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Alvin Greene Inaction Figure

July 16th 2010 00:07
Alvin Greene, who won the South Carolina Democratic primary for Senate without actually campaigning or spending any money, is getting some help from a minor league baseball team.

The Charleston RiverDogs, the Class A affiliate of the New York Yankees, is giving away Mr. Lady Liberty statues featuring the likeness of Greene.

Greene, who originally embraced the idea has since called the statue tacky.


Hey Alvin, remember there is no such thing as bad publicity. My advice is to enjoy your fifteen minutes and try to make a buck or two off your celebrity status.


The RiverDogs are somewhat famous for sponsoring outlandish promotions including Nobody Night, where no fans were allowed in the park until the game was declared official. They also had Free Vasectomy night and August Fools Day where the Dogs staff played pranks on unsuspecting fans each inning.
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An 18th century ship that was buried to help expand the island of Manhattan has been rediscovered two centuries after it was junked.

Historians say the ship, believed to date to the 1700s, was defunct by the time it was used around 1810 to extend the shores of lower Manhattan.

"A ship is the summit of what you might find under the World Trade Center — it's exciting!" said Molly McDonald, an archaeologist who first spotted two pieces of hewn, curved timber — part of the frame of the ship — peeking out of the muddy soil at dawn on Tuesday.

By Thursday, she and three colleagues had dug up the hull from a muddy pit where parts of the new trade center are being built.

A steep, hanging ladder trembled with each step down into chaotic mounds of dirt, dwarfed all around by Manhattan skyscrapers rising into the July sun. People sank in the mud as they walked and grasped pieces of the historic wood for support — touching the centuries-old ship that may once have sailed the Caribbean, according to marine historian Norman Brower, who examined it Thursday.



McDonald and archaeologist A. Michael Pappalardo made the discovery on Tuesday at about 6:15 a.m., just as they started their shift observing construction in a pit at the southern edge of ground zero. The two work for AKRF, a New York environmental consulting firm hired to document artifacts discovered at the trade center site.

"We noticed two curved timbers that a backhoe had dislocated," McDonald said. Joined by two more archaeologists, they started digging with shovels, "and we quickly found the rib of a vessel and continued to clear it away and expose the hull over the last two days."

Brower, the historian, works in Mystic, Conn. — renowned for its historic vessels. He told the archaeologists that it was an oceangoing vessel that might have sailed the Caribbean, as evidenced by 18th-century marine organisms that had bored tiny tunnels in the timber.

The vessel's age will be estimated after the two pieces that first popped up are tested in a laboratory through dendrochronology — the science of using tree rings to determine dates and chronological order. Also unknown is what kind of wood was used to build the ship.

A 100-pound iron anchor was found a few yards from the hull, possibly from the old vessel.


There were also traces of human life nearby — "pieces of shoes all over," said McDonald, who had no idea how they got there.

The ship likely got there because of the effort to extend lower Manhattan into the Hudson River in the 1700s and 1800s using landfill. Cribbing usually consisted of logs joined together — much like a log cabin — but a derelict ship was occasionally used.

The ship discovered Tuesday was weighted down and sunk to the bottom of the river, as support for new city piers in a part of Manhattan tied to global commerce and trade.

A similar find emerged a walk away in 1982, when archaeologists found an 18th-century cargo ship on Water Street.
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One of biggest quandaries in the history of mankind is the age old question of which came first the chicken or the egg.

I'm happy to announce that we can now move on to the next serious dilemma. A group of scientists in Britain have now declared a winner in the debate.

Sorry egg, but these scientists say that the chicken did indeed arrive first.

How did they come to this startling conclusion?

It all has to do with a protein called ovocledidin-17 that is found in both eggshells and chicken's ovaries.

Colin Freeman, from the University of Sheffield in northern England and colleagues from the University of Warwick used Britain's national supercomputer, a machine dubbed HECToR, to simulate the process of biomineralization, or the production of minerals on solid materials inside organisms.

It was a world first and revealed that one potential purpose of the protein ovocledidin-17 is to speed up the production of eggshell within the chicken so that in 24 hours an egg is ready to be laid.

"What we have really identified is that the protein seems to accelerate the crystallization process so it can make that eggshell appear far quicker. In simple terms it accelerates calcite formation," Freeman said.

They also found that the egg can't be produced without the protein ovocledidin-17 in the chickens' ovaries, so that means that the chicken must have come first. Right?

"Obviously, it's not really what we were trying to get out of our simulations, but it's an interesting question isn't it?" Freeman said.


I guess the next tough question to be answered is that pesky tree falling in the forest problem.
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The book that Glenn Beck calls the "worst book ever written" was the favorite of ex-President Woodrow Wilson, who read it three times during his time in office.

From Wiki


[ Click here to read more ]
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A fisherman that caught a would-be record Marlin at the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament in Morehead City, N.C has been disqualified after tournament organizers learned that he had purchased a fishing license after catching an 887 pound monster of a fish.

The tournament noted that the rule violation did not involve dishonesty or cheating


[ Click here to read more ]
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The new ad campaign by Dos Equis seems to be quite successful. Many people are searching to see if "The Most Interesting Man In The World" is a real person.

The man is actually played by actor Jonathan Goldsmith, who has had a modest career as a character on shows like "Dallas", "Dynasty", and many other 80s dramas


[ Click here to read more ]
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Blockade Billy by Stephen King

June 22nd 2010 22:31
This is a public service annoucement:

Don't waste your money on Stephen King's newly released book Blockade Billy.
[ Click here to read more ]
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Thomas Edison Lives

June 22nd 2010 04:37
The great inventor Thomas Edison lives again thanks to Schenectady Museum archivist Chris Hunter.

Hunter grew curious about 13 undocumented film canisters tucked away on a bottom shelf among 5 million items in the basement archives of the Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium


[ Click here to read more ]
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After years of planning and re-writing Ayn Rand's classic novel Atlas Shrugged has begun filming.



[ Click here to read more ]
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John Goodman's career could have easily been cut short like many talented overweight actors including John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley. However, fifty-eight year old actor has finally gotten control over his alcoholism and eating patterns to look better than he has in years.

Check out the photos below


[ Click here to read more ]
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