What the fuck is up with Greenland? Is it a country? Is it a continent? Do people live there? Is it just one giant sheet of ice? Well guess what - people actually do live in Greenland. The local population clocks in 57,600 (as of July 2009), and the vast majority are either Native Inuits or Danish - making Greenland, one of the largest islands in the entire world but home to less people than a sold out Yankees game. It is the largest island in the world not classified as a continent. Up until 1979 it was ruled by the Kingdom of Denmark, who oversaw its rules, laws, etc. The shift in power and responsibility came to a head in 2008 as the Danish throne voted to transfer its power and authority to local Greenland government entities. As of 2009, the Danish only have say in Greenland's foreign affairs, security and finances, and they actually provide subsidaries to native Greenlandians to the sum of $11,300 annually, just for being there. Paid over 10 grand a year by your goverment just for living in their crappy ice island! I'll take that.

Guess who carried out the dealiest act of mass murder in a school in US history? If you said "pegged pants", you're close. It was actually Andrew Kehoe, who is 1927 was responsible for killing 45 people, among them 38 grade school age children, in Bath Township, Michigan. Kehoe was known as an odd man with a reputation for "thiftiness"; at the time of the killings, he was about to lose his farm due to non payment of his mortgage. With a wife dying of tuberculosis and in dire financial straits (which he blamed on the Bath School Board), Kehoe lost his shit in the ugliest of ways. On May 18th, 1927 he loaded up his truck with dynamite, shrapnel, and other explosive chemicals and set off for the Bath Consolidated School. He first ignited dynamite and pyrotol, a inflammant which he buried at the school months in advance, which blew apart the building and killed scores of children and teachers. After the school was destroyed and everyone was running for their lives from the enflamed building, he tracked down the superintendent and calmly blew both of them up in his death-strapped truck. He also killed his wife and denonated dynamite on his own farm, tying his own farm animals down inside so they would certainly burn to death in the flames. Investigators also found 500 pounds of dynamite in another part of the school that failed to denonate. But perhaps the most stunning was when investigators searched his farm, they found so much unused and surplus farm equipment that he could have paid off his mortgage payment by simply selling it. It just goes to show you, before you plan a hideous mass murder, always have a yard sale.

Did you know there is actually a set of international laws in place that covers the jurisdiction of the moon, planets, stars and other celestial objects? The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, aka Moon Treaty, was established in 1979. The laws established by the Moon Treaty secede to UN Charter law, meaning all activity on the moon and other space entities must adhere to international law. In layman terms, the Moon Treaty makes sure no one uses the moon as a military base (sorry, Dr. Evil) no one can shotgun the moon as their own (I call the Mare Imbrium!), and all states have equal right to conduct research on the moon and celestial bodies. Yet only 13 countries have ratified the Moon Treaty, and zero of that number have any space aspirations nor the ability to venture into outer space (though I hear Kazkahstan is chomping at the bit to get their space progam off the ground). Space travel countries such as Russia and the US have not even signed the Moon Treaty, which essentially makes the whole concept worthless. Why? Because that moon is ours baby! Think about it - Moon-Disney, Trump Moon Towers, Viva Las Moongas, and all the Fort Moons the eye can see with a high powered telescope. Moon Treaty? Not on the US's watch.

Now I'm convinced that the Dutch have thought of everything. Some of the ideas have been great (decriminalizing marijuana) and some not so great (the slave trade), but you've got to hand it to the Dutch, they are inventive.
     A Dutch non-profit named APOPO, whose mission consists of ridding old landmines out of third world countries, has begun training so called "Hero Rats" to sniff out the mines. That's right, not dogs or humans, but rats, the things we see in our garbage cans eating old banana peels. Apparently, they're not such pests after all.
      In particular, the African pouched giant rat, which look similar to chinchillas, are  sociable animals who show affection toward their masters and enjoy being taken for walks. Their sense of smell is highly developed and with their noses being located so close to the ground, they have an advantage to finding things in the ground over dogs. Also, the rats are too light to activate the mine so it's not a danger that the little guy will be blown to bits.
       You can learn more or donate money to help provide a years worth of bananas for the rats (which is their staple food) or a "love nest" for the rats to get busy during the mating season at the APOPO website here.

Do you know Hollywood has been using the same made-up fake South American country for most of their big budget 80s action movies? Val Verde, which isn't even a real nation, has been the backdrop for such action classics as Commando, Die Hard 2, and Predator, among others. The country's creation is the work of writer Steven E de Souza, who penned both Commando and Die Hard 2. It is a combination of several troublesome South American countries, most obviously places like Colombia and Nicaragua; this way Hollywood can totally portray the country and its denizen as drug-smuggling savages without offending anyone who thinks Hollywood assumes all South & Central Americans are drug-smuggling savages. What, they're not?

Did you know that an actual war broke out between Honduras and El Salvador in the 1970s in part because of their qualifying games for the World Cup? The Football War lasted 4 days and was kick-started into an actual military conflict because of, all things, a little soccer. Tensions had been high between the two nations previously (little things like forced relocation, land annexation, murders), but things came to a boil when both countries played each in qualifying match play for the 1970 World Cup tournament, with Honduras taking the 1st game on their home field and El Salvador taking the 2nd in their own capital; between both matches, both countries' newspaper and press members reported abuse by the opposite host country. The day before the final deciding game with the chance to qualify for the tournament, El Salvador dissolved all ties with Honduras and began to plan military action. El Salvador won the deciding game 3-2 in extra time, and also, just for kicks, invaded Honduras with their air force bombing strategic targets.  The Football War only lasted four full days and El Salvador withdraw its troops within a month, but the bloody seige left 3,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless on both sides. The war actually lead to a complete breakdown in El Salvador's governemt and lead to civil war ten years later. So with that, enjoy the first day of the World Cup! GOAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!   

