GEORGIA – Apparently foreign students, and some American college students, don’t know how to use a toilet.  Some colleges are offering instruction.

A number of foreign students are not familiar with Western bathroom customs and techniques and, apparently, this has become an issue on college campuses.  In addition, while studying this new phenomenon, colleges have also found that many Americans of college age are not using the toilet properly either.

Colleges in the southern U.S. have been using signs over the last two years to  help students work the toilet.  The signs feature diagrams and bullet points explaining how use a toilet, advising students to refrain from standing on the seat and to instead sit on it like they would a chair.

The advice does not stop there, with further instructions explaining how to use the sanitary bins, while students have also been asked to leave the cubicles in a sanitary state and avoid throwing toilet paper on the floor.   The sign also reminded students to flush.

But it has not been working, so some colleges in the south are offering a mandatory class in the first semester of Freshman Year.  The class is:  Toilet Use 101.

Students are taught proper sitting and standing technique, how to wipe, how to flush and how to plunge – if the need arises.  Students are reminded to thoroughly wash their hands after using the toilet, accompanied by an image of two upturned hands under a running tap with the words ‘WASH ME’ on the palms.

“Prior to the mandatory course, many of the toilets around campus were found in found in an unsanitary condition,” said a source at Georgia Tech.

Some in the south are saying that “the toilet problem” was caused at first because of the ‘cultural differences’ between western customs and the many foreign students attending the universities,.  Many eastern countries people use the toilet by ‘squatting’ over it, but this practice does not transfer to western bathrooms.

Some locals have a different opinion, “kids today just ain’t go not sense,” said Marcus Christmas of Atlanta.  ”What is this world coming to, when kids today don’t know how to use the john.  Ridiculous.”

This girl did not pass her toilet class:

PANAMA CITY, FL – A cloud tsunami hit Panama City Beach, causing considerable damage.

Helicopter pilot Mike Schaeffer was wrapping up a tour when he spotted this incredible weather phenomenon along the coast of Panama City Beach, Fl. on Sunday.

As soon as he landed, he alerted Panhandle Helicopter  owner JR Hott of the “cloud form waves,” and together they went up for a better view. They moved quickly knowing that it is only in very specific weather conditions that this beautiful effect occurs.

While the online community has dubbed this a “cloud tsunami,” Hott disagrees with the popular moniker:

I wouldn’t call it a “cloud tsunami.” The term tsunami implies a natural disaster. The event, while it can form quickly, moves gently and slowly. It isn’t something that happens with more than a gentle breeze.

While the images appear non-threatening and peaceful, as an experienced pilot, Hott has been trained to treat all fog and clouds as if they are solid objects. He and Schaeffer were very careful approaching in the air to get a better view. Fortunately, because of the location of the condos, they were able to approach the cloud waves from the side and did not place themselves in the direct path of the fog.

Natalie Jimenez
MSNBC

Religious leaders will soon reveal the location of this sacred place.

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
~ King James Bible

There may have been giants upon the Earth, a very long time ago, in our prehistory. This concept connects to the highly controversial quote above from the Bible. This quote has been the subject of much controversy through the ages

Now, in 2012, religious leaders will announce the location of The Footprint of God.  It will soon become the most popular religious site on the planet.

Here’s a video clip of the Footprint of God:

Congress passed a bill this week allowing the  government to fly unmanned spy planes in the U.S.

The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama reportedly signed, orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the licensing of commercial drones by 2013.

Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well. They fear that law enforcement will actually use the drones in attacks against criminals in the U.S.

“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of Aviation Scientists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation  also is “concerned about the implications for surveillance by government agencies,” said attorney Jennifer Lynch.

The provision in the legislation is the fruit of “a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones” in American airspace, she added.

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA clears their use.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies in the next few years.

The highest-profile use of drones by the United States has been in the CIA’s armed Predator-drone program, which targets al Qaeda terrorist leaders. But the vast majority of U.S. drone missions, even in war zones, are flown for surveillance. Some drones are as small as model aircraft, while others have the wingspan of a full-size jet.

The legislation orders the FAA, before the end of the year, to expedite the process through which it authorizes the use of drones by federal, state and local police and other agencies. The FAA currently issues certificates, which can cover multiple flights by more than one aircraft in a particular area, on a case-by-case basis.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, operates nine drones, variants of the CIAs feared Predator.  The aircraft, which are flown remotely by a team of 80 fully qualified pilots, are used principally for border and counternarcotics surveillance under four long-term FAA certificates.

Officials say they can be used on a short-term basis for a variety of other public-safety and emergency-management missions if a separate certificate is issued for that mission.

“It’s not all about surveillance,”  Mr. Aftergood said.

Homeland Security has deployed drones to support disaster relief operations. Unmanned aircraft also could be useful for fighting fires or finding missing climbers or hikers, he added.

President Obama is reportedly excited about the use of drones on U.S. citizens.  ”The President wants to be able to keep a close eye on citizens that may not agree with him on certain policy issues,” said a source close to an aide near the White House.  ”He likes uses drones abroad and now he’s going to use them on Americans.  He’s thrilled.”

