Random Lists of Random Things

[Levis]

I don't like coke or pepsi or anything fizzy. I don't think I've ever finished an entire bottle of the stuff. But I never have any qualms about throwing it away... it'll clean out the drain

[_Laurie_]

I'm not a real big pop drinker either...once in a great while....looks like it's good for just about everything except drinking it....It will rot your teeth, and put pounds on too....not good at all...

[edna]

I don´t care, I LOVE COKE!!

I hated it when I was a child, I couldn´t stand fizzy drinks, and this one was black!! I rediscovered it when I was over 20... it´s the miracle cure!!

[RonJonSurfer]

I'm a big 7UP fan....especially with some Seagram's 7 in it...

[The Seeker]

Extra, extra

read all about it

The Pinball wizard in a miracle cure!

I love coke too. I drink too much of it.

[Farin]

[big]When insults had Class[/big]

It’s stating the obvious to say that the worst thing about the internet is the horde of morons that populate it (present company excluded, of course). I will admit to antagonising these sad excuses for human beings for my own amusement in the past. What can I say? As a kid I used to stir up ant’s nests.

But no more. I’m done with these losers. I refuse to even acknowledge their pathetic attempts at insults until they make a decent effort. They may never reach the standard of the classics listed below but I’m not going to indulge people who don’t even try.

There really was a time when insults had class.

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.†–

Winston Churchill

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.†–

Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.†–

Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.†–

William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time in reading it.†–

Moses Hadas

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.†–

Abraham Lincoln

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.†–

Groucho Marx

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.†–

Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.†–

Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play. Bring a friend… if you have one.†–

George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.†–

Winston Churchill, in response

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.†–

Irvin S. Cobb

“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.†–

Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.†–

Paul Keating

“He had delusions of adequacy.†–

Walter Kerr

“There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.†–

Jack E. Leonard

“He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.†–

James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?†–

Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.†–

Mae West

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever…†–

Oscar Wilde

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts… for support rather than illumination. †–

Andrew Lang

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.†–

Billy Wilder

[RonJonSurfer]

This was the winner:

“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.†–

Samuel Johnson

[Rayzor]

I prefer this one:

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts… for support rather than illumination. †–

Andrew Lang

[_Laurie_]

He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.†–

Billy Wilder

[c_s_1987]

That entire list is just brilliant and hilarious!

[c_s_1987]

Also, about the Coke list, I have two things to say:

1. I used to like soft drinks, but over the last three years or so I have grown to dislike them quite a lot. I guess beer has replaced them.

2. I can't believe the list doesn't mention what happens if you add Mentos to Coke! (If anyone doesn't know about this and wants to try, make sure you do it outdoors. )

[Rayzor]

I thought it had to be diet Coke...

[c_s_1987]

Hmm, you might be right. I forget.

[Rayzor]

If I remember right, diet Coke has more aspertame(sp?) or something that reacts with the Mentos...

I was watching the whole explanation of it on Mythbusters...

I'm such a geek!

[_Laurie_]

I'm a geek too... I saw that show also...

mythbusters

Edited August 18, 2007 by Guest

[edna]

Oh, I tried that Mentos and Coke thing last year... it didn´t work but now that you mention it, it was regular Coke...

[Levis]

It only works with diet coke, yes.

[Farin]

[big]10 Surprising Uses For Aspirin[/big]

Aspirin is an excellent painkiller and anti-inflammatory, but it also has many other household uses.

1. To remove perspiration stains from white T-shirts, dissolve two aspirins in half a cup of warm water and apply to the area of the fabric where the stain is. This should be left for a couple of hours before washing.

2. Has your hair ever gone yellow or green from chlorine in a swimming pool? This can be remedied very quickly by dissolving 8 aspirin tablets in a glass of water and rubbing the resulting liquid into your hair. Leave for about ten minutes and then rinse it out. Shampoo in the usual way.

3. First aid for pimples: Crush an aspirin tablet and add a little water to make a paste. Cover the pimple with this paste and after a few minutes rinse it off. The pimple will be less red and reduced in size. Aspirin is an astringent.

4. Drop a soluble aspirin tablet into the water before arranging cut flowers in a vase. It helps to keep them fresh for longer.

5. To treat dandruff, crush two aspirin tablets and add them to your usual shampoo. Leave on the hair for a couple of minutes and rinse as normal.

