|
BreaststrokePride
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Barry
Birthday: 2/16/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: Swimming, Piano, It's Ac, Web-browsing, Writing, Composing, Solving random problems all the time, Reading.
Expertise: Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Breaststroke, Piano
Occupation: Computer related
Industry: Computers (Software)
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  Sphere991
Member Since:
1/24/2004
|
|
| Green garden grass snakes can be dangerous. Yes, grass snakes, not just rattlesnakes.
A couple in Sweetwater, Texas had a lot of potted plants, and during
a recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to
protect them from a possible freeze.
It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in
one of the plants and when it had warmed up, it slithered out and the
wife saw it go under the sofa. She let out a very loud scream.
The husband, who was taking a shower, ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was.
She told him there was a snake under the sofa. He got down on the
floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family
dog came and cold nosed him on the rear. He thought the snake had
bitten him and he fainted.
His wife thought he had a heart attack, so she called an ambulance.
The attendants rushed in and loaded him on the stretcher and started
carrying him out. About that time the snake came out from under the
sofa and one of the Emergency Medical Technicians saw it and dropped
his end of the stretcher.
That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in the hospital.
The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she
called on a neighbor man. He volunteered to capture the snake. He armed
himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch.
Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the
sofa in relief.
But in relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushion where she
felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the snake
rushed back under the sofa, and the neighbor man, seeing her laying
there passed out tried to use CPR to revive her.
The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the
grocery store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed
her husband on the back of the head with a bag of canned goods,
knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed
stitches.
An ambulance was again called when it was determined that the injury required hospitalization.
The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her
neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she
assumed he had been bitten by the snake. She went to the kitchen,
brought back a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the
man's throat.
By now the police had arrived. They saw the unconscious man, smelled
the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were
about to arrest them all, when the two women tried to explain how it
all happened over a little green snake.
The ambulance arrived and took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.
Just then the little snake crawled out from under the couch. One of
the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit
the leg of the end table that was on one side of the sofa. The table
fell over and the lamp on it shattered and as the bulb broke, it
started a fire in the drapes.
Another policeman tried to beat out the flames and fell through the
window into the yard on top of the family dog. The startled dog jumped
up and raced out into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to
avoid it and smashed into the parked police car and set it on fire.
Meanwhile, the burning drapes had spread to the walls and the entire
house was blazing. Neighbors had called the fire department and the
arriving fire truck had started raising his ladder when they were
halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires
and pulled out the electricity and disconnected telephones in a
ten-square city block area.
Time passed...
Both men were discharged from the hospital.
The house was rebuilt.
The police acquired a new car, and all was right with the world.
About a year later the original couple were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night.
The husband asked his wife if she thought they should bring in their plants for the night. She shot him. | | |
| I was looking at SI.com's gallery of Summer Nationals (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0608/gallery.swimming/content.1.html)
and it seems that they have gotten just a huge amount of information wrong. And I was wondering if it was possible for someone at US Swimming to let them know that perhaps they should attempt to do some research before posting results on the web.
Errors:
Page 2: "Kate Hoff, who would go on to break her own U.S. record in the 400 IM." Hoff does not own the US record in the 400 IM, nor did she break it. They mean US Open record.
Page 11: "Amanda Weir, Kara Lynn Joyce, Kate Ziegler, Jessica Hardy and Katie Hoff enjoyed success at the USA Championships, winning a combined eight medals." Actually, they won a combined 9 medals...
Weir (1: gold - 100m free)
Joyce (1: gold - 50m free)
Ziegler (2: gold - 400m free, silver - 800m free, more on this later)
Hardy (1: silver - 100m breast)
Hoff (4: gold - 200m/400m IM, silver - 200m/400m free)
1+1+2+1+4 = 9
Page 12: "In the 200 IM, Katie Hoff didn't improve upon her own American record" Yes she did.
Page 13: "Kate Ziegler swam divinely in Irvine, California on Saturday, August 5, to claim the 800m Final in Freestyle" No, she didn't.
Page 17: "Crocker, a member of Longhorn Aquatics, finished 1st, 0.33 seconds ahead of the 2nd place finisher, Club Wolverine's top dog, Michael Phelps." Not true, finished 2nd, .22 behind Phelps.
5 errors in 17 pages, 3 grossly wrong. | | |
| Today, at the FINA World Masters Championships:
Japan’s
Goro Kobayashi broke the men’s 90-94 100-meter backstroke record of
2:04.65 previously held by Japan’s Toshiji Sato since 2005 with a
1:45.46.
