Medieval Shark Week is about fun!
If you’re a gamer, you’ll want to play TIMESHARK II: Medieval Shark Strike Force, in which you become a time-traveling shark transported back to medieval Germany to feast on clones of Adolf Hitler....
Download the game for Mac or PC here. You’ll find instructions on the second page of this thread, where the game’s author reveals that TIMESHARK is an acronym for “Time-travelling Intimidation and Mastication Expert: Sharks Have Ample Reason to Kill.”
Cool.
With no end in sight to the rise in fuel prices, commuters in Albany are using a network of trebuchets to save on gas and the airlines are taking notice.
“We have a high-density of renaissance festival attendees, so it’s only natural that the trend started here,” said Clinton Decola who heads the Trebuchet Transport Cooperative of Albany (TTCA). “In medieval times the trebuchet was accurate, but with today’s technology we can make it even more accurate. People can launch themselves from house to house until they’re near enough their work to walk.”The members of the TTCA operate over one hundred trebuchets and catapults around the Albany area. Members pay a small fee to maintain the trebuchets, then they can use the network to travel anywhere the trebuchets launch to.
Christian Rega uses the network to fling himself to work and back saving over $100 a week on gas. “I save money; I’m helping break America’s addiction to oil and defying death every day. It doesn’t get much better than that,” said Rega.
"I don't remember ever seeing a quicker bat or a stronger arm. Among the moderns, possibly one player worthy of comparison is that young man Joe DiMaggio. He has a trace of Sockalexis's stuff, but I don't believe he can run or throw with the Indian." - Red Sox Manager Bill Carrigan
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The Ogden School District needs a big eraser. After naming a new school "James A. Madison Elementary School" in May, a history teacher pointed out this month that the fourth president of the United States didn't have a middle initial.
"I'm blindsided," school board member John Gullo said. "I hate being embarrassed."
Gullo heads the American Dream Foundation, which donated a large painting of the former president to the school. An accompanying plaque does not have the mystery initial.
Word of the mistake reached superintendent Noel Zabriskie, who verified it and called the company that was making a sign for the new school. The call came in time for the error to be fixed on the sign. It is set to be installed Friday.
Some school letterheads will need to be replaced.
The board voted May 23 to approve the school name as "James A. Madison." The majority of board members chose Madison because the school borders Madison Avenue. Several board members also said they feel James Madison was a great president.
Three weeks ago a handful of reporters at an international press junket here for the Warner Brothers movie “300,” about the battle of Thermopylae some 2,500 years ago, cornered the director Zack Snyder with an unanticipated question.The story also explains that attempts to analogize President Bush and the Iraq War to the characters and events at Thermopylae are nothing new and predate the movie. It also explains that some plot changes may have also amplified the apparent political under- (or over-) tones.“Is George Bush Leonidas or Xerxes?” one of them asked.
The questioner, by Mr. Snyder’s recollection, insisted that Mr. Bush was Xerxes, the Persian emperor who led his force against Greek’s city states in 480 B.C., unleashing an army on a small country guarded by fanatical guerilla fighters so he could finish a job his father had left undone. More likely, another reporter chimed in, Mr. Bush was Leonidas, the Spartan king who would defend freedom at any cost.
Mr. Snyder, who said he intended neither analogy when he set out to adapt the graphic novel created by Frank Miller with Lynn Varley in 1998, suddenly knew he had the contemporary version of a water-cooler movie on his hands. And it has turned out to be one that could be construed as a thinly veiled polemic against the Bush administration, or be seen by others as slyly supporting it.
...when viewers find a potentially divisive message in big studio movies that were meant more to entertain than enlighten...[there is a] danger...that an accidental political overtone will alienate part of the potential audience for a film that needs broad appeal to succeed.
The Comtois is a very old breed that is thought to have descended from horses brought to France by the Burgundians, a people from northern Germany that immigrated in the fourth century. The Franche-Comté and the Jura Mountains on the border of France and Switzerland are the original breeding ground of the Comtois breed.
In the sixteenth century, the Comtois was used to improve the horses of Burgundy and became famous as a cavalry and artillery horse. Louis XIV's used this breed in his armies, as did Napoleon on his campaign into Russia.
During the nineteenth century the Comtois was breed with other draft breeds like the Norman, Boulonnais and Percheron. Since 1905 a stronger horse with improved legs has emerged from using small Ardennais sires.
Today, the Comtois is bred in the mountainous regions of the Massif Central, the Pyrenees and the Alps for which they are perfectly suited. The Comtois has good qualities of endurance, hardiness and balance in these rugged landscapes. The breed is still widely used for hauling wood in the high pine forests of the Jura and for work on the hilly vineyards of the Arbois area. The Comtois is second only to the Breton draft horse in numbers in France.
