This has not been a good month for my friends and family. Shortly before Christmas my nurse of many years at work, who was 10-15 years younger than I am and a model of healthy living, had a massive coronary event, went into pulmonary failure and was subsequently taken off all support systems.
Then shortly after Christmas a favorite aunt, who had been in a car accident, developed pneumonia and passed away.
And yesterday I learned that the nurse practitioner in our office, with whom I became fast friends with both her and her family, had also passed away.
The deaths of three people I cherish in a month’s time have kind of taken the wind out of my sails.
I had already started work on this week’s “Friday Fun”, so I should be able to post it by tomorrow or Sunday. And I’ll still be commenting, because I hope it’ll be therapeutic.
As a preview, I’ll note that Lynn had recently mentioned she’s working her way through the 2009 Oscar-winning movie “Avatar”. In the dregs of my mind that reminded me that a number of the surreal locations in the film were actually inspired by other-worldly spots right here on earth. We’ll visit some of them shortly …
We’ve all been to zoos or aquariums and marveled at some of the colorful creatures. To make it easy for your enjoyment, I’m showcasing some of the more unusual ones.
BUT to make it interesting, I’m going to also include some Fake ones. Your job is to identify which ones are Fakes in the Commentssection.
To help you out, I’ll let you know there are six (6) Fakes. But NO FAIR Googling to find out! After all, there are no Prizes
BONUS POINTS
There’s a technically untrue description in at least one of the titles. It’s really pretty picayune, but interesting. Can you identify it?
For those of you nursing the results of a wee bit too much celebration from last night, you may want to just move on to the next post, because these will be New Year’s Fireworks.
It goes without saying that they are best viewed in Full Screen. And some of them tend to be quite long, so fill free to skip forward. And if your YouTube screen ends up white with a gray circle in the center containing a white exclamation mark – the “Gray Circle of Death” – it’s because your Flash Player is overloaded. So be sure to only play one at a time, and stop it before you play the next one.
We’ll start with a quick, one-minute overview from around-the-world. (And apparently SkyNews has one font setting: HUGE!)
This is a more in-depth view from London, New York, Dubai and Japan. (No offense to all my Big Apple friends, but your Times Square New Year’s Eve fireworks pale in comparison to almost every other city. OK, I did come across a kind of puny display from Reykjavik, Iceland – but what do you expect?)
This one is purported to be of the world’s largest firework shells – 48” diameter shells! In Trump’s vernacular, it’s YUUUGGGEEE!
The first minute-and-a-half is them loading a shell in its 12METER firing tube! It’s a little boring after you’ve seen it a little while, so you can skip forward in jumps. The actually firings are very impressive – but the video is pretty static, filmed from just one point of view. So after you’ve seen a couple of them, you can skip forward also.
This is a nicely done series of still photos of New Year’s Eve fireworks from around the world, but put together as a YouTube video.
Apparently there’s a big competition between London and Sydney (or, as they spell for New Year’s Eve – SydNYE) when it comes to New Year’s Eve fireworks. This is Sydney’s celebration in HD:
This is London’s celebration from the BBC in HD – I think it’s the best display of them all as it’s very professionally done.
And if you prefer to just look at pictures of the rivalry, “Daily Mail” has a nice series:
Yep, courtesy of Trump’s own words below, ISIS recruiters can take a break & just loop The Donald’s unfathomable hate-mongering words over and over.
Donald J. Trump called on Monday for the United States to bar all Muslims from entering the country until the nation’s leaders can “figure out what is going on” after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., an extraordinary escalation of rhetoric aimed at voters’ fears about members of the Islamic faith.
A prohibition of Muslims – an unprecedented proposal by a leading American presidential candidate, and an idea more typically associated with hate groups – reflects a progression of mistrust that is rooted in ideology as much as politics.
It’s Sunday, with many of us heading off to church. In more churches than we’d like, Christians will hear how evil Islam is. But here’s an experiment done by a couple of pranksters from the Dutch internet show “Dit Is Normaal” (“This is Normal”) that shows we’re not so very different.
[Islam] has been under huge scrutiny lately and is often [criticized] for being an aggressive religion… but what about Christianity? In this video we disguised a Bible as a Quran and read some of its most gruesome verses to the people. This is what they had to say.
It wasn’t a bit difficult to convince the people on the street that the violent, misogynistic, unforgiving passages were straight out of the Quran.
But what is heartening are their reactions when they learn that it’s actually from the Bible …
“WTF?!?”
“That’s just sick! Really sick!!”
… And how objective they were in assessing their shock.
TWO BONUSES …
To save you all the time and trouble, I Googled the Bible passages they used so you don’t have to – with a few surrounding verses where appropriate:
(NOTE: They were all New International Version [NIV])
[11: "If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals]
12: then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity.
13: If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Second Bonus:
How well do you know your Bible? Here’s a pretty tough quiz TEST with 50 questions. Or you can skip it and just click the “Submit” button at the bottom to find the Answers.
I scored 22, and 15 is the average. How did you do?
