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Matrix - Revisited

The two sequels were fun watching in the theater. You just couldn't watch them 25 times (and more) like the first one.

Wonder weapons of World War II

Germany had a reputation as a scientifically advanced nation well before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. At the beginning of the war, the Germans had a significant advantage in many areas of military technology, although it lost the lead, for a variety of reasons, as the war progressed.

Thinking the war was already won, Hitler placed less emphasis on weapons development. Later, when the war turned against them, Germany turned to new, highly sophisticated weaponry in a desperate bid to turn the tide. These wonder weapons, or wunderwaffe, mostly reached the field of combat too late to make a difference, although some, like the V2 rockets, were deployed and were superior to anything possessed by the Allies at the time. Most of these weapons were very advanced for their era and with the exception of the gigantic tanks, were all developed by other counties in the subsequent decades.

German engineers worked on a number of designs for super-heavy tanks and the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus was the heaviest model of which a working prototype was made during the war. This tank weighed in at around 180 tonnes and this ended up being its principal problem.

The Fieseler Fi 103, more familiar as the V-1, from the German vergeltungswaffe or vengeance weapon, was the world’s first cruise missile. The V-1 was powered by jets and carried an 1875 lb warhead with a range of 125 miles, the first ones being launched at England on June 13, 1944, just after D Day.

The vortex gun was designed to try and take advantage of the known fact that air turbulence could bring down large aircraft and break them into pieces. The vortex gun’s shells, containing coal-dust and a slow-burning explosive in the center, were supposed to create an artificial whirlwind or tornado, which would make enemy airplanes lose control and thus fall from the sky.

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Shoe's next?

Times of Indiatalks about the recent phenomenon of flying shoes:
And shoes can be expensive items. So, perhaps as the global financial downturn kicks in, the standard of shoe being hurled will drop, with battered old sneakers that were going in the bin anyway being given a more memorable send-off.

Or, if it's meant to be an insult, is it a case of the worse the footwear, the better?

And India Uncut sees the coining of a new term:
We all know what it means to throw the book at someone, and now it seems that dictionaries will soon have to make space for a new phrase—‘throwing the shoe.’ The origin would be the journalist who threw a shoe at George W Bush a few months ago, and it seems to be becoming a trend now that a journalist in a press conference has hurled a shoe at P Chidambaram. (In a PC, at PC, as it happens.)
Do we see a new entry in POD soon?

Recent scenes from Afghanistan

Since he took office in January, President Barack Obama has ordered an additional 21,000 U.S. troops to be deployed to Afghanistan, which will bring the full U.S. deployment there to a total of 60,000 troops, joining 39,000 coalition troops from 43 countries. The U.S. administration plans to impose benchmarks for progress on both Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, who struggle with problems tied to tribal rivalries, illegal drug production and distribution, religious factions, general instability and poverty. Collected here are photographs from the past few months of the situation in Afghanistan and the lives that continue to be affected by it. (43 photos total)
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Don't Let the Recession Hurt Your Pets

According to NPR’s All Things Considered, the number of domestic pets being surrendered to animal shelters has risen dramatically in the past year since the recession began. The shelters, overcrowded even before the financial crisis began, have been stretched to breaking point, and are forced to euthanize millions of loving and healthy dogs, cats, rabbits, and other domestic pets.

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Yahoo! Answers or 911?

Thinking I should take her to the hospital. she's dizzy, falling over, feeling like she's about to throw up; hasn't yet though. Her speech is slurring and it's taking her minutes to figure out what word she wants to say. Take her to the hospital right!?

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Orthodox Israeli newspapers Photo-shop out female Cabinet ministers

The daily Yated Neeman digitally changed the photo, moving two male ministers into the places formerly occupied by the women.

The weekly Shaa Tova simply blacked the women out, in a photo reprinted today by the mainstream daily Maariv.

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Hitler's Flying Saucers - A Guide to German Flying Discs of the Second World War

Dr. Erb was on the cutting edge of several technologies according to this report. None of these technologies was especially exciting in 1946, however. Jets, rockets and atomic energy where the hot-ticket items of the time. Nobody cared about new sources of electrical energy. The USA had plenty of electricity and plenty of oil to generate more. It was also known by then that atomic power could be applied to generate even more electricity.Nobody cared about Dr. Erb's experiments listed under item (iii)"Apparatus for conversion of residual heat into electrical energy" or item (viii) "Electrical sources of energy of various kinds" or even item (ix) "Apparatus for turning the energy of the sun's rays into electrical energy". Since nobody cared about these things, there was really no reason not to list them in the summary report. Their significance would only be realized a generation later during the "energy crisis" of the mid-1970s and by then it was too late to censor the report. One can only wonder where this research would have led if it funding had continued over the next thirty years. Or did it continue in secret?


