It now appears imminent that the return of the NHL to Winnipeg, Manitoba is only days if not hours away. There are reports that the big news conference everybody in The Peg has feverishly been waiting for will happen this week. About time, true sports fans in Winnipeg have been sitting on pins and needles long enough.
Let it happen!
And when it does happen, what will the new NHL franchise in our true northern city be named? It is starting to sound like the name Jets may be left by the wayside. The new owners, Mark Chipman and David Thomson want to start fresh with a new name. Well I am putting forward my ideas on a new Nickname for our city and provinces new NHL squad.
The Jets was a great name, as I am an aviation buff. And the name just sounds better than Maple Leafs or Canucks.
The Jets last WHA championship in 1979.
On with the new suggestions.
As this spring has proved again, Manitoba has unruly rivers. So how about this name?
The Manitoba Rivers Wild
A great senior hockey team played in this city years ago named The Winnipeg Warriors. The problem with this name is there is a very large Aboriginal street gang in the North End with the same name. They may sue for copyright infringement.
The Winnipeg Warriors
There have been sightings of cougars in Manitoba over the past few years. And it is cold and snowy in Manitoba.
The Manitoba SnowCats
Sticking to the cold weather theme for Manitoba.
Winnipeg WindChill Factor
There have been alleged sightings of a beast in Lake Manitoba over the years.
Lake Manitoba Manipogo Monsters
The name Falcons has been bandied about recently. The Winnipeg Falcons from years past won an Olympic Gold in ice hockey back in 1920. It was Canada’s first ice hockey gold. But lets enhance that name a bit.
Winnipeg Fighting Falcons
Manitoba has a major problem with suicidal deer charging into vehicles on the roads.
Winnipeg Psycho-Bucks
Manitoba has more hogs than people. Giant hog farms everywhere. Lately a lot of them have been burning down though. But to celebrate our loud swine this would be a good name. To anybody who has ever walked in a hog barn at feeding time, these critters can scream.
Manitoba Screaming Hogs
Being one of the smaller cities in the NHL, Winnipeg will have to be audacious and fearless to be successful. In other words Cocky!
Winnipeg Cocks
A storied militia calls Winnipeg home. Great historical reserve army unit. They played a decisive factor in the Riel Rebellion.
The Winnipeg Rifles
Manitoba is one of the few places in the world where the Grizzly Bear and Polar Bear can cross paths. Grizzlies have been reported on the Manitoba Nunavut border. If these 2 species of bear would copulate and have hybrid offspring. A very nasty bear would be the result.
The Winnipeg Grizzolar Bears
There have been dozens of Sasquatch reports in Manitoba over the years. And the Manitoba Squatches are described by the hopefully sober eyewitnesses, as being very big. And if these Bigfeet would get ornery it could be a bad scene.
Manitoba Sasquatch Attack
Okay Mr. Chipman and Mr. Thomason, lets pick a fine name that everybody will be proud of.
Some of the most sophisticated aircraft and weapons systems ever developed by the United States were tested at Area 51 in Nevada. The top-secret base is located about 90 miles north of Las Vegas. A couple new photos have emerged recently showing tests conducted on a prototype of the A-12 reconnaissance aircraft.
This strange set-up was constructed to test the radar signature of the A-12.
When the Russian spy satellites took pictures of this upside down aircraft the Soviet generals must have wondered, “what in the hell are those Americans up to now?”
After some major tinkering the A-12 eventually evolved into the SR-71 Blackbird.
The Almighty Black P. Stone Nation (often abbreviated BPSN or BPS) is a Chicago-based street gang estimated to have more than 30,000 members. The gang was originally formed in the late 1950s as a civil rights organization called the “Blackstone Rangers.” In later years, an Islamic faction of the gang emerged, naming themselves the “El Rukn tribe of the Moorish Science Temple of America” (or simply El Rukn). The Blackstone Rangers’ founder and ‘religious leader’ is Abdullah-Malik (born Jeff Fort). The BPSN finances itself through a wide array of criminal activities and are part of the large Chicago gang alliance known as the People Nation.
