Weird News Stories

[Raithe]

BBC News - Young people 'feel they have nothing to live for'

 

 

 

As many as three quarters of a million young people in the UK may feel that they have nothing to live for, a study for the Prince's Trust charity claims.

The trust says almost a third of long-term unemployed young people have contemplated taking their own lives.

Urgent action must be taken to prevent the young jobless becoming the young hopeless, it says.

 

The government commented that it was doing "everything possible" to help young people find work.

Last month, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed the UK unemployment rate had fallen to its lowest level since 2009, with the number of people out of work falling by 99,000 to 2.39 million in the three months to October.

 

'Devastating'

 

The Prince's Trust Macquarie Youth Index was based on interviews with 2,161 16 to 25-year-olds. Of these, 281 were classified as Neet (not in employment, education or training) and 166 of these Neets had been unemployed for over six months.

 

The report found 9% of all respondents agreed with the statement: "I have nothing to live for" and said if 9% of all youngsters felt the same, it would equate to some 751,230 young people feeling they had nothing to live for.

 

Among those respondents classified as Neet, the percentage of those agreeing with the statement rose to 21%.

The research found that long-term unemployed young people were more than twice as likely as their peers to have been prescribed anti-depressants.

One in three (32%) had contemplated suicide, while one in four (24%) had self-harmed.

The report found 40% of jobless young people had faced symptoms of mental illness, including suicidal thoughts, feelings of self-loathing and panic attacks, as a direct result of unemployment.

 

Three quarters of long-term unemployed young people (72%) did not have someone to confide in, the study found.

 

Martina Milburn, chief executive of the Prince's Trust, said: "Unemployment is proven to cause devastating, long-lasting mental health problems among young people.

"Thousands wake up every day believing that life isn't worth living, after struggling for years in the dole queue.

"More than 440,000 young people are facing long-term unemployment, and it is these young people that urgently need our help.

"If we fail to act, there is a real danger that these young people will become hopeless, as well as jobless."

 

Wage incentives

 

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pension said the government was "doing everything possible" to help young people into work and that there were currently 106,000 fewer young people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance than there were in 2010.

"Through the youth contract, we've hugely increased the number of work experience placements and apprenticeships to give young people the support they need to find a job," the spokesman said.

 

"By offering employers wage incentives worth up to £2,275 we are helping businesses to take them on.

"The work programme has also helped more than 74,000 young people escape long-term unemployment and find lasting work."

 

The Prince's Trust was set up by Prince Charles in 1976 to help disadvantaged young people.

It supports 13 to 30 year-olds who are unemployed and those struggling at school and at risk of exclusion

 

[Meshugger]

Soon you have enough man-power to rebuild your empire. The old colonies have shown to be incompetent to take care of themselves anyway.

[Raithe]

For the other side of things, this might interest a few folk:

 

At this years 30C3 (30th Chaos Communication Congress), Jacob "@ioerror" Applebaum gave a talk explaining in detail, how the NSA spy on everyday citizens.

 

http://youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA

 

It's about an hour long, so to break out some of the highlights for it...

 

The Big Picture: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=7m10s
       - NIGHTSTAND: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=15m58s
       - How "they" do it?:    youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=18m22s
       - MARINA:    youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=20m18s
       - Militarization of the Internet:    youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=25m15s
       - FOXACID: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=27m05s
       - How QUANTUM works: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=35m07s
       - How the NSA capture and control your phone data: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=36m50s
       - How the NSA re-purpose your wifi cards for their needs: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=39m16s
       - Software "implants": youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=39m57s
       - STUCCOMONTANA / BADBIOS? : youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=40m37s
       - SWAP: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=41m47s
       - DEITYBOUNCE: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=43m10s
       - DROPOUTJEEP: iPhone backdoor youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=44m30s
       - IRATEMONK: youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=46m02s
 

[ShadySands]

Just in case you were curious

 

Dogs poop in line with Earth’s magnetic field, says study

 A study published this week in the journal Frontiers in Zoology suggests that dogs choose to relieve themselves along a north-south axis in line with Earth’s magnetic field. The Motherboard blog reported on the study’s findings, saying that the research was carried out by a team of Czech and German scientists.