Thousands of Iranian woman are training to be ninjas – and they are ready for battle!

Thousands of Iranian women are taking their fight against the infidels to a new level.  Thousands of them are training to become Ninjas, the ancient Japanese stealth assassins who use swords, martial arts and throwing stars to neutralize their enemies.

The Atlantic is reporting that more than 3500 Iranian women are donning the ninja outfit and taking part in the intensive training. The program is being hailed as a massive attempt at women’s equality.

The Iranian regime’s 33-year quest to make Iranian women weak and helpless, to force them into child-like subservience, has failed. Though we in the West often perceive them this way because the hijab and the chador are all we see on the surface, women in Iran are stronger collectively and more assertive individually than the Islamic Republic would have us believe.

Women in Iran have a 42% unemployment rate, are required to dress modestly by law and are subject to beating and even stonings for adultery. Their fight takes a back seat to what is going on in Iran.During the Green protests for democracy last year in Iran, women were even killed for going out to protest the regime.

Watch a training video of the female Iranian ninjas in action.

Scientists declare that ancient patches of a giant seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea are the oldest living organism on Earth

The scientists dated them as up to 200,000 years old.

Australian scientists sequenced the DNA of samples of the giant seagrass, Posidonia oceanic, from 40 underwater meadows in an area spanning more than 2,000 miles, from Spain to Cyprus.

The analysis, published in the journal PLos ONE, found the seagrass was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old. This is far older than the current known oldest species, a Tasmanian plant that is believed to be 43,000 years old.

Prof Carlos Duarte, from the University of Western Australia, said the seagrass has been able to reach such old age because it can reproduce asexually and generate clones of itself. Organisms that can only reproduce sexually are inevitably lost at each generation, he added.

“They are continually producing new branches,” he said.. “They spread very slowly and cover a very large area giving them more area to mine resources. They can then store nutrients within their very large branches during bad conditions for growth.”

The separate patches of seagrass in the Mediterranean span almost 10 miles and weigh more than 6,000 tons.

But Prof Duarte said that while the seagrass is one of the world’s most resilient organisms, it has begun to decline due to coastal development and global warming.

“If climate change continues, the outlook for this species is very bad,” he said.

“The seagrass in the Mediterranean is already in clear decline due to shoreline construction and declining water quality and this decline has been exacerbated by climate change. As the water warms, the organisms move slowly to higher altitudes. The Mediterranean is locked to the north by the European continent.

“They cannot move. The outlook is very bad.”

Jonathan Pearlman
Daily Telegraph

VIENNA –   Sales of wine and schnapps with Adolf Hitler on the label are increasing all over Austria.

An Austrian website was selling bottles with portraits of Hitler and the swastika. The site offered sales of spirits in “nostalgic bottles of former historical greats.”

The man selling the wine and schnapps was identified only as Roland M.  Legal officials say he was motivated by profit, not ideology.

The prosecutor’s office said Thursday the man stopped sales when legal action against him started.

When German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries recently called a line of Italian wines “tasteless,” she wasn’t referring to the grapes.

Since 1995, a winery in northern Italy called Azienda Vinicola Alessandro Lunardelli has produced a line of “historical” wines featuring images of important men of history on the label — among them, Napoleon, Che Guevara and Adolf Hitler.

The Hitler line — called “Fuehrerwein” and featuring pictures of Hitler and slogans from Nazi Germany on the label — made headlines worldwide this month after a family of Polish tourists found the wine in an Italian supermarket. The family brought a bottle back to Poland and handed it over to the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, which ran a photo of the bottle on its front page. Since then, vintner Alessandro Lunardelli has been under attack. Zypries wrote a letter to her Italian counterpart, Roberto Castelli, calling Fuehrerwein “contemptible and tasteless,” and asked Castelli to try to take the wines off the market. Castelli told Radio Padania, a northern Italian radio station, that there was nothing his office could do.

Fuehrerwein is only the latest effort to market images of Nazi Germany that has met with public outcry. In August, the Hong Kong-based clothing company Izzue took its Nazi-themed line out of stores after staunch protest from the Israeli and German embassies.

But Hitler continues to be a popular commercial draw for other businesses. Reuters reported earlier this week that Hitler’s Alpine retreat — the “Berghof” — has become a tourist hot spot, with over 100,000 visitors every year and a thriving gift shop filled with books and videos about Hitler and Eva Braun.

“There’s always been a perverse interest in World War II,” said Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League. “You find a lot of Nazi memorabilia in gun shows, in auctions, on eBay… There’s something about evil that attracts people’s interests.”

Ron Guth, a California-based coin dealer who specializes in German coins and has sold Nazi-era coins to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, agreed that the current wave of “Nazi kitsch” has always been around to a certain extent. “I’d say 90% of [buyers of Nazi-era coins] are legitimate coin collectors,” Guth said. “And then you have 7% or 8 % who are interested in the historical aspects of World War II. Then you have 2% or 3% who are kooks who really believe in the stuff.”