The Black P. Stones originated, and is based, in the South Side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Their main rivals are the Gangster Disciples (GD), and to a lesser degree, the Black Disciples (BD).
Rivals include the entire Folk Nation alliance and white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Brotherhood. Their allies are the Vice Lords, Latin Kings and other People Nation gangs, Black Separatist groups, Zulu Nation, the Five Percenters, and Los Zetas. There are 7 BPS branches in Chicago: Gangster Stones, Jet Black Stones, Rubinite Stones, Familia Stones,Corner Stones, and Black P. Stones. All these branches have many factions.
The Blackstone Rangers were founded at the St. Charles Institution for Troubled Youth by Jeff Fort and Eugene Hairston as a community organization for black youth in the Woodlawn area of South Chicago. In the 1960s they evolved into one of the most dangerous and powerful gangs in Chicago. Fort seized upon the gang’s changed mission, renaming it the Black P. Stone Nation. He transformed the BPS into a black nationalistic group, and continued to involve the gang in street crime and drug trafficking.
BPSN founding member Eugene Hairston was incarcerated on drug charges on June 6, 1966, and Fort was arrested for mismanagement of government grants totaling $927,000 from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity in March 1972. Fort was released in the early 1980s, but was later re-incarcerated on drug charges. At some time in the 1980s, Fort converted to Islam and imbued the BPS with Islamic overtones. It was then that he adopted the name of Abdullah-Malik and the rank of “caliph.” Following meetings during 1986 with Libyan operatives from Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi’s government, Fort was charged with buying weapons to commit terrorist acts on behalf of the Libyan government.
While Abdullah-Malik continues to exercise considerable influence over the BPSN from prison, the various Black Stones splinter groups suffer from rampant infighting without a clear leader. There are two major groups that have split with the BPSN. The Mickey Cobras were supporters of Mickey Cogwell, a co-founder of BPS killed by Jeff Fort. The Titanic Stones were supporters of Eugene Hairston who had a falling-out with Fort.
The Black P. Stone Nation now has a strong Islamic character, which can be attributed to the Moorish Science Temple of America. BPS first started to embrace Islam in the late 1970s when Jeff Fort was released from prison and changed his name. He also renamed the Black P. Stones as El Rukn. El Rukn adopted their Islamic principles from the Moorish Science Temple – also the forerunner of black Muslim groups such as the Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters. They take inspiration from the historic black African Moors who came from north and west Africa and conquered Iberia in the Middle Ages, and who were fundamentalist Muslims.
Even though Abdullah-Malik created an Islamic identity for BPS, nowadays that ideological underpinning is not solid. Although a significant number of Stones are Muslims, Islam now has little to do with the organization’s day-to-day operations. The vast spreading of chapters throughout the United States has served to dilute any Islamic identity. Many Chicago based and influenced BPS in the Midwest, East Coast, and in the South embrace Islam, but just as many do not (especially BPS Bloods/Black Stone West). BPS Bloods/Black Stone West does not embrace Islam as it emerged in 1969, before Fort overhauled the mainstream BPS organization.
The Fort-Hairston schism left a significant number of groups adhering to Hairston’s principles, and thus have no religious character. Belief in Islam is in many cases a prerogative of individual members. Most ‘Stones’ in the South don’t personally acknowledge Islam, but many on the East Coast do, and in Chicago more than a quarter of BPS is Muslim. Islam has also brought negative attention from federal law enforcement because of BPS’s ties to domestic and international Islamic terrorism. There were declared a threat to homeland security after the September 11 attacks. El Rukn has virtually no street presence any longer, with the religious/political body of the BPSN now existing as the Masjid Al Kabah under Abdullah-Malik and his Islamic clergy.
The tragic deaths in the states of Missouri and Oklahoma again bring to the forefront the deadly power of tornadoes. 120 fatalities in Joplin, Missouri alone is one of the worst tornado disasters in U.S. history. Being prepared for these twisting devils is a major priority in the states that get hit hardest.