 

“Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field,” said the research team. “Dogs preferred to excrete with the body being aligned along the North-south axis” rather than the East-west axis.

 

The study examined the daily habits of 70 dogs during 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations over the course of two years. Consistently, during times of calm electromagnetic “weather,” the dogs chose to eliminate while facing north or south.

[Wrath of Dagon]

You can't make this stuff up : http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/somethings_cracking_and_its_not_the_ice_around_the_warmists_ship/#.UsOUhnAuxZ8.facebook

[Raithe]

Not strictly news, but kind of interesting for some of the points raised...

 

io9 - Is Bitcoin evil or just dumb?

 

 

There's been a digital cash rush over the past few months, with Bitcoin rising in value from $13.50 to over $1000 in 2013. Economist Paul Krugman calls Bitcoin "evil," while economics-obsessed scifi author Charles Stross says he wishes it would die in fire. Why do they think Bitcoin will usher in the econopocalypse?

 

Bitcoin is a cryptographic currency — a form of digital money that is designed to be anonymous as it passes from hand to hand, just like cash. It requires no central banks, and is inherently limited because of the computationally-intensive way it is "mined." As Stross puts it, Bitcoin is the ultimate econo-porn for Libertarians:

 

 

 

Libertarians love it because it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish and it doesn't look like a "Fiat currency". You can visualize it as some kind of scarce precious data resource, sort of a digital equivalent of gold. Nation-states don't control the supply of it, so it promises to bypass central banks.

 

 

So what's the problem with this? As Krugman points out, there are really two questions to answer here. First, what is the philosophy behind Bitcoin? And second, can it work in the real world? As for the first question — if you enjoy having a relatively stable society where you can depend on your next paycheck having value, the rise of Bitcoin might be a Really Bad Thing. Stross continues:

 

 

It's also inherently damaging to the fabric of civil society. You think our wonderful investment bankers aren't paying their fair share of taxes? Bitcoin is pretty much designed for tax evasion. Moreover, The Gini coefficient of the Bitcoin economy is ghastly, and getting worse, to an extent that makes a sub-Saharan African kleptocracy look like a socialist utopia, and the "if this goes on" linear extrapolations imply that BtC will badly damage stable governance, not to mention redistributive taxation systems and social security/pension nets if its value continues to soar (as it seems designed to do due to its deflationary properties).

 

To editorialize briefly, BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions. Which is fine if you're a Libertarian, but I tend to take the stance that Libertarianism is like Leninism: a fascinating, internally consistent political theory with some good underlying points that, regrettably, makes prescriptions about how to run human society that can only work if we replace real messy human beings with frictionless spherical humanoids of uniform density (because it relies on simplifying assumptions about human behaviour which are unfortunately wrong).

 

 

Again, this isn't a judgement about whether Bitcoin can work. It might be able to work, but kind of badly.

 

Bitcoin is designed to be forked into other currencies — anyone can use the code make their own kind of digital money. Tomorrow, I could create Klingoncoin and start paying you with it to assassinate my enemies. The problem is that my cash is really only as secure as the online trading system where I store and exchange it. There are flash crashes, of course. But more worryingly, as the Dogecoin adherents discovered, it's easy to find your virtual pockets emptied by enterprising (or not-so-enterprising) thieves. In the case of Dogecoin, hackers modified the Dogewallet system to send everybody's money to one wallet.

 

UC Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong talks about the Dogecoin debacle and notes that Bitcoin lacks some "too big to fail entity" promising to back it, or becoming a currency sink for it:

 

 

So how do actual fiat moneys maintain their value? Well, they don't always do so–coughZimbabwe, cough Weimar Germany. When they do so, it is because a government (a) accepts its money in payment of taxes, thus giving people a reason to hold it, (b) doesn't want the financial chaos that hyperinflation would generate, and so © sets its central bank the mission of being a currency sink–of maintaining the value of the currency by buying it back and burning it up if necessary. Thus I tend to be a "chartalist": commodity moneys can maintain their value via their cost of production, but fiat moneys maintain their value when some very large too-big-to-fail entity backs them.