Most Americans know little to nothing about Islam yet, like we Americans like to do, we'll make bold claims about it because Charlie from work told us about it or we think we read about it once but can't remember where. Despite having access to the largest pool of information in human existence, we still rely on second hand sources and gossip to forumulate our opinions.
   Today's attempt at dispelling the ignorance involves the claim that, according the Koran, Muslims will receive 72 virgins in paradise when they kill themselves for the cause of Islam. The claim has further instilled the point of view that 'those Muslims believe in some crazy things' as if a man named Jesus rising from the dead and walking on water isn't crazy in any way or that God used to make it rain gnats and slaughter babies but, for some reason, stopped being so demonstative about it. Anyway...
     There is simply no claim that Harmid will meet 72 virgins when he blows himself up. In fact, the Koran openly condemns suicide, considering it an abomination against God. Here's the complete text:

"And if somebody commits suicide with anything in this world, he will be tortured with that very thing on the Day of Resurrection."

Not exactly up for interpretation; it's pretty clear.

So where does the claim come from? Is it just made up. Not exactly. There is a mention of 72 wives in this passage:

The Prophet Muhammad was heard as saying: “The smallest reward for the people of Paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah (a Damascus suburb) to – Sana’a (Yemen)” – Sunan al-Tirmidhi Hadith 2562

As you can see, there is a mention of 72 somethings there (wives, not virgins) but there's a catch. The Koran is a huge book compiled by a number of different sources, similar to the Bible (contrary to the idiotic belief that 'God wrote the Bible'). Some passages, or Hadiths, are considered sacred while others just barely made it in there and are called Gharib Hadiths- in other words, sketchy.
     In fact, most moderate Muslims don't even know this Hadith because it's not a major piece of the Koran. It's not unlike anti-gay activists using passages from the Bible highlighting homosexuality, even though it's not a major theme of the book as a whole. So ironically, the passage that (non-Muslim) Americans know from the Koran is one that most Muslims have never read, and which doesn't actually exist anyway.
     Clearly, the promise of 72 virgins is a cynical ploy by warlords to promote their agenda, just like the promise that God wants America to be at war in the middle east or that Jesus would have loved the free market. It's another example of poor, uneducated people being taken advantage of in the name of religion, of which all religions are guilty.
      So sorry guys, no pack of virgins waiting for you in the afterlife. But the upside is that Scientologists believe that you get 1,000 handjobs after death.

Did you know that Germany is facing an epidemic of dog poop? Officials have estimated that over 3 million pounds of dog poops are being left DAILY on public property. That's 1400 tons of the butt sauce every single day being deposited by Fido on city streets, in parks, in alleys, and schoolyards. Things were so out of whack that a citizen commission in Germany wanted to start recording canine DNA in order to match poops found in public areas to the dogs and their owners in order to impose heavy fines and a dose of extreme embarrassment. The commission failed to get off the ground but the thought of all those logs logged for public records and that there might actually be a Shit Czar in the German government makes me all sorts of queasy. Man, the Germans love their poop.

Yesterday afternoon you were probably wondering, "Hey why the fuck are they filming Twister 2 without letting anyone know, my car is about to blow off the road and I think all the trees in New England just flew up and landed on the highway." The calamity that struck the area, particularly the Northshore, Merrimack Valley and most parts of eastern Massachusetts, was called a "macroburst", an intense downdraft from a thunderstorm hits the ground and quickly spreads out. This is different than a tornado in that the winds are directed outwards, not in a cylinder formation or internally, and can flat line trees, vegeation, crops, people, you name it, macrobursts will flatten it.  The tamer version of the macroburst is the "microburst", which has the capacity to uproot trees, crash aircraft, and even level buildings. Remember that Dallas Cowboy employee that was paralyzed a few years ago when the team's practice bubble collapsed? That was due to a high intensity microbust. They even have Heat Bursts, a rainless form of the macrobusts where extreme barometric pressure and gusty winds blow through an area, raising that region's temperature as much as 20 to 50 degrees for several moments. One documented heat burst in Oklahoma in 1909 struck and temporarily raised ground temperarures to 136 degrees Farenheit, scorching area crops. I know what you're thinking. If anyone had been there and farted, Oklahoma might not even exist anymore.

Did you know that the US actually refused to let a cruiseship full of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi occupied Germany to our shores in 1939? A German ocean liner the SS St. Louis, filled with more than 900 refugees escaping persecution, set sail initially for Cuba, but were rejected by the Cuban goverment for visa issues. Setting sail for Florida, a concentrated effort by members of FDR's Cabinet denied the refugees entry off the coast of Florida and tried to have Cuba retake the refugee ship off their hands. Their embattled captain, Gustav Schoeder, took his ship back across the pond to Europe, and succeeded to displacing his cargo amongst Britain, France, Belguim, and the Netherlands. The subsequent invasion of western Europe caused the death of half the refugees, either at concentration camps or attempting to hide or flee from the Nazis. Isn't that ironic, since most people in America now go to Florida to die. "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." Isn't that the slogan on the Statue of Liberty? I guess not if it's beachfront property.