The mayor of Oklahoma City was on the radio today and said building codes in his city make it mandatory for new homes to build underground tornado shelters in garages. So if there is ample warning and the tornado sirens are howling, people will have time to get into the shelters.
If there are marital problems a guy could grab a little TV and some refreshments and head down there to wait until peace terms are offered.
This Mom came to the ball game prepared. She had the glove and she had a helmet on the baby, just in case.
Wife catches a foul ball right in front of her husband while holding a baby.
FREDERICKSBURG—
The hottest baseball picture in the world right now wasn’t taken at a big league game.
It wasn’t shot at Wrigley Field, Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium, but at the Diamond in Richmond, Va., where the Double-A Flying Squirrels play.
The woman in the photo is Tiffany Goodwin, who honed her skills playing first base for the softball team at Rosemont High School in Rosemont, California.
“So I’m used to stretching for the ball,” Tiffany said from her home in Fredericksburg. Her husband, Allen, works at the Pentagon for the Air Force.
Sharing a passion for America’s pastime, Tiffany and Allen played together on a co-ed team at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
Their whole family is in that photograph because they love baseball as a family. They’re season ticket holders at the Diamond, sitting in Section 116, right off the third base bag. Their oldest daughter, Elizabeth, plays ball already. All the children, save baby Jerry, wear gloves to the games.
Safe driving can only be achieved by being alert as to what is going on around you. The senses have to be sharp. The eyes have to be focused and able to scan the rear-view mirrors. The shoulders and neck have to be agile so a person can shoulder check and visually scan around their vehicle 160 degrees at least. If these actions cannot be performed the results can be nasty. People who are not up to standard should maybe say no to driving.
The consequences can be a lot worse than some damage to the vehicle.
Driver, 94, pleads guilty in death of neighbour
Winnipeg Free Press
A 94-year-old Winnipeg man has pleaded guilty to killing his elderly neighbour by accidentally driving his car over him.
Edward Hudek admitted earlier this week to a Highway Traffic Act charge of backing a vehicle without due care. He was given a $1,000 fine and two-year driving prohibition.
Frederick Albert Tippen, 86, died in April 2010 after being struck by Hudek’s rented Suzuki SX4 in the parking lot of a St. Vital seniors residence.
Hudek, who has no prior criminal or driving record, told police he heard “knocking at the side of his car” as he reversed out of a stall. He then got out, saw nothing but went inside the Dakota House assisted living facility and told a staff member he might have “bumped into somebody.”
Police and paramedics arrived to find Tippen trapped underneath the vehicle, which had to be lifted to free him. The unconscious man was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead.
“This is a tragic, isolated incident in his life,” defence lawyer Martin Glazer told court.
Hudek surrendered his licence following the tragedy and has not driven since. He also wrote a letter of apology to Tippen’s family.
Glazer said his client was unfamiliar with the rental car and may not have seen Tippen in his blind spot while backing out.
The case has raised questions about how society handles a growing number of aging motorists. The ranks of seniors behind the wheel are expanding as baby boomers age, according to Manitoba Public Insurance.
In 1994, there were more than 80,000 Manitobans 65 and older with a valid driver’s licence, MPI said. In 2010, about 103,600 — 14 per cent — of the nearly 740,000 licensed drivers provincewide were 65 or older. It’s estimated 21 per cent of drivers in Manitoba will be over 65 by 2025.
Therefore driver testing for people who reach the age of 80 should be mandatory every 18 months. If these people can’t pass the test they can start taking cabs if they live in the city. If they live in rural areas they can move into an old folks complex. Friends and support staff will be there to help with the shopping, errands and appointments.
And it is not just the other drivers on the road that can be traumatized by bad senior citizen drivers, passengers are often affected as well.
Shopping can be provided by friends or companies that provide such services. Making it less hazardous in the parking lots.
Property damage, injuries and tying up the police could all be reduced if people in their later golden years had to take the mandatory drivers test.