Three things are really amazing to me about this:]
1) He broke that record by 20 seconds. That's ridiculous. That's 16% faster. There were only 3 guys in the event, and he beat one by 54 seconds and the other by just under two minutes. He's literally more than twice as fast as the guy who got 3rd (who, granted, was 93)
2) He's 90. He can swim 100m backstroke in a pretty respectable time. Couple years ago, that was not too much slower than what I could do in practice...
3) He's 90. He can swim.
My new goal in life: In 70 years, I am taking down that record. Bring it on, Goro Kobayashi. When I'm 90, I'm gonna go 1:45.45 and be triumphant. You better not be alive at age 160 to see that record crash.
| | |
| Speech by Israeli Prime Minsiter Ehud Olmert, 7/31/2006
Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world. I, the Prime Minister of
Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible
pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken
and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort
that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you
straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will
continue its military campaign in Lebanon.
The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from
which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age
homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security
forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and
launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of
Israel.
We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back
off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we
will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after
tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere. The children of Kfar Kana could
now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents
of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our
children into hell.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time you understood: the Jewish state
will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to
exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will
be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our
women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can
boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop
visiting you.
Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli
citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were
melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases,
those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid
of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish
race off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the
State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.
And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you
are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of
the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs
that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for
salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish
people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their
destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women
and children. They will no longer be able to evade their
responsibility.
Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel
will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated
clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to
ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us?
Absolutely not.
Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens
to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the
basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the
areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish
people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian
people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions
are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us.
The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and
gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for
themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the
lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the
international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish,
develop and establish its democracy and its economy.
What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did
we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace,
met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at
Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and
blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't
remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did
not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli
youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people
butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in
Netanya? What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body
parts at the camera. We grieve quietly.
We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our
enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the
monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us.
Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with
the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.
And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. What did it get us? A
barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the
kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such
alarm. And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the
vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who
took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism and is
trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there
to Paris and London.
An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran
on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our
very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes
a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake
- we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened
world, will go down along with us.
So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of
hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the
100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who
kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains
silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the
Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in
order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo
for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you
also kept silent. What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the
persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do
we have that all the others don't?
In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand
before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I
will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For
the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate
borders. It is also your battle. I pray and I believe that now you will
understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when
it's too late.
| | |
| HOLY SHIT!
So right now US Nationals are going on in California at the same time as European Champs are going on in Budapest. There have been some solid swims in Nationals so far, Katie Hoff breaking her own American record in the 200IM for instance. But Europeans have been absolutely sick.
First, the German women's 4x100 free relay break the world record by .72, thanks to their third leg Britta Steffen who swam the fastest leg ever in 52.66. Also, the second leg was Daniela Goetz who could easily be a daughter of Mrs. Goetz since she easily fits the naming convention of everything starting with D. Then Ms Steffen goes on to show that she IS all taht, breaking the world record int he 100m free by 0.12 going 53.30. But today. Today was ridiculous.
The women's 4x200 free relay record had been held by the German Democratic Republic since 1987 at 7:55.47 and was extremely drug tainted (oh those East German women... ) until the US team raped it at the Athens Olympics going 7:53.42, but the GDR record still stood as the European record. But I guess the Germans wanted it back. With a vengeance.
The first leg was not spectacular, Petra Dallmann led off in 1:59.14, about a second and a half over WR pace (Natalie Coughlin led off in 1:57.74). This put Germany 2nd, two full seconds behind Poland. But after a strong leg by Daniela Samulski of 1:58.27, Germany went back into the lead, just off of world record pace (3:57.41 - 3:57.13). Enter Britta Steffen, who is very much a 100m swimmer. But she tore up, was already under pace at 450m and held up, splitting 1:57.77 and putting Germany one tenth under pace (5:55.18 - 5:55.25). Then Annika Liebs hit it with a vengeance. She led off in like 56.0, which is fast as crap and put Germany a second under pace, and she finished amazingly. I'm sitting here being like "Oh shit, they're going to go like a low 7:52!" But no.
7:50.82.
Two and a half seconds faster than the US. And Annika Liebs split a 1:55.64, which is exactly one second under van Almsick's (also German) world record. The women's 200 free final is on Saturday, and I think we're going to see a 4th world record from Germany in these champs.
Like holy shit, 7:50.82.
| | |
|
