7

The Sound Of Music rocks!

I have a confession to make… I, Burton, think The Sound Of Music rocks!

…And that would make me cool (because we all know that anyone into retro stuff is rather hip). Another, even more shocking confession… We even own two copies of the DVD ( original and special anniversary edition).

I do believe a Sound Of Music revival is coming to the world… View clip below, be inspired, and spread the love.

2

Angel Of Death?

I was enduring the trailer of Hellboy 2 recently when I saw the disturbing images of a creature with eyes on its wings (on the trailer that is, not in real life ;-) . My mind immediately thought about the Bible’s description of heavenly creatures in Revelation Chapter 4…

In the center and around the throne were four living beings, each covered with eyes, front and back… Each of these living beings had six wings, and their wings were covered with eyes, inside and out…

After some cyber-digging I discover that the creature in question just happens to be the Angel of Death. Hmmm. I’m not intending on ever seeing the movie, but it makes me wonder…

1. Who, or what is influencing Hollywood’s creature creators to imagine such morbid beings?

2. Are these creatures perhaps closer to the truth than we realise?

Food for thought… Comments welcome.

3

Fred and Barney’s Nicotine addiction

Anyone in their 30′s and older will remember well the Flintstones. The cartoon was one of my all-time favourites and I reminisce (with nostalgic happiness) the 80′s when the show screened every school day around 4pm. Any cultured kidult will know that the Flintstones equal retro cartoonsville at its very best. I even named my cat ‘Barney’ in honour of the show.

What I bet you didn’t know is that good old Fred and Barney were also heavy cigarette smokers, frequently lighting up and at the same time encouraging their impressionable viewers to do the same.

Shame on them. Actually, same on the shows producers. Let me explain…

The Flintstones series was initially aimed at adult audiences, and the first series was sponsored by Winstone Cigarettes. Hanna Barbara allowed Fred and Barney to appear in several black and white television commercials for the cigarette company.

And we think that today’s cartoons are a bad influence!?

5

Rich

A reasonable mortgage, four kids, one dog… bills. Sometimes it’s a challenge to make ends meet… but God is always faithful, and it’s nothing short of supernatural how He meets our needs (and the occasional want).

This morning I stumbled upon a very interesting website called: http://www.globalrichlist.com/.

The site calculates your rank in the world’s ‘rich-list’. Suffice to say that we are incredibly more wealthy than we realise when compared to the rest of the world.

More from the site:

- $8 could buy you 15 organic apples OR 25 fruit trees for farmers in Honduras to grow and sell fruit at their local market.

- $30 could buy you an ER DVD Boxset OR a First Aid kit for a village in Haiti.

- $73 could buy you a new mobile phone OR a new mobile health clinic to care for AIDS orphans in Uganda.

- $2400 could buy you a second generation High Definition TV OR schooling for an entire generation of school children in an Angolan village.

It makes you think doesn’t it.

5

Defeat (but goodtimes) on the battlefield

My best welt, shot by Isaac pointblank in the ribs… yes that is bruising.

Two church teams, 20 guys, one paintball field, 2 hours of carnage, Goodtimes! Sadly my team (CRF Central) were defeated by Shaun’ team (Bream Bay CRF).

A couple of comments. Shaun, you got lucky this time buddy. Isaac, you are a marked man my friend. Rhys, I think the DIY paintball field is a phenomenal idea… I’m in!

Thanks for such a great time guys. I can’t wait unitl the next game. Until then, let the following vid fuel your keenness!

7

What’s your Pro Wrestling name?

Thanks to Betty I’ve just been cracking myself up discovering my pro-wrestling names. Depending on whether I use my online name or real one, if I were a Pro Wrestler I would be called:

Big Ace
or
Sheik Grinder

They have a certain ring to them, don’t you think? Click here to discover your wrestling name (and post it in a comment below so I can join you in your laughter).
4

The Tunguska Catastrophe

I had never ever heard of the name Tunguska before… until I bought a PC game (for the kids) called Secret files: Tunguska. Then I became enlightened to an extremely fascinating and equally mysterious event which occurred 101 years ago in Central Siberia.

In the Tunguska region at 7:17am on 30 June 1908 something of apocalyptic proportions occurred. This ‘happening’ flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,000 square km. The blast (if that was what it was) was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and generated a shock wave that knocked people unconscious 60km from the epicentre. In the following weeks, night skies over Europe and western Russia glowed brightly enough for people to read by. Mysteriously, there was no crater or any other clear evidence for what exploded.