Foxman said that Nazi imagery is a good way to attract attention. “The commercial people know that there’s this thing out there; it attracts people. They know it gets people’s attention… Where do you find a lot of it happening? In Asia and Southeast Asia, mostly. They don’t really have a concept of Hitler. I’ve seen a lot of really bizarre things [in Asia] — like [advertisements for] ‘German pianos at Jewish prices.’ It’s bizarre. There’s a bar named after Hitler.”

In a 2001 interview with the Associated Press, Lunardelli said that the historic labels were “a great marketing success.”

The Hitler wine, Lunardelli told the newspaper, is his bestseller, moving more than 30,000 bottles a year.

Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting the Sun-like star HD 10180.  One planet, Zamina, is identical to earth.

The team of astronomers also found evidence that the distances of the planets from their star follow a regular pattern, as also seen in our Solar System.

“We have found what is the system with the most planets yet discovered,” says Christophe Lovis, lead author of the paper reporting the result.

“Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the long-term evolution of the system.”

The team used the HARPS spectrograph, attached to ESO’s telescope at La Silla, Chile, for a six-year-long study of HD 10180, located 127 light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus.

The astronomers detected the tiny motions of the star caused by the gravitational attractions from five or more planets. The five strongest signals indicate planets with roughly the mass of Neptune, which orbit with periods ranging from six to 600 days. They lie between 0.06 and 1.4 times the Earth–Sun distance from their star.

“We that two other planets are present,” says Lovis.

One would be a Saturn-like planet orbiting in 2,200 days. The other, Zamina, is the smallest exoplanet yet discovered, with a mass about 1.4 times that of the Earth. It’s very close to its host star, at just two percent of the Earth–Sun distance.

“This object causes a wobble of its star of only about three kilometers per hour — slower than walking speed — and this motion is very hard to measure,” says team member Damien Ségransan. If confirmed, it would be a hot rocky planet, similar to Corot-7b.

The inner region of the system is more populated than our own. It probably has no Jupiter-like gas giant. Unlike in our solar system, all the planets seem to have almost circular orbits.

So far, astronomers know of fifteen systems with at least three planets. The last record-holder was 55 Cancri, which contains five, two of them being giant planets. “Systems of low-mass planets like the one around HD 10180 appear to be quite common, but their formation history remains a puzzle,” says Lovis.

Using the new discovery as well as data for other planetary systems, the astronomers found an equivalent of the Titius–Bode law that exists in our Solar System: the distances of the planets from their star seem to follow a regular pattern.

They also found a relationship between the mass of a planetary system and the nature of its host star.

All very massive planetary systems are found around massive and metal-rich stars, while the four lowest-mass systems are found around lower-mass, metal-poor stars. Such properties confirm current theoretical models.

“This discovery highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research: the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets,” says Lovis.

It’s a .905 caliber.  A ballistic beast!

SSK Industries .950 JDJ is the biggest centerfire rifle ever made.

With a 2400 grain bullet, propelled by 240 grains of powder, the JDJ is comparable to a World War I-era tank round or a 20mm cannon in terms of kinetic energy.

Estimates are that one of these rounds would easily pass through several human targets– even if each were equipped with full body armor.

It was almost classified as a “destructive device” but a special “sportsman exception” was made for the JDJ.

The guys from Knight Rifles headed out to the range to give this monster a try. Very few people have ever shot the .950 JDJ as a rifle, as only 3 have been made.

This model was the first and the lightest coming in at a robust 50 lbs. The custom bullets cost about $40 each.

So what’s it like to shoot a bullet that nearly an inch wide and four inches tall? Well, it has been described as having “significant recoil” and in the video below, one of the shooters say “it’s like firing ten .30-06′s at once.”

Another shooter, after getting a taste of that vicious recoil, turned to his buddies and yelled “you lied to me. it kicks like a mule.”

Buck Sexton, The Blaze

You can see the .950 JDJ in action below:

An alien spaceship from Planet Zeeba was seen over American Fork, Utah last week.

Anthony Piceno, of American Fork, Utah, said he was drawn to the sight in the air because it was like nothing he had ever seen before.

His footage of the object later appeared on The Weather Channel.

The video shows the blue craft resembling a spinning top floating in the sky and moving very slowly.

Mr Piceno said: ‘I looked up in the sky and, you know, it was just a different object, it was neon blue, red flashing lights’.

Utah authorities contacted Dr. John Malley of the U.N. Panel on Extraterrestrials, who flew to Utah with Dr. Banesh Bannerjee.  Together, they examined all the video footage and interviewed a number of locals.  They determined that the “UFO” was actually an alien spaceship from Planet Zeeba.

“The Zeebans are here to help humans fight the Gootans, who landed on our planet last November and are planing to attack humans in the very near future.  The ship was clearly Zeeban Blue.”

This is not the first Zeeban ships have been seen hovering in the sky in the area, as several people have reported close encounters in the past few months.