tagged w/ Believe
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NEW YORK – Jose Canseco might want to dust off that muscled-up "Bash Brother" moniker one more time. He needs a colorful nickname for his introduction as he enters the boxing ring Saturday night for a celebrity match against child star-turned-radio host Danny Bonaduce. Before Canseco pummels a Partridge, he wants a flashy name that fits the oversized personality of the former steroid-fueled slugger.
"Hercules," chirps his girlfriend, Heidi Northcott.
"The Destroyer," Canseco offers.
Certainly, he means by knockout punches, not destroyer of reputations.
The former major leaguers named in Canseco's 2005 book on steroid use in professional baseball might suggest far less heroic names for the 1988 AL MVP. But just as he's set to show in his three-round fight with Bonaduce, Canseco is ready to take his punches.
"I'm the bad guy no matter where I go," he said.
Former Oakland A's teammate Ricky Henderson is going into the Hall of Fame this summer and fellow Bash Brother Mark McGwire has withdrawn from public life. The 44-year-old Canseco still seeks the spotlight, a puffed-up sideshow on the same road other fallen celebrities have traveled in last-gasp bids to cash in on their notoriety. The man who was once the most feared power hitter in baseball finds himself training to drill a D-list celebrity in suburban Philadelphia.
He's written two books, starred in a pair of reality shows, and is taking his second swing at celebrity boxing. By his acknowledgment, he needs the money. So he'll let shock jock Howard Stern needle him about what steroids did to his sex drive as long as he can tout his upcoming match.NEW YORK – Jose Canseco might want to dust off that muscled-up "Bash... more
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Los Angeles (E! Online) – When it comes to putting up with rumors of a feud, the female half of ABBA has been nothing but super troupers.
Until, that is, last night, when Swedish songbirds Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad—perhaps better known these days as the ones who sang the songs before Meryl Streep—denied they have or ever had bad blood while picking up a Lifetime Achievement award in Stockholm.
"I would like to put the record straight on one thing," Lyngstad (the brunette one) told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. "A lot has been written about how Agnetha and I fought and quarreled with each other.
"There is absolutely no truth in that. Of course, we competed...but to good effect."
Fältskog (the blonde) echoed her onetime bandmate. "We didn't fight. But we have to live a whole lot of such misinterpretations."
As for whether the group is willing to take a chance on a reunion in the wake of their box office-assisted resurgence...
"Promotion and traveling—you don't want to do that anymore," Lyngstad said, while Fältskog got a little bit more to the point...and possibly shed light on how those feud rumors got started in the first place.
"You're just too old."
··· THEY SAID WHAT? Get today's most commented stories now at www.eonline.comLos Angeles (E! Online) – When it comes to putting up with rumors of a feud, the... more
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MANILA, Philippines – Three men, including one of the Philippines' top terror suspects, were sentenced to life in prison Friday for the 2000 Manila bombing that killed 11 people in an attack that revealed close coordination among militants across the region.
The five near-simultaneous bombings on Dec. 30, 2000 left a total of 22 dead and about 100 wounded, but the court found the three men guilty of only the main attack on a train station.
The ringleader, Saiffulah "Moklis" Yunos, was described by prosecutors as an explosives expert and self-confessed member of the main Muslim separatist group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The two others convicted and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole were Abdul Patak Paute and Mamasakul Naga.
The judge said he rejected their denials and alibis because they were positively identified by witnesses.
The Philippine and U.S. governments accused Yunos of carrying out the bombings on behalf of the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.
Officials said he worked closely with Indonesian Fathur Roman Al-Ghozi, a demolition expert who bolted from a Manila jail in July 2003 and was killed in a shootout with police three months later in the southern Philippines, a militant hide-out and training ground.
Prosecutors said Al-Ghozi and Yunos had confessed to buying about 155 pounds (70 kilograms) of explosives used to bomb the targets. Yunos prepared the bombs' wiring while Al-Ghozi admitted preparing the switch on the alarm-clock triggers and packing the explosives, they said.
It was the deadliest terrorist attack until the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group bombed a ferry in Manila Bay in 2004, killing 116 people.MANILA, Philippines – Three men, including one of the Philippines' top... more
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HAVANA – Raul Castro says Barack Obama seems like a good guy, and his brother Fidel says no one can doubt his sincerity. The new U.S. president wants to sit down and negotiate, and is in a better position to do so than any other since Eisenhower.
But making up is hard to do. To restore relations and end the U.S. embargo, Obama would have to drop demands for democracy on the island, or Cuba would have to accept them — both unlikely scenarios.
Never since a young Fidel Castro traveled to the United States in 1959 have hopes for U.S.-Cuba relations been higher, nor the obstacles to closer relations fewer. Among the positive signs:
• An ailing Fidel Castro handed the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006, removing a symbolic hurdle to closer ties.