 

In my view, BitCoin's chances would be a lot better if there were some large and durable entity that promised to be a BitCoin sink if necessary. If, say, Google Cayman Islands were to start GoogleCoin, and announce that it would always stand ready to buy back GoogleCoins at a fixed real value, it could make a (small) fortune and, I think, eliminate BitCoin's business in a month…

 

 

So the current Bitcoin rush is likely to end in disaster — either for the Bitcoin millionaires, or for the "fabric of civil society," as Stross puts it. Just yesterday, casual gaming company Zynga, makers of Farmville and boneheadedly-titled Cityville, announced that they'd be taking Bitcoin. That sent the price up to $1000 per Bitcoin. Not exactly an auspicious sign when your currency jumps based on the announcements of what amounts to an online gambling company.

[ShadySands]

Man eats nothing but McDonald's for 3 months and loses 37 pounds

 

Roughly one decade after the film Super Size Me skewered McDonald's for selling food that the hit documentary film claimed was not healthy and lacking in key nutritional elements when consumed regularly, there's a new, unexpected twist to the experiment that had director Morgan Spurlock gaining weight and getting sick after chowing-down on McDonald's food for only 90 days.

 

The new twist: A high school science teacher in the Colo-Nesco School District in Colo, Iowa, says he lost 37 pounds in 90 days also by eating only McDonald's food — but he followed strict nutritional limits laid out by his students. That included limits of 2,000 calories a day and attempts to stick with daily recommended allowances for protein, carbohydrates, cholesterol and several other nutritional restrictions.

 

"I'm the perfect example of a slob," says the teacher, John Cisna, in a phone interview on Monday. He insists that he ate a variety of stuff on the McDonald's menu — including Big Macs, Quarter Pounders and even desserts, including sundaes and ice cream cones. His mission: to demonstrate to his students that it's how and what you eat — not where you eat — that matters most. During the three months, he says, his cholesterol dropped from 249 to 170.

 

He had two Egg White Delight McMuffins, a bowl of McDonald's Fruit & Maple Oatmeal and 1% milk for breakfast and, typically, a salad for lunch. Then, at dinner, he'd often have a more traditional Value Meal. He also adopted a new exercise regimen of walking 45 minutes daily.

[Raithe]

Techdirt - MPAA joins W3C

 

 

Not Cool: MPAA Joins The W3C from the that's-not-going-to-end-well dept

The W3C has been at the forefront of open standards and an open internet for many years, obviously. So it's somewhat distressing to see it announced this morning that the MPAA has now joined the group. After all, it was not that long ago that the MPAA flat out tried to break the open internet by imposing rules, via SOPA, that would have effectively harmed security protocols and basic DNS concepts. All because it refuses to update its business model at the pace of technology. The MPAA has never been about supporting open standards or an open and free internet. The W3C states that its "principles" are "web for all, web for everything" and that its vision is "web of consumers and authors, data and services, trust." The MPAA has basically been opposed to... well.... all of that. It has tried to take a consumer web of authors and turn it into a broadcast medium for major producers. It's tried to destroy trust, and put in place locks and keys.

In short, the MPAA has no place at all in the W3C. If there had been any indication that this was a shift in the MPAA's thinking, that actually would be interesting. If the MPAA had shown even the slightest indication that it was finally willing to embrace real internet principles and standards, and move Hollywood into the 21st century, that would be a good thing, and they should participate. But that's not what this is about, at all.

Instead, I fear that this is because of the stupid fight, which the W3C supports, to put DRM in HTML5. Tim Berners-Lee, who created the web and heads the W3C, has (for reasons that still don't make any sense) supported this dangerous proposal. Despite detailed explanations for why this is a bad idea, he has continued to defend the idea, which appears to go against nearly everything he's said in the past. Having the MPAA join the W3C is not encouraging at all.

Berners-Lee's support of DRM in HTML5 seems to be based on the short-sighted (and simply wrong) idea that the web needs the legacy entertainment industry more than the legacy entertainment industry needs the web. Building truly open standards that the world adopts will get the MPAA and others to come along eventually, because they'll realize they need to go where the people are, even if it isn't crippled with restrictions and locks. Bringing the MPAA into the process only continues to perpetuate this idea that we should be building a broadcast platform for the entertainment industry to push a message at consumers, rather than building a platform for creators of all kinds to communicate and share.