Many people love to believe conspiracy theories. There are many opinions as to why this is. The two most common reasons usually attributed to the phenomenon are that people want to have a big cause behind a big event. Puny Lee Harvey Oswald could not have pulled off the assassination of JFK by himself. It had to be a group of powerful organizations behind the action. Even though it would have taken many dozens of people, maybe hundreds, to be involved in the conspiracy, nobody has ever talked. And as we know, people love to talk. Yet, besides the improbability that nobody has yet spilled the beans, people still believe these far-fetched theories.
And conspiracy believers give the powers that be too much credit. They think all big organizations can do what they want when they want. They believe these big political or fraternal organizations wield enormous power with air tight secrecy. And these big organizations are always scheming to benefit their own ends at the cost of the average citizen. Citizens are manipulated into entering wars that are not what they seem to be. The wars do not provide anything positive to the average citizen, but only further the goals of the elite secret societies. People love to believe this type of nonsense. Many authors make their livelihoods from perpetuating the bunk, I.E. Stanton Friedman who single-handedly invented the Roswell UFO myth.
Roswell was a balloon, not a weather balloon of any kind although. It was a super-secret, extremely advanced reconnaissance system code-named Project Mogul. It comprised up to 6 giant balloons one above the other that carried top-secret sensors to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. No wonder the military was on scene immediately to recover the equipment after it crashed. And the giant size of the device led to the huge debris field. But alien chasers will never believe this common sense argument. It was ALIENS! Even if these aliens were advanced enough to travel millions of light years to come to the earth, and then when they get here, they fly into a flock of Canada geese and crash. Enough said.
The newest conspiracy theory is that Barack Obama was lying when he said U.S. forces killed Bin Laden. Not a body to be seen and no released pictures of the blasted head of OBL. The other day one of my in-laws insinuated that Obama created the lie to gain approval rating points as the 2012 election nears. This is usually a very logical, common sense guy. But this story just had too many loose ends. And the conspiracy tendencies in his brain broke through. I had to refute his argument with a couple obvious observations. If Bin Laden wasn’t killed by the SEALS all he would have to do is make a new audio tape with the latest NHL playoff scores included. Proving he was alive and in the here and now. And why would Obama risk such a lie? If found out that he perpetuated such a fib he could be impeached and maybe sent to jail. It would not have been worth it. And by the way in-law, Al Qaeda admitted that OBL was dead. But then the CIA could have fabricated that with their advanced psyops techniques.
And it goes on and on.
TIME magazine just put out their Top Ten Conspiracy Theories. Enjoy. m
1.
The JFK Assassination
This much we can stipulate: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, struck by two bullets — one in the head, one in the neck — while riding in an open-topped limo through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with killing him, and a presidential commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren found that Oswald acted alone.
That conclusion hasn’t passed muster with the public. A 2003 ABC News poll found that 70% of Americans believe Kennedy’s death was the result of a broader plot. The trajectory of the bullets, some say, didn’t square with Oswald’s perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Others suggest a second gunman — perhaps on the grassy knoll of Dealey Plaza — participated in the shooting. Others believe in an even broader conspiracy. Was Kennedy killed by CIA agents acting either out of anger over the Bay of Pigs or at the behest of Vice President Lyndon Johnson? By KGB operatives? Mobsters mad at Kennedy’s brother for initiating the prosecution of organized crime rings? Speculation over one of history’s most famous political assassinations is such a popular parlor game that most people have taken the rumors to heart: just 32% of those polled by ABC believe Oswald carried out the killing on his own.
2.
9/11 Cover-Up
Not since the JFK assassination has there been a national tragedy so heavily imprinted in American minds — or that has given rise to quite as many alternative explanations. While videos and photographs of the two planes striking the World Trade Center towers are famous around the world, the sheer profusion of documentary evidence has only provided even more fodder for conspiracy theories.
