Free Republic

It's the moment nosy Norwegian neighbors have been waiting for — the release of official records showing the annual income and overall wealth of nearly every taxpayer in the Scandinavian country. In a move that would be unthinkable elsewhere, tax authorities in Norway have issued the "skatteliste," or "tax list," for 2008 to the media under a law designed to uphold the country's tradition of transparency. It's Norwegians' way of keeping up with the Johansens — from fishermen on the western fjords and Sami reindeer herders in the north to members of the committee that awarded President Barack Obama the...

Ted Williams' frozen head for batting practice at cryogenics lab: book BY Nathaniel Vinton DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Updated Friday, October 2nd 2009, 10:44 AM Head of Ted Williams was abused by employees at Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., whistleblower says. AP Ted Williams, who spent his entire career with the Red Sox, died in 2002 at the age of 83. 'Frozen,' by former Alcor exec Larry Johnson, makes shocking claims about how employees treated Ted Williams' frozen head. Take our PollCryonics: Critical or near-criminal? In "Frozen," Larry Johnson, a former exec at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation...

Michael Jackson will live on as a 'plastinated' creature preserved by German doctor Gunther von Hagens. Von Hagens has caused controversy with everyone from the Pope to the chief rabbi in Israel with his practice of embalming corpses with preserving polyurethane. Yesterday, he declared: 'An agreement is in place to plastinate the King of Pop.' Von Hagens said that he spoke with representatives of the Jackson family 'many months ago' and it was agreed that his body will be plastinated and placed next to Bubbles, his late pet monkey who was plastinated a number of years ago and is exhibited...

Texas cuisine is not only big, it’s bizarre. At least that’s the word from the host of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Zimmern is a chef and professional eater with an infectiously amiable nature and, as The Soup likes to point out, a penchant for entrails, eyeballs and other strange edibles. He found the Lone Star State, and especially its food, not only “larger than life,” he said in an interview, but unusual and interesting enough to fill an entire episode of his culinary show. Bizarre Foods: Texas premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on the Travel Channel. During...

So, I'm sitting there today working on something for a client when I received an unsolicted Skype Message with an "Important Business Proposal". I normally mess with these guys a little, just to waste their time , but as I was on the phone to a client I just decided to get rid of him quickly.As you can see - he was suprisingly honest about his ultimate intentions. This is how the scam works Mr Dutu, or Mrs Dutu is usually writing to you from a yahoo or other free email address. It usually doesn't address you by name. It...

A brand-new website called BadPaintingsofBarackObama.com is living up to its name, displaying exactly what it suggests – strange portraits of America's president. Internet surfers are treated to a collection of images of President Obama from a variety of artists, with no commentary at all on the site. Readers merely click each image or refresh the page to see another of the approximately 50 items in the gallery. The site is the creation of Chris Collins, a 24-year old artist and Web designer in Cincinnati, Ohio. "It's just really bizarre because I made it on a Sunday night to amuse a...

FALMOUTH – What’s in your wallet? A Walmart customer shopping around for a new wallet found 10 human teeth while looking through a wallet he was about to buy on Saturday night, police said. More Times Breaking News Police said the man was shopping in the Teaticket Highway store at 9:58 p.m., when he unzipped one of the wallet’s compartments and discovered what police have identified as 10 human teeth. One tooth – which police said are from an adult – had a filling, police said. The male customer turned the wallet and the teeth over to Walmart employees, but...

LAGOS, Nigeria – One of Nigeria's biggest daily newspapers reported that police implicated a goat in an attempted automobile theft. In a front-page article on Friday, the Vanguard newspaper said that two men tried to steal a Mazda car two days earlier in Kwara State, with one suspect transforming himself into a goat as vigilantes cornered him. The paper quoted police spokesman Tunde Mohammed as saying that while one suspect escaped, the other transformed into a goat as he was about to be apprehended.

Archeologists in China are baffled after finding a tiny Swiss watch in a 400-year-old tomb. The watch ring was discovered as archeologists were making a documentary with two journalists from Shangsi town. "When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, a piece of rock suddenly dropped off and hit the ground with a metallic sound,? said Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Autonomous Region Museum. "We picked up the object, and found it was a ring. After removing the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it was a watch." The time...

Two years ago, the federal government was spending money at Mach 8. That is, if every single dollar paid in taxes were laid out end to end, and you had to spend the entire lot in a year--the line would have to move at 8x the speed of sound. Now the rate is probably closer to Mach 10. We all hate the ides of April, but we seldom notice all of the taxes we pay each day. And some of them are ridiculous. Here are some taxes that you may not know you are paying which are still on the...

