flickering pictures

If this isn’t the strangest thing you’ll read today, it’s up there.
A woman in China has apparently lost all hearing in her left ear after a session of “passionate” kissing with her boyfriend.
The BBC reports:

The doctor who treated the girl in hospital was quoted in the paper explaining what had happened.
“The kiss reduced the pressure […]

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Why shallots? Why not shallots?
From the Times of India:

India would make Pakistan a barren land in the next six years by blocking its water through construction of dams in violation of the Indus Water Treaty, Pakistan Indus Water Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah said on Monday.
[…] Dismissing India’s claim that it had stopped Pakistan’s water […]

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According to a new study, nearly a third of Canadians diagnosed with asthma may not actually have it. The CBC reports:

In Monday’s online issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Shawn Aaron of the Ottawa Health Research Institute and his colleagues looked at 496 adults from eight Canadian cities — Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, […]

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With the world’s oceans expected to rise dramatically this century, the new president of the tiny island republic of Maldives is getting proactive about climate change.
The Guardian reports:

The U.N. forecasts that the seas are likely to rise by up to 59cm [nearly two feet] by 2100, due to global warming. Most parts of the Maldives […]

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Parts of South Dakota are buried under a staggering snowstorm that apparently came out of nowhere, and people are missing all over the state. I know South Dakotans are hardy and all, but isn’t it a little early in the season for this sort of thing?
CNN reports:

“We cannot see a thing in many areas […]

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Because they’re idiots, that’s why.

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From the indefatigable Cool Things in Random Places:

The sport of shin kicking has been around since the 17th century [and was] reborn in 1951 at Chipping Camden, England. Although the games are not quite as brutal as the earlier versions, I’m sure players are secretly rejoicing that they now prohibit iron-capped boots. Players used to […]

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According to the U.K., that there is a map of the world’s newest terrorist state.
As stock markets continue to dry-heave at the toilet of the world economy — and as financial-sector CEOs continue to dry-hump the American taxpayer — we’re discovering that British municipalities, police forces and other investors had a lot of money in […]

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Chinese astronauts walked through space this week, the Russian and Venezuelan navies staged ominous joint war games, Myanmar freed 9,000 political prisoners, and a man flew across the English Channel with a jetpack and a parachute. But the only story in the news for the last few days has been the growing worldwide economic […]

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Could the most dangerous weapon in the world be charisma?
From the Los Angeles Times:

Next week the academic journal Language & Communication will publish the poetry of Osama bin Laden, as part of an article by UC Davis Professor Flagg Miller. “Bin Laden is a skilled poet with clever rhymes and meters,” Miller told the Times […]

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