Your weekly dose of awesome cosplay pictures for Saturday.
More Jessica Nigri
Psylocke
Cara Nicole
Slave girl Leia
Cobra Villains
Rogue
Jessica Nigri
Wonder Woman
Harley Quinn
Ya Ya Han and Riddle. Bringing the awesome to Star Trek
Gentleman Robot
Join the Dark side, they have the bad girls
The most hated villain King Joffrey
Hellboy
Cara Nicole
/
Catwoman
Poison Ivy
Filed under Humor and Observations
Rev. Faye Pama Musa, 52, was one of 2,123 Christians killed last year due to their faith, compared to 1,201 in 2012. More than half of those reported killings (1,213) occurred in Syria, followed by Nigeria (612) and Pakistan (88). (Courtesy: Open Doors)
Rev. Faye Pama Musa knew immediately why suspected Boko Haram militants burst into his home last year as his wife prepared dinner in the family’s northeastern Nigeria home. His stance against Christian persecution in the divided African nation had long made him a target.
Musa, who served as the general overseer of the Rhema Assembly International Church and secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Borno, saw the intruders near the front door of his home in Maiduguri as his wife, Mercy, prepped food. One of the couple’s daughters, Zion, had spotted the armed men just seconds earlier jumping a fence.
“Today you are a dead man,” one of the gunmen reported said on May 14 as he dragged Musa to the porch. “Call your Jesus to help you, Mr. CAN man!”
Zion Musa then begged the attackers to spare her father, a request met with a misfired bullet that caused her to faint. She survived but her 52-year-old father – a man who worked closely with Open Doors, a nondenominational group tracking persecuted Christians worldwide – did not.
Musa, according to the group, was one of 2,123 Christians killed last year due to their faith, compared to 1,201 in 2012. More than half of those reported killings (1,213) occurred in Syria, followed by Nigeria (612) and Pakistan (88).
But North Korea — a country of more than 24 million, with an estimated 300,000 Christians — remained the most dangerous country worldwide for Christians for the 12th consecutive year, followed by Somalia, Syria and Iraq.
“Like others in that country, Christians have to survive under one of the most oppressive regimes in contemporary times,” according to a release on the report issued Wednesday. “They have to deal with corrupt officials, bad policies, natural disasters, diseases and hunger. On top of that, they must hide their decision to follow Christ. Being caught with a Bible is grounds for execution or a life-long political prison sentence. An estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Christians live in concentration camps, prisons and prison-like circumstances under the regime of leader Kim Jong-Un.”
A sub-Saharan African country — Somalia — was ranked second on the organization’s list for the first time. Islamic extremism is the primary source of Christian persecution in the country of more than 10 million and while the capital of Mogadishu is under more moderate Muslim control recently, coverts from Islam are threatened with execution, sometimes by the al-Shabaab militant rebels.
“In Somalia, a Christian cannot trust anyone,” one Christian reportedly told an Open Doors researcher. “One false confidence and you literally lose your head.”
Syria, meanwhile, which had not previously cracked the group’s list of top ten most oppressive places for Christians, ranked third last year. Like in Somalia, Islamic extremism powered the prosecution, according to Open Door officials, and many towns that previously had large populations of Christians have become ghost towns.
“The face of persecution in Syria has changed,” the group’s World Watch List reads, adding that nearly half of rebels in Syria have a jihadist background. “The influence of these groups that are linked to Al Qaeda and other extremist factions has risen considerably in the past year.”
More than 80 percent of people worldwide identify with a religious group, according to 2011 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Of those, 2.2 billion, or 32 percent, identified themselves as Christians, followed by 1.6 billion Muslims (23 percent) and 1 billion Hindus (15 percent).
The survey also found that roughly 1.1 billion people, or 16 percent worldwide, have no religious affiliation, making that segment the third-largest religious group globally and roughly equal in size to the world’s Catholic population.
Filed under Humor and Observations
“Image with consent of the descendants of Robert Hasler.
“The Darby Steam-Digger, a light traction engine, was invented circa 1879 by farmer Thomas Darby and built at Lodge Farm Pleshey, near Chelmsford in Essex, England. Robert Hasler, seen driving the Digger, helped to build this first prototype.
“In effect the machine was an early tractor designed mainly for ploughing, and could accomplish 1-acre (4,000 m2) an hour (1 m²/s) to a maximum depth of 14 inches (360 mm). This first digger was constructed on pedestrian principles and had six “feet” and really did walk over the fields. Unfortunately it jumped too much to be really successful. The digger was later modified to have wheels in place of the legs.”