• Obama didn't need the anti-Castro vote in Florida, once thought indispensable. In any case, a recent poll indicates most Cuban-Americans in the heart of Florida's exile community want an end to the embargo that bars most U.S.-Cuba trade and travel.
• A stream of Latin American leaders has visited Havana in recent weeks, and the region is beginning to speak with one voice against the U.S. embargo.
• Obama took heat during the campaign for saying he'd sit down with a Castro — and won anyway.
• And the Castros, who covered Havana with images of former President George W. Bush as a bloody-fanged vampire, actually seem to like the new president.
"No one can doubt the sincerity of his words," Fidel Castro wrote Thursday evening in an online essay, saying Obama's "intelligent and noble face" has become "a living symbol of the American dream."
As for Raul Castro's take: "He seems like a good man."HAVANA – Raul Castro says Barack Obama seems like a good guy, and his brother... more
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BAGHDAD – Candidates in this month's provincial elections are answering questions from voters and debating issues ranging from Baghdad's housing shortage to the need to attract foreign investment.
This is the new style of campaigning in Iraq, where candidates feel safe enough to stump for votes and focus on grass-roots issues instead of the religious divisions and violence that overshadowed earlier elections held after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in 2003.
The shift was evident at a weekend forum that brought together 13 candidates in the Jan. 31 election for provincial councils, including a communist, Shiites, Sunnis and a journalist who formed a party named after an Iraqi television show called "Let's Talk."
As a waiter in traditional Arab clothing poured coffee at the gathering in a Baghdad country club, the moderator and people in the audience asked candidates how they would improve public services.
They got one minute for each answer. And nobody was fazed when the power went out briefly — a common occurrence in a country that still has severe electricity shortages.
Madiha al-Moussawi, a candidate from a secular party, promised to encourage foreign investment to help create jobs.
"Our goal is a better life for Baghdad and respect for women," said Ayad Younis of the main Sunni bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front.
A new election rule allows Iraqis to vote for individuals instead of only political parties for the first time since Saddam's ouster. That has encouraged a number of first-time candidates to join the race, hoping to persuade voters to turn against politicians widely criticized for misrule.
The field is crowded. There are 14,431 candidates vying for a total of 444 seats on councils in all but four of Iraq's 18 provinces. The electoral commission says 75 percent of the parties and coalitions are newBAGHDAD – Candidates in this month's provincial elections are answering... more
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The next edition of UltraFast Optics (UFO VII) and High Field Short Wavelength (HFSW XIII) meetings will be co-located in Arcachon (France) from August 31st to September 4th 2009, UltraFast Optics has traditionally been a meeting centered on applied ultrafast science with emphasis on the latest technology, instrumentation and methods. UFO is ideally co-located with the topical meeting on High Field and Short Wavelengths, where themes of high intensities and ultrafast timescales are central. HFSW centers on the the scientific advances in high field phenomena and in the generation of intense coherent short wavelength light including, but nont limited to, XUV and X-ray sources, attosecond science, and coherent optics.
UFO VII – HFSW XIII will cover a wide range of topics related to ultrafast laser technology and high-field sources and applications, with special focus on the generation, amplification and measurement of ultrashort laser pulses: from particle and X-ray beams to ultrafast Terahertz sources, from picosecond to attosecond durations and from fiber lasers to PetaWatt-class systems.
More informations about specific topics are given here.
The meeting is held in Arcachon, in the Aquitaine region (France). Located in a protected bay on the southwest coast of France, Arcachon is the seaside resort of the city of Bordeaux, recently listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. Arcachon is a city renowned for its wonderful seacost, arts and 1920's houses. For more information on Arcachon and its surrounding as well as traveling to Aquitaine, visit the Arcachon visitor website.The next edition of UltraFast Optics (UFO VII) and High Field Short Wavelength (HFSW... more
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A spectacular pink type of Galapagos iguana promises to rewrite the family's evolutionary history in the islands.
Rosada was missed by Charles Darwin during his 1835 visit, but appears to indicate the earliest known divergence of land animals in the archipelago.
Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers say rosada split from other land iguanas about 5.7 million years ago.
The scientists suggest that less than 100 of the animals still exist.
Park rangers first noted the presence of a pink variety of iguana on the slopes of Volcano Wolf on the island of Isabela in 1986, but it was not until 2000 that scientists began to examine it.
Darwin's studies in the Galapagos provided key evidence underpinning the theory of evolution by natural selection, which he set out in the 1859 tome On the Origin of Species.
Our studies would indicate that the population size is very small
Gabriele Gentile
Animals such as finches and tortoises showed subtle changes of form between the islands, leading him to theorise that they had evolved along different paths in different environments.
