What they do, SenorMysterioso, is run traffic through in several-hours-long shifts coordinated and operated by the military. You basically are forced into a military caravan consisting of mostly military vehicles plus a handful of trucks carrying cargo and maybe a bus or two.
They have massive staging areas where the caravans wait, and when the time is right they let one caravan go in one direction, etc.
I have some amazing photos - unfortunately they are slides, not prints - of our vehicle getting stuck against a random military vehicle that was traveling in the other direction outside of a caravan. The photo is of a crowd of us - soldiers and the passengers in my car - pulling/pushing against our respective vehicles in order to get them "unstuck" from one another - with the 18 switchback valley in the background below us.
Scary, wonderful shit for me back then when I was just 18. I'm not sure that I'd do it again now. hehe.
I took the Himalayan road from Srinigar, Jammu & Kashmir Province (India) to Leh, Ladakh (and back!) via the town of Kargil in 1988. Kargil has since been destroyed in fighting between the Indian and Pakistani armed forces.
I've always thought this to be the most dangerous road in the world. I once counted 18 switchbacks below me as I looked out over the edge of one guardrail-free, single-vehicle-width cliff. I can't imagine that it has changed much in the 20 years that have passed since I was there, either.
A friend of mine IM'd me the video this afternoon. As far as I know, nobody was killed delivering it to my friend.
I'm not sure why there is no audio. I don't think the reason there's no audio has anything to do with keeping anybody safe, however.
I was frankly very surprised at the negative reactions to the video here. While I'm not really a cat or a pet person, I do love all living things to some extent and would never tolerate any cruelty to any animal.
I looked at the video again and again and I just don't think there is anything cruel about it at all. I can guarantee that nobody who posts on Neatorama would ever post a video in which an animal is deliberately being harmed for laughs. This simply does not compute.
I had a few free minutes when I wrote the comment above about the NASA cat cruelty program. It was a complete fabrication and was meant to be marginally humorous. The idea in comments that inspired it was somebody saying that nobody would hurt a cat that they knew - which made me think that if you DIDN'T know the cat, maybe you could be cruel to it. What if NASA took away your cat and replaced it with a cat that you didn't know - and demanded that you tie little paper bags to its feet. Would you do it? Would you derive some small amount of sadistic pleasure in doing so?
These are important questions without easy answers.
In the meantime, I'm genuinely sorry if anyone was genuinely upset by the cat video. I'm not sorry enough to take it down, however, as I think it is interesting, and yes - even "neat." It isn't the most interesting thing on this site by a longshot, nor will this post go down in the annals of Neatorama history as one of the "neater" ones, but I think it is "neat," nevertheless.
I reach into my magic bag and try to find something worthy of a post here on Neatorama. More often than not, I think I'm successful. Some posters have higher success rates than me, however, IMO. Are they able to tap in to some cosmic "neat" energy that mysteriously guides them? Are they eating diets higher in Omega-3 Fatty Acids? Are they simply cooler, funnier and "neater" than I am? I'm afraid that I can't answer these questions. I just don't know.
User feedback - particularly through comments and the occasional hate mail/death threat - is something that I personally take into account on an ongoing basis as I continue to post here. While the demands of conflicting definitions of "neat" can sometimes be paralyzing, I believe in my heart that whether or not I agree with a given feedback tidbit, I learn from them all. The lesson I will carry forth from today is that there are people who read this blog who seem to have a remarkable amount of concern about whether or not a cat that is unknown to them that appears in a video is happy or unhappy. Seeing what they perceive to be an unhappy cat makes these people unhappy. I do not wish to be an agent of unhappiness here on Neatorama or anywhere else for that matter. In the future, when choosing a video that features a cat whose happiness can be discerned, I will stick exclusively to videos where the cats depicted are either apparently happy or indifferent. There is a third category I might consider - that of cats that are pretending to be unhappy, but who are actually happy deep down. The truth be told, however, I will probably mostly stay away from that type of video as I could see how making a determination like that - and sticking with it - could be stressful.
If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to post them here in this thread or to contact me directly via email. Thanks!
I think it is on one of those airplanes that one can buy rides on now that have all of the seats removed and that make huge dives, creating the illusion of weightlessness inside the cabin.
What you folks don't realize is that NASA trained two separate teams of astronauts for this mission. They had each team live together for more than 12 months in a special house - along with a cat. Each day they would bring their cat to the training facility to plan for this mission.
On the day of the actual mission into space, without telling the astronauts, NASA technicians switched the cats so that Team A would fly with Team B's cat - and vice-versa.