More:

The F.B.I. operates within the USA and usually does not concern itself with foreign matters unless they have meaning for the internal security of the United States. Could the reason that this report was taken and retained for so many years be that it did, in fact, have meaning for the internal security of the United States? Did it have something to do with the flying saucers seen over Texas at the time which also stopped motor vehicles?

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Testicle festivals

The idea of a Testicle Festival intrigued me. I thought it sounded like an odd, but very unique, idea. Turns out, what I thought was an unusual idea is much more common than I realized. Testicle Festivals appear to be a popular fundraising venue.

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Boy calls 911 to do his Math

Abstract:

Operator: Alright, what’s the problem?
Boy: Um, you have to help me with my math.
Operator: Okay. Tell me what the math is.
Boy: Okay. 16 take away 8 is what?

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Inflation: Is it bad?

Inflation. It’s bad right? When prices rise your money is worth less and nobody wants to see their hard earned cash decline in value. But what is inflation anyway and what are its root causes? Turns out the situation is not as straightforward as it first appears.

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From Borat to Bruno

Who does not remember Borat in the Borat movie. (Fruits for anyone who remembers the full name of the movie.) Baron Cohen who played Borat will now be back as Bruno. The yet-to-be-released movie has already started getting mired in controversies. The Wrap reports:

Universal’s ”Bruno,” the widely anticipated Sacha Baron Cohen docu-comedy opening in July, has been slapped with an NC-17 rating on its first submission to the Motion Picture Association of America because of numerous sexual scenes that the ratings board considers over the line, according to the studio releasing the film.

Among the objectionable scenes is one in which Bruno -- a gay Austrian fashionista played by Baron Cohen -- appears to have anal sex with a man on camera. In another, the actor goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor.

PETA's slaughterhouses

The name could not be more ironic. PETA, or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals killed 95% of the pets under its care in 2008. PETA Kills Animals reports:

Since 1998, PETA has opted to “put down” 21,339 adoptable dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens instead of finding homes for them.
PETA’s “Animal Record” report for 2008, filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, shows that the animal rights group killed 95 percent of the dogs and cats in its care last year. During all of 2008, PETA found adoptive homes for just seven pets.

To put things in perspective, PETA's website tries to stop hunting of sea kittens thus:

Given the drastic situation for this country's sea kittens—who are often the victims of many major threats to their welfare and ways of life—it's high time that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) stop allowing our little sea kitten friends to be tortured and killed. Who'd want to hurt a sea kitten anyway?!

Sea kittens are just as intelligent (not to mention adorable) as dogs and cats, and they feel pain just as all animals do.

If this is not hypocrisy, what is?

Audio Book Narrator gets drunk around Chapter 13

Why Marijuana is illegal

...the fact that marijuana is not a dangerous substance–at least not as dangerous as American society has been led to believe. A large majority of unbiased studies from the 1950s to the present day have conclusively proven that marijuana is safer than most legal alternatives (i.e. alcohol, tobacco, prescription medications, etc.). Not only have the studies produced similar results, but they have managed to shatter many of the ill-conceived social beliefs about the drug.

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Dear A.I.G, I quit!

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

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How to tell you are an Indian

• You expect to bargain for everything. When you offer a price, you aren't so much probing the seller's minimum, as signalling how much you really want the item.
• If a woman is plumper than the average, it improves her looks. (i.e. what a person considers 'ideal' is likely to be plumper than the American ideal).
• The police are typically not armed, unless they are guarding VVIPs, in which case they might tote submachine guns. For men to have sex with other men is almost totally unheard of. There is a very small number of genuine homosexuals in the big cities.
• On the other hand, there is a complete absence of American style homophobia in Indian society; it is very common for men to express affection by embracing each other.

Find more here. If you are from somewhere else, you can find the link here.

Film. Film. Film.

High-rez Tetris after a week

More pics here. Play high rez Tetris here.