In spite of being the only nation to have facilities ready and waiting to host the 2018 World Cup, and in spite of the people and manpower ready to work the World Cup, the United States did not get the hosting spot for the 2018 World Cup. Instead, FIFA decided to indulge its sense of [...]
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Has NASA Found Aliens?
Posted 12/02/2010 11:00 am by Ron HoganNASA started the uproar with a single comment on its official website. The quote reads, “NASA will hold a news conference at 2pm EST to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” Cue the wild speculation that NASA has found alien life! Is it a microorganism? Is it [...]
Read »German School Allows Chewing Gum
Posted 12/02/2010 10:30 am by Ron HoganFor years, chewing gum has been banned in schools. It’s a distraction, educators said for years, and the kids are just going to smear it everywhere. Well, the Volkenschwand School in the German state of Bavaria is bucking the system and changing the game. The Volkenschwand School allows students to chew gum under a trial [...]
Read »Japan’s Eel-Powered Christmas Tree
Posted 12/02/2010 10:00 am by Ron HoganIt’s both eco-friendly and interesting. An aquarium in Kamakura, a Japanese suburb of Tokoy, has had an unusual Christmas display set up for the last five years. They have a 6 foot 6 inch tall Christmas tree, and connected to the tree is a pair of aluminum plates stuck inside a tank. The tank contains [...]
Read »Building Owner Cited For Building Damage Caused By Runaway City Truck
Posted 12/02/2010 9:30 am by Ron HoganThings went from bad to worse for Ian Cotterell. When a runaway tow truck owned by the Boston Transportation Department crashed into his Roxbury, Massachusetts, apartment building, the damage done was bad enough. To add insult to injury, the very next day, Ian Cotterell was cited by Boston for “structural defects” after the city tow [...]
Read »Amazon Pulls WikiLeaks From Its Web Servers
Posted 12/02/2010 9:00 am by Ron HoganWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is no stranger to legal controversy. After all, the founder of WikiLeaks is on Interpol’s wanted, or red, list due to suspected sexual assaults in Sweden, and that’s before he started poking at the slumbering giant of the US legal system by posting classified documents on his website. It’s the controversial [...]
Read »NCAA Declares Cameron Newton Eligible
Posted 12/02/2010 8:30 am by Ron HoganFear not, Auburn Tigers fans. The War Eagle will continue to soar unfettered by NCAA violations. The NCAA, the governing body for college sports, has declared that Auburn Quarterback Cameron Newton is eligible to play this season. That means, at least for now, Auburn can breathe a sign of relief and take its rightful place [...]
Read »Google Punishes Evil-Doers Via Downranking
Posted 12/02/2010 8:00 am by Ron HoganOn the surface, it was a great idea. A Brooklyn eyewear merchant would treat customers horribly, stealing from them, sending late shipments, and doing other bad business practices in a concerted effort to gain attention. The more people complained about the business on customer service forums, the more Google’s ranking of the business increased. That, [...]
Read »Index Finger Length Ties To Prostate Cancer
Posted 12/02/2010 7:30 am by Ron HoganEvery year, prostate cancer affects hundreds of thousands of men throughout the world. Last year, 913,000 new cases were discovered, and thousands of those unfortunate men died. When it comes to detecting prostate cancer, the only option is a very invasive test in a very personal area that makes the TSA enhanced pat-down look like [...]
Read »Meet The 2011 Grammy Nominees
Posted 12/02/2010 7:00 am by Ron HoganLast night, while walking past the television, I saw the new Ray LaMontagne song, “Beg Steal Or Borrow,” playing on television. It was just a brief snippet, then they introduced Cee-lo Green’s incredible “F— You” and its amazingly funny radio edit. As it turns out, what program I was walking by was the announcement of [...]
Read »Happy Hanukkah From Matisyahu
Posted 12/02/2010 6:30 am by Ron HoganLast night, at sundown, the Jewish winter holiday of Chanukah (or Hanukkah, or Chanuka) began. Weirdly, despite being the holiday where gifts are given, it’s not a huge deal to the Jews, unlike Passover, but it’s still a Jewish holiday, celebrating the victory of the Jews over the invading Greeks and the miracle of the [...]
Read »Good News For World AIDS Day
Posted 12/01/2010 12:30 pm by Ron HoganThere’s a lot of bad news about HIV and AIDS, but for the 2010 World AIDS Day, let’s focus on some of the positive movements in the fight against HIV/AIDS. It’s not all bad news; here is some good news about the global war on HIV and AIDS. AIDS infection rates have stabilized, the Pope has [...]
