A cruise ship is freed from the Antarctic ice.
Ever since the soggy film “Titanic” sailed onto the silver screen, cruise
ship passengers have reenacted Leonardo DiCaprio’s and Kate Winslet’s birdlike pose on the bow of ships from Fiji to Cancun.
But nobody was leaning over the bow of the Clipper Adventurer
last week when the ship became stuck in icy waters off the coast of
Antarctica.
The luxury liner was navigating the waters between Belgrano and Liar islands
when a sudden wind change caused giant chunks of ice to pile up around the
vessel. According to an Associated Press report, the Clipper’s propeller
“was surrounded by ice and couldn’t be restarted.”
The ship’s captain alerted Argentine authorities, who immediately sent an
ice breaker out from their naval base on the frozen continent. The navy
worked through the night to cut through the frozen chunks, and by morning,
the Clipper was free and able to sail to open waters to continue its 12-day
sightseeing cruise.
Of the 186 passengers and crew members on the ship, Clipper Cruise Line
spokeswoman Liz McQuinn told Reuters, “I’m actually assuming that the people
on board are looking at this as sort of a great adventure of being in
Antarctica … They’ll get to see the icebreaker come, and I don’t think
anyone will be upset about this.”
Uh-huh.
Some Aussie surfers are attacking tourist "kooks" for stealing their breaks.
When traveling in the USA, the land of the automobile, one must be wary of road rage. Down Under, in the land of surfing, one must be careful of wave rage. According to a recent BBC report, several of Australia’s most popular surfing breaks have become battlegrounds between locals and tourists. And the locals are winning.
Here’s the scoop: Young travelers, usually male, show up, take one look at those long, beautiful breaks and, before you can say “Don’t forget your rash guard,” they’re in the water, paddling to catch the wave of their dreams.
Now, here’s where things turn sour. As anybody who has ever surfed knows, paddling is a lot of work. Then there’s the timing — it has to be perfect or you’ll miss the wave. And then there’s the wave itself; it may peter out, or it may be the wave everybody’s looking for. If it’s the one, it’s guaranteed that a lot of people are going to want to ride it.
But the unlucky visitor who drops in on a wave and cuts off a local is headed for trouble. Grant Walton, a Sydney surfer, told the BBC what happened to a foreigner who made this very mistake. “They beat him pretty badly,” he said. “It was brutal stuff. The bloke got smashed.”
On Sydney’s Bondi and Manly beaches, things have gotten so out of control that the Surfrider Foundation of Australia has begun distributing pamphlets and posters with surfing rules written in English, Japanese, Hebrew and German to nearby hostels and cafes.
Apparently, most Aussie surfers are placing the blame on “grommets” or “kooks” — young or inexperienced surfers — who don’t know the rules. That, however, can’t explain what happened to Nat Young, Australia’s former world surfing champion. After a shouting match over a wave at Angourie Beach in New South Wales, Young was attacked, and ended up in surgery with two broken eye sockets, cracked cheekbones and sinuses that no longer work the way they used to.
And I thought the whole point of the sport was to have fun.
Outraged by a classmate's death, hundreds go on a "drunken rampage."
It all started with a pencil. On Monday, a 9-year-old student of the James Gichuru School in Dandora, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, dropped his pencil on the road near his school. When he bent down to pick it up, the speeding driver of a matatu — a public minibus — hit and killed the boy.
The child’s classmates, incensed by their friend’s death and the lack of speed bumps in the area, banded together with kids from other area schools and went on a “drunken rampage,” according to a Reuters report.
The children, some as young as 5, looted shops, drank the contents of a beer wagon and set fire to the matatu that killed their peer. A schoolteacher told Reuters, “They just ran out of the classroom like crazy demons … We managed to hold back some of the little ones, but the others, they went hitting people — pah! — and hitting cars — pah!”
The prepubescent uprising went on for eight long hours, during which the furious kids barricaded roadways, hurled rocks at vehicles and effectively took over their town.
The teacher interviewed explained that the kids “really, really want speed bumps. That is why they got drunk and smashed things, to make a point. But nonetheless they are serious hooligans. They are like English football fans.”
Though the report stated that details on injuries were not yet available, it did say that the driver and conductor of the matatu managed to escape the melee unscathed.
A court sentences a United Arab Emirates woman to four months in jail for casting a spell.
In the United Arab Emirates, a teacher and former housewife is spending four months in jail for putting a bad mojo on her former husband and his sister, according to a recent Reuters report.
The woman, angry with her ex-spouse for divorcing her, went to the country next door, Oman, where she hired a magician to conjure up a nasty spell for her former beloved and his sibling.
Apparently, the spell worked. At least psychologically. The man and his sister soon came down with a number of undiagnosed illnesses, which they attributed to the ex-wife’s black magic. Believing they were possessed by demons, they sought retribution in court — and won. The ex-wife was promptly whisked off to jail.
Recently, however, she was granted an appeal from a court in Sharjah, which informed the Gulf News that the “physical and psychological ailments” of the man and his sibling had no correlation with the ex-wife’s visit to the magician.
The newspaper also said that it is common for Arab women to visit magicians in times of need — as in “I need that Mercedes” or “I need you to come down with a rare and unsightly skin disease.” Hey, maybe they’ve got something there.
Spanish villages plan to burn giant veggies for electricity.
In two years, the northern Spanish towns of Villabilla de Burgos and Alcala de Gurrea will be running on artichokes. No kidding!
According to a Reuters report, the towns plan to burn giant, 10-foot-high artichokes at their twin power stations to convert the thorny vegetables to electricity.
Ten-foot-high artichokes? Yup. Spanish farmers, with a little financial help from European Union subsidies and the towns’ electricity generator, have been raising genetically modified “monster vegetables” with 23-foot-long roots. These larger-than-life artichokes may be unfit for human consumption, but once burned, they will provide the power to supply Villabilla de Burgos’ and Alcala de Gurrea’s 60,000 residents with electricity.
The idea of burning plants for energy has been around for quite a while, but nobody paid it much attention until the environment began to crumble and decay before our very eyes. Now that our resources are running out, governments are turning to plant life. Last year, a project was proposed in Ireland to burn the wonderfully diverse cannabis plant for electricity, but it was dropped, alas, because, reported Reuters, “it was considered too expensive compared with wind power projects.”
Now, finally, somebody is going to use plants for power — and not a moment too soon. Long live the artichoke!
Thieves in New Delhi, India, use snakes to hold up victims.
That money belt tucked under your shirt isn’t going to do much good if you happen to be held up by a certain type of thief in India’s capital.
According to a BBC report, a group of New Delhi muggers have taken up an ingenious new weapon — snakes. Yes, snakes.
The scheme works like this: A criminal approaches an unsuspecting citizen and places a python around her neck. The python begins to squeeze, and voil` — the victim gives up her money in return for breath and life.
In another popular ruse, a man is approached by a “snake charmer” who threatens him with a hissing asp: Give up the jewelry or risk a poisonous snake bite. Guess which wins.
Many of these robberies have occurred in the light of day, prompting Delhi police to warn the public to “stay clear of snake charmers and people carrying serpents.”
Aye, aye.
The things I carry 
When I lost the ability to type 
Pop art, the beaded edition 
The beautiful banality of high school 
The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks 
Demi’s last night out 
One day you’re in 
Pitch and catch 
Whip-it 
