Of facial hair ..

Hey.. just a couple weeks to go to the next Karma kula thing! FUnny thing is I dreampt about it last night.
Gotta love this whole moustache festival thing:


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Traffic stop leads to man believed dead since '89

Traffic stop leads to man believed dead since '89

A man who faked his drowning death nearly 20 years ago off a Florida beach was found out by North Carolina police who stopped him for a traffic violation, authorities said Thursday.
Bennie Wint told police he faked his drowning death in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1989.

Bennie Wint told police he faked his drowning death in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1989.
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Bennie Wint left behind a grieving fiancee and a daughter from a previous marriage. Over the past two decades, he acquired a common-law wife and another child in Marshall, North Carolina.

Wint told police he faked his death in Daytona Beach, Florida, because he was "paranoid" about his narcotics-related activity at the time, Weaverville, North Carolina, police Sgt. Stacy Wyatt told CNN.

When pulled over in Weaverville on Saturday because of malfunctioning lights on his license plate, the man said his name was James Sweet, Wyatt said. But when Wyatt ran the name through official databases, he was unable to find any information.

"I found it suspicious and believed it to be a false name," Wyatt said. He arrested the man on suspicion of driving without a license and giving false information, both misdemeanor offenses, and booked him under the name "John Doe."

But "John Doe" finally opened up to Wyatt, admitting he was really Bennie Wint and had been on the run since 1989. Video Watch how reports of his death were premature »

Wint returned a call Thursday from CNN and asked what an interview with him would be "worth to you." Told that CNN does not pay for interviews, he responded, "Unless you want to pay for it, don't come up here. You are wasting your time. There are 'no trespassing' signs on my property." He then hung up.

According to police reports, Wint was on a trip to Daytona Beach with his then-fiancee, Patricia Hollingsworth. She told police they were engaged and had discussed getting married while on the trip.

But it was not to be. On September 25, 1989, Hollingsworth told beach patrol officials that Wint disappeared while swimming.

"We spent a bunch of time looking for him," said Volusia County Beach Patrol Capt. Scott Petersohn, who was on the beach patrol at the time, although he did not respond to the call. "We used helicopters, boats and boatloads of lifeguards."

Hollingsworth, then 37, told officials Wint entered the ocean about 4 p.m. and swam past the breakers before she lost sight of him, according to the incident report. The report notes Hollingsworth was "very upset" and that after contacting officials, she "began to run north and south in the area," looking for Wint.

Members of the beach patrol, however, thought the supposed drowning was suspicious.

"It is very rare to drown offshore and not wash back in onto the shore," Petersohn said. In addition, he said, the lifeguard on the beach told officials he did not see anyone swimming in the area.

Wyatt submitted Wint's fingerprints to the FBI for identification and, while waiting for the results, searched the Internet for information on a Bennie Wint.

"I found a daughter that was looking for him," Wyatt said. The woman posted information about her father in 2007, saying he went missing under suspicious circumstances.

Wyatt contacted the now-23-year-old woman, who said she was 4 when her father disappeared.

Wint has been released from jail and has not been charged in relation to the 1989 incident. It was not known whether he contacted his daughter.

Wyatt said Wint now has a common-law wife, a child and a business selling NASCAR items. The night he was arrested, Wyatt said, his wife was "distraught" upon learning his true identity.

Wyatt said Wint told him he was involved in narcotics in the 1970s and '80s, and "he ran out of paranoia, thinking people were out to get him." He said he went from Daytona Beach to Ozark, Alabama.

CNN's attempts to contact Hollingsworth were unsuccessful, and it was unclear whether she knows Wint is alive.

Petersohn said he is attempting to find the lifeguard on duty at Daytona Beach the day Wint disappeared to tell him the truth about the supposed drowning.
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"For 20 years, that man that works for us thinks he might have missed something in the ocean," Petersohn said.

"I'm glad the guy's alive. I really am. ... It's unfortunate the way it went down at the time, people looking for a body that wasn't out there."

