XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Saturday 15 June 2013

Audi Overtakes BMW As Adulterers' Favourite Car Brand -


Audi Overtakes BMW As Adulterers' Favourite Car Brand - 



As Audi hopes to surpass BMW as the top-selling luxury automaker, sometimes it has to look at the small victories, too. For instance, IllicitEncounters.com – a UK dating site for married folks (also known as adultery, cheating, on the DL...) – is reporting that a recent poll shows that more people willing to cheat on their spouses drive an Audi. Last year, this same poll showed that BMW was the car-of-choice for adulterers.

With Audi on top (pun intended) and BMW bumped to number two, check out the Top 5 car brands owned by unfaithful wives and husbands. Check out the poll over at IllicitEncounters.com, but be sure to clear your browser history afterward. You know, just to make sure your spouse doesn't get the wrong idea about the websites you visit.

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Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home -


Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home  - 



A recent briefing by senior intelligence officials on surveillance programs failed to attract even half of the Senate, showing the lack of enthusiasm in Congress for learning about classified security programs. 

Many senators elected to leave Washington early Thursday afternoon instead of attending a briefing with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and other officials. 

The Senate held its last vote of the week a little after noon on Thursday, and many lawmakers were eager to take advantage of the short day and head back to their home states for Father’s Day weekend. 

Only 47 of 100 senators attended the 2:30 briefing, leaving dozens of chairs in the secure meeting room empty as Clapper, Alexander and other senior officials told lawmakers about classified programs to monitor millions of telephone calls and broad swaths of Internet activity. The room on the lower level of the Capitol Visitor Center is large enough to fit the entire Senate membership, according to a Senate aide. 
The Hill was not provided the names of who did, and who didn't, attend the briefing.

The exodus of colleagues exasperated Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who spent a grueling week answering colleagues’ and media questions about the program. 

“It’s hard to get this story out. Even now we have this big briefing — we’ve got Alexander, we’ve got the FBI, we’ve got the Justice Department, we have the FISA Court there, we have Clapper there — and people are leaving,” she said.


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'Rock' Found In Man's Yard Determined To Be Piece Of Russian Space Station Mir... -


'Rock' Found In Man's Yard Determined To Be Piece Of Russian Space Station Mir... - 



Phil Green wasn’t quite sure what he had, when he noticed the unusual rock on the banks of the Merrimack River.

His yard backs up to the river and he was on one of his frequent walks, looking for arrowheads. The tide was low, leaving behind exposed mud and smooth granite. And then he noticed something that just didn’t look right.

“There she was just sitting there, sticking up like that, and I said heck what is this,” recalls as he holds a large greenish colored rock. “It just didn’t belong.”

The rock was covered in mud when Phil found it. It was hard to see the burn marks on the side. At first he thought it was a rock used to make arrowheads. Then he suspected it might be meteorite. He used a metal detector to check and found it wasn’t metallic.

He suspected it might have come from outer space. But he had no idea just how unusual it actually was.

Phil was puzzled by the strange rock so he held on to it. But before long, he placed it in the yard and forgot about it. The rock sat under a tree for six years until a friend started asking questions.

Phil’s sister in law also thought it was from space so she sent it to a friend who works for NASA. That friend confirmed the rock was special, and that it wasn’t actually a rock at all.

What Phil had found was a piece of the Russian Space Station Mir. When Mir was de-commissioned, much of it burned up as it re-entered Earth’s orbit. The rest landed in the South Pacific Ocean. Somehow, one palm-sized chunk crashed into the Merrimack River in Amesbury.

Phil, who works as a custodian at Amesbury Elementary School, has brought it in as a teaching tool.

“I had a lot of fun taking it to school and showing it to all the kids,” he says.

Now it sits in his house, next to a letter from the NASA engineer.

The “rock” that started on Earth, went to space, and came back to Amesbury, now has a place as Phil’s prized possession.

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