The Prayer Threads for Obama have occasioned no small amount of differences of opinion and a wide diversity of feelings hereon. Given the unfittingness of discussion and debate on a prayer thread, it seems wise and fitting to have a thread where Believers can FRUITFULLY chew on these issues. Some folks quite understandably follow the Biblical exhortation to pray for our leaders; love our enemies; pray for our enemies; do good to those who despitefully use you . . . etc. to pray warmly positive prayers for Obama . . . even Bin Laden, Hillary et al. Others of...

FRESNO -- A burglar who broke into a home just east of Fresno rubbed spices over the body of one of two men as they slept in their rooms and then used an 8-inch sausage to whack the other man in the face and head before he ran out of the house, Fresno County sheriff's deputies said Saturday. Lt. Ian Burrimond, describing the crime as one of the strangest he's ever heard of, said a suspect was found hiding in a nearby field a few minutes later and taken into custody on suspicion of residential robbery. Deputies, he said, had...

London (agencies) A Desperate dad last night begged medics for help because he is turning naturally into a woman. Pub singer Terry Wright said: “I am a man, not a woman. And I do not want to be a woman. “I just want to get my life back to normal.” Father-of-five Terry, 60, started losing his hair and beard ten years ago. Since then he has developed smooth skin, hot flushes. And kids living nearby taunt him by calling him “She-Man”. Blood tests have revealed Terry has abnormally high levels of the female hormone oestrogen. But doctors who have examined...

2 Nephi 25   19 For according to the words of the prophets, the Messiah cometh in six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem; and according to the words of the prophets, and also the word of the angel of God, his name shall be Jesus Christ, the Son of God.   20 And now, my brethren, I have spoken plainly that ye cannot err. And as the Lord God liveth that brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt, and gave unto Moses power that he should heal the nations after they had been bitten by...

/begin my translation Growing Mushrooms and Raising Rabbits for Celebrating 60th Anniversary of Party's Birth Issue No. 118 2008.04.03 People are busy trying to grow mushrooms and raise rabbits all over the country, following Kim Jong-il's directive issued on Feb. 3, 2008. Ministry of Agriculture, which will be in charge of this drive, are prodding factories, enterprises, and other work units all over the country to carry out the directive. Workers at factories, enterprises, and work units as well as children at Kindergarten should grow mushrooms and raise rabbits until the 60th Anniversary of Korean Worker's Party's Founding. People's...

'Bizarre' new mammal discovered By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News The curious-looking creature was caught on camera A new species of mammal has been discovered in the mountains of Tanzania, scientists report. The bizarre-looking creature, dubbed Rhynochocyon udzungwensis, is a type of giant elephant shrew, or sengi. The cat-sized animal, which is reported in the Journal of Zoology, looks like a cross between a miniature antelope and a small anteater. It has a grey face, a long, flexible snout, a bulky, amber body, a jet-black rump and it stands on spindly legs. "This is one of the most exciting...

Where in the World is the Internet’s new Most Popular Video — the Tom Cruise Banned Video? FACTNet Found Them!!! In 2004 Cruise made a secret interview video just for Scientology cult members. This secret video was leaked to the Internet on January 15, 2008 on YouTube.com. This was the same day that the considerably less damaging Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton was released in bookstores all over the world.

Phobia catalogue reveals bizarre list of fears By Ben Farmer Last Updated: 6:22pm GMT 10/01/2008 It is enough to give someone an irrational fear of long and faintly improbable-sounding words. In fact according to an exhaustive list of unusual phobias the fear of long words already exists and has a name. A phobia of being tickled with feathers could be rooted in childhood A catalogue of fears unearthed by New Scientist magazine, claims sufferers have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, or sesquippedaliophobia for short, which describes “a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of long words”. The list of hundreds of unlikely irrational fears, which...

A little girl thought she was getting an iPod for Christmas but ended up getting a rude surprise. She got the box but when she opened it up, she found a surprising switch: the iPod had been replaced with a bizarre note. The note reads in part "Reclaim your mind from the media shackles." Jay Ellis, the girls father, returned the ipod to the Germantown, Md. Wal-Mart store where he purchased it. The store manger told him that another customer returned an iPod with a similar issue. MyFoxDC attempted to reach Apple for a comment, but got no response.

I attended a church bazaar this morning, and watched little kiddies posing with Santa. That started me wondering...