A May 2006 Zogby poll found that 42% of Americans believed that the government and the 9/11 commission “concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks.” Why had the military failed to intercept the hijacked planes? Had the government issued a “stand down” order, to minimize interference with a secret plan to destroy the buildings and blame it on Islamic terrorists? In 2005, Popular Mechanics published a massive investigation of similar claims and responses to them. The reporting team found that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) did not have a history of having fighter jets prepped and ready to intercept aircraft that had gone off route. And while the team found no evidence that the government had planned the attacks, lack of proof has rarely stopped conspiracy theorists before.
3.
Area 51 and the Aliens
We may have Tang thanks to the space program, but who gave us such innovations as the Stealth fighter and Kevlar? Aliens, of course. Conspiracy theorists believe that the remains of crashed UFO spacecrafts are stored at Area 51, an Air Force base about 150 miles from Las Vegas, where government scientists reverse-engineer the aliens’ highly advanced technology. Fodder for this has come from a variety of supposed UFO sightings in the area and testimony from a retired Army colonel who says he was given access to extraterrestrial materials gathered from an alien spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, N.M. Some believe that the government studies time travel at Area 51, also known as Groom Lake or Dreamland.
The government has developed advanced aircraft and weapons systems at nearby Nellis Air Force Base, including Stealth bombers and reconnaissance planes. And the government’s official line — that the details of Area 51 are classified for purposes of national security — is only seen as further proof that the military is hiding aliens or alien spacecraft.
4.
Paul Is Dead
Paul McCartney never wrote “Maybe I’m Amazed.” He never formed the band Wings. He never clashed with Yoko, became a vegetarian, or fathered any of his children. When Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 1997, she was actually knighting someone else. This is because, conspiracy-minded Beatlemaniacs say, Paul McCartney secretly died in 1966. Theorists claim the other Beatles covered up his death — hiring someone who looked like him, sang like him, and had the same jovial personality. But the guilt eventually got to them and they began hiding clues in their music. In the song “Taxman,” George Harrison gave his “advice for those who die,” meaning Paul. The entire Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album was awash with Paul-is-dead clues: the Beatles had formed a “new” band featuring a fictional member named Billy Shears — supposedly the name of Paul’s replacement. The album contained John Lennon’s “A Day in the Life,” which had the lyrics “He blew his mind out in a car” and the recorded phrase “Paul is dead, miss him, miss him,” which becomes evident only when the song is played backward. Lennon also mumbled, “I buried Paul” at the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever” (in interviews, Lennon said the phrase was actually “cranberry sauce” and denied the existence of any backward messages).
Paul-is-dead believers think the Beatles accompanied these backward tape loops and veiled references to death with album covers that illustrated the loss of their friend. The original cover of 1966’s Yesterday and Today album featured the Beatles posed amid raw meat and dismembered doll parts — symbolizing McCartney’s gruesome accident. If fans placed a mirror in front of the Sgt. Pepper album cover, the words Lonely Hearts on the drum logo could be read as “1 ONE 1 X HE DIE 1 ONE 1.” And of course, there’s the Abbey Road cover, on which John, George and Ringo forwent all pretense and pretended to cross the street as a funeral procession. John wore all white, like a clergyman. Ringo, the mourner, dressed in black. George donned jeans, like a gravedigger. Paul wore no shoes (he didn’t need them, because he was dead) and walked out of step with the others.
If Paul is dead, then his imposter is still at large. He met and married Linda Eastman, with whom he had four children before losing her to breast cancer in 1998. He released a live album in 1993 called Paul Is Live (likely story), and produced more than 20 solo albums — and that’s not even counting the ones released by Wings. Then he endured a horrible divorce from Heather Mills, which may have made him wish he were dead — or, at least, were still Billy Shears. So who is the real McCartney? The world may never know.
5.
Secret Societies Control the World
If you were really a member of the global élite, you’d know this already: the world is ruled by a powerful, secretive few. Many of the rest of us peons have heard that in 2004 both candidates for the White House were members of Yale University’s secretive Skull and Bones society, many of whose members have risen to powerful positions. But Skull and Bones is small potatoes compared with the mysterious cabals that occupy virtually every seat of power, from the corridors of government to the boardrooms of Wall Street.
