Just a few weeks ago my beloved dog Sandy came to the end of a long and debilitating struggle with kidney failure. My wife and I did everything we could to prolong her life and make her happy and comfortable, but none of us can cheat death, and eventually it was upon us.

One of the most difficult decisions of my life came when I was forced to choose to euthanize my faithful companion of more than a decade. It was compounded by a feeling of guilt – not that I had acted too soon, but that perhaps I had waited too long out of grief and a sense of personal loss. I remember wishing for days that she could tell me if it was worth living, or if she merely wished she could die.

When we finally had our vet come to the house and put her to rest it was a traumatic experience for the family, yet the death was so quite, fast and peaceful that not only did it remove any feeling of lingering doubt that we had done the right thing, but it made me consider my own mortality and caused me to realize that ultimately I would rather be able to go like this, than be imprisoned in a body stricken with ailments, waiting for death to take me.

Well, this is the situation that Sir Edward Downes, and his wife of 54 years, Lady Joan, found themselves in. And luckily for them, they were able to make the decision to leave this world on their own terms. I only wish that we had the freedom to choose for our selves here in the USA.
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What is the easiest way to define Parkour? How about this. The world, is literally, your playground.

Now, Wikipedia defines Parkour as follows:

Parkour (sometimes also abbreviated to PK) or l’art du déplacement (English: the art of movement) is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment—from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls—and can be practiced in both rural and urban areas. Parkour practitioners are referred to as traceurs, or traceuses for females.

It’s also known as Free Running, but if you really want to understand what it’s all about, you just have to see it in action.
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Folks, I’m neither a Democrat, nor a Republican. But my mom asked me to give her an unbiased, factual rundown on the political platforms – so what my mother wants, my mother gets! Here you go Mom…

I’m making the presumption that the two candidates who are going to actually be running for President are Barack Obama, and John McCain. So, below I’ve taken the liberty of narrowing down all the data to these two guys. What you need to do is line up as many of your political ideal matches and then you can rationally choose who you are voting for.
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News that shouldn’t be missed:

• Miniature Earth (Must see!)
• Crack Users Do More Time Than People Convicted of Manslaughter
• Five Years in Jail for Porn Spammers
• It’s Now Illegal to Feed the Homeless
• Scientists Invent 30 Year Continuous Power Laptop Battery

Have a great weekend!

Tasers were developed as a non-lethal option to bring dangerous situations under control. But law enforcement officials are now using them with wild abandon in cases where simple diplomacy or a little hard work would otherwise suffice.

In the past I’ve written about the police tasering of a UCLA student for refusing to show his school ID, as well as the time a cop tasered an 11 year old at school because the officer on hand apparently couldn’t physically restrain him?!? (Gee, what would they have done 10 years ago?)

Police have also used Tasers against peaceful protesters (NPR audio about tasering protesters), a pregnant woman (8 months) and an elderly man who called 911 to get medical attention for his diabetic seizure.

So who’s next? Maybe you.
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I was inspired by a fantastic article published by the Sietch Blog called Bending Swords Into Wind Turbines, so I decided to bring together some data to share on the opportunity costs associated with the ongoing war in Iraq.

Just to be clear, I’m not espousing any political position. I’m only interested in coming to an understanding of what alternatives we are forgoing by spending money, effort and lives in Iraq as opposed to spending them on something else. We’re talking about a whole boatload of money here, so it’s nice to know what else we could be getting for our dollar.
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Folks, this is breaking news. If you are going to try this I’d say you have to do so pretty quickly. If you wait too long the instructions here will probably not be valid.

UPDATE: I’ve added the book here. You can download it below the video explaining that OJ is happy the book has been leaked.”

Ok, I’m not going to say that I’ve personally obtained a leaked copy of OJ Simpson’s book, If I Did It… but if I had obtained it, here is how I did it!

1. First of all, one would need to head over to SnapFiles.com and download the free uTorrent client.
2. Save it to your computer and launch it to run the installer.
3. AFTER you have installed it, click on this link to initiate the download. It’s from the PirateBay.
4. At this point the uTorrent client should start up and begin downloading a PDF copy of the book. You would then only need to unzip it.

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Now here is something unique. A little game that allows you to hunt down insurgents in the streets of Iraq. The only catch is, you can’t win!

You see, it starts out with a few terrorists running around amidst the civilians in the streets of Iraq. You’ve got your finger on the trigger and you can hunt them down. If you manage to shoot one of them, fantastic! But if you hit any civilians in the process you’ll watch as their friends mourn them and then become terrorists themselves.
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Can’t we all just get along? Apparantly not, and the folks over at Maps of War have documented the many different eras of domination of the Middle East as proof.

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Persians, Europeans…the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question.
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I’m not sure about you, but I had some preconceived notions about American political parties tendencies to go to war. Interestingly, they turned out to be completely wrong.

Here is a historical recounting of all US wars, how many lives were lost in each, and the responsible ruling party at the time.

This is not to say that the US necessarily initiated the conflicts, but these parties were in power at the time the decision was made to go to war, so it still demonstrates willingness to fight.
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ATLANTA (Reuters) – James Brown, the “Godfather of Soul,” whose voice, showmanship and bold rhythms brought funk into the mainstream and influenced a generation of black music, died on Christmas morning at age 73.

Brown died of congestive heart failure at 1:45 a.m. (0645 GMT) on Monday at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, his lawyer Joel Katz told a news conference.
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A recent report from Reuter’s brings hope to the nearly 40 million people currently infected with the AIDS virus worldwide.

An AIDS virus genetically engineered to fight other AIDS viruses worked better than expected, suppressing the virus and renewing the immune systems of a few patients…

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