His travels bypassed Volcano Wolf, and so he missed the characteristic pink iguana, which has not been found outside this single, relatively young volcano.
sillywabbit is gonna take this kinda hard.A spectacular pink type of Galapagos iguana promises to rewrite the family's... more
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During the dawn of Ufology in the United States, unidentified flying objects made themselves known to the leaders of the free world in 1952, buzzing over the White House, the Capitol building, and the Pentagon. Seemingly the unknown objects were defying the very governmental agencies sworn to protect the United States from foreign powers. Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base picked up a number of UFOs on their radar screens on July 19, 1952, beginning a wave of sightings still unexplained to this day.
These blips were objects traveling at about 100 m.p.h. but with the ability to accelerate to the unbelievable speed of 7,200 m.p.h. The Washington National sighting was confirmed by other local radar, and then Andrews Air Force Base was contacted.
Washington Tower:
Andrews Tower, do you read? Did you have an airplane in sight west-northwest or east of your airport moving east-bound?
Andrews: No, but we just got a call from the center. We're looking for it.
Washington: We've got a big target showing up on our scope. He's just coming in on the west edge of your airport-the northwest edge of it eastbound. He'll be passing right through the northern portion of your field on an east heading. He's about a quarter of a mile from the northwest runway-right over the edge of your northwest runway now.
Andrews: What happened to your target now?
Washington: He's still eastbound. He went directly over Andrews Fields and is now five miles east.
Andrews: Where did he come from?
Washington: We picked him up ourselves at about seven miles east, slightly southeast, and we have been tracking him ever since then. The Center has been tracking him farther than that.
Andrews: Was he waving his course?
Washington: Holding steady course, due east heading.During the dawn of Ufology in the United States, unidentified flying objects made... more
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SYDNEY (AFP) – Saving the planet by eating kangaroos and wild camels may seem like pie in the sky, but the offbeat menu comes with a scientific stamp of approval in Australia.
The aim in both cases is to reduce damage to the environment, but the reasoning behind the push to put the animals on the menu is sharply different.
In the case of kangaroos, environmentalists say the national animal should become a dietary staple in place of cattle and sheep as part of the fight against global warming.
The farm animals make a major contribution to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions simply by belching and farting, while kangaroos emit negligible amounts of dangerous methane gas.
In other words, there should be more kangaroos and fewer farm animals.
"For most of Australia's human history -- around 60,000 years -- kangaroo was the main source of meat," the government's top climate change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut noted in a major report on global warming recently.
"It could again become important."
In the case of camels, scientists say eating the imported animals would be one way of reducing the million-strong feral herd -- one of the largest on earth -- running amok in the fragile ecosystems of the outback.
"Eat a camel today, I've done it," says Professor Murray McGregor, co-author of a three-year study on the humpbacked pests presented to the government last month.
In each case, the scientists admit they face a struggle to change Australia's eating habits, but believe strongly in the need to somehow cut the numbers of sheep, cattle and camels.
Garnaut's study concluded that by 2020, beef cattle and sheep numbers could be reduced by seven million and 36 million respectively, allowing for an increase in kangaroo numbers to 240 million by 2020, from 34 million now.
He acknowledged, however, that there were some problems in this plan, including livestock and farm management issues, consumer resistance and the gradual nature of change in food tastes.
The idea of farming kangaroos -- which appear on the Australian coat of arms...........
Camel toe is very tasty, never have tried kangaroo.SYDNEY (AFP) – Saving the planet by eating kangaroos and wild camels may seem... more
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It is of my opinion that alien abduction is against the free will of the humans who experience it. Below, I will try to explain why I’ve come to believe this idea to be absolutely a fact dealing with trauma-based experiences. It's very possible that there is a covert, even sinister agenda being carried out by the creature’s committing such acts and further more the possibility exists that such creatures are manipulating, changing our core DNA to make the abductee co-habitable for other entities to utilize.
The positive and negative alien presence is a hot topic debate within the abduction research community; who's right/wrong about alien abduction agenda in general, instead of getting down to the bottom of what's happening. None of us can get to the bottom unless we first come together and openly discuss the issues that are facing the abductee and find ways to help the abductee become lucid to see who the abductors are and what they are doing. Lucidity and removing all the screen memories is the key to help the abductee face what is behind creating the trauma based scenarios.
Out of those who claim abduction, a majority of abductees do not remember what's happened to them. It's only a small percentage (estimating 3 to 4 percent) claim that they have had partial to total recall of their experiences. Out of this group, another majority are experiencing massive trauma in conjunction with their abductions-- anything from being mind controlled with disaster images that are being forced into their minds by artificial means, seeing loved ones tortured if they do not cooperate, seeing what appears to be clones of themselves, forced to hold alien/hybrid children, themselves forced into submitting to painful experimentations, even being given a deadly disease for non cooperation. Many female abductees are reporting, autoimmune disorders like Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as well as a sudden onset of female urinary tract infections and a host of female problems which eventually lead in some cases to hysterectomy.