The astronauts did not find out that they were in space with the other team's cat until they were already in orbit. This was also the moment that they discovered that the cat experiments they had prepared and trained for: cat stroking and purring in zero gravity, cat grooming, catnip toy playing, etc. were to be discarded in favor of a new set of experiments, known collectively as the "Cruelty to Cats" experiments.
We've only been able to piece together a small amount of information about the "Cruelty to Cats" series of zero-gravity experiments, but we know that in addition to the one that appears in this video, "Effects of throwing a weightless cat at a metal capsule wall," there was another experiment that involved tying little paper bags on the cat's feet and forcing him to roam freely about the capsule. It is suspected that an additional experiment involved spraying the cat with a zero-gravity water hose.
I realize that these acts - including the part of the experiment depicted in the video above - are heinous. Neither Neatorama nor I condone acts of cruelty perpetrated against any animals, especially cats - even in the name of science.
I chose to share this video as a warning to some of our younger readers out there that even within an organization as ostensibly benevolent as NASA, evil still lurks in the hearts of men. Hopefully, by watching this video, young people will be more aware of what takes place in their names these days, masquerading as "science." It is my belief that these young "scientists of tomorrow" can use the awareness to change things for a better future for all of us - human and feline alike.
Right or wrong, Mao will always be the father of modern China. These days he is revered as almost a Santa Claus-like demigod.
Regardless of the terrible things he did, of which he did many, he did unite an internally (eternally) warring China with a serious Japanese Imperial Army infestation under a single government to create the modern Chinese state.
The "Long March" he led in the mid-1930s was truly an amazing undertaking which deserves the mythic status it has in modern Chinese society.
Hundreds of thousands or even millions of people died as a result of Mao's arrogance, stubbornness and even evil. He wasn't all about arrogance and evil, however, and simply calling him a GOOD or BAD man is inappropriate for someone involved in so much history.
We Americans tend to see things in black or white. Mao's life and legacy was far too complex to be reduced to a simple, single label.
And don't forget, kids: Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman.
This not-quite-middle aged American with a thick head of hair occasionally dreams of sliding over a line of oiled-up Japanese women in bikinis. Who doesn't?
My beloved wife - a foreigner who didn't grow up with electricity, let alone microwaves - once cooked an egg in our microwave. It ended up exploding, of course, almost as loud as an M-80.
Now that the ancestral village has electricity, we bought a microwave for our house there. One of the first things I did with it was show my brothers-in-law and nieces how to nuke compact disks.
My dear and beloved wife (from Thailand) gets unusually excited whenever she happens to notice 11:11 on a digital clock and demands that everyone present "make a wish."
They have massive staging areas where the caravans wait, and when the time is right they let one caravan go in one direction, etc.
I have some amazing photos - unfortunately they are slides, not prints - of our vehicle getting stuck against a random military vehicle that was traveling in the other direction outside of a caravan. The photo is of a crowd of us - soldiers and the passengers in my car - pulling/pushing against our respective vehicles in order to get them "unstuck" from one another - with the 18 switchback valley in the background below us.
Scary, wonderful shit for me back then when I was just 18. I'm not sure that I'd do it again now. hehe.
http://www.buddhamaitreya.org/
Here's something about him when he was simply Ron Spencer back in the 1980s:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/shambhala/shambhala2.html
I've always thought this to be the most dangerous road in the world. I once counted 18 switchbacks below me as I looked out over the edge of one guardrail-free, single-vehicle-width cliff. I can't imagine that it has changed much in the 20 years that have passed since I was there, either.
That's very sweet of you.
A friend of mine IM'd me the video this afternoon. As far as I know, nobody was killed delivering it to my friend.
I'm not sure why there is no audio. I don't think the reason there's no audio has anything to do with keeping anybody safe, however.
I was frankly very surprised at the negative reactions to the video here. While I'm not really a cat or a pet person, I do love all living things to some extent and would never tolerate any cruelty to any animal.
I looked at the video again and again and I just don't think there is anything cruel about it at all. I can guarantee that nobody who posts on Neatorama would ever post a video in which an animal is deliberately being harmed for laughs. This simply does not compute.
I had a few free minutes when I wrote the comment above about the NASA cat cruelty program. It was a complete fabrication and was meant to be marginally humorous. The idea in comments that inspired it was somebody saying that nobody would hurt a cat that they knew - which made me think that if you DIDN'T know the cat, maybe you could be cruel to it. What if NASA took away your cat and replaced it with a cat that you didn't know - and demanded that you tie little paper bags to its feet. Would you do it? Would you derive some small amount of sadistic pleasure in doing so?
