- There is great news from at least one corner of the North
Korean real estate market. That corner of the market just so happens to be the
fast-expanding labor camp where prisoners have been beaten to death with hammers and
forced to dig their own graves, but it is growth nonetheless. According to
human rights group Amnesty International, North Korea has increased the size of
the camp, known as kwanliso 16, substantially under the leadership of despot
Kim Jong Un. AI commissioned satellite analysis of the country's largest prison
camp and found that new buildings have been constructed inside the compound,
making the camp three times the size of Washington, D.C., since K.J. Un replaced
his late father. Along with this expansion, tales of women being raped and executed
in secret by officials and attempted escapees being beaten before being
publicly shot or hanged are also leaking out courtesy of former camp guards and
inmates. Guards have related stories of prisoners being treated worse than
animals, with the expressed purpose of oppressing and degrading them for as
long as they remain alive. The AI report also claims more than 100,000 people
are imprisoned in labor camps for alleged crimes against the state, for
offenses both small and ridiculously small. The North Korean government continues
to deny the existence of the camps despite incontrovertible proof to the
contrary. One guard who worked at kwanliso 16 in the mid-1980s was quoted in
the report as saying that he had witnessed inmates being forced to dig their
own graves before being killed by hammer blows to the neck and women being
raped and then permanently disappearing. Former prisoners told grisly stories
of hangings and other violent executions and with more housing being
constructed at the nation’s largest labor camp, more of the same is almost
certainly on the way………
- Bigfoot is not living in South Carolina, but a small
group of delusional kooks seeking the mythical Sasquatch are. The Carolina Society for Paranormal Research
and Investigation, Inc. (CSPRI) is a collection of ass hats/paranormal
investigators in upstate South Carolina who are attempting to prove that
Bigfoot is alive and well in the woods of Oconee County. "We want to see
it. We want to shake hands with it. We want to talk to it," said Brandon
Hudgens, director of CSPRI. "There have been sightings in this area dating
back to the '70s. We've found footprints, wood structures, just different
out-of-the-ordinary movement of limbs and branches and trees, broken trees from
the base of the tree, where it has been physically moved.” Hudgens seems
gleefully ignorant of the fact that a) Bigfoot does not actually exist and b)
if it did exist, it certainly would not be shaking hands with a bunch of
delusional fools trekking through the woods with their Dollar Store-supplied
CSI kits and magnifying glasses because they have no social lives or friends
who aren't members of their loser group. CSPRI members are keeping the exact
location of their search secret because they don’t want anyone showing up to
openly mock them, er, disrupt their adventure. They are armed with alleged
"footprints" belonging to the creature and the print they have is 18
inches in length and about 8-9 inches in width. "The print is about You
can see a little bit of the toes here and a good heel imprint," said
Dennis Carroll, the CSPRI head of investigation. So far, the group has
(allegedly) found a few nests that they contend could not have been created
simply by weather or wind movement. They believe these nests are proof of Bigfoot’s
existence rather than manmade hoaxes. A large-scale Bigfoot hunt is scheduled
for Dec. 14 and once can only imagine the fun that will ensue there………
- The moment is etched in rock and roll history. Bob Dylan
breaking out a sunburst Fender Stratocaster at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival is an
iconic happening in the music world, marking the moment when Dylan embraced the
electronic guitar and created decades of debate over the change. That
Stratocaster is still around and it’s making headlines once more. The guitar is
headed to the auction block at Christie's auction house, where it has been
appraised at $300,000 to $500,000 and comes with its original black leather
strap and Fender hard shell case. It won't rival the price for Eric Clapton's
Fender, nicknamed "Blackie," which sold at Christie's for $959,500 in
2004, but it is still a memento from Dylan's move from acoustic folk to
electric rock and roll. That one moment unquestionably and irrevocably changed
American music even though Dylan’s electric set only lasted three songs on a
Rhode Island summer night and was met by boos from folk purists who viewed him
as a traitor. His acoustic encore of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue” did