If the creatures creating this type of misery for their captives were here on a peaceful mission to help humanity, why does this sort of abusive treatment happen with the same style of administration reminiscent of the Nazi German concentration camp doctors? I have come to believe something is more than amiss; something sinister is happening to the abduction populace without regard for the abductee. Why us and why now, someone might ask. What is it we possess that is unique from other species? My thought is survival - theirs verses ours. Here are a few thoughts which might hold some of the answers. Other researchers have suggested some of the ideas below:It is of my opinion that alien abduction is against the free will of the humans who... more
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If a professor at the University of Florida (U.F.) has his way, the first flying saucer to grace Planet Earth's skies isn't likely to come from outer space but rather from Gainesville, where the faculty member is drawing up plans to build a circular aircraft that can hover in the air like a helicopter without any moving parts or fuel.
In other words, it will look like a UFO, but will actually be more of an IFO—an identified flying object.
The saucer will hover and propel itself using electrodes that cover its surface to ionize the surrounding air into plasma. Gases (such as air, which has an equal number of positive and negative charges) become plasma when energy (such as heat or electricity) causes some of the gas's atoms to lose their negatively charged electrons, creating atoms with a positive charge, or positive ions, surrounded by the newly detached electrons. Using an onboard source of energy (such as a battery, ultracapacitor, solar panel or any combination thereof), the electrodes will send an electrical current into the plasma, causing the plasma to push against the neutral (noncharged) air surrounding the craft, theoretically generating enough force for liftoff and movement in different directions (depending on where on the craft's surface you direct the electrical current).
The concept sounds far-fetched, but U.F. mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Subrata Roy plans to have a mini model ready to demonstrate his theory within the next year.
At six inches (15.2 centimeters) in diameter, the device, which Roy calls a "wingless electromagnetic air vehicle" (WEAV), will truly be a flying saucer. Theoretically, Roy says, the flying saucer can be as large as anyone wants to build it, because the design gives the aircraft balance and stability. In other words, this type of aircraft could someday be built large enough to ferry around people. But, Roy says, "we need to walk before we can run, so we're........
Leave it a professor to make a boastful statement like "The World's First" bla bla bla it well indeed may be a flying saucer. But, not the first made by Earthlings or the first in general. The Air Force has films from the 1950's of some of their saucers, ON THE NET. And of course there are thousands of pictures and Video's of probable ET saucers. Not all of which could be hoaxes. In fact, some that were classified as hoaxes back in the day, have now been declared real.If a professor at the University of Florida (U.F.) has his way, the first flying... more
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Picture this: you are standing on a small wooden bridge that leads from the shore to a wooden dock in the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, NH. The year is 1896. You are guarding a United States Navy ship that is tied up to the dock. It is dark and the air is still and chilly. All you hear is the slight slapping of the water on the dock and the creaking of the boards you are standing on.
You have the latest and best rifle in your hands and you are getting a chill from the river breeze in the cool night air. The ship is tied to the dock and once in a while you hear the creaking noise of the old wood that the ship is tied up to.
All of a sudden the man who is guarding the navy ship calls out to you. "Hey what is this?" There, coming down the river and heading for the ocean is a silent object that looks like a white/yellowish oblong flying thing. It is flying, but has silent: you don't hear a sound, except the slight slapping of the waves on the pier and the ship. It is getting closer. What to do? Do you fire at it or just watch in awe and amazement of the "something" flying and coming at you and the ship?
There is no one to call or ask. The object is getting closer. It is almost over your head. As it gets nearer and closer you look at each other and decide this thing, nobody has seen before and you get panicky. What to do? So both men bring their guns up and fire at the object as it passes over their heads.
You hear the bullets hit the object. The sharp ping, ping on the metal surface. Now the object brightens up and silently gains speed and heads down the river and out to sea. Both men look at each other in bewilderment. One of the guards runs to get a superior officer. As the officer and the other servicemen run back they witness the White-yellowish silent object head out to sea. This is something that no one, not even an officer, has ever seen before.
The object that two armed navy men shot at and hit was still flying. It continued making no noise and appeared to have no engine or wings. No one has ever seen any thing like that before. It was reported to the base commander. He doesn't believe what he is hearing! A flying object, completely silent and all the servicemen heard was the sound of the bullets bouncing off its hull. The officer tells the navy admiral and the admiral gets the testimony of all three men who swear to the incident in written statements. Remember it is 1896.
Things Molder and Scully missed.Picture this: you are standing on a small wooden bridge that leads from the shore to a... more
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