Can’t believe I’ve neglected to link this, but there are a couple hours left to watch Troopathon and donate to help our troops. They need your support just as much as ever.
Archive of entries posted on 25th June 2009
Heartbreaking
I was thrilled to read that a Russian cruise liner was selling “pirate cruises”, wherein tourists could rent weapons, go cruising off the Somali coast, wait to get attacked, and fire back with impunity.
However, I got suspicious that everyone who linked this story all linked to the same source at Ananova and nobody linked to a mainstream media source. Odd… figured the bleeding hearts would be frantic on this.
So I did some digging.
Ananova mentioned that they got the story from the Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt.
Wirtschaftsblatt said they got the story from Golden Morgenstern & Partners.
And the story there is clearly marked “Satire!”
So curb your enthusiasm if you’ve read about this story elsewhere. It ain’t real.
Meanwhile, for your reading pleasure, here’s the clumsy Google translation of the original piece:
Rich Russians hunting pirates on Somalia
Satire! 16,000 unarmed merchant ships each year to try healing through the Gulf of Aden to sail and not the Somali pirates to be upset. A Russian cruise business now turns the tables around and loads of Russians to hunt down pirates before the coast of Somalia, the most dangerous waterway in the world.
His business idea is simple: His cruise ship is the bait for the pirates. Try the real pirates, the seemingly harmless ship to enter and experience the wonders of blue its Africans. Instead defenseless sailors are trading them to the teeth armed Russian tourists compared. A macabre tourist fun.
A day on board the chartered Kreuzfahrschiffes costs $ 5,790. It is geschippert while until the real pirates are actually attacking. At least one pirate attack Kaperungsversuch with entrepreneurs from the travel is guaranteed.
The route goes from Djibouti to Mombasa in Kenya. The ship sails as close to the Somali coast with a speed of five nautical miles along. The tourists can taste and budget in accordance with arms monoplane.
A gun-type AK-47 can cruise by the Russian passengers on board for $ 9 a day for rent. 100 rounds of ammunition cost $ 12. A grenade launcher costs $ 175 a day. These included three grenades, which are included in the rent. The use of Reeling in the permanently installed machine guns should cost $ 475.
In order for the pirates but not yet on stupid ideas, rich Russians will receive an extra personal protection. On board the ship at any time hold a large number of former employees of Russian special commands a watchful eye on the guests. The Russian elite fighters will be mainly at night for security on the cruise ship care.
As the international naval associations tourist to this military operation to combat pirates react, however, is still unclear.
Don’t Trust Your Eyes
See the blue and green spirals? No, you don’t. You’re perceiving the blue and green but they’re both the same color. People like to think they’re eyes are like video cameras, but things go through a bit of interpretation before reaching your conscious mind.
Trust nothing!
So Unscientific That Even FOX Wouldn’t Dare Mention It
One of my favorite tricks for spell-checking a word with two popular spellings is to put both versions in Google and see which one comes back as more popular (like with “adviser” and “advisor”, both of which mean “one who advises”). It’s a “wisdom of the crowd” sort of thing, and it’s sometimes useful in minor matters of taste and sensibility.
In today’s experiment, keep in mind that Obama has been in office for 5 months. George W. Bush held the office for 96 months:
I’m not going to say that this comparison has any use or meaning. Rather, like a documentary by Michael Moore, I’m going to hang a contextless fact out there and hope that it encourages people to jump to conclusions.
Meanwhile, I’m gonna sit here feeling cruelly and delightfully smug.
Oh, and just to be a scurrilous wag, I’ll point out that Obama’s name isn’t hyperlinked by Google because the man lacks definition.
Monkeys and Civility
More evidence you can’t be a civilized country and have monkeys running around. Who can respect the leader of a country who get regularly urinated on by monkeys? As much as people like to say political debate is low brow in this country, at least our politicians aren’t used a lavatories for lesser primates. We don’t have this problem in America because once a monkey peed on Benjamin Franklin. Big mistake. That guys is nuts. Right on the spot he invented the shotgun and went to slaughter all the monkeys in North America and you still can’t find one here to this day. And now America is the most powerful country in the world.
Random Thoughts
Be careful what you say about Iran today, because it may be the president’s position a week later.
Do you think al Qaeda’s members sometimes slip up and call Osama bin Laden “Obama”?
Not to spread more rumors, but I was in Argentina and I didn’t see Sanford anywhere.
Are we going to have to spend the next four years dragging Obama kicking and screaming to do the right thing in every crisis?
Can the nearest adult to the White House please takeover?
Re-thinking that we should just dissolve the Republican Party and start over. New party won’t allow any politicians to join. I don’t trust them.
I fear that Sanford is yet another indication that we as a nation are not doing enough to combat the problem of jackassery.