Archive for July 4th, 2007
Vietnamese grandmother battles police and government corruption
Here’s a hero for you:
Most Vietnamese cower when a cop squeezes them for a bribe. Le Hien Duc, a gray-haired 75-year-old grandmother, fights back.Four-foot-nine and weighing just 88 pounds, she’ll take on anyone, from lowly bureaucrats to high-level officials. She e-mails, phones, tracks them down at their offices, confronts them at their homes.
“Corruption is definitely an evil, and it is ruining my beloved country,” said Duc, a former elementary school teacher who works from dawn until dusk battling graft.
Duc says she is following the example of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s Communist revolutionary hero. As a young woman, she joined Ho Chi Minh’s anti-colonial revolution and spent years in the jungle working with codes for the army. Link to story at Guardian.co.uk.
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US wins Mustard Belt!
Joey Chesnut set another world record for hot dog eating today, defeating six-time winner Takeru Kobayashi at Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island. Chesnut downed 66 hot dogs in twelve minutes. Kobayashi had a personal-best 63 hot dogs. Link
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Witch caught on video terrorizing Mexican town!
What do you think the object is that appears in the video? Obviously it’s not a witch – but it’s something! Creepy! It actually reminds me of a phenomenon I observed during the Oakland firestorm in 1991. The updraft of the fire was so powerful that the intact ashes of some large objects – I would assume that they were big cardboard boxes, for example – were lifted high into the sky and transported across the bay. The object in the video appears to be moving in a similar fashion. Anyone? Link at LiveLeak.
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Stars and Stripes Forever.
Despite the way they are dressed, these guys are pretty good. What, you didn’t know this song had words? Push play or go to YouTube. YesButNoButYes has this and eight other eclectic version of Stars and Stripes Forever, including hand fart, ukulele, and electric guitar. Link
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Cooking hot dogs via electrocution.
Hot dogs are a traditional part of Fourth of July celebrations. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories explains how to cook your weiners in a thoroughly unsafe way. Or you could just read about it.
While we could give you lots of warnings about all the different dangers involved and how to possibly skirt them, the simple truth is that this just isn’t safe. If you are foolish enough to attempt this, you will have to deal with pointy things, raw electricity out of the wall, hot steam, and the possibility of fire. If that isn’t enough, and you succeed, you are still faced with the possibility of having to eat a hot dog. In summary: do not, under any circumstances, cook hot dogs this way.
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The Face of Age
Stunning. Living in Three Centuries: The Face of Age is the working title for this black-and-white photographic portrait project. Link via Two Loud
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Color Inspiration from the Masters.
From Colour Lovers, the folks who brought you Butterflies and Their Color Palettes, here are pleasing color combinations gleaned from famous paintings. Link -via Dump Trumpet
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Pink Dolphin Seen in Louisiana Lake.
Amongst a pack of bottlenose dolphins in Calcasieu Lake in Louisiana, this pink dolphin stands out. It’s a rare albino dolphin, unrelated to the species of pink dolphin found in the Amazon. Link -via Arbroath
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The Mustard Belt.
Along with fireworks, parades, and picnics, another Independence Day tradition is Nathan’s Famous July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Contest, held annually since 1916. This year’s competition will pit new world record holder Joey Chesnutt against six-time winner Takeru Kobayashi (who is recovering from wisdom tooth surgery). The last time an American won the event was in 1999. $20,000 and the “mustard belt†are up for grabs today in Coney Island. The event will be broadcast live at 12:40PM by ESPN. Link
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5 Obscure Facts About the Declaration of Independence.
John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence [wiki] | Key to Painting [Flash]
1. There Was No "United States" in the Declaration of Independence.
When the Founding Fathers adopted "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" [wiki] on July 4, 1776, they didn’t form the nation called The United States of America.
Indeed, the United States of America actually came into being on March 1, 1781 when the Second Continental Congress ratified the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (or more commonly known as the Article of Confederation [wiki]).
2. Jefferson Was Upset that Slavery was Edited out.
In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson [wiki] listed the British crown’s support and importation of slavery to the colonies as one of the grievances:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither."
The passage, however, was edited out by request of the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia. Jefferson (himself a slave owner!) remained upset about this removal of the condemnation of slavery until his death.
3. The Youngest and Oldest Signers
The youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence was Edward Rutledge [wiki] of Southern Carolina. He was 26. Actually that wasn’t the only interesting thing: Rutledge argued for the deletion of Jefferson’s condemnation of slavery (see above). He was also initially opposed to independence, but signed the Declaration for the sake of unanimity.
