- Bear attacks are so last year in Minnesota, where the
predator to fear at the moment is the mighty otter. Sometimes thought of as a
furry, peaceful creature that pops up occasionally in a PBS nature special, the
otter is on the attack in Minnesota. A second Minnesota swimmer has been
attacked by an otter, just weeks after the first attack took place near Duluth.
The second attack occurred near a cabin in McGregor, where a woman was swimming
in a lake near the cabin her family owned when furry rage struck. Carol Schefers was
enjoying what she thought would be a relaxing afternoon in the water when she
suffered what she thought was a bite from a fish. “I thought it was muskies. I
got bitten by muskies before,” she said. Instead, it was an otter that targeted
her for a little “when animals attack” vengeance as she swam about 200 yards
from where her husband Patrick and three children were also swimming. “I could
see his little head circling around her,” Patrick Schefers said“And when it
would go under the water, Carol would really go crazy, because that’s when it
was biting her.” Like any good husband would, Patrick jumped into a boat and
rushed to his wife’s rescue. By the time Patrick Schefers stopped the angry
otter, his wife had suffered 18 bites, on her hand, foot, thigh, and the back
of her knee. He took pictures of the bites, rushed his wife to the emergency
room and called the Health Department for advice on otter bites. Carol Schefers
was less fortunate than Anoka triathlete Leah Prudhomme, who was attacked last
month near Duluth but didn’t suffer too much harm because her wetsuit kept the
otter from inflicting too much damage. There has still been no concrete theory
offered as to why Minnesota’s otters are so enraged…………
- So you’re saying there’s a chance. That famous line from
slacker cult favorite comedy “Dumb and Dumber” could not fit any better with
news that “Dumb
and Dumber 2” will go ahead as planned and will likely start shooting early next
year, according to star Jeff Daniels.
It was Daniels who revealed a few weeks
ago that the project was in danger of cancellation after Jim Carey pulled out.
Carey reportedly wanted out of the one role he seems perfectly suited for at
this stage of his faltering career because he had grown "increasingly
frustrated" about the "lack of enthusiasm" from film studios New
Line and Warner Bros. Given a few weeks to reconsider his options, Carey has
apparently re-thought the matter and along with Daniels, is currently waiting
on the script to be finished by the film's creators, The Farrelly Brothers.
"We almost were able to kinda get it done this year, but they're still
working on the script. Jim wants to do it. I want to do it and The Farrellys
want to do it. We're all hoping that'll come together early next year,” Daniels
said. The original “Dumb and Dumber” was released in 1994 and starred Carrey
and Jeff Daniels as dim-witted
friends navigating mishaps and misadventures on a cross-country trip. An
ill-conceived, ill-executed prequel titled “Dumb And Dumberer: When Harry
Met Lloyd” dropped in 2003, but
neither Daniels nor Carey was involved in the project. Then, fans of the
franchise were thrown a bone earlier this year when Peter Farrelly, co-director of the
original, revealed that he and
brother Bob would direct
"the first [true] sequel" to the original film. The events that
followed have been a bumbling series of mishaps truly befitting the spirit of
what “Dumb and Dumber” is all about………..