[Raithe]

NPR - Army takes on it's own Toxic Leaders

 

 

Top commanders in the U.S. Army have announced publicly that they have a problem: They have too many "toxic leaders" — the kind of bosses who make their employees miserable. Many corporations share a similar problem, but in the Army's case, destructive leadership can potentially have life or death consequences. So, some Army researchers are wondering if toxic officers have contributed to soldiers' mental health problems.

 

One of those researchers is Dave Matsuda. In 2010, then-Brig. Gen. Pete Bayer, who was supervising the Army's drawdown in Iraq, asked Matsuda to study why almost 30 soldiers in Iraq had committed or attempted suicides in the past year.

 

"We got to a point where we were exceptionally frustrated by the suicides that were occurring," Bayer says. "And quite honestly feeling — at least I was — helpless to some degree that otherwise good young men and women were taking their lives."

 

Matsuda might seem like an unconventional choice to study Army suicides. He's an anthropologist; the Army hired him to advise U.S. commanders on how to understand what was really going on below the surface in Iraq. But Bayer says those skills are what prompted him to ask Matsuda to look below the surface of the suicide problem in the Army.

"What we valued about [Matsuda], as well as a few others who worked for us, was he didn't wear a uniform. He wasn't one of us, so to speak," Bayer says.

 

Whenever a soldier committed suicide, Bayer says, a team of Army investigators would essentially ask the same questions: What was wrong with the individual soldier? Did he or she have a troubled childhood or mental health problems? Did the soldier just break up with a partner or spouse? Was he or she in debt? The answer was often "yes." But Bayer says he felt part of the puzzle was missing.

 

"We decided we were going to take a look at it from a different angle," he says.

So Matsuda looked at the cases of eight soldiers who had recently killed themselves and interviewed friends of the victims.

 

"I crisscrossed Iraq and interviewed 50 soldiers," Matusda recalls.

A more complicated story began to emerge, he says. In addition to major problems in their personal lives, the victims also had a leader who made their lives hell — sometimes a couple of leaders — Matsuda says. The officers would "smoke" them, as soldiers call it.

 

"Oftentimes platoon leaders will take turns seeing who can smoke this guy the worst. Seeing who can dream up the worst torture, seeing who can dream up the worst duties, seeing who can make this guy's life the most miserable," says Matusda.

 

He says the evidence did not show that the soldiers' leaders caused them to commit suicide. But the soldiers' friends said leaders had helped push them over the brink.

"When you're ridden mercilessly, there's just no letup, a lot of folks begin to fold," Matsuda says. He submitted a report stating: "uicidal behavior can be triggered by ... toxic command climate."

 

Research At The War College

 

This was not the first time that an Army researcher had raised the issue of toxic leadership. In 2003, the secretary of the Army asked researchers at the Army War College in Pennsylvania to study a question:

 

"Given an institutional objective to establish and maintain effective command climate," Secretary Thomas White Jr. wrote, "how can the Army effectively assess leaders to prevent those with destructive leadership styles?"

 

"The first thing that struck me was, what a good question," says retired Col. George Reed, who was director of Command and Leadership Studies at the War College. "It was not a question that we had wrestled with before."

 

Reed and a colleague interviewed dozens of officers who were attending the War College. He says most of them told stories about recent encounters with leaders whom they said were toxic. He says the soldiers were talking about something worse than incompetent bosses: They said toxic leaders were abusive and self-aggrandizing, arrogant and petty, and "unconcerned about, or oblivious to, staff or troop morale."

 

Toxic leaders were also good at snowing their superiors — so they kept getting promoted. Reed says after Military Review published his article about the study, he was flooded with emails from other soldiers who complained about the toxic leaders they knew.

 

"The stories just poured out at that point," Reed, who now teaches leadership studies at University of San Diego, says. "It was distressing because the Army is a world-class organization and at some point you have to ask, 'No, really? Are we tolerating this kind of leadership behavior?' "

 

Gradually, some generals started to ask that question and a few years ago they ordered researchers to do the first nationwide study to help answer it. Researchers based at the Center for Army Leadership at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas surveyed more than 22,000 troops in 2009 and 2010. Most commanders received good ratings, some even got great ratings. But the study found that roughly 20 percent of soldiers reported their own leaders were what researchers called toxic.

