Isn't Latin a ":dead language" ? I took it in high school because I figured I'd never meet a Roman and have to know how to speak it ! I wonder if our military uses Klingon geeks as "code talkers" ??

A "joke item" that you hide in your garden and scare the daylights out of your wife when she goes to work in it.

Didn't a couple of guys base jump off of some 20 K cliff in Pakistan or somewhere once ? I think it took them around two weeks to climb up and a few seconds to parachute down.

Weren't code talkers used in close combat situations and not for transmitting strategic information ? You really think that the average Japanese soldier on say Iwo Jima was walking around with a Japanese/Italian dictionary and even had the time to open it up and decode information as the battle raged ? I'm guessing not many Japanese units on Okinawa had Polish translators either. Come on.

Always a neat story, however- with all say the Italian-Americans and Polish-Americans that served wouldnt it have been easier to use men speaking those languages ? Im sure the Japanese would have been as easily foiled.

My maternal Grandfather was a combat surgeon in WW 1, sort of the M*A*S*H of that war. He was also an avid photographer and he took many photos, some of the carnage. I was always taken by the dead horses as they used a lot of horses to haul supplies. He said that without the benefit of penicillin, discovered after the war, that the men who had maggots in their wounds stood a better chance of survival.

Reminds me of that lost WW 2 airplane that they found years later.

I simply cannot fathom the type of person who works every day at disposing unwanted babies. Then again few of us could understand the mind set of Nazi death camp personell.

It is sad that such a creature may be doomed as we all are. We will have to face reality and if we wish, allot any money to those programs that will actually have an impact.

No "Beast Light" ? Some survey.

I forgot to add--when I was younger and collecting for my paper route, I noticed a funny looking quarter that had a recent mint date--1954 or such. It felt heavier than a typical quaret so for some reaason I decided to bite it. It was lead ! Someone had gone to the trouble to cast a lead quarter. Maybe it was lead poisoning that made me so goofy ?

Amazing that it wasn't simply lost or discarded. I'll pick up pennies I find on the floor or pavement and usually put them into a charity can/jar.

Not a sock darner with that handle; I remember my Grandmother using one. More likely some type of early machine like a butter churn or primative Veg-O-Matic.

Here's another guy - interesting in his own right. He lived next door to my maternal Grandmother in Waddington NY. When he died, his widow gave my Mother's family a lot of memoribilia including boxes of the 3-D photos and a "magic lantern" to view them. As a kid we looked at a lot of those slides in our kitchen projected on the refrigerator. I have a hand carved table from India which was given to me through my late Mother. My sister has an artifact from the Empress of China's palace. The 3-D photos were given by my Mother to a museum in New Jersey.

here is a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ricalton

What ? No one going with all you can eat buffet--and just keep on eating ??