little to assuage the crowd, but the controversy only drums up the value of his
axe. In addition to the guitar and its case, Christie’s is also selling five
lots of hand- and typewritten lyric fragments found inside the guitar case -
early versions of some of Dylan's famous songs. Those who cannot afford the axe
can aim for the music instead, which varies in value from $3,000 to $30,000. Owning "In the Darkness of Your
Room," an early draft of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" from Dylan's
"Blonde on Blonde" album, and three songs from the record's 1965
recording session that were not released until the 1980s would be cool as well
for hardcore Dylan fans. The guitar retains is classic sunburst finish and
original flat-wound strings and for the past 48 years, it has belonged to a New
Jersey family who took ownership after Dylan left it on a private plane piloted
by the owner's late father, Vic Quinto, who worked for the musician's manager………
- Eating healthy isn't cheap. In fact, the cost for a family
of four to cut the fatty foods and unhealthy eats from its diet is steeper than
one might imagine. According to a study conducted by Harvard School of Public Health professor Dariush
Mozaffarian, a family on a healthy diet can expect to pay $2,000 more a year
for food than one having less nutritious meals. Mozaffarian and his colleagues reviewed
27 studies from 10 high-income countries to evaluate the price differences of
foods and diet patterns. "Our results indicate that lowering the
price of healthier diet patterns — on average about $1.50/day more
expensive — should be a goal of public health and policy efforts, and some
studies suggest that this intervention can indeed reduce consumption of
unhealthy foods," Mozaffarian said. The numbers aren't much rosier for
individuals, as one person eating a healthier diet rich in fruits, vegetables,
fish and nuts would increase their food costs by about $550 a year, the
researchers said. For purposes of their study, the researchers considered diets
rich in processed foods, meats and refined grains to be unhealthy. Meats and
protein-rich items showed the highest price difference and cost about 29 cents
more per serving. To offset this discrepancy, Mozaffarian's team suggested
taxing less healthy foods together with subsidies for healthier foods. "That's
a real price difference, $1.50 for a low-income family could be an important
barrier," Mozaffarian added. "On the other hand, that's a cup of
coffee, that's a trivial cost compared to the enormous burdens of heart
disease, obesity, diabetes that are due to poor diet." A difference of
$1.50 a day might not seem huge (no matter what various heart-tugging ads for
hunger-related charities tell us), but that amount is a difference-maker for anyone
working with budget constraints……….
- Overpaying highly rated Japanese pitchers has become a
trend in Major League Baseball in recent years. Since the days of the Yankees
splurging on the failed experiment that was Hideki Irabu and the Dodgers
spending big to ink Hideo Nomo, teams have cast their eyes across the Pacific
to the Land of the Rising Sun in search of a great new starter. Some, such as
Texas Rangers ace Yu Darvish, have
actually lived up to the hype, but most have fallen short. That may not be a
problem for Masahiro Tanaka, who went 24-0 with a 1.27 ERA this season for the
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, because the president of his team said this week
that it may not make Tanaka available to major league teams as a free agent
this winter. Yozo Tachibana could merely be posturing and angling for more cash
by suggesting the prized starter won't be made available through the posting
process, which is what anxious MLB teams are hoping for. Under the proposed
system, major league teams would submit maximum bids of $20 million for rights
to negotiate with Tanaka and he could be free to sign with the club of his
choosing among those that meet the threshold. In previous cases, teams would
submit bids and the club with the highest offer would receive exclusive rights
to negotiate with the player. "We have an obligation to explain to our
stakeholders whether it's fair," Tachibana said. In other words, bid more
money or else. With Tanaka’s numbers, MLB teams looking for an impact similar
to the one Darvish has had with Texas will likely pony up even more than the six-year,
$60 million contract the Rangers paid after posting a $51.7 million fee merely
to negotiate with Darvish. Tanaka is 99-35 with a 2.30 ERA in seven seasons
with Rakuten and is coveted by big-money, pitching-starved teams such as the
New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Angels, Arizona Diamondbacks
and Chicago Cubs. For now, negotiations between MLB and Nippon Baseball are
ongoing and nothing has been settled yet……….
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