 

NPR has interviewed dozens of current or former soldiers who say they have struggled under those kinds of leaders. We found one of them, Frank Costabile, at a center for homeless vets in Las Vegas. The Army discharged him last year after the third time he threatened or attempted suicide.

"I'm doing better," says Costabile, who had been a private first class fueling helicopters, tanks and trucks. "After my last suicide attempt, they gave me a new medication."

 

Costabile says he never heard the term toxic leadership while he was in the Army. But he says some of his own leaders started tormenting him psychologically three years ago in Afghanistan, and the abuse continued when he came home in 2011 to Fort Carson in Colorado. He says those leaders didn't scream at him, they ostracized him. And the more he felt like he was falling apart, the worse it got. Army records show he had "major depressive episodes" and "multiple hospitalizations."

"Like the kid that was picked last for kickball in school, you know? I get the jobs that nobody wanted to do. Take out the trash, you're going to sweep the floor, you're going to mop the hallway. And it's like, why?" Costabile says.

 

Army records show that Costabile stopped eating more than a few bites each day; he lost 30 pounds in a month. His wife found him lying on the bathroom floor after he took dozens of antidepressants and other pills. But some officers said he was faking it.

"And I just had feelings, like, that nothing's ever going to change," Costabile says. "I'm going to get [expletive] every day, and I just don't want this anymore. And I just felt like I wanted to kill myself."

 

The Army Defines Toxic Leadership

 

Lt. Gen. David Perkins, who commands the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, says he knows how toxic leadership can hurt soldiers — and the Army.

"If we don't do something about toxic leadership, I mean in the end, not to be too dramatic, but it does have life or death consequences. And quite honestly, we owe it to the American public," Perkins says.

 

He continues: "I can just tell you from experience ... that if you have toxic leadership, people will get sort of what we call the 'foxhole mentality.' They'll just hunker down and no one is taking what we call prudent risk." Perkins led the first U.S. Army troops into downtown Baghdad after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. "They're not being innovative, they're not being creative. And some people who are toxic leaders, they might be able to get some short-term results and get an immediate mission at hand done. But in the process, they are destroying the organization and destroying their people."

 

Perkins says the first step to figuring out what to do about toxic leaders was to define the problem. So in 2012, the Army revised its leadership bible, Army Doctrine Publication 6-22, to detail what toxic leadership means for the first time.

 

The manual now states:

 

"Toxic leadership is a combination of self-centered attitudes, motivations, and behaviors that have adverse effects on subordinates, the organization, and mission performance. This leader lacks concern for others and the climate of the organization, which leads to short- and long-term negative effects. The toxic leader operates with an inflated sense of self-worth and from acute self-interest. Toxic leaders consistently use dysfunctional behaviors to deceive, intimidate, coerce, or unfairly punish others to get what they want for themselves. The negative leader completes short-term requirements by operating at the bottom of the continuum of commitment, where followers respond to the positional power of their leader to fulfill requests. This may achieve results in the short term, but ignores the other leader competency categories of leads and develops. Prolonged use of negative leadership to influence followers undermines the followers' will, initiative, and potential and destroys unit morale."

 

 

The Army then launched a pilot project to take a second step toward dealing with the problem: In addition to having leaders evaluate their subordinates, as just about every institution does, they asked subordinates to evaluate their leaders — anonymously. The pilot project evaluated only eight commanders, in what the Army and management specialists call a 360 evaluation, but Perkins says the Army plans to expand the system by October 2014.

 

Meanwhile, Army commanders have taken more aggressive steps: They have kicked a small number of officers out of their jobs for being toxic. And the issue is becoming part of a national conversation. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told the Senate chamber recently that destructive leaders are one reason why the number of sexual assaults in the military is so high. "You've just heard from these victims, there are too many command climates that are toxic," she said.

Some of the Army researchers who first raised the issue of toxic leadership say this is clearly a new world. Still, they're concerned that Army leaders are not moving fast enough to confront it.

 

Walter Ulmer, a retired general who led forces in Vietnam, calls toxic leadership an "institutional cancer." He says he's "enthusiastic and optimistic" that top officials are publicly discussing the problem and debating ways to combat it, but he says the Army strategies like the new officer evaluation system are just one step.