The first report of the explosion was in the Irkutsk paper dated July 2, 1908, published two days after the explosion:

The peasants saw a body shining very brightly (too bright for the naked eye) with a bluish-white light… The body was in the form of ‘a pipe’, i.e. cylindrical. The sky was cloudless, except that low down on the horizon, in the direction in which this glowing body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticed. It was hot and dry and when the shining body approached the ground (which was covered with forest at this point) it seemed to be pulverized, and in its place a loud crash, not like thunder, but as if from the fall of large stones or from gunfire was heard. All the buildings shook and at the same time a forked tongue of flames broke through the cloud. All the inhabitants of the village ran out into the street in panic. The old women wept, everyone thought that the end of the world was approaching.

S.B. Semenov, an eyewitness in the village of Vanovara about 60 km south of the explosion site, gave the following report…

I was sitting in the porch of the house at the trading station of Vanovara at breakfast time… when suddenly the sky was split in two and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared to be covered with fire. At that moment I felt great heat as if my shirt had caught fire; this heat came from the north side. I wanted to pull off my shirt and throw it away, but at that moment there was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash was heard. I was thrown to the ground… and for a moment I lost consciousness… The crash was followed by noise like stones falling from the sky, or guns firing. The earth trembled, and when I lay on the ground I covered my head because I was afraid that stones might hit it.

The most accepted explanations as to what caused the Tunguska event are:

  • A fragmentary asteroid or meteorite that exploded in the atmosphere.
  • The nucleus of a comet that likewise exploded in the atmosphere.
  • But I ask you, could a comet cause the following enigmatic effects that were recorded at the site?

  • disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field.
  • a local geomagnetic storm.
  • a reversal of soil magnetization.
  • an electromagnetic pulse, similar to what would be created by a nuclear explosion.
  • aurora displays before and after the event.
  • unusually bright nights seen before and after the event.
  • genetic mutations in plants and animals.
  • accelerated growth of plants afterward.
  • radiation-like burns and deaths of exposed people.
  • Not surprisingly there are many learned people who disagree with the ‘accepted’ explanation. Among the more ‘exotic’ theories are…

  • An unusual tectonic event.
  • A massive methane gas explosion.
  • A black hole that entered the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space and imploded.
  • A chunk of antimatter that reacted with the matter of our planet.
  • A crashed UFO.
  • A deliberate attack by extraterrestrials.
  • The result of a test of Nikola Tesla’s wireless power transmitter.
  • I agree that most of the theories listed above sound utterly ridiculous… but the event itself simply cannot be adequately explained using natural reasoning. Even now, 101 years later Russian scientists are still struggling to get a clearer understanding of what really happened that day.

    What is disturbing is that if the Tunguska event occurred 4 hours and 47 seconds later, it would have hit the Russian Capitol.

    (For an intriguing look at the Nikola Tesla hypothesis click here.)

    8

    Surviving the first month with my Whippet

    Narnia our ADHD Whippet puppy has been a part of our family for almost a month.

    Being the bookworm/research nut that I am, I made sure I was prepared for Narnia’s arrival by scouring as much material on puppies as I could.

    What the ‘Your First Puppy’ books didn’t tell me…

    Whippet puppies are unbelievably energetic. They seem to have two speeds: Go-Fast-and-Furious, and Sleep. They will chew anything that does not chew them back, and they love to dig. Many young Whippets are “high energy” dogs for the first two or three years. Around that age, their ‘on’ switch seems to get turned ‘off’ and they become more mellow (though still up for occasional bursts of zeal). American Whippet Club

    If you aren’t a bundle of energy, beware the puppies. Whippet puppies are hell on wheels. Whippets can take two to four years to mature, and one that isn’t crated can tear apart your home. It’s not that they are hyperactive, they are just in a constant state of, “Now what can I do?” dogworld.com

    “Mine is now 13months old and has finally got out of the “Let’s destroy everything I touch” stage.” Whippet forum comment

    Sittercity posted a survey invloving 3000 dog owners… The Whippet was crowned as the fourth most destructive dog breed (behind Mastiffs, Chihuahuas, and Great Danes)…

    “These sweet-looking pups apparently cause around $900 worth of damage in their lifetimes.”

    So, in conclusion… Nothing (note the capital N) can prepare a virgin dog owner for a Whippet puppy. Note that the first quote said that Whippets eventually calm down after two or three years…

    How encouraging. Pray for me.

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