Filed under Humor and Observations
Still toiling away with trowels and rakes to tend your unruly garden? Skip the hands-and-knees routine and show your soil who’s boss with Flower Shells.
What’s a Flower Shell you ask? It’s exactly what it sounds like: a shotgun shell loaded with flower seeds. And no, just to clarify, you don’t stuff these things in the ground like little biodegradeable bulbs and wait for ‘em to sprout either – you actually load them into a shotgun and blast them into the soil like Rambo. The shells are standard 12 gauge (0.729 in, 18.5 mm) shotgun ammunition, but instead of being filled with birdshot or buckshot, they’re loaded with one of twelve different seed types. You can currently blast your choice of cornflower, daisy, poppy, sunflower, clematis, columbine, lavender, sweet pea, lupine, carnation, peony, or an assortment of wildflowers.
To ensure that you’ve got the proper level of firepower for the seeds, the amount of gunpowder in each shell has been reduced in proportion to the type of seeds it’s loaded with. That means they’re ideal for violently reseeding your garden beds, but probably not so great for home protection and self defense. Then again, threatening intruders with a face full of hot peony seeds might be surprisingly effective, but we don’t recommend that you give it a shot (no pun intended).
Unfortunately, Flower Shells aren’t in large-scale production at this point, but it’s creators have made and tested a handful of them, which you can see in the video below. We’ll keep you posted on availability, but for the time being you can find out more at FlowerShells.com
Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/flowershells-let-plant-garden-shotgun/#ixzz2q1me2Zaz
Follow us: @digitaltrends on Twitter | digitaltrendsftw on Facebook
Filed under Humor and Observations
The tale of Rudolph’s red nose has long been a Christmas classic — and now researchers in Sweden have caught the reindeer’s glowing nose on camera.
Scientists at Lund University used a thermographic camera to film reindeer at the Zoo of Nordic Animals in Sweden.
They discovered that Rudolph’s nose is “red” due to the rich supply of blood the animal needs to pump to its nose to keep it from freezing.
“When reindeer are feeding, their mules are exposed to very low temperatures as they look for food under the snow,” Professor of Functional Zoology at Lund University Ronald Kröger said in a press release. “They need to maintain sensitivity in order to know what they’re actually eating.”
They do so by sending warm blood to their cold noses — creating the reddish “glow” Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is named for.
Not all mammals function this way, the researchers said. Kröger is a dog owner and part of the Mammalian Rhinarium Group at Lund University, which studies how mammals obtain sensory information from their specialized, hairless and wet nose tips (called rhinaria).
“Dogs are the exact opposite to reindeer. Nobody knows why their noses are cold and why they have evolved that way. That is what we want to find out,” he said.
Filed under Humor and Observations
Random humor to get you over the middle of the week. Enjoy!
Filed under Humor and Observations
Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs and I have a Message for Young People
For most of history, very few people have gone to college or universities. If you were to be a lawyer, doctor, engineer or a handful of other trades you went. There was a strong apprentice system where you would learn most trades first by learning the family business, whatever that was, second, by apprenticing to someone making a living in the field you desired. As your skills increased, you became a journeyman and later a master crafter. Guilds or trade unions regulated themselves, provided training and kept up certain price and quality standards. These were the backbone of nearly every advanced society. We were told – “Get a job and support your family. Work sucks, but you act like an adult and get it done. You work to support your family and take care of yourself. That is why it is called work.” That expectation made working easy because if you happened to enjoy it at all, it was a nice surprise.
Now, we have embraced a doomed system where everyone “has to” go to college. We tell our kids they need to enjoy their jobs and do what they love. We are creating a generation that is told to do what they love, get a degree and things will be great. They are burdened with student debt and no jobs in their study field. If everyone has a BA, who will dig the ditches and serve the food in the restaurants or clean the toilets? Someone with a BA will. The academic world has left behind the concept of an education directed at a job. Instead, we are raising a generation that works hard in school, builds up massive debt, and at the end are left with no more than they started. It was true if you had a BA you would get more earnings when only 15% had them, but as we approach 80% it is not true.
The student debt statistics – http://www.asa.org/policy/resources/stats/
Electricians, air conditioning repair, plumbers, masons, roofers, builders, fire fighters, policemen and so on are all great jobs. They provide good wages and are pillars of the society. I cringe when I see ads asking if they have a degree. I applaud the ad I saw on TV by the electrical workers talking about the amount of training they receive being equivalent to a Masters. They learn on the job and support their families. Why does everyone have to go to college? When did we instill this idea that education for its own sake, at the cost of four to six years and a hundred thousand dollars is better than learning and working on a valuable career? I am not against education at all, but in all its forms, not just a university. Universities, apprenticeships, on the job training, technical schools, mentoring, let’s bring them all back.
