what is the world coming to?

"No one can say they didn't see it coming"
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
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Iraq stampede deaths near 1,000

Almost 1,000 people are known to have died in a stampede of Shia pilgrims in northern Baghdad, Iraqi health officials have said.
So far, there have been at least 965 confirmed deaths, making the incident the single biggest loss of Iraqi life since the US-led invasion in 2003.
The incident happened on a river bridge as about a million Shias marched to a shrine for a religious festival.
Witnesses said panic spread over rumours of suicide bombers.
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Would you rather:
1. be a fan of the visiting team at a sporting event OR be a member of the opposite political party at a political rally? - visiting team
   
2. visit a biker bar dressed as george w. bush OR visit a monastery dressed as a biker? - biker at a monastery, definitely.
   
3. spend an entire month completely nude OR wear the same underwear for two weeks without washing it? - ew, but i would have to go with month completely nude.
   
4. look and talk like steve urkel OR look and talk like michael jackson? - urkel.

what about you?

katrina, the hurricane

just got an email from a contact on flickr to join the katrina missing person's board so if there is anyone out there that is looking for someone or has pictures of someone they can post, this is a great avenue for that.

About Katrina Missing Person's Board

NowPublic is setting up a missing persons board to help victims of Hurricane Katrina find those who go missing during the storm.

If you want to publish the photograph of someone you are looking for you can upload it to the site by clicking here or by sending an email to:

news@nowpublic.com.

If you include \'NP 17228\' in the body of the email then your email will be automatically posted with other photographs. If you have any information about any of the photographs posted here post a comment below the photo (or video) or contact the owner of the footage by rolling over it and following the instructions that are provided.

If you have any questions please contact us at clorenz@nowpublic.com.

Please post comments or suggestions about other resources in the comments/reports section of this story.

Book meme

post or link your answers to the following book meme - don't forget to link back to me if you post.

found this meme on the daily meme

1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 -- first sentence
3. Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 -- final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph:

my answers
1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 -- first sentence
The angel was cleaning out his closets when the call came.
3. Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty
"Gawnette, you're a genius."
4. Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred
"Shit," I offered.
5. Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
Her mother consoled her.
6. Book #5 -- final sentence of the book
"Not yet."
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph:
"Shit," I offered. The angel was cleaning out his closets when the call came. "Not yet." Her mother consoled her. "Gawnette, you're a genius."

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

worst date story ever

voted on battle of the blogs on BE, and came across this funny post.

worst date story ever

needless to say, i voted in favour of this blog.

progressive girl

for anyone interested, i took another online quiz and it turns out that... i am a Progressive Girl Click on the picture below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Are You?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com

this one goes out to anyone who loves a bit of that nostalgia feeling now and again.

the wayback machine is another brilliant invention that does exactly what it advertises it will do. it takes you way back. just type in a commonly known website (yahoo, msn, the white house) and it will provide you with a set of dates, each of which is an archived page of that particular website. making sense yet?

its a great tool to look back and see how far we have come in the world of the web - sometimes things around us change so fast we don't notice the small adjustments, but when you go back 5-10 years you see how drastic the development truly is.

if only we could use our power for good.....

happy birthday solange!

today is my sister solange's 22nd birthday. i can't believe my baby's all grows up....

if you want to make her day, send her a happy birthday email, but please don't abuse it.

this post will have nothing to do with skittles

a few things....

i watched the wedding crashers last night (which kept me up until 4am) and i have to say - brilliant. this movie was absolutely hilarious and if you have not watched it, you should seriously consider doing so. ok so perhaps my review is a bit over-the-top but this movie had me in stitches (though it was VERY late at night)...

also, tried out google talk with ruha last night and the sound quality is great. essentially the same sound quality as skype, though google talk is in beta testing form so it does not have many features just yet. though i have faith that the many wonderful brains at google will be adding some soon.

also, for those of you visiting me here via blogexplosion, welcome. if you like what you see, say hi. come back and visit. make yourself comfortable, there are drinks in the fridge.

my footprint

ok so i just took the ecology footprint test and my total footprint is 7.5 (eek!). broken down this translates to food - 1.7, mobility - 1.4, shelter - 1.1, goods/services - 3.3

this may not mean much to you now, but let me give you a few points of reference:

• In comparison, the average ecological footprint in my country is 4.7 global hectares per person.
• Worldwide, there exist 1.8 biologically productive global hectares per person.
• If everyone lived like me, we would need 4.2 planets.

now the question remains...what am i going to do about it?

- um, can i get back to you on that?

google talk

so it finally seems that google has come up with google talk - which is one of those things that advertises what it does (google made it and with it you can talk) - i have downloaded it and will install, but this is a call to arms to all my friends with gmail accounts - download google talk, if for any other reason than because you can.

guess the google

a time killer/waster/murderer if there was ever one...but entertaining nonetheless :)

a game in which a set of 20 images is presented to you and you have to guess what the "google" term used to search for them was (they all relate to each other somehow). you are given 10 different sets of images.

my score: 267.

i wanna play guess-the-google so i am going to click on this link

martin's birthday

just got home from martin's birthday party - and have few words to explain how hilarious tonight ended up being! i thought it best to include a picture in this post to futher enlighten the reader as to tonights proceedings...

above awad, florian and raouf can be seen brilliantly illustrating the course much of the night's activities which included, among other things, a game of charades...

further pics can be found here

on another note, kelly and martin just remodeled their living room and it looks amazing!

overall a great time, and happy birthday martin!

lost in translation

for everyone who has ever had the feeling that the meaning of what they said just didn't come across....

check this out

a great little webpage that will translate and re-translate what you type in. for example typing in "amusingly digressive" results in a translation (through multiple languages) which reads:

"Relative the contented pagination of the branch" - ?!?!?!

enjoy...

gone forever...

so today, which began with me literally walking through crap, ended with me losing my mobile phone.

and no, germans are not good samaritans (or atleast the one who found my mobile is not) as it was immediately switched off/used for international phone calls - phone immediately went to "unavailable message".

boo hoo. off to ebay to find myself a bargain phone...

100 years of the Baha'i Faith in Germany

on my way to rehearsal with mehdi and aris in offenbach.

we are preparing a "time travel" presentation documenting the 100 years of the Baha'i Faith in Germany which will be performed on 10 Sept 2005 in Stuttgart, for details click here

i am going to be doing the monologue of alma knobloch, an awesome woman and early pioneer. she spoke german with an american accent - hence my playing her part :) see you stuttgart in september!

my first post as a blogger

so i have been hunting around the internet for essentially nothing and came across a great website, or what i mean by great is a website that sucked me in and continued to fascinate me for a period of time which exceeded 3 minutes. well done.

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. There are some amusing, disturbing, fascinating and repulsive postcards sent in. Definitely worth checking out....