View the photo essay at the link - http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2007/11/questions-for-clintons-vin-gupta-and.html

Charges: Man Hunting Squirrels Shoots Bow Hunter November 20, 2007 STILLWATER, Minn. (AP) ― A 20-year-old Minneapolis man is charged with a felony after he allegedly fired a shotgun at what he thought was a squirrel and hit another hunter. Washington County prosecutors charged Neng Xiong with felony discharge of a firearm on Tuesday in the hunting accident that wounded a bow hunter in Bayport Wildlife Management Area on Oct. 25. The criminal complaint alleges that Xiong was hunting squirrels with a 20-gauge shotgun loaded with birdshot when he accidentally shot the other hunter, who was kneeling on the ground....

New Zealand Denies Immigration to U.K. Wife Because She's Too Fat Saturday, November 17, 2007 NEW YORK — New Zealand immigration officials are keeping a U.K. wife from joining her husband "down under" because they say she is too fat, the Daily Mail reports. Click here to read the full report in the Daily Mail. British citizens Rowan Trezise, 33, and Richie Trezise, 35, are living apart as she tries desperately to shed the pounds needed to comply with New Zealand guidelines that immigrants maintain a healthy BMI, or body mass index. BMI is a weight-height ratio that estimates percentage...

Do you know this crotch grabber? By John Jagler Story Created: Nov 14, 2007 We are in a frantic search to track down the man who grabbed Packers Wide Receiver Ruvell Martin's junk at Sunday's game against the Vikings. The guy in the white at the far right literally left a mark on the Packers wideout. Donald Driver, during his regular Greenhouse segment on Newsradio 620 WTMJ said what happened to Ruvell "just ain't right" and that it's the talk of the lockerroom. We know this was a Milwaukee season ticket "holder" game, so chances are this guy's i-d will...

A British pro-life group warns that a new type of embryo research, likely to be approved this week by a U.K. government panel, undermines human dignity. Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority is expected to give a green light this week to U.K. laboratories seeking to create the first animal-human embryos for medical research using eggs taken from dead cows. British scientists want to use the hybrid embryos in order to research genetic diseases. Anthony Ozimic, political secretary for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, opposes the embryo-destructive research. He says that an "a-nucleated" cow egg will only...

#1: Elephants on Acid What happens if you give an elephant LSD? On Friday August 3, 1962, a group of Oklahoma City researchers decided to find out. Warren Thomas, Director of the City Zoo, fired a cartridge-syringe containing 297 milligrams of LSD into Tusko the Elephant's rump. With Thomas were two scientific colleagues from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, Louis Jolyon West and Chester M. Pierce. 297 milligrams is a lot of LSD — about 3000 times the level of a typical human dose. In fact, it remains the largest dose of LSD ever given to a living...

'Vegansexuals' shun sex with meaties By staff writers July 31, 2007 10:45am A GROUP of vegans in New Zealand - vegansexuals - are shunning sex with meat-eaters because their bodies are made up of animal carcases. "When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals," vegan Nichola Kriek said in the Christchurch daily The Press. Another said: "I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance." Annie...

101 Frightening Ice Cream Flavors From Around The World Ice cream is a frozen dessert made from dairy products, such as cream (or substituted ingredients), combined with flavorings and sweeteners, such as sugar. In the fifth century BC, ancient Greeks sold snow cones mixed with honey and fruit in the markets of Athens. Persians, having mastered the storage of ice, ate ice cream well into summer. Roman emperor Nero (37–68) had ice brought from the mountains and combined with fruit toppings. Today’s ice treats likely originated with these early ice delicacies. But at some point, the world of ice cream...

'Vegetarians Make Better Lovers,' Says Sexy Couple For Immediate Release: June 22, 2007 Contact: Mike Brazell 757-622-7382 Atlanta -- Wearing nothing but boxer shorts during a display of passion that's bound to raise a few eyebrows and turn lots of heads, PETA's Mike Brazell and his partner, Jonathan Frank, will passionately make out in a bed set up outside the main entrance to the Peachtree Center Mall. While the not-so-discreet couple is getting it on beneath a banner that reads, "Vegetarians Make Better Lovers," PETA members will hand out leaflets and vegetarian starter kits to gaping passersby. Brazell and Frank...