When I hired people I never cared about their education or lack thereof. I cared about their abilities and experience. Several asked in their interviews – “don’t you want to hear about my college work?” And I told them no. I care about their personal confidence, abilities, and work ethic, not much else.
My Story – When I was born, fewer than 5% had a college degree. No one in my family had ever gone past high school, with the exception of some seminary training. You needed hard work, a good mind and little else to be a success. Welfare and unemployment were virtually non-existent. You were ashamed to be on welfare. My father was a dairy manager and we lived in a nice house and drove in a Lincoln Continental. When my father was permanently crippled on his job, he refused welfare. We lived off SSDI and free cheese and did what we could on disability money and my mom cleaning houses of “rich” people. We grew our own food, made our clothing, even built our own house from reclaimed wood and supplies. We knew we were poor, but it we were proud nonetheless.
I was born in 1963. I graduated school in the class of 1981. When I graduated with my degrees in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, and my Masters Degree in Economics it was 1989. At that time I was in the top 1-2% educationally in the United States. Around 30% had some college up to a BA, and only 2% had post graduate degrees as in a Masters or PhD. Only certain professions asked for a degree and once you got your first job, no one cared after that. As an Economist, I was offered a fellowship to be paid to get my doctorate at the University of Oklahoma. I turned it down because: 1) I was poor and the head of a four person household; 2) I was frankly tired of working and going to school full-time; and 3) in Economics, as a Master’s level you went into business and finance, but as a PhD I would have been stuck in academia or a government agency job. As a finance advisor, CEO, and CFO during my career, I actually used most of my economics training and some of my computer science. I had no debt because I was in the United States Air Force and they paid 75% while I paid the other in hard won cash – from my wife supporting me through college. Later, my wife decided to be a teacher, and I returned the favor while she got her BA and went on to her Masters. Her job and my job required you to check the box to work. Hers needed a BA and a teaching certificate, mine needed a Masters or people would not trust me with millions of dollars.
For my children I gave them this advice – Make sure you can support yourself with your job. If you want to do something in particular, see what requirements they have for entry and meet them. It might not need college. Work hard, show up on time, don’t bitch or gossip and you will do fine. You are competing against other humans, not perfection. Never leave a job in a bad way no matter how much you hate it, just go. If you want to dig ditches for a living great, if you want to cure cancer great, I support you no matter what. Don’t think people will pay you to do whatever you want. All jobs, even ones you love, have things that suck about them. Other people, put together in a work environment, always sucks. Leave your work at work, be good to your friends and family. Try to live without debt and if you can, save up three years salary in the bank. There is no greater feeling than to know you can quit any time you want and have money to last you until your next job.
Help me, and Mike Rowe (story below) stop forcing our young folks to go into debt for degrees that won’t help them. Support our colleges to have real world applications and our youth to get their start. Hire those veterans, hard working youngsters and mentor them.
Mike Rowe, widely-known from the hit TV show “Dirty Jobs” and a series of Ford commercials, appeared on The Glenn Beck Program Wednesday to discuss his efforts with themikeroweWORKS Foundation in challenging “the absurd belief that a four-year degree is the only path to success.”
“We’re lending money we don’t have, to kids who will never be able to pay it back, for jobs that no longer exist,” he explained, echoing what he told TheBlaze TV’s Andrew Wilkow earlier this month. “That’s crazy, right? That’s what we’ve been doing for the last forty years.”
Rowe’s motivation for the work largely began with what he described as “the worst advice in the history of the world” – a poster he saw in high school challenging students to “work smart, not hard.” The picture of the person working “smart” was holding a diploma, and the person working “hard” looked miserable performing some form of manual labor.
“Today, skilled trades are in demand. In fact, there are 3 million jobs out there that companies are having a hard time filling. So we thought that skilled trades could do with a PR campaign,” he said with a smile. “So we took the same idea, went ahead and vandalized it. Work smart AND hard.’”
And with that, he unveiled a similar photo — but with the person working hard now more successful than the person simply holding a degree.
When Beck thanked him, saying that not everyone needs an Ivy League education and he would recommend you shy away from it, though, Rowe said he wanted to make something clear.
What he’s against, Rowe added, is that we started promoting college “at the expense” of the vocational training that, in many cases, is what’s actually needed for the career.
“It’s not about, this is good or this is bad,” Rowe said. “It’s about, when did it make sense to say one size fits everybody? It never ever ever made sense to do that, and yet we’re still selling education the same way we sold it when you and I were in high school.”
Of the roughly three million jobs that companies are struggling to fill, Rowe said only 8 to 12 percent require a college degree.
