Scenario #1: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.

1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark… Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario #2: Jeffrey won’t be still in class, disrupts other students.

1957 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal… Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin… Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADHD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario #3: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse… Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang… State psychologist tells Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison… Billy’s Mom has affair with psychologist.

Scenario #4: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations… Car searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario #5: Pedro fails high school English.

1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro’s English teacher… English banned from core curriculum… Pedro given diploma anyway… but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario #6: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.

1957 - Ants die.
2007 - ATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home… computers confiscated. Johnny’s Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario #7: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary… Mary hugs him to comfort him.

1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison… Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
• The Sanskrit word for “war” means “desire for more cows.”
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression “to get fired.”
• Canada is an Indian word meaning “Big Village.”
• Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
  (see World Series Winners)
• Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.
• First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
• The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
• Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
• In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television’s Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not renumber the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
• It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
• Only President to win a Pulitzer: John F. Kennedy for Profiles in Courage.
  (see U.S. Presidents)
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
• Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
• Smartest dogs: 1) Scottish border collie; 2)Poodle; 3) Golden retriever. Dumbest: Afghan hound.
• Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.
  (see U.S. States)
• The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
• The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.
• The San Fancisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments
• The youngest pope was 11 years old.
  (see Roman Catholic Popes)
• There are more chickens than people in the world.
• There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

All of these are verified, and completely true.  See sources below.

1. Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.
2. A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other’s head.
3. A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film’s depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.
4. The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
5. A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
6. Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.
7. A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
8. Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn’t telling the truth. Believing the “lie detector” was working, the suspect confessed.
9. When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
10. A Los Angeles man who later said he was “tired of walking,” stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
11. A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise’s car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore — where a tree blew over and killed him.
12. Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge — killing him.
13. Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull.
14. Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car at a snail’s pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren’t scratched.
15. George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him.
16. Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla, in 1981, sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand threatening to kill himself. His wife pleaded for him not to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.
17. In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright.
18. A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but laid back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and crushed him to death.
19. Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison.
20. In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one person was hit, Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.
21. While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti came up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down. While he sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the farmer tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and cart drew up behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in a sports car. When the train roared through the crossing, the horse startled and bit Falatti on the arm. Not a man to be trifled with, Falatti responded by punching the horse in the head. In consequence the horse’s owner jumped down from his cart and began scuffling with the motorcyclist. The horse, which was not up to this sort of excitement, backed away briskly, smashing the cart into the sports car. At this, the sports car driver leaped out of his car and joined the fray. The farmer came forward to try to pacify the three flailing men. As he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was strangled. At last report, the insurance companies were still trying to sort out the claims.
22. In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years in Kingston-on-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started when one of the men threw a french fry at another while they stood waiting for a train.
23. Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife’s incessant nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses, seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room, her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he and his wife were reconciled.
24. An unidentified English woman, according to the London Sunday Express was climbing into the bathtub one afternoon when she remembered she had left some muffins in the oven. Naked, she dashed downstairs and was removing the muffins when she heard a noise at the door. Thinking it was the baker, and knowing he would come in and leave a loaf of bread on the kitchen table if she didn’t answer his knock, the woman darted into the broom cupboard. A few moments later she heard the back door open and, to her eternal mortification, the sound of footsteps coming toward the cupboard. It was the man from the gas company, coming to read the meter. “Oh,” stammered the woman, “I was expecting the baker.” The gas man blinked, excused himself and departed.

Sources can be found here

Source

Having lived in New York for over 8 years, I can honestly say that New Yorker’s are an eclectic bunch. You’ve got everything from tourists, to cab drivers that may or may not be tourists, naked cowboys, crazed sports fans, wannabe divas, and your oh-so-chic Manhattan clique’s. New York is a helluva place to live, and you can see why in these photos.

Complaining about photo glare. Everyone’s a critic!

Trees aren’t very good at getting out of the way, so they’ve adapted to simply swallow things when it becomes necessary.

About thirty years ago in Cambre, a small village in the northwest of Spain what started as displaying of sign on trees to indicate a taxi stand was nearby, now these very signs have become a part of the trees.

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If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq Theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The firearms death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation’s Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C.

Source

If you like doing laps in the swimming pool, you might want to stock up on the energy drinks before diving in to this one.

It is more than 1,000 yards long, covers 20 acres, had a 115ft deep end and holds 66 million gallons of water.

Yesterday the Guinness Book of Records named the vast pool beside the sea in Chile as the biggest in the world.

But if you fancy splashing out on one of your own - and you have the space to accommodate it - then beware: This one took five years to build, cost nearly 1.4 billion and the annual maintenance bill will be 3.8 million.

The man-made saltwater lagoon has been attracting huge crowds to the San Alfonso del Mar resort at Algarrobo, on Chile ’s southern coast, since it opened last month.

Its turquoise waters are so crystal clear that you can see the bottom even in the deep end.

It dwarfs the world’s second biggest pool, the Orthlieb - nicknamed the Big Splash - in Morocco , which is a mere 150 yards long and 100 yards wide. An Olympicsize pool measures some 50 yards by 25 yards.

Chile ’s monster pool uses a computer- controlled suction and filtration system to keep fresh seawater in permanent circulation, drawing it in from the ocean at one end and pumping it out at the other.

The sun warms the water to 86 degrees f, nine degrees warmer than the adjoining sea.

Chilean biochemist Fernando Fischmann, whose Crystal Lagoons Corporation designed the pool, said advanced engineering meant his company could build “an impressive artificial paradise” even in inhospitable areas.

“As long as we have access to unlimited seawater, we can make it work, and it causes no damage to the ocean.” Check out the rest of these images below the jump.

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For those of you that don’t know, Dubai is in the UAE that has absolutely exploded in the last 15 years to become one of the worlds hottest tourist destinations. What happened to send this oil-rich place to send it from desert wasteland to one of the hottest tourist spots in the country? Easy… they are running out of oil! When a city or a country for that matter makes most of it’s money from oil, it’s easy to see why it might be smart to generate revenue from other sources when your big money producer is running low. So that’s exactly what they did. With a creative prince, and bottomless pockets, they have gone on to create a tourist mecca, and it’ll only get bigger and better. Just check out these images.

This is “the strip” in Dubai in 1990. Still an oil-rich country, yet they are starting to build in the desert.

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