6. Mosquito bites can be eased by wetting the skin and rubbing an aspirin over the spot.

7. Bee stings can be treated in the same way but any adverse reaction to the sting should be reported to a doctor.

8. Gardeners can treat fungal soil infections by dissolving an aspirin tablet in a liter of water and using the mixture to treat the soil. Don't make this mixture too strong if using around plants as it may burn the leaves.

9. Aspirin can also be mixed with potting compost in the greenhouse, or garden, to prevent fungus forming around the roots of new plants.

10. Take some fresh lemon juice and mix it with a soluble aspirin to make a mixture that will remove grass stains, nicotine stains, etc from hands.

[MarcM]

i HEAR IT IS GOOD FOR HEADACHES, TOO.

[edna]

It´s also very good to cause hemorrhages to the young zarevitch and then stop giving it to him so the bleeding stops and the zarina will think that you are a god...

[MarcM]

sAYS eDNA rASPUTIN!

[edna]

Oh, yes, good ole uncle Gregori... I still use some of his recipes...

[Farin]

[big]Top 10 Greatest Hoaxes of all time[/big]

Link

The Surgeon's Photo of the Loch Ness Monster

Ancient Scottish legends spoke of a giant sea monster that lived in the waters of Loch Ness. In 1934, Colonel Robert Wilson, a highly respectable British surgeon, said that he noticed something moving in the water and took a picture of it. The resulting image showed the slender neck of a serpent rising out of the Loch. The photo came to be known simply as "The Surgeon's Photo" and for decades it was considered to be the best evidence of the monster.

It wasn't until 1994, when Christian Spurling, before his death at the age of 90, confessed his involvement in a plot, that included Wetherell and Colonel Wilson, to create the famous photo. Apparently Wetherell's motive was revenge, since he was humiliated years earlier when the supposed monster's footprints he found were nothing but dried hippo's footsteps.

Hitler's $6 million-dollar diary

On April 22, 1983 the German magazine Der Stern announced that it had made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: a diary kept by Adolf Hitler himself. And this was not just one thin journal.

The magazine had paid 10 million German marks ($6 million at that time) for the sixty small books as well as two "special issues" about Rudolf Hess' flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945.

However, within two weeks, the Hitler Diaries were revealed as being "grotesquely plump fakes" made on modern paper using modern ink and full of historical inaccuracies, the most obvious of which might have been the fact that the monogram on the title page read 'FH' instead of 'AH' (for Adolf Hitler). The diaries were actually written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger of Hitler's works, who was sentenced to 42 months in prison.

The Jewish master plan to dominate the World

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a text purporting to describe a plan to achieve global domination by Jews. Following its first publication in 1903 in the Russian Empire, numerous independent investigations have demonstrated that the document is a hoax; notably, a series of articles printed in The Times of London in 1921 revealed that much of the material was directly plagiarized from earlier works of political satire unrelated to Jews.

In Russia, it helped to the idea that the Bolshevik movement was a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. On WWII, The Protocols became a part of the Nazi propaganda effort to justify persecution of the Jews. It was made required reading for German students.

Today, many Arab governments funded new printings of the Protocols, and taught them in their schools as historical fact. In Syria, The Protocols is currently a best-seller, and government-controlled television channels occasionally broadcast mini-series concerning the Protocols.

Idaho, the US state with a made-up name

Idaho it's perhaps the only state to be named as the result of a hoax. When a name was being selected for new territory, eccentric lobbyist George M. Willing suggested "Idaho," which he claimed was a Native American term meaning "gem of the mountains".

It was later revealed Willing had made up the name himself, and the original Idaho territory was re-named Colorado because of it. Eventually the controversy was forgotten, and modern-day Idaho was given the made-up name when the Idaho Territory was formally created in 1863.

The Alien Autopsy footage from Roswell UFO crash

On 5 May 1995, Ray Santilli, a London-based film producer, presented for the first time his alleged "Alien Autopsy" footage to media representatives and UFO researchers. The body was suggested to belong to one of the aliens picked from the supposed Roswell UFO crash site in 1947. The footage became world-known inmediatly.

he debate on whether the autopsied body is a very realistic mannequin, a girl with a genetic disorder (such as progeria or Turner's syndrome), or a real alien is still going on. Pathologists have also questioned the techniques being used in the supposed autopsy. Ironically, the best evidence against the film comes from one of the background details. On one wall of the autopsy room, there is a type of warning sign that was not produced until 1967, two decades after the alleged event.