According to the Army's plans, for example, it will ask subordinates to anonymously evaluate roughly 1,100 battalion and brigade commanders by late next year. But there are more than 100,000 officers in the Army, from noncommissioned sergeants to generals.

 

If you used a 10-point scale to rate how well the Army is doing tackling toxic leadership, Ulmer — whose papers on the issue are taught in the Army's command schools — says, "I guess I give it maybe, maybe a six."

The Army is doing more about toxic leaders than at any time in the past, he says, but there is "still a long way to go."

Matsuda, the researcher who concluded that toxic leaders had played a role in the suicides of eight soldiers in Iraq, says even though the study was small and anecdotal, it raises a big question: Have toxic leaders played a role in many more suicides?

 

The Army and the National Institutes of Mental Health have launched the biggest study yet of why soldiers kill themselves. One of the study's directors says that they're only just starting to ask whether there might be a link with toxic leadership.

[Raithe]

And for more in the sense of fun..

 

Review Journal - Tactical Fast Draw Could Bring Gunfights to a Bar Near You

 

 

Later this month, two guys plan to walk into a North Las Vegas bar and shoot each other.

The combatants will be wearing ballistics-grade head and body armor, carrying dinner plate-sized forearm shields and modified police-issue 9 mm Glocks.

They will be standing at opposite ends of a 30-by-8-foot steel cage — fully enclosed, UFC-style — in the middle of what used to be a couple of stage-side tabletops at Whiskey ****’s, 2750 E. Craig Road.

 

That’s where a new sport, known to its North Las Vegas-based creators as tactical fast draw, is set to make its Jan. 31 debut.

“You’ll get two points for a head shot and one point for anything to the (body) vest,” fast draw inventor and former bounty hunter Nephi Oliva said. “You can score a maximum of 12 points, but there’s no time limit, so it’s almost like a boxing match with bullets.”

 

Oliva has been kicking around the idea of starting a fast draw league for years but had to wait until this month to get a firearms instruction certificate needed to handle “Simunition,” the plastic-tipped, paint-filled training ammunition to be used by fast draw’s gunslingers.

 

Simunition rounds aren’t as loud as a standard 9 mm round — and can’t be fired out of a regular gun barrel — but they’re built around a regular 9 mm casing and travel at a velocity much higher than paintball guns.

 

A round hitting an unarmored fast draw gunslinger might not break the skin but is sure to leave a nasty bruise. The Simunition website says that wearing head, throat and groin protection is mandatory and calls the cartridges “nonlethal.” It “strongly recommends” that shooters stay anywhere from 1 foot to 6 feet away from each other, depending on the type of ammunition used.

 

Oliva, the founder and owner of North Las Vegas-based Nevada Pigeon Control, recently invested $6,000 for a dozen Simunition-modified Glocks to help get fast draw off the ground.

He and three business partners at the American Gunfighter Association, the fledgling sport’s sanctioning body, expect to earn that seed money back quickly, explaining they are already in talks to install fast draw cages at several bars around the valley.

 

Fast draw’s appeal, according to its founders, lies in its accessibility.

 

To Oliva, the sport isn’t a barroom gimmick or a claustrophobic take on indoor paintball. It is a complete entertainment experience, a gender-neutral mix between mixed martial arts and video gaming, featuring disc jockeys, ring announcers, nicknamed gunfighters and just about everything else short of a fog machine.

But beneath it all, he said, fast draw is just an especially flashy way to teach people how to use a gun properly.

 

“Training for firearms is relatively boring,” Oliva said. “Ultimately, we are a firearms instruction company, and we offer training through sports to make it more appealing.

“People will ask, ‘Aren’t you promoting violence?’ My answer is that people like George Zimmerman existed because something like (fast draw) didn’t,” he said.

Zimmerman’s trial on charges of fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 sparked protests around the nation with discussions of “stand your ground” laws. He was acquitted in July.

 

For Whiskey ****’s owner Rich Tyson, fast draw is good business.

Tyson, who helped found the bar in 2010, said at first he was a little wary about taking on the sport.

Then he started to imagine all the bar’s booths and stools filled with fast draw spectators, its most prominent gunslingers donning a Whiskey ****’s-sponsored protective vest.