Take the Illuminati, a sect said to have originated in 18th century Germany and which is allegedly responsible for the pyramid-and-eye symbol adorning the $1 bill: they intend to foment world wars to strengthen the argument for the creation of a worldwide government (which would, of course, be Satanic in nature). Or consider the Freemasons, who tout their group as the “oldest and largest worldwide fraternity” and boast alumni like George Washington. Some think that despite donating heaps of cash to charity, they’re secretly plotting your undoing at Masonic temples across the world. Or maybe, some theorize, the guys pulling the strings aren’t concealed in shadow at all. They might be the intelligentsia on the Council on Foreign Relations, a cadre of policy wonks who allegedly count their aims as publishing an erudite bimonthly journal and establishing a unified world government — not necessarily in that order.
6.
The Moon Landings Were Faked
It’s now been nearly four decades since Neil Armstrong took his “giant leap for mankind” — if, that is, he ever set foot off this planet. Doubters say the U.S. government, desperate to beat the Russians in the space race, faked the lunar landings, with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin acting out their mission on a secret film set, located (depending on the theory) either high in the Hollywood Hills or deep within Area 51. With the photos and videos of the Apollo missions only available through NASA, there’s no independent verification that the lunar landings were anything but a hoax.
The smoking gun? Film of Aldrin planting a waving American flag on the moon, which critics say proves that he was not in space. The flag’s movement, they say, clearly shows the presence of wind, which is impossible in a vacuum. NASA says Aldrin was twisting the flagpole to get the moon soil, which caused the flag to move. (And never mind that astronauts have brought back hundreds of independently verified moon rocks.) Theorists have even suggested that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick may have helped NASA fake the first lunar landing, given that his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odessey proves that the technology existed back then to artificially create a spacelike set. And as for Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee — three astronauts who died in a fire while testing equipment for the first moon mission? They were executed by the U.S. government, which feared they were about to disclose the truth.
Far-fetched as the hoax theory may seem, a 1999 Gallup poll showed that it’s comparatively durable: 6% of Americans said they thought the lunar landings were fake, and 5% said they were undecided.
7.
Jesus and Mary Magdalene
Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have been married, or so says the Gospel of Philip. Sure, it’s the basic plot of The Da Vinci Code (the thriller also wraps in conspiracy shibboleths like Opus Dei and the Knights Templar for good measure) — but the theory finds its basis in writings from the Gnostic Gospels, which were discovered in 1945 and whose authenticity religious experts still dispute. In the Gospel of Philip, Mary Magdalene, who is referred to as Jesus’ koinonos,a Greek term for “companion” or “partner,” is depicted as being closer to Jesus than any other apostle.
In an exchange between Peter and Mary, he admits to her that “the Saviour loved you above all other women” — a tense moment in the scripture that seems to portray the jealousy that the other apostles might have felt for Mary’s relationship with Jesus. The only other evidence used to support the theory is a mention of Jesus kissing Mary often, but some say kissing was the custom and it was typical of Jesus to practice it with those close to him. (Remember Judas?)
8.
Holocaust Revisionism
Despite overwhelming evidence and an admission and apology from Germany decades ago, revisionists continue to claim that nearly 6 million Jews were not killed by Nazis during the Holocaust. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for one, has called the Holocaust a “myth” and suggested that Germany and other European countries, rather than Palestine, provide land for a Jewish state.
Unlike Ahmadinejad, most revisionists do not deny that Jews were interned in prison camps during World War II; rather, they argue that the number of deaths was greatly exaggerated. Gas chambers are a particular sticking point: Holocaust deniers say they were purely a rumor or, if they indeed existed, were not powerful enough to kill — though evidence and history indicate otherwise. And the photographs of emaciated and dying Jews? Attorney Edgar J. Steele, a revisionist, says, “All those pictures of skinny people and bodies stacked like cordwood were actually of Czechs and Poles and Germans [who] died of typhus, which was rampant in the camps.”
9.