Source

You'll be found some day. Can't keep hiding.

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Crazy day..

Lol.. Check out these kids.. I thought that my nephew was a michellin man, but he's like, hardly anything compared to this kid.

Would-be bride, 107, seeks first husband
BEIJING (Reuters) – A 107-year-old Chinese woman who was afraid to marry when she was young has decided to look for her first husband and hopes to find a fellow centenarian so they will have something to talk about, a Chinese paper reported.

Wang Guiying is worried she is becoming a burden to her aging nieces and nephews since breaking her leg when she was 102 and had to stop doing chores like washing her clothes.

"I'm already 107 and I still haven't got married," the Chongqing Commercial Times quoted her saying. "What will happen if I don't hurry up and find a husband?"

Born in southern Guizhou province the child of a salt merchant, Wang grew up watching her uncles and other men scold and beat their wives and often found her aunt crying in the woodshed after an attack, the paper said.

"All the married people around there lived like that. Getting married was too frightening," she said of an era when Chinese women had few rights and low social standing.

Many also had their feet bound in an excruciating process aimed at making them look more dainty and marriageable.

After Wang's father, mother and older sister died, she still shied away from marriage. Instead she moved to the countryside and survived as a farmer until she was 74 years old and no longer strong enough to work in the fields, the report said.

Yahoo News

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Can't remember...

I'm back home now. I'm just exhausted. zzz..

My puppy's grown heaps tho! Glad to see her as she was glad to see me. :)


I could use this..

Forgetting things? Mnemonics can make them stick

Arriving at your uncle's holiday party in suitable dress and good cheer, you are greeted at the door by an old friend from school whose name, you suddenly realize, you cannot recall.
There are effective word connections you can make to help you remember things.

There are effective word connections you can make to help you remember things.

You've known him for 20 years. You played baseball with him, went on family trips together. You were at his wedding, for goodness' sake.

It's too embarrassing to ask his name, so as he waits awkwardly for an introduction to your significant other, you just stand there dully, waiting for the roof to cave in.

Well the roof did just that at a party in Greece in the fifth century B.C., killing all in attendance except for Simonides of Ceos, who had serendipitously stepped outside at just the right moment.

Simonides, however, had no such problem with names.

He was able to identify the bodies, which had been damaged beyond recognition, simply by recalling where each one sat.

And thus, says Judy Parkinson in a book titled "i before e (except after c)," Simonides begat a system for memorizing and recalling facts, called mnemonics.
Don't Miss

* Boom times for brain training games

Parkinson's book is a gathering of tricks, rhymes and riddles for remembering anything from names to rules of grammar and spelling, to science, math and music.

Can't remember when to use "affect" as opposed to "effect"? Simple says Parkinson: Just remember RAVEN: Remember Affect Verb Effect Noun (This only helps, of course, if you remember how to spell "raven").

After dinner, will you be having dessert or desert? To avoid after-dinner sand, says Parkinson, remember the double s stands for "sweet stuff."

But there's more to mnemonics than tricks and acronyms.

The best kind of mnemonic, says Robert Bjork, distinguished professor of cognitive psychology at UCLA, is one you make up yourself using interactive images.

A common method is to associate locations along a well-traveled path, like a school or work route, with items on a list. The Greeks called this the Method of Loci.

It's not enough, however, to associate a flagpole on your route with a giraffe on your list. To be truly effective, says Bjork, the giraffe must DO something with the flagpole.

"It should be interactive with the location as much as possible. If you imagine a giraffe, you imagine the giraffe climbing the pole rather than just standing there."

Another interactive device, a "peg-word" system, uses a rhyme as a kind of template to associate with items on a list. To use Bjork's example:

"One is a bun

Two is a shoe

Three is a tree ..."

And so on.

An apple on your list goes in the bun, a quart of milk goes in the shoe, a honey-baked ham hangs on the tree. You can reuse the same rhyme for different lists.

Interactive mnemonic devices like these can be very effective, says Bjork.