Fox TV produced a programme debunking the video as a hoax a couple of years later and, in 2006, a British comedy movie called "Alien Autopsy" was released, on the subject of Santilli faking the autopsy footage, who was apparently involved in the movie's production, which if so would suggest that the autopsy footage was indeed faked.

The fossil that embarrassed British Paleontology

The so-called Piltdown Man was fragments of a skull and jaw bone found in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown in the English county of Sussex. The fragments were claimed by experts of the day to be the fossilised remains of a hitherto unknown form of early man.

From the British Museum's reconstruction of the skull, it was proposed that Piltdown man represented an evolutionary missing link between ape and man, since the combination of a human-like cranium with an ape-like jaw tended to support the notion then prevailing in England that human evolution was brain-led.

In 1953, 41 years later, the Piltdown man was finally exposed as a composite forgery: it consisted of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of a Sarawak orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth. The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown.

The Catholic Pope that turned out to be a woman

John Anglicus, a ninth century Englishman, travelled to Rome, became a Cardinal, and when Pope Leo IV died in 853 A.D., he was unanimously elected pope. As Pope John VIII, he ruled for two years, until 855 A.D. However, while riding one day from St. Peter's to the Lateran, he had to stop by the side of the road and, to the astonishment of everyone, gave birth to a child. It turned out that Pope John VIII was really a woman. In other words, Pope John was really Pope Joan.

According to legend, upon discovering the Pope's true gender, the people of Rome tied her feet together and dragged her behind a horse while stoning her, until she died. Another legend has it that she was sent to a faraway convent to repent her sins and that the child she bore grew up to become the Bishop of Ostia. It is not known whether the story of Pope Joan is true.

The "Chess Machine" that fooled Napoleon

The Turk was a famous hoax which purported to be a chess-playing automaton first constructed and unveiled in 1769 by Wolfgang von Kempelen. He first exhibited the Turk at the court of Austrian Empress Maria Theresa in 1770, and later took it on a tour of Europe for several years during the 1780s. The Turk defeated prominent world-figures, such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.

The cabinet had doors that opened to reveal internal clockwork mechanisms, and when activated the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent. However, the cabinet was a cleverly constructed illusion that allowed a chess master to hide inside and operate the mannequin. Consequently, it won most games.

The buying of the Catholic Church by Microsoft

In 1994 a press release began circulating around the internet claiming that Microsoft had bought the Catholic church. The release quoted Bill Gates saying that he considered religion to be a growth market and that, "The combined resources of Microsoft and the Catholic Church will allow us to make religion easier and more fun for a broader range of people." Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft would acquire exclusive electronic rights to the Bible and would make the sacraments available online.

Microsoft had to issue a formal denial of the release on December 16, 1994. This was the first internet hoax to reach a mass audience using the internet. The authors of these hoaxes remain unknown.

The Martian invasion that frightened the World

The War of the Worlds, is a radio adaptation by Orson Welles based upon H. G. Wells' classic novel, was performed by Mercury Theatre on the Air as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938. The live broadcast reportedly frightened many listeners into believing that an actual Martian invasion was in progress. It has been called the "single greatest media hoax of all time", although it was not intended to be one.

Contemporary newspapers reported panic ensued, with people fleeing the area, and others thinking they could smell the poison gas or could see the flashes of the fighting in the distance. Several people reportedly rushed to the "scene" of the events in New Jersey to see if they could catch a glimpse of the unfolding events, including a few astronomers from Princeton University who went looking for the "meteorite" that had supposedly fallen near their school.

It is sometimes said that the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was first received in skepticism as a consequence of the radio performance. Amazingly enough, the drama has been rewritten to apply to other locations and rebroadcast, with similar results:

- A 1944 broadcast in Santiago, Chile caused panic, including mobilization of troops by the governor.

- A February 12, 1949 broadcast in Quito, Ecuador panicked tens of thousands. Some listeners, enraged at the deception, set fire to the radio station and the offices of El Comercio, the capital's leading newspaper, killing twenty people.

Link

[The Seeker]

Microsoft buying the Catholic Church

[Farin]

"more fun for a broader range of people"