Golfer starts fire with spark from club RENO, Nev., June 20 (UPI) -- Reno, Nev., fire officials say a brush fire was caused by a golfer who tried to play his ball from a patch of grass near the Wildcreek Golf Course. Reno Battalion Chief Curtis Johnson said the golfer hit his ball off the course and then struck an object with his club while trying to direct the ball back to the fairway, The Reno Gazette-Journal reported Wednesday. The impact of the club on the object created a spark that caused the brush fire, Johnson said. "He was totally...

PASCO COUNTY Vietnam vet kills rabid bobcat in fight for survival BY CAMILLE C. SPENCER St. Petersburg Times WESLEY CHAPEL -- Dale Rippy, 62, a quick-thinking Vietnam veteran, choked to death a growling bobcat that lunged at him from his back porch. Pasco County officials praised Rippy for his quick thinking. ''If he let the cat go, we would have had more victims,'' said Denise Hilton, animal services manager for Pasco County Animal Control. Recuperating from puncture wounds Tuesday, Rippy told about his confrontation with the 25-pound bobcat. ''If that cat had attacked a child, it would've been really bad,''...

LA HABRA, Calif. — An Orange County man cut off his mother's head with a circular saw and then died after trying to decapitate himself, authorities said. Police answered a 911 report of a family dispute at a Pinehurst Avenue home just after 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, entered a locked bedroom and found the body of 60-year-old Guadalupe Ruiz on a bed, police spokeswoman Cindy Knapp said. Arthur Ruiz Jr., 32, was on another bed with the saw nearby. He had died of neck injuries, police said. It was unclear why Ruiz attacked his mother, police said. A child and three...

A Seattle man has been charged with a slew of crimes that involved an alleged shoplifting, assaults and a pet duck named Mr. Peepers. Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Paul Stern on Thursday charged Kenneth Blaine Quinlan, 35, with two counts of third-degree assault and one count each of vehicular assault and hit-and-run. Authorities say that on March 23, Quinlan and his 39-year-old girlfriend drove to a Lynnwood shopping center, where he entered a Linens 'n Things outlet and she went into a Petco store, taking the duck with her.

Rudy Giuliani has a lot to learn about campaigning outside of New York City. The former New York mayor attended a roundtable discussion with heavy-hitters at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City recently. Two of the three co-hosts were natural gas billionaires who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. “Mayor Giuliani was doing fine until one CEO asked him what his energy policy was,” a participant said. “He gave a very detailed and lengthy answer covering every energy source imaginable, but he never once uttered the words ‘natural gas.’ Considering where he was, who he was talking to, and...

A 29-year-old sex offender from Oklahoma duped two Arizona men into thinking he was a 12-year-old boy and lived with them for two years in a sexual relationship before the truth finally emerged Wednesday, officials said. Neil Havens Rodreick II, who had been living under the alias of Casey Price, was arrested this week along with the men he’d fooled and a possible former cellmate, who is also an Oklahoma sex offender, officials said. “This is extremely strange,” said Susan Quayle, spokeswoman for the Yavapai County sheriff’s office in Prescott, Ariz. “I can’t get over how bizarre this whole situation...

Ngoc: three decades without sleep Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc, known as Hai Ngoc, said he could not sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and has counted infinite numbers of sheep during more than 11,700 consecutive sleepless nights. "I don't know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But I'm still healthy and can farm normally like others," Ngoc said. Proving his health, the elderly resident of Que Trung commune, Que Son district said he can carry two 50kg bags of fertilizer down 4km of road to return home every day. His wife said, "My husband used...

ATLANTA - Imagine your body pocked by erupting sores. The sensation of little bugs crawling all over you. And worst of all, mysterious red and blue fibers sprouting from your skin. It may sound like a macabre science fiction movie, but a growing legion of Americans say they suffer from this condition. And now the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating. Some doctors dismiss these patients as delusional. But the condition — called Morgellons — has caused a small frenzy on the Internet, with hundreds of people pleading for help. "Sometimes the government doesn't want to panic...

Not for the squeamish. I understand that this clip is from the Wife Swap show.

SOUTH PLAINFIELD — At first, Andrea Leipow thought the severed human hand nicknamed Freddy, found in a mason jar of formaldehyde on a basement table, was just a bizarre joke. But when a resident at the home on the quiet suburban street read a satanic text in the language Enochian, the 25-year-old Leipow, who moved into the home in February, started to get "creeped out," she said. Things grew much darker at the house, which was shared by a group of people in their 20s, Leipow told the Home News Tribune yesterday. The two exotic dancers living there, Linda E....