Read »Pentagon Unveils Next-Generation XM25 Smart Gun
Posted 12/01/2010 12:00 pm by Ron HoganIt’s been called the most effective weapon ever put into the hands of the individual United States soldier, capable of neutralizing a target from 2300 feet away from the target using 25mm grenades and a whole host of high-tech sensors, sights, and lasers. It’s a one-man smart bomb grenade launcher dubbed the XM25 Counter Defilade [...]
Read »21 Pounds Lighter, Man Ends All-Potato Diet
Posted 12/01/2010 11:30 am by Ron HoganSixty days ago, Chris Voigt decided to undertake an unusual publicity stunt. To battle public perception of the potato as an unhealthy food unfit for consumption with every meal, Voigt decided to eat nothing but potatoes. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack, it was potatoes all the way for the head of the Washington State Potato [...]
Read »Driver Claims He Got Drunk To Stay Warm
Posted 12/01/2010 11:00 am by Ron HoganIt seems, on the surface, like an open-and-shut DUI case. A drunk Thomas Drummond was found in his wrecked automobile on the side of the road in Jackson, Missouri. However, there are extenuating circumstances. On a snowy night, Drummond was stranded for nearly two hours after calling for help. Thomas Drummond claims he got drunk [...]
Read »New York Earthquake
Posted 12/01/2010 10:30 am by Ron HoganWell, of all the disaster scenarios in the world, the one that’s least probable is probably the idea of an east coast earthquake. California and the west are used to being rattled by geological catastrophes, but New York City? Not so much. Imagine my surprise when a 3.9 magnitude earthquake shook things up off the coast of [...]
Read »Starbucks Gets Lower-Class With Seattle’s Best Coffee
Posted 12/01/2010 9:30 am by Ron HoganYou’d think that Starbucks, with its thousands of locations all throughout the world, would have enough of the coffee market. However, any glance at grocery store shelves will tell you that Starbucks might be in a lot of places, but they’re not everywhere a coffee drinker will turn for a fix. That’s about to change. [...]
Read »Robber Stopped By Empanadas To The Head
Posted 12/01/2010 9:00 am by Ron HoganWhen a mask-wearing bandit entered Amigo’s Mexican Food in Deming, New Mexico, he didn’t say a word. He just walked to the counter, grabbed the entire cash register, and took off running. Unfortunately for the bandito, he underestimated the power of a little Latin American pastry called the empanada. The robber dropped the cash register [...]
Read »Google Celebrates Rosa Parks
Posted 12/01/2010 8:30 am by Ron HoganOn this day 55 years ago, a woman named Rosa Parks kick-started the modern civil rights movement when the then-42-year-old refused to leave her seat in the colored section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She’d been working all day at the Montgomery Fair department store and felt like she shouldn’t have to give up [...]
Read »Pilot Seat Adjustment Almost Causes Plane Crash
Posted 12/01/2010 8:00 am by Ron HoganAs I mentioned on Monday when discussing the death of Leslie Nielsen, I watched the classic spoof Airplane! this weekend. I’ve had a few flights in my time, including some very long international flights, but I’ve never had any serious problem while strapped into my seat. I’ve been blessed with some great flying weather, and [...]
Read »US Protected By Hurricane Shield
Posted 12/01/2010 7:30 am by Ron HoganThe 2010 hurricane season was, to put it bluntly, unusually active. There were 19 named storms (tied for third most overall) and a staggering 12 hurricanes (second most all time). However, of the many storms that formed, only one made landfall with the United States, and that was Hurricane Igor. Others scraped the US coast, [...]
Read »EU Launches Antitrust Google Probe
Posted 12/01/2010 7:00 am by Ron HoganThere are competing expressions when it comes to power. As has long been said, it’s good to be the king. However, the other end of that spectrum is the old maxim, heavy is the head that wears the crown. Google is the undisputed king of online searches, thanks to its brilliant algorithms. That’s all well [...]
Read »European Airports Closed By Snow
Posted 12/01/2010 6:30 am by Ron HoganIt’s the first day of December, and already the snow is starting to mount up throughout the world. Over Thanksgiving weekend, we had a little drizzle of snow here in Kentucky, but that’s nothing compared to what they face across Europe, where heavy snow falls have forced several airports to close, including some of Europe’s [...]
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