From there, he was just about sold.

 

“Our biggest concern was obviously safety,” Tyson said. “But they’re going to be in this cage that’s lined with Plexiglas, and I know (Oliva) has been working with the cops to make sure everything is safe.

 

“I’m not really a big gun guy, but I think the idea is pretty neat. I’d wanna come over and watch it if I didn’t own the place.”

North Las Vegas Police Department spokeswoman Chrissie Coon said police are “looking into the (sport’s) legality.”

“We’ve always taken the stance that guns and alcohol don’t mix, but there’s still a lot to review with the city attorney before we take an official position,” she said.

[BruceVC]

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/07/world/asia/rodman-5-craziest-moments/index.html

 

I have been watching the hilarious and concerning antics of Dennis Rodman around his trip to North Korea. On a serious note I know he isn't very clever but is he also demented or on drugs? I was watching the latest interview on CNN with him this morning and what he was saying didn't make sense..it was embarrassing

[Raithe]

ViralNova - The World's Most Dangerous Trail...

 

 

 

We hope you’re not afraid of heights, because this even made our palms sweat. What you see below is a mountain in China called Mt. Hua Shan. At its base, you’ll find a gigantic set of stone stairs, called “the Heavenly Stairs.” These stairs go so high up the mountainside, it’s hard to see where they end. If that wasn’t enough, the precarious stairs lead to the world’s most dangerous trail, the Hua Shan plank path. The plank trail leads high up the Hua Shan mountain just outside the city Xi’an. No one will force you to wear safety gear, although it’s strongly encouraged. The trail itself is dangerous and stunning, but what is at the top will really shock you.

 

The stairs themselves, although beautiful, are daunting.

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And they are the easiest part of the climb.

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However, countless people make the dangerous journey for what’s at the top…

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As you climb the stairs, you pass little villages and houses that have cropped up on the mountain.

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Then, once you get high enough, you can take a gondola to the southern peak, where the plank path awaits.

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This is where the path turns truly dangerous, with nothing but planks to walk on and a rail of chains to hold onto.

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There’s almost nothing from keeping you from falling.

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There are parts you must climb as well, with toe holes cut out.

uqpu.net

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Our palms are sweating just looking at this path.

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… Woah.

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But, if you’re brave enough to keep climbing…

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You’ll find something pretty interesting at the end of your journey.

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At the very top of the southern peak is a Taoist temple that was converted into a teahouse.

uqpu.net

Thousands of people climb the world’s most dangerous path to end up at a teahouse.

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So, either these people really like dangerous climbing, or they really like tea. Either way, you should probably check out the teahouse at the top of Mt. Hua Shan.

 

 

[BruceVC]

 

ViralNova - The World's Most Dangerous Trail...

 

 

 

We hope you’re not afraid of heights, because this even made our palms sweat. What you see below is a mountain in China called Mt. Hua Shan. At its base, you’ll find a gigantic set of stone stairs, called “the Heavenly Stairs.” These stairs go so high up the mountainside, it’s hard to see where they end. If that wasn’t enough, the precarious stairs lead to the world’s most dangerous trail, the Hua Shan plank path. The plank trail leads high up the Hua Shan mountain just outside the city Xi’an. No one will force you to wear safety gear, although it’s strongly encouraged. The trail itself is dangerous and stunning, but what is at the top will really shock you.

 

The stairs themselves, although beautiful, are daunting.

uqpu.net

 

And they are the easiest part of the climb.

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However, countless people make the dangerous journey for what’s at the top…

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As you climb the stairs, you pass little villages and houses that have cropped up on the mountain.

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Then, once you get high enough, you can take a gondola to the southern peak, where the plank path awaits.

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This is where the path turns truly dangerous, with nothing but planks to walk on and a rail of chains to hold onto.

uqpu.net

 

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uqpu.net

 

 

imgur.com

 

You’ll find something pretty interesting at the end of your journey.

 

imgur.com

 

At the very top of the southern peak is a Taoist temple that was converted into a teahouse.

 

uqpu.net

 

Thousands of people climb the world’s most dangerous path to end up at a teahouse.

 

imgur.com

 

 

So, either these people really like dangerous climbing, or they really like tea. Either way, you should probably check out the teahouse at the top of Mt. Hua Shan.

