Odds And Ends, November 21, 2006

As I write tonight, I am beginning the first of five days off over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Next week the new owners take over at the radio station and except for Christmas, I doubt I'll be getting much time off for a while. So you can bet I'll be enjoying this week off!!

I have a ton of stuff I could write about, but somehow.....this just seems like a night to keep things lite. So I have a few things I found in various places that seemed interesting and entertaining. Almost none of these made the mainstream newscasts. Seems that we were too interested in that piece of garbage named OJ Simpson....oh..wait, I wrote about that. Then there was the debut of the PS3.....nope, I did that one too. Oh well, you get the idea. Anyway here are some things that caught my eye that wasn't on the news........maybe you find them interesting too!

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In the South Pacific, an underwater volcano has given birth to a new island. The land mass, as of yet unamed and still steaming, is aproximately one mile in diameter and has four distinct peaks. The crew of the yacht "Maiken" are believed to be among the first to see this island as it formed. The "Maiken" was a day out of Tonga enroute to Fiji when the crew noticed the land mass rising from the water. Oh I smell a Discovery or National Geographic Channel special coming soon!!!

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A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the Israeli military and General Dynamics have developed a new weapon in the fight against roadside bombs, land mines, and suicide bombers. The new weapon is called "Thor" and is a high energy laser weapon that allows the user to rapidly clear unexploded ordnance and defeat IEDs by inducing a low-order burn reaction in the explosive from a safe distance before they can kill or injure troops or unsuspecting civilians. Funny thing about this story though, I only heard it once on Paul Harvey's daily broadcast & nowhere else since. I was able to find this about Thor on the internet. The disappointing thing about this story is that I had to go to an Israeli newspaper to read about Thor. I guess our media was more interested in OJ and PS3 than they were in sharing some potentially great news for our troops involved in the war in Iraq and the War on Terror.

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And Forbes Magazine has come out with it's list of the world's richest fictional characters. "The winner.... Defense Contractor, Oliver"Daddy" Warbucks. Warbucks, a lieutenant general in the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, unseats Santa from the top position for the first time with an estimated net worth of $36.2 billion with the conflict in Iraq boosting his fortune." I swear, I wish I had been the one to make this stuff up......it's a riot for sure AND it gets better. "We still estimate Claus' net worth as infinite, but we excluded him from this year's rankings after being bombarded by letters from outraged children insisting that Claus is 'real'," according to a statement from Forbes.com. Other drop-offs include Ebenezer Scrooge, who gave much of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Superman nemesis Lex Luther, who blew billions trying to take over the world; and Cruella De Vil as demand for fur coats plummeted. The new annual list with an aggregate fictional net worth of $111 billion includes Mr. Monopoly, spam entrepreneur Prince Abakaliki of Nigeria, and videogame plumber Mario. Second place goes to Charles Montgomery Burns, owner of the Springfield nuclear power plant in the cartoon TV show "The Simpsons" worth an estimated $16.8 billion after announcing a "technology exchange" with North Korean leader Kim Jong II. I guess the folks at Forbes have gotten tired of trying to convince the liberals that our economy is actually doing pretty good. Either that or they decided they needed some way to amuse themselves since their boss Steven Forbes isn't planning another presidential campaign anytime soon. SEE THE ENTIRE LIST HERE!

And then there's this...........

In White Plains, New York, 32 year old Oscar Aponte is going BACK to jail after briefly flirting with freedom. You see, after serving his original sentence, Aponte was released from prison just before Halloween. But before he left the facility, Aponte decided he wanted to keep his orange prison issue jumpsuit. So he took it.....and wore it on Halloween night as he took his daughter trick or treating. Their first stop on this night of father-daughter fun? The home of a local deputy sheriff. Nuff said! LOL I swear I could feel MY IQ dropping as I typed that one! LOL

TIL NEXT TIME...................................

Originally posted 11-21-06 on Yahoo 360