Local officials in Rotorua, a popular tourist destination in New Zealand for geothermal activity and geysers and mud pools that I have actually visited, are under fire for spending about $70,000 in public funds to import five tons of mud from Boryeong, South Korea for a mud and music festival known as Mudtopia. What’s wrong with their own mud, which attracts people to that region?
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A Florida man was outraged by vehicles used by utility workers partially blocking his driveway. This of course happens all the time since those vehicles can be quite long and they have to be parked near the utility poles. Rather than politely asking the workers to move so that he could get out, something that has always worked for me whenever I encountered this since the workers are right there, this being Merika and the man being a real Merkin, he brought his gun and started shooting at the vehicles, including at the engine and the tires, deflating them and making the vehicles immobile.
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Following my post earlier today about the 10 people rescued from drowning off the coast of Florida, I came across a news report of another dramatic rescue yesterday, this time of a wild elephant. Elephants are good swimmers but one of them seemed to have been caught in a tide and dragged 8 km out to sea off the northeast coast of Sri Lanka. It was spotted desperately trying to keep its trunk above water in order to breathe.
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Perhaps because of my memories of being a new graduate student in the US, my attention was drawn to the strange and sad case of a Chinese student Yingying Zhang, who came to the US for graduate studies in April and disappeared soon after on June 9. What is puzzling is that footage from street security cameras show her waiting at a bus stop and then getting into a car that stopped for her. The car’s owner has since been identified as being until recently a promising physics graduate student and he has been taken into custody.
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This video below shows what can happen when two drivers both try to enter a Taco Bell drive-through line at the same time and then each refuses to yield to the other, ending up blocking the line for everyone and the police having to be called in. The video was taken by a driver who was stuck behind as the people in the two contesting cars demanded that the other back down, and the videographer could not believe that this standoff was over Taco Bell food.
Jack Sock is a tennis player who was on the court for his first round Wimbledon match. When a young boy in the stands gestured for a souvenir, he threw him a towel. But an old man in front of the boy caught part of the towel and wrested it away from the boy. This was caught on camera and distributed on Twitter and has understandably caused widespread disgust because it was easily identified as a jerk move. Adults should really know better.
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People are usually taught some version of the Golden Rule, originating in religion or philosophy or just common sense. It is stated in various forms but usually boils down to the precept that one should behave towards others the way that you would like them to behave towards you or, even more extreme, that one should love everybody.
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My post a couple of days ago about the first Sri Lankan to climb Everest sparked an interesting discussion about these climbs. Would you like to see what it is like to get to the top of Mount Everest but think it’s too damn dangerous? Well, you can follow the trek taken by most climbers to get to the summit and, once you get there, have a 3D view of the world below you.
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I am usually not a big fan of those contrived situations that are meant to make people more sensitive or empathetic by revealing something about themselves. But I found this exercise by the creators of Brave New Films, where they invited 40 strangers into a large room and posed 50 questions, was rather well done in showing how we all share so many similar life experiences that transcend the distancing that occurs when we pigeonhole others into boxes based on their appearance.
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