 

 

 

That looks amazing, I would love to do that hike. Imagine the view, I wonder how they get supplies to that teahouse? Probably airlift ?

[IndiraLightfoot]

Isn't that High Hrothgar in Skyrim, but now in summer time? Where are the obnoxious dragons??

[Hurlshort]

I like a good hike, but those boards do not look very safe.  

[BruceVC]

I like a good hike, but those boards do not look very safe.  

 

But there is a chain so it should be fine however I wouldn't consider taking your kids with if that's what you thinking  ...

[Raithe]

It's wondering how the original Taoist temple was built..  Those monks carting up building supplies certainly didn't have airlift help..

[BruceVC]

It's wondering how the original Taoist temple was built..  Those monks carting up building supplies certainly didn't have airlift help..

 

You right, that's more of an enigma. Unless the teahouse is more modern than what they are saying ?

[Raithe]

 

It's wondering how the original Taoist temple was built..  Those monks carting up building supplies certainly didn't have airlift help..

 

You right, that's more of an enigma. Unless the teahouse is more modern than what they are saying ?

 

 

 

Well, there's certainly a long history of Temples and Monasteries being built on/in incredibly remote and awkward places. Especially in China..

[ShadySands]

Marines Consider Removing Black Pixels from Collars

 

The next time the Marine Corps Uniform Board meets it may consider removing some of the black pixels from the Woodlands camouflage utilities blouse, according to a report by the Marine Corps Times.

 

Marines have complained about having trouble distinguishing rank because the black pixels blend in with the black ranks. A report in the Times said the board will discuss removing those pixels to make it easier.

 

No date for a future meeting has been set yet. 

 

On one hand I can totally relate from not being able to tell rank at a distance and wish that the powers that be had thought of this sooner (like when they adopted the uniform) but on the other this seems like a waste of money

 

one of my favorite comments

 

So, because some senior NCOs have a stick in their butt about being properly greeted from 30 feet away, the MC is going to create an added cost to the manufacture of uniforms. First-world military problems. This is ridiculous.

 

It does leave out that officers get butt hurt about it as well. For those that don't know, Marine officers wear black rank insignia while deployed

[Keyrock]

http://www.uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/01/cormac-mccarthys-ex-arrested-brandishing-gun-pulled-vagina-dispute-aliens/

 

 

JANUARY 8–A domestic dispute over space aliens escalated Saturday morning when a lingerie-clad New Mexico woman allegedly pointed a silver handgun at her boyfriend, a weapon she retrieved from her vagina, where it had been placed while the accused was performing a sex act, police allege.

 

New Mexico, eh?  Florida, step your game up. 

[Walsingham]

http://www.uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/01/cormac-mccarthys-ex-arrested-brandishing-gun-pulled-vagina-dispute-aliens/

 

 

JANUARY 8–A domestic dispute over space aliens escalated Saturday morning when a lingerie-clad New Mexico woman allegedly pointed a silver handgun at her boyfriend, a weapon she retrieved from her vagina, where it had been placed while the accused was performing a sex act, police allege.

 

New Mexico, eh?  Florida, step your game up. 

 

I'm laughing because I can imagine Woldan disliking this story for very non-standard reasons.

[Keyrock]

 

http://www.uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/01/cormac-mccarthys-ex-arrested-brandishing-gun-pulled-vagina-dispute-aliens/

 

 

JANUARY 8–A domestic dispute over space aliens escalated Saturday morning when a lingerie-clad New Mexico woman allegedly pointed a silver handgun at her boyfriend, a weapon she retrieved from her vagina, where it had been placed while the accused was performing a sex act, police allege.

 

New Mexico, eh?  Florida, step your game up. 

 

I'm laughing because I can imagine Woldan disliking this story for very non-standard reasons.

 

Improper storage of a firearm?

[Katphood]

Anybody from Chicago here? 

 

http://gizmodo.com/21-pictures-of-chicagos-modern-day-ice-age-1496173773?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

 

Wow!

[BruceVC]

Anybody from Chicago here? 

 

http://gizmodo.com/21-pictures-of-chicagos-modern-day-ice-age-1496173773?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

 

Wow!

 

Wow, amazing pictures