MOSCOW (AFP) - Forget politics, oligarchs and Chechnya. What Russians really want to ask their leader is when he lost his virginity, when he will legalise marijuana and when a giant fictional octopus sleeping at the bottom of the ocean will awaken. These are at least some of the most popular questions being put by Russian web surfers to President Vladimir Putin on the Yandex website in preparation for a July 6 interactive Internet question-and-answer session. Putin will respond via Internet in his first-ever webcast to some of the questions posted through the BBC Online and Yandex sites, where queries...

OUCH! Nasty. :(

Jackson Visits Tokyo Orphans Michael Jackson visited an orphanage in Tokyo, Japan, on Sunday as part of his first public appearances since being acquitted of child molestation charges last year. Jackson had jetted to Japan to collect MTV Japan's Legend Award on Saturday, and was keen to make the most of his time in the capital. The Bad hitmaker was thrilled to meet more than 160 orphaned kids between the ages of three and 18 at the children's home in downtown Tokyo. The 47-year-old singer was greeted by crowds of cheering fans outside the orphanage, and he shouted "I love...

Driver Has 18 Times Legal Alcohol Limit By LIUDAS DAPKUS, Associated Press Writer Tue May 23, 8:42 AM ET VILNIUS, Lithuania - Lithuanian police were so astonished when they pulled over a truck driver and his breathalyzer test registered 18 times the legal alcohol limit, they thought their testing device must be broken. It wasn't. Police said Tuesday 41-year-old Vidmantas Sungaila registered 7.27 grams per liter of alcohol in his blood repeatedly on different devices when he was pulled over for driving his truck down the center of a two-lane highway 60 miles from the capital, Vilnius on Saturday. Lithuania's...

Michael Berg has come to terms with his son's murderer. But to most Americans that man is still enemy No.1, writes Martin Daly in New York. In the darkness, when the pain becomes too great, Michael Berg pulls out a chair for the man who decapitated his son and talks to him about compassion and forgiveness. Michael Berg has cried publicly many times for his dead son but he has forgiven Zarqawi, considered by the Americans to be the premier threat to peace in Iraq, but who remains free despite a $US25 million ($33 million) bounty on his head, and...

TOM Cruise has claimed he will eat the PLACENTA after fiancée Katie Holmes has their baby. The actor, 43 — who wants her to give birth in silence according to his Scientology cult rules — said: “I’m gonna eat the placenta, too. “I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I’m going to eat the cord and the placenta right there.” But when a GQ magazine interviewer said it would be a big meal, Cruise replied: “OK, maybe I won’t.”

Only three things are certain in life. MySpace, Taxes, and Death. If you have a MySpace account and you die, this is where you will end up. MyDeathSpace.com memorializes deceased MySpace users and picks up where a regular obituary leaves off. Click the MySpace Deaths link at the top to view the latest MySpace Deaths!

Comments in Middle East border on bizarre... Bill Clinton (in Qatar) called the cartoon depictions of Muhammad published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last fall "totally outrageous cartoons against Islam," ... In fact, the cartoons are pretty tame stuff -- the Islamic prophet is not shown as dirty, drooling, shaped like an animal or engaged in any unsavory acts, all standard for cartoon depictions of Jews in the modern Arab press. Mr. Clinton is entitled to his opinion, of course, though one wonders why he would want to gin up more hostility toward the West with an inflammatory characterization of...

The massive, hollow crests that protrude like bananas from atop the heads of duck-billed dinosaurs did not help their sense of smell, as previously believed. A new study still doesn't quite rule out some of the more outlandish theories for what the crest did do, including that it possibly functioned as a brain cooler or snorkel. David Evans reconstructed the brain cavity of an herbivorous lambeosaur, also known as the "cows of the Cretaceous period," creating the first ever cast of the dino's brain, which was about the size of your fist. Lambeosaurs roamed the planet from 85 million to...

Harry Reid just made a motion, that was seconded, to send the Senate into closeed session.Schumer, Rockefeller and Durbin are before the press asking for a Senate Intelligence investigation into the Plame affair

Society Becomes Stranger and Stranger Tragically, many psychologists and sociologists have noted that even in same-sex “marriages,” both partners take on heterosexual gender roles. That is, one person will play a female role and the other will play a male role. Some members of the gay community have denounced this imitation of heterosexual marriage by inventing a new term. The new term for the phenomenon to be avoided is called “couple-ism.” Since marriage is thought to be an outmoded “patriarchal” institution, taking on gender roles within a same-sex marriage is to be avoided. In other words, same-sex marriage is good...