“That’s not me saying don’t go to college. I’m saying, to start your life [$150,000] in the hole, [$80,000] in the hole with your art history major…that’s why you’ve got a trillion dollars in debt. These kids can’t find a job that they’ve been trained for, and the expectation is, it should be waiting for me. It ain’t.”
At mikeroweWorks, they’re flipping the traditional notion of scholarships on its head by aiding students who demonstrate a solid work ethic, not financial need or academic or athletic merit.
“Why don’t we reward kids who are willing to learn a new trade, a useful skill, and…prove that they’re willing to get up early, stay late, and volunteer for every crappy task there is?” he said. “Let’s reward the thing we want to encourage. Long story short, we raised $800,000 for work ethic scholarships for this one school [Midwestern Technical Institute].”
And he said that’s only the beginning. Be sure to watch the full clip, below:
“This whole topic always boils down to management vs. workers…the blue, the white collar. Enough with the color of collars,” he declared. “The way to talk about work is through the context of, what are you addicted to? Are you addicted to smooth roads? …Cheap electricity? Indoor plumbing? I am. So if you share my addiction to the fruits of skilled labor, you’ve got skin in this game. So I think if you start to engage a bigger hunk of people, not just management and not just labor, if you really start to have a conversation about work and education, about affordability, everybody can take a micro-macro look at this thing.”
When asked to summarize what he needs to continue the effort, Rowe directed people tomikeroweWORKS.com, saying it’s a “PR campaign for hard work, skilled labor, alternative education, entrepreneurship and invention – but most of all, hard work.”
He added that he’s uncomfortable asking people for money outright, but if you buy a “work smartand hard” poster, not only does it further the scholarships, but you can “hang it up at a high school…a factory floor, a construction site, just to get people talking about the idea that not all knowledge comes from college.”
Beck said he believes in what Rowe is doing, and concluded the program by giving him a $20,000 check from his Charity, Mercury One.
Filed under Humor and Observations
Your weekly dosage of cuteness from the canine world to help smooth those Monday back to work blues…
Filed under Animals
I first met Joe McCord over lunch. Some mutual acquaintances told me he was quite a character and had a varied background. Joe was a person who was affable and fun and love to tell stories. He had a long career of service in the military, the community, and for his family and friends. Later I worked with him while he was on the Governing Board of Directors for the Peoria Unified School District. We found we had a mutual interest in writing. Unfortunately, his writing group was too far away though he invited me numerous times. I did proof some his literary work, but I am not sure if he ever finished the book he was writing. It was based on a very interesting and mostly true story of a man in World War 2 Italy and his ups and downs and finding love.
Joe loved most to talk about the children he would entertain for free on the Challenger Space Program. He loved to show them the Tesla coil and light bulbs coming on without wires and their hair raising up. He invited me to come see him do it several times, but I always figured I would do it later. Now I regret not having taken the time. We had our hip replacement surgeries near the same time, although his was from age and wear and tear while mine was from a drug reaction, it gave us more to chat about.
Whether it be the school district, air quality, community work, children or friends, I never saw Joe get angry. You could always depend on him to give you a smile, a warm handshake or hug, and a great story. It makes you think about how life is short, and we are remembered very little no matter how much good we do. I have attached the story from the arizona.newszap.com below. It just doesn’t seem like enough is ever said about those good people we know that never dream of fame or fortune, but simply live to help others.
Rest in peace Joe McCord.
By Rusty Bradshaw
Independent Newsmedia, Inc. USA
PEORIA, Ariz. — Peoria Unified School District Governing Board member Joe McCord died on New Year’s Day 2014.
Mr. McCord left a legacy of community service behind him. He served as a PUSD Governing Board since 2009, and provided service on the Maricopa County Mining Committee and theVentana Lakes Board of Directors through the years. Some of these posts were served at the same time.
An advocate for children and community volunteer, Mr. McCord was once a magazine and newspaper publisher. In addition, Mr. McCord served 28 years before retiring as a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel. He taught physics and astrophysics to children at the Challenger Space Science Center, 21170 N. 83rd Ave., Peoria. In 2012,
“Mr. McCord was a tireless advocate for students and it will be difficult to replace the expertise he brought to the Peoria Unified Governing Board. He will be deeply missed,” said Peoria Unified Governing Board President Hal Borhauer.
Annually, Mr. McCord made it a point to visit each of PUSD’s 39 schools to get a hands-on look at how things were done in the classroom.
Filed under Humor and Observations
This is a collection of car dashboards. Which one would you pick? Of course, some come attached to pretty awesome cars as well. I have also included a couple that I own or have owned… Enjoy!
Filed under Humor and Observations
