Red Bull.
- Jack Bauer once downloaded the entire Internet onto his PDA.
- When Jack Bauer sneezes, God blesses him.
- The reason why terrorists attacked New York City was because Jack Bauer was in LA.
- Jack Bauer doesn't eat honey, he chews bees.
- Jack Bauer thought the movie "Mission: Impossible" was completely unrealistic. No mission is impossible.
- A terrorist once killed himself so Jack Bauer did not torture him. Jack just laughed, brought him back to life, and tortured him.
- Jack Bauer does not hunt because the word hunting infers the probability of failure. Jack Bauer goes killing.
Funeral stories
Here are a few:
My Sisters ex husbands long long trip to the after life….
My sisters ex died suddenly of an excess of gravity (twat fell into a hold on a ship pissed while shouting abuse at a deck hand working for him). Now my sister and him hated each others guts but for the sake of the kid she did the right thing with the inlaws at the funeral, she was greatly surprised to be handed the casket a while later as they were sure she would know what he would have wanted done with it as he had left no specific instructions.
So being the woman scorned she did the following, (please note he hated all the following places and services with a vengeance).
1 Dropped his ashes in several Micky D, Little Chief fine food establishments.
2 Places small amount in envelopes and sent them to non existent address around the world with no return address( he hated the post office for some reason!)
3 Mixed with bread and feed to seagulls, he hated these and their plop (shame as he is part plop now)…
4 She asked me to deposited some in urinals so he could be pissed on by strangers. ( I obliged her by doing this in several establishments including the George in Dublin (very pink establishment) as he was a skank homophobe as well…
5 He wanted to be laid to rest at sea being a jolly jack tar, We feed some to his remains to his dogs so he could be shit out a dogs ass. then flushing same, so he could take the long journey to the sea via the sewers in a dog doo raft (not quite the Styx , I should have jammed a few coins in the log for Charon)..
6 The rest of his ashes are still in my sisters bedroom so he can witness her not faking an orgasm…
A friend of mine...
attended his Uncle's funeral at the impressionable age of 6. As the coffin was lowered slowly into the grave, he mistook the priest's sombre words "Unto the father, the son and unto the holy ghost" for "Unto the father, the son, and into the hole he goes"!
Dad had died... his coffin was brought back to the house...
... so people could pay their last respects.
During the last weeks as he was sedated before dying, visitors were refused access to preserve both his dignity and his memory. It seemed only fair that his friends and further family could visit him at home for one final farewell.
Picture the scene. The close family are gathered around the coffin in the dining room. My brother-in-law tactfully softened the lighting ready for the candles to be brought out.
No-one could say anything. Eventually my brother found the courage to ask "do you think he's up there looking down on us?" a tremble in his voice.
Tears welled in my eyes. My sister remained silent. All eyes turned to the coffin.
And then... amazingly... the lights became incredibly, fiercely bright. In a split second the room was then pitched into absolute darkness.
Silence.
Then the lights slowly returned to their previous softness.
Mum hopefully looked up to the heavens for another impossible sign from my dear, deceased father... as my brother-in-law, with real fear in his voice announced:
"Sorry everyone... I just leant on the dimmer switch."
Still laughing with him about that a couple of years later. Truly worthy of Frank Spencer.
VisiCalc
If you use Excel, then you should thank the people who invented the first popular electronic spreadsheet for the computer. It was called VisiCalc.
It was created by Dan Bricklin and Bob Franklin’s company Software Arts. It was first shipped in 1979.
VisiCalc attributes:
- It was interactive in a WYSIWYG way
- The User Interface and design has stayed with us
- It ran on an affordable, personal machine, so it was accessible to all
- It shipped and was successfully marketed
- It was a catalyst to the personal computer industry
- Most subsequent spreadsheets are directly descended from it
It is the combination of all these things that made VisiCalc unique and special.
For more on this incredible early computer tool and a working model of VisiCalc, click here.
Granny glues eyes shut
January 2005 - SUNSHINE Coast great-grandmother Terry Horder got the fright of her life when she accidentally stuck her eyes shut with super-strength glue.
The 78-year-old Wurtulla resident was defrosting the fridge when her eyes started watering and she reached for a bottle of allergy eye drops.