"In fact it is remarkably long-lived. If I have my students remember 20 items around UCLA campus, they'll remember 19 of them a week later."

The more you use the mnemonic, the better it will work. In fact, says Bjork, recall is one of the best ways to reinforce any kind of memory -- repeated recall leads to easier recall.

Still, with or without mnemonics, we simply forget things more easily as we get older, says Dr. James Lah, associate professor of neurology at Emory University.

It's perfectly natural, says Lah, to start forgetting things that were easy to remember at a younger age -- "senior moments."

But what if you keep forgetting things -- where you put your keys, the name of the person you just met at a party, the names of your co-worker's children -- should this be cause for concern?

"Not necessarily," says Lah.

"What people talk about when they talk about senior moments is really just a commonplace experience that does not necessarily imply something else going on as far as disease."

So how do you know when a memory lapse is a serious problem as opposed to just a nuisance?

"If you meet the new pastor's wife and you immediately forget her name -- [or] you see her the next day and you can't recall her name, that's not necessarily a reflection of a problem," says Lah. "It's a commonplace annoyance that increases with age."

"If you meet the pastor's wife and the next day can't recall having met her, that may be an indication of a more serious problem."

Besides mnemonics, which Lah recommends, there are other things you can do to keep those senior moments to a minimum.

There is evidence to suggest that if you take care of your cardiovascular health by eating right and exercising, your neurological health will also benefit.

"There is a direct correlation between cardiovascular health and neurological health and especially cognitive aging," says Lah.

The reasons are complex, says Lah, but when you have bad cardiovascular health, "the efficiency of communication between brain cells is eroded."

"So that's one of the reasons people in their 30s, 40s and 50s should be paying attention to [cardiovascular] diseases."

How, you may ask, does all this help you at your uncle's party with your old and seemingly nameless friend?

Find out his name from someone else and start working on a mnemonic. For example, if his name is Charlie, remember you deserve a "charlie-horse" for forgetting his name.

Imagine giving the charlie-horse to your significant other for an even more effective, "interactive" memory.

And remember, recall reinforces recall, so the more often you give your significant other a charlie-horse -- real or imagined -- the more likely you are to remember Charlie's name in the future.

CNN Offbeat News

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Don't pet panda...

Lol, I think these guys need to learn a few things about wild animals..



those are some mean looking teeth

Panda bites student seeking a hug

BEIJING (AP) -- A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.
Don't be deceived. Pandas might look cute, but they're not to be trifled with.

Don't be deceived. Pandas might look cute, but they're not to be trifled with.

The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot (2-meter) high fence around the panda's habitat, said the park employee, who refused to give his name.

The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.

He said the student was bitten on the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said.

The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clearheaded, he said.

"Yang Yang was so cute, and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack," the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Liu underwent surgery Friday evening and was out of danger but will remain in the hospital for several days, Xinhua said.

Yang Yang, who was flown to Guilin last year from Sichuan province, was behaving normally on Saturday and did not seem to suffer any negative psychological effects, the park employee said.

He said it was not clear whether the facility would add more signs around the enclosure or put more fences up.

"We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in," he said. "There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge."

Pandas, which generally have a public image as cute, gentle creatures, are nonetheless wild animals that can be violent when provoked or startled.

Last year, a panda at the Beijing Zoo attacked a teenager, ripping chunks out of his legs, when he jumped a barrier while the bear was being fed.

The same panda was in the news in 2006 when he bit a drunk tourist who broke into his enclosure and tried to hug him while he was asleep. The tourist retaliated by biting the bear in the back.

Source

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So.. people really can live without hearts

I mean.. check this out: Teen without a heart.


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General Dunwoody, err, Ma'am?

I salute all these women! Woohoo!! I would join the military if I could.

Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer Robert Burns, Ap Military Writer – Fri Nov 14, 5:53 pm ET

Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general Play Video AP – Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general

* First Female Four-Star General Slideshow: First Female Four-Star General
* Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general Play Video Video: Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general AP

Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody gives a thumbs up to recognize her father, retired Brig. AP – Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody gives a thumbs up to recognize her father, retired Brig. General Harold H. Dunwoody, …

WASHINGTON – Call it breaking the brass ceiling. Ann E. Dunwoody, after 33 years in the Army, ascended Friday to a peak never before reached by a woman in the U.S. military: four-star general. At an emotional promotion ceremony, Dunwoody looked back on her years in uniform and said it was a credit to the Army — and a great surprise to her — that she would make history in a male-dominated military.

"Thirty-three years after I took the oath as a second lieutenant, I have to tell you this is not exactly how I envisioned my life unfolding," she told a standing-room-only auditorium crowd. "Even as a young kid, all I ever wanted to do was teach physical education and raise a family.

"It was clear to me that my Army experience was just going to be a two-year detour en route to my fitness profession," she added. "So when asked, `Ann, did you ever think you were going to be a general officer, to say nothing about a four-star?' I say, `Not in my wildest dreams.'

"There is no one more surprised than I — except, of course, my husband. You know what they say, `Behind every successful woman there is an astonished man.' "

In an Associated Press interview after the ceremony, Gen. George Casey, the Army's chief of staff, said that if there is one thing that distinguishes Dunwoody it is her lifetime commitment to excelling in uniform.

"If you talk to leaders around the Army and say, `What do you think about Ann Dunwoody?' almost unanimously you get: `She's a soldier,'" Casey said, adding that he admires the fact that, "she's a soldier first."

Dunwoody, 55, hails from a family of military men dating back to the 1800s. Her father, 89-year-old Hal Dunwoody — a decorated veteran of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam — was in the audience, along with the service chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, plus the Joint Chiefs chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen.

Dunwoody, whose husband, Craig Brotchie, served for 26 years in the Air Force, choked up at times during a speech in which she said she only recently realized how much her accomplishment means to others.

"This promotion has taken me back in time like no other event in my entire life," she said. "And I didn't appreciate the enormity of the events until tidal waves of cards, letters, and e-mails started coming my way.

"And I've heard from men and women, from every branch of service, from every region of our country, and every corner of the world. I've heard from moms and dads who see this promotion as a beacon of home for their own daughters and after affirmation that anything is possible through hard work and commitment.

"And I've heard from women veterans of all wars, many who just wanted to say congratulations; some who just wanted to say thanks; and still others who just wanted to say they were so happy this day had finally come."

In remarks opening Dunwoody's Pentagon ceremony, Defense Secretary Robert Gates underscored the tradition of military service in Dunwoody's family, spanning five generations, beginning with her great-grandfather, Brig. Gen. Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody, who graduated from West Point in 1866 and was the chief signal officer in Cuba from 1898 to 1901.

"As she's been known to say, olive drab runs in her veins," Gates said.

Later Friday, at Fort Belvoir, Va. — her birthplace — Dunwoody was sworn in as commander of the Army Materiel Command, responsible for equipping, outfitting and arming all U.S. soldiers across the globe. Just five months ago, she became the first female deputy commander there.

Dunwoody was nominated by President George W. Bush in June for promotion to four-star rank, and she was confirmed by the Senate in July.

There are 21 female general officers in the Army — all but four at the one-star rank of brigadier. It was not until 1970 that the Army had its first one-star: Anna Mae Hays, chief of the Army Nurse Corps.

Women now make up about 14 percent of the active-duty Army and are allowed to serve in a wide variety of assignments. They are still excluded from units designed primarily to engage in direct combat, such as infantry and tank units, but their opportunities have expanded over the past two decades.

At a Pentagon news conference following her promotion ceremony, Dunwoody was asked whether she believed women should be allowed to serve in the infantry and whether women's role in the Army should otherwise be expanded.

"I don't have a personal view on it," she replied. "I think we have a law that precludes that (serving in the infantry) right now, and we are in compliance with that law. If that law needs to be revisited, I think we have a deliberate process to do that."

Dunwoody received her Army commission after graduating from the State University of New York in 1975.