The oldest signer was Benjamin Franklin [wiki], who was 70 at the time. At the signing, Franklin famously said "We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
4. The Sole Recanter: Richard Stockton
During the course of the Revolutionary War, four signers were captured by the British (George Walton, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge) while fighting. Although they were treated harshly, all four were eventually released.
Only one guy, Richard Stockton [wiki] of New Jersey, was captured in the middle of the night and taken prisoner specifically because he was a signer of the Declaration. Stockton also had the singular misfortune of being the only recanter of the oath to support the Declaration of Independence with "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." Under duress of harsh British confinement, Stockton recanted his signature on the Declaration and declared his allegiance to the King George III before he was released. (Source: American Heritage).
Stockton’s ordeal didn’t end there: his estate was taken by the British army during his absence, and all of his household belongings were taken or destroyed. The imprisonment not only broke Stockton’s mind and spirit, but also ruined his health – it took him years to fully recuperate. Before he died, Stockton re-affirmed his oath of allegiance to the United States.
5. Bargain Hunter Bought an Old Copy of the Declaration of Independence for $4, Sold It For Millions!
In 1989, a bargain hunter who bought an old and torn painting for $4 at a flea market found an old copy of the Declaration of Independence tucked away between the canvas and the frame!
A copy of the Dunlap Broadside, now at Yale University.
It turned out to be one of the 200 official copies from the first printing of the Declaration of Independence, called the Dunlap Broadsides [wiki]. Before this discovery, only 24 copies were known to exist.
The lucky bargain hunter sold his copy of the Declaration at an auction for $8.14 million!
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iToid: The iPhone Altoids.
For those who are tired of hearing their friends going ga-ga over the iPhone, but are too cheap to shell out $500 for a phone (or if you live in Vermont), I present to you something you can make for about $2 – behold, the iToid: the iPhone Altoids!
From a distance, it looks quite like the real thing, so your co-workers may scoot over to your cubicle for a closer look. If they’re disappointed that you don’t have the real thing, there is a plus side to it: you can offer them an Altoid.
If the process isn’t obvious to you, here’s how to make it: more …
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Butterfly Hole Punch Clouds.
We’ve posted some strange clouds before on Neatorama (like this one). Here’s another one: Butterfly Hole punch Cloud, caused by falling ice crystals.
Hole-punch clouds or fall-streak holes, such as the ones shown above near Shreveport, Louisiana, are caused by falling ice crystals. The ice crystals could originate in a higher cloud or be facilitated by a passing airplane exhaust. If the air has just the right temperature and moisture content, the crystals will absorb vapor as they fall and thus continue to grow. Holes are formed when supercooled water droplets in shallow cloud layers freeze (initiated by the falling ice crystals) and release their heat of fusion, which warms the air and evaporates the surrounding cloud. The fibrous, icy wisps falling from the clouds are called fall-streaks (seen above at left in the shape of a butterfly)
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Chicken Goggles Prevent Fighting.
From Modern Mechanix blog, here’s something strange from the 30s: they put rose-colored glasses on chickens to prevent them from fighting!
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DIY Batman Underwear Wallet.
High school craftster Reagan Copeland wrote a neat little how-to make your very own Batman underwear wallet (just make sure it’s clean, mmkay?)
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Naked Mole Rat's Birth Control Method: Infertility Through Intimidation.
Photo Credit: Rochelle Buffenstein / City College of New York
Here’s birth control, queen naked mole-rat style:
In African naked mole-rat colonies, the queen is the only reproducing female—a feat she accomplishes by bullying around her fellow blind,
tunnel-digging companions. [...]“The queen exerts her dominance over the colony by, literally, pushing the other members of the colony around. She shoves them to show who’s boss,” said Chris Faulkes, a zoologist at the University of London.
Faulkes explained that the stressful domination reduces fertility hormone levels—effectively suppressing puberty in young mole-rats, lowering sperm counts in males and even turning off the female ovulatory cycle .
“The queen also seems to exert control over the breeding males, so that concentrations of their testosterone are suppressed except when she is ready to mate,” he said.
Link – via The Good Reverend
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Dissected Captain America by Ron English.
First they killed off Captain America, then Ron English of Supertouch created this: a "dissection" of Captain America:
Catching up with Supertouch’s own RON ENGLISH in his Jersey studio, we got a first-hand look at the master’s new huge-scale painting, “Dissect” featuring a very stripped-down Captain America before a background of some of his most patriotic comic strips. The phenomenal thing about this piece is that the background comic panels are entirely hand-painted and not a collage. Every single panel has been replicated with exacting detail by Ron, right down to the hand-lettered dialogue.
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