But instead of grabbing the medicated drops she got Loctite 401 instant glue. The powerful adhesive was being kept in the fridge to avoid heat damage.
"That second my eyes were glued shut and I realized the glue was next to the drops in the fridge," Mrs Horder said.
Her husband of 57 years, Joe Horder, said his normally outspoken wife was suddenly very quiet. "Normally you can't shut her up but she went very silent and I just heard this little voice say 'Dad, I think I've glued my eyes shut'," Mr Horder said.
Mr Horder called Triple-0 and paramedics soon arrived to take her to Caloundra Hospital's emergency ward.
Nurses then used vegetable oil to try to remove the glue, which had fused Mrs Horder's eyelashes together and seeped under the lids.
"There was a pool of glue against the eyeball itself but lucky it couldn't dry because of the water on the eye," Mrs Horder said.
"They soaked my eyes for around five minutes and then tried to pry the lashes apart, which wasn't pleasant. But about 10 minutes later I was good as new."
The picture
After a long night of making love, he notices a photo of another man on her nightstand by the bed. He begins to worry.
"Is this your husband?" he nervously asks.
"No, silly," she replies, snuggling up to him.
"Your boyfriend, then?" he continues
"No, not at all," she says, nibbling away at his ear.
"Is it your dad or your brother?" he inquires, hoping to be reassured.
"No, no, no!!!" she answers.
"Well, who in the hell is he, then?" he demands.
"That's me before the surgery".
Thanks Phyllis
When girls drink too much
1. WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHERE OUR PURSE IS.- 3. WE'VE SUDDENLY DECIDED THAT WE WANT TO KICK SOMEONE'S ASS AND HONESTLY BELIEVE WE COULD DO IT TOO.
- 10. WE THINK WE ARE IN BED, BUT OUR PILLOW FEELS STRANGELY LIKE THE KITCHEN FLOOR (or the mop?)
Father
A little boy got on the bus, sat next to a man reading a book,and noticed he had his collar on backwards. The little boy asked why he wore his collar that way.
The man,who was a priest, said, " I am a Father." The little boy replied, "My daddy doesn't wear his collar like that." The priest looked up from his book and answered "I am the Father of many." The boy said, "My dad has 4 boys, 4 girls and two grandchildren and he doesn't wear his collar that way." The priest, getting impatient, said, "I am the Father of hundreds" and went back to reading his book. The little boy sat quietly thinking for a while, then leaned over and said,"Maybe you should wear your pants backwards instead of your collar.
Thanks Phyllis
Simple solution to the immigration problem
Let’s dig a moat around the U.S. border and fill it with all the alligators that appear to be in abundance in Florida all of a sudden. Then we take that dirt we dug from the moat to New Orleans and built a floodwall with it…. or just rebuild the city on top of all the dirt so it’s above floodstage.
Any other problems you need solved?
Heard on Paul Harvey’s radio program
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
This just in....
I took this picture less than five minutes ago (5:30 CDT) from my deck on the back of my house. It was a very short but active lightning show. The view is across the Mississippi River looking into Illinois.
Have the movie theatre experience at home
Pour Coke on the floor the previous night and allow to harden. - Garnish with wads of chewing gum.
- Buy a DVD, but not the extended version.
- Make popcorn, but put all the butter on one side of the bowl.
- Set your cell phone to go off randomly throughout the film.
- Place an obstacle that is taller than you, directly in front of your seat.
- Throw popcorn at yourself.
- Leer at yourself and flirt shamelessly.
- Do not pause the DVD for bathroom breaks.
- Ask yourself outloud what is happening. Do this every ten minutes.
- Give away the ending to yourself.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
How to think like a genius
"Even if you're not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future."
The following eight strategies encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. "These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history."
1. Look at problems in many different ways, and find new perspectives that no one else has taken (or no one else has publicized!)
2. Visualize!
3. Produce! A distinguishing characteristic of genius is productivity.
4. Make novel combinations. Combine, and recombine, ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations no matter how incongruent or unusual.
5. Form relationships; make connections between dissimilar subjects.
6. Think in opposites.
7. Think metaphorically.
8. Prepare yourself for chance.
For more details on these thoughts click here.
Monday, May 22, 2006
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