Her first assignment was to Fort Sill, as supply platoon leader in June 1976, and she remained at Sill in various positions until she was sent to quartermaster officer school at Fort Lee, Va., in July 1980.

She later served in Germany and Saudi Arabia.

After graduating from the Command and General Staff College in 1987, she was assigned to Fort Bragg, N.C., where she became the 82nd Airborne Division's first female battalion commander.

She has numerous decorations, including the Distinguished Service Medal and Defense Superior Service Medal.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects year of great-grandfather's West Point graduation in 13th graf to 1866 sted 1966. AP Video.)

Source

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Warm Hands- Warm Hearts

I knew it all along!

Study: Warm hands do make warm hearts

* Story Highlights
* Research: Touching something warm can make you feel more warmly toward others
* Yale University scientists recruit 41 college students for sneaky research study
* Students holding warm cups of coffee showed more psychological warmth
* Students holding an ice pad were more likely to be less generous to others

* Next Article in Technology »

Decrease font Decrease font
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Time to update that old saying "cold hands, warm heart." New research shows touching something warm can make you feel and act more warmly toward others.
A study by Yale University scientists found that physical warmth can promote psychological warmth.

A study by Yale University scientists found that physical warmth can promote psychological warmth.

Whether someone is deemed to have a "warm" or "cold" personality makes a powerful first impression. That led Yale University scientists to wonder if physical warmth could promote psychological warmth, by subconsciously priming people to think better of others.

It took a sneaky study to find out: Scientists recruited 41 college students for what they thought was personality research. A lab worker escorted each participant up the elevator of Yale's psychology building and casually asked for help holding her cup of coffee -- either hot or iced -- while she recorded the student's name on a clipboard.

Inside the lab, the students were given a description of a fictitious person described as industrious, cautious and determined, and then rated that person's presumed personality traits.

Students who had held the hot cup saw the person as more generous, sociable and good-natured than those who had held the cold cup -- all traits that psychologists consider part of a "warm" personality, the researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Yet there were no differences between the two groups on ratings of honesty, attractiveness or strength, traits not associated with either warm or cold personalities.

Then researchers recruited 53 different students for a second study, having them briefly hold one of those heat or ice pads sold in drugstores for pain, allegedly as part of product-testing. Really the test was which trinket the students chose as a thank you for participating: An ice-cream coupon or bottled drink for themselves, or one for a friend.

Students who held the hot pad were more likely to choose a reward for a friend, while those who held the ice pad were more likely to choose a reward for themselves.

So is the moral of the story to hand out hot drinks when you want to make a good first impression?

Not quite. The bigger message is that very subtle cues from our environment can significantly influence behavior and feelings, said lead researcher Dr. Lawrence Williams, who conducted the study while completing his psychology graduate degree at Yale.

Physical and psychological concepts "are much more closely aligned in the mind than we have previously appreciated," said Williams, now at the University of Colorado.

Indeed, other research has found that the same brain region that processes physical temperature changes, called the insula, also processes feelings of trust and empathy associated with social warmth.

"Parts of the brain that we know process physical attributes, whether it's motor movements or physical pain -- the same circuitry more and more is seen with more mental qualities," said Dr. Caroline Zink of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the new research. "It's very interesting from a neuroscientist's perspective that there are those similarities."

The whole concept of social warmth is learned in infancy, Williams said. He pointed to a classic psychology study that found attachment and affection were more dependent on hugs and cuddles that happen to be physically warm than on merely ensuring a baby is fed.

As for a practical use for the finding: Those free food samples distributed in grocery stores probably entice more shoppers if they're warm, advises Williams, now an assistant marketing professor.

From: CNN

With a bunch of people I know I knew this was the case because well.. all the people I know with cold hands are quite difficult to deal with. Of course not all of them are the same way, but a lot of them sure are!

As for my daily Ninjai posting: Ninjai International Hmm. . seeing all these sites which are like, Brazillian sites, Chinese sites- etc with Ninjai on it. It makes me quite interested.