Odds ‘n Sods:

Rourke recommended the Patriot Nurse video blog. Rourke says: “She has done many videos on several survival topics. Check this one out in particular.

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“Your Agonizer please, Mister Kyle.”: Inmate-frying microwave pain blaster turret installed in US jail. This news really bothers me on several levels. To start: This isn’t at a prison. It is a County Jail, where I assume a good portion of the population is awaiting trial, and presumed innocent. This sounds like “cruel or unusual punishment”, to me.

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I spotted this over at TSLRF: Talk about adrenaline powered feats of strength! Real American Heroes #1. Unless he went back to make separate carries, that’s at least a 250 pound load, carried under heavy small arms fire. Staff Sgt. Jarrett D. Brown has a standing invitation to come hunt or fish at the Rawles Ranch, whenever he’d like!

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Cyber-squatting reaches a new low. Reader Roger S. mentioned jameswesleyrawles.com. Apparently, part of the Epik company’s business model is to take the name of anyone notable enough to have a Wikipedia biography, “scrape” the biography content from Wikipedia, and automagically add a few video clips from YouTube. They then try to sell the domain name to its rightful owner, or even auction them, presumably to even more ambitious cyber squatters. (The “Greater Fool Theory” is alive and well.) Sorry, but I’m not buying it. I certainly don’t want to encourage them. Some of these domain names sell for for big bucks. For example, the domain “howardstern.info” recently sold at auction for $15,000. These bottom feeders even have a convention planned, where they will schmooze and scheme more money, selling “developed domains.” (With similar scraped content.) The only good news is that there will soon be huge number of new Top Level Domains. The “.co” domain just opened up, and “.blog” is planned. Within a couple of years, there will be “.inc” , “.movie” , “.film” “.radio”, “.store”, “.shop”, “.book”, “.news”, “.poll”, “.travel”, and so forth. With this profusion of new domain naming options, the cyber-squatters will soon be overwhelmed, and lose their traction. OBTW, don’t get me started about how Facebook hijacks people’s names, without their consent. I loathe Facebook! Oh, and likewise don’t get me started about the so-called “publishers” that are leeching Wikipedia biographies into books.

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M.&W. suggested: Watermelons: What happened to the seeds?