These are important questions without easy answers.
In the meantime, I'm genuinely sorry if anyone was genuinely upset by the cat video. I'm not sorry enough to take it down, however, as I think it is interesting, and yes - even "neat." It isn't the most interesting thing on this site by a longshot, nor will this post go down in the annals of Neatorama history as one of the "neater" ones, but I think it is "neat," nevertheless.
I reach into my magic bag and try to find something worthy of a post here on Neatorama. More often than not, I think I'm successful. Some posters have higher success rates than me, however, IMO. Are they able to tap in to some cosmic "neat" energy that mysteriously guides them? Are they eating diets higher in Omega-3 Fatty Acids? Are they simply cooler, funnier and "neater" than I am? I'm afraid that I can't answer these questions. I just don't know.
User feedback - particularly through comments and the occasional hate mail/death threat - is something that I personally take into account on an ongoing basis as I continue to post here. While the demands of conflicting definitions of "neat" can sometimes be paralyzing, I believe in my heart that whether or not I agree with a given feedback tidbit, I learn from them all. The lesson I will carry forth from today is that there are people who read this blog who seem to have a remarkable amount of concern about whether or not a cat that is unknown to them that appears in a video is happy or unhappy. Seeing what they perceive to be an unhappy cat makes these people unhappy. I do not wish to be an agent of unhappiness here on Neatorama or anywhere else for that matter. In the future, when choosing a video that features a cat whose happiness can be discerned, I will stick exclusively to videos where the cats depicted are either apparently happy or indifferent. There is a third category I might consider - that of cats that are pretending to be unhappy, but who are actually happy deep down. The truth be told, however, I will probably mostly stay away from that type of video as I could see how making a determination like that - and sticking with it - could be stressful.
If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to post them here in this thread or to contact me directly via email. Thanks!
I think it is on one of those airplanes that one can buy rides on now that have all of the seats removed and that make huge dives, creating the illusion of weightlessness inside the cabin.
Anyone?
What is Robert Lount hiding behind that goatee - and who does he think he's fooling?
On the day of the actual mission into space, without telling the astronauts, NASA technicians switched the cats so that Team A would fly with Team B's cat - and vice-versa.
The astronauts did not find out that they were in space with the other team's cat until they were already in orbit. This was also the moment that they discovered that the cat experiments they had prepared and trained for: cat stroking and purring in zero gravity, cat grooming, catnip toy playing, etc. were to be discarded in favor of a new set of experiments, known collectively as the "Cruelty to Cats" experiments.
We've only been able to piece together a small amount of information about the "Cruelty to Cats" series of zero-gravity experiments, but we know that in addition to the one that appears in this video, "Effects of throwing a weightless cat at a metal capsule wall," there was another experiment that involved tying little paper bags on the cat's feet and forcing him to roam freely about the capsule. It is suspected that an additional experiment involved spraying the cat with a zero-gravity water hose.
I realize that these acts - including the part of the experiment depicted in the video above - are heinous. Neither Neatorama nor I condone acts of cruelty perpetrated against any animals, especially cats - even in the name of science.
I chose to share this video as a warning to some of our younger readers out there that even within an organization as ostensibly benevolent as NASA, evil still lurks in the hearts of men. Hopefully, by watching this video, young people will be more aware of what takes place in their names these days, masquerading as "science." It is my belief that these young "scientists of tomorrow" can use the awareness to change things for a better future for all of us - human and feline alike.
Tell your friends.
Regardless of the terrible things he did, of which he did many, he did unite an internally (eternally) warring China with a serious Japanese Imperial Army infestation under a single government to create the modern Chinese state.
The "Long March" he led in the mid-1930s was truly an amazing undertaking which deserves the mythic status it has in modern Chinese society.
Hundreds of thousands or even millions of people died as a result of Mao's arrogance, stubbornness and even evil. He wasn't all about arrogance and evil, however, and simply calling him a GOOD or BAD man is inappropriate for someone involved in so much history.
We Americans tend to see things in black or white. Mao's life and legacy was far too complex to be reduced to a simple, single label.
And don't forget, kids: Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman.
Now that the ancestral village has electricity, we bought a microwave for our house there. One of the first things I did with it was show my brothers-in-law and nieces how to nuke compact disks.
Modern technology can be fun!
Any non-Thai people here familiar with that?