- Lying: Even if it helps you duck trouble and drama in the
present, it may cost you down the road. A study conducted by psychologists from
the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., found that liars may be
unhealthier than their truthful peers. Researchers performed polygraph tests on
110 people over 10 weeks, with 66 percent of participants college students and
the rest adults who lived near the university. Half of the subjects were
instructed to stop telling major and minor lies for the 10-week study period,
and other half served as controls and received no instructions. Both groups
came to the lab once a week to complete questionnaires about their health and
relationships take a polygraph test to determine how many large and small lies
they told during the previous week. Over the course of the 10-week study, subjects
in the group instructed not to lie reported better health and when members of
the group told three fewer small lies than they did in previous weeks, they
reported four fewer mental health complaints and about three fewer physical
health complaints. The same pattern held true for large lies and additionally, participants
in the no-lie group became more truthful over the 10-week study, the polygraphs
revealed. By the midway point of the study, most of them saw themselves as
"more honest" individuals. Throughout the study, participants who
told fewer lies more likely to report improvements in personal relationships
and better social interactions. Their relationship improvements significantly
contributed to the overall health improvements, researchers found. "Recent
evidence indicates that Americans average about 11 lies per week. We wanted to
find out if living more honestly can actually cause better health," said study
author Dr. Anita E. Kelly, professor of psychology at the University of Notre
Dame. "We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically
reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly
improved health." Even participants in the no-lie group said they realized
they could easily tell the truth about their daily accomplishments rather than
exaggerate or stop making false excuses for not completing tasks. Kelly’s team
presented their findings last week at the American Psychological Association's
annual convention/nonstop kegger in Orlando and proved that while the truth can
hurt, it can also improve health……….
- Floyd Mayweather Jr. may be out of prison after serving
two months behind bars on domestic violence charges, but boxing fans shouldn’t
expect the long-awaited fight between he and Manny Pacquiao to happen because
Mayweather is a free man. Top Rank
promoter Bob Arum, who represents Pacquiao, headed to the Philippines on Monday
to sit down with his cash cow and discuss options for a planned Nov. 10 return
to the ring. Arum plans to stay in Pacquiao's homeland for a week and said
prior to departing that there are three candidates to face Pacquiao next -- and
none of them is Mayweather. Ironically enough, Arum has long stood as a prime
impediment to a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight, but he said that after the November
fight: "I just hope we will be able to get the Mayweather fight done. I
don't think we can do it in November with Mayweather just being released from
jail and so forth. "I have had no signal from anybody on his side that he
would be back so quick for a fight Nov. 10. I would think if we can make a deal
it would be in the spring, in April, after March Madness.” Assuming fight fans don’t
get a Pacquiao-Mayweather bout, they will likely be asked to throw away $50 on
a pay-per-view event in which the headline bout will be Pacquiao against one of
three challenges: welterweight titlist Timothy Bradley Jr. in a rematch of the
tremendously controversial fight they had on June 9, junior welterweight
titleholder Juan Manuel Marquez, who has already faced Pacquiao three times, or
former three-division titlist Miguel Cotto, whom Pacquiao knocked out in the
12th round of an all-action welterweight title bout in November 2009. "I
gotta tell Manny what I can afford for each fight and we need to talk about each
fight, but he makes his own decision," Arum said. That decision will
almost certainly disappoint anyone who still cares about boxing, although that
number is alarmingly small by this point……..
- The Occupy movement is not having quite the impact in
Germany that it has had in the United States. While the Occupiers haven't affected
any real change in the U.S., they have managed to be at least an annoying and
slightly disruptive force in the daily lives of residents of a few American
cities for a prolonged period of time. That doesn’t appear likely to happen in
Germany, not after German police began
clearing anti-capitalist protesters from the Occupy Frankfurt camp next to the
European Central Bank headquarters early Monday morning. Police calmly marched
onto the scene, put up barricades around several dozen tents and asked people
to leave voluntarily. A smattering of protesters banged drums or blew whistles
and chanted "Occupy, Occupy," but there were no major clashes between
protestors and The Man, no violent conflicts to be aired in a constant cycle on
the nightly news. Instead, a small crane picked up heavy objects, such as old
sofas, from the Frankfurt camp, and loaded them in the back of a truck for
removal. Maybe Occupy Frankfurters saw the writing on the wall after a court
ruling upholding city rules against camping on city-owned parkland, but that doesn’t
excuse their weak decision to give up the fight and go along with what city
official Joerg Bannach called the government’s attempt to clear the camp
"as peacefully as possible." If the Occupy movement doesn’t mean
enough to fight to keep it alive even if a bunch of judges in a courtroom say
it has to end, then what was the purpose of initiating it in the first place………..
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