The CIA and AIDS
Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first reported the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1981, rumors have persisted that the deadly virus was created by the CIA to wipe out homosexuals and African Americans. Even today, the conspiracy theory has a number of high-profile believers. South African President Thabo Mbeki once touted the theory, disputing scientific claims that the virus originated in Africa and accusing the U.S. government of manufacturing the disease in military labs. When she won the Nobel Peace Prize, Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai used the international spotlight to support that theory as well. Others insist that the government deliberately injected gay men with the virus during 1978 hepatitis-B experiments in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Still others point to Richard Nixon, who combined the U.S. Army’s biowarfare department with the National Cancer Institute in 1971. Though the co-discoverers of HIV — Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris — don’t agree on its origins, most members of the scientific community believe the virus jumped from monkeys to humans some time during the 1930s.
10.
The Reptilian Elite
They are among us. Blood-drinking, flesh-eating, shape-shifting extraterrestrial reptilian humanoids with only one objective in their cold-blooded little heads: to enslave the human race. They are our leaders, our corporate executives, our beloved Oscar-winning actors and Grammy-winning singers, and they’re responsible for the Holocaust, the Oklahoma City bombings and the 9/11 attacks … at least according to former BBC sports reporter David Icke, who became the poster human for the theory in 1998 after publishing his first book, The Biggest Secret, which contained interviews with two Brits who claimed members of the royal family are nothing more than reptiles with crowns. (Picture Dracula meets Swamp Thing).
The conspiracy theorist and New Age philosopher, who wore only turquoise for a time and insisted on being called Son of God-Head, says these “Annunaki” (the reptiles) have controlled humankind since ancient times; they count among their number Queen Elizabeth, George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Bob Hope. Encroaching on other conspiracy theorists’ territory, Icke even claims that the lizards are behind secret societies like the Freemasons and the Illuminati. Since earning the dubious title of “paranoid of the decade” in the late 1990s, Icke has written several books on the topic, including his latest work, The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy, while operating his own website — complete with merchandise and advertisements.
The Boeing 747-8 is a wide-body commercial jet airliner being developed by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Officially announced in 2005, the 747-8 is the fourth-generation Boeing 747 version, with lengthened fuselage, redesigned wings and improved efficiency. The 747-8 is the largest 747 version, the largest commercial aircraft built in the United States, and the longest passenger aircraft in the world.
Final testing phase of 747-8 Intercontinental at Everett, Washington in early May 2011.
Cargolux and Nippon Cargo Airlines were the first customers for the 747-8, placing orders for the freighter variant in November 2005. The firm configuration of the aircraft was finalized in October 2006. Major assembly of the aircraft began on August 8, 2008, and the aircraft first left Boeing’s Everett factory on November 12, 2009.
747-8I Intercontinental (passenger) and 747-8F (freighter) current orders. As of the end of June 2012.
Specifications
747-8I
747-8F
Cockpit crew
Two
Seating capacity
467 (3-class)
N/A
Overall length
250 ft 2 in (76.25 m)
Wingspan
224 ft 7 in (68.45 m)
Height
63 ft 6 in (19.35 m)
Cabin width
20.1 ft (6.1 m)
Maximum take-off weight
975,000 lb (442,000 kg)
Maximum landing weight
682,000 lb (309,000 kg)
757,000 lb (343,000 kg)
Maximum zero fuel weight
642,000 lb (291,000 kg)
717,000 lb (325,000 kg)
Maximum structural payload
171,900 lb (78,000 kg)
295,800 lb (134,200 kg)
Maximum fuel capacity
64,055 US gallons (242,470 l)
60,755 US gallons (229,980 l)
Cruising speed
at 35,000 feet
Mach 0.855
(570 mph, 495 kn, 917 km/h)
Mach 0.845
(564 mph, 490 kn, 908 km/h)
Maximum speed
at 35,000 ft
Mach 0.92 (614 mph, 533 kn, 988 km/h)
Range
(at MTOW) 8,000 nmi (14,800 km)
with 467 passengers and baggage
(full load) 4,475 nmi (8,288 km)
with 295,800 lb (134,000 kg) payload
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