News of the Weird

Lemur is gonna love this....

Models given their own visas?

IT'S not often that fashion models are paired with IT workers, except in the lurid fantasies of computer geeks. But because of a decision made back in 1990 they must compete for the same over-subscribed H-1B, a temporary work visa for specialised occupations. Until 2004, when the government lowered the cap on the number of H-1Bs it issued, it didn't matter so much. But now demand has far outstripped the limited number of visas available, and many foreign models are being denied the chance to sashay down America's catwalks.

Anthony Weiner, a New York congressman, wants to fix this tragic glitch. He has proposed a bill amending the rules so that the models will be reclassified into their own special immigration category. This would free up more visas for the nerds; and it would allow 1,000 models to strut their stuff in America each year, compared with just 349 in 2007, half the annual number admitted between 2000 and 2005.

Only 65,000 H-1B visas are awarded annually and they get snapped up within days of becoming available, most of them going to tech workers. Companies like Infosys and Microsoft were among the top H-1B users in 2007. But even these companies are being constrained. Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, testified to a Senate committee last year that the only way to solve the “critical shortage of scientific talent” was to open up the country's doors.

Steve King, an Iowa congressman, thinks the bill should be called the “Ugly American Act” because it implies there are not enough beautiful people in the United States. But Mr Weiner, a bachelor accused by the tabloids and his fellow politicians of using the visa issue to get himself a glamorous date, says he's only thinking of New York's economy, which is heavily involved in the fashion industry.

The business generates thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue: the average photo-shoot costs about $100,000. If a foreign model is denied entry, he says, the production is likely to be lost to other countries. New York's skyline or California's hills can be easily photoshopped in later. This “beauty drain”, as the newspaper Politico calls it, affects make-up artists, stylists and photographers as well as media companies and advertising agencies.

The visas for models bill is still far from becoming reality, and comprehensive immigration reform is a distant dream. Luckily though, supermodels like Gisele Bündchen are in the clear. They are eligible for O-1 visas, given to those with “extraordinary ability,” like Nobel laureates.

Well, if supermodels can't get an exception to immigration law, what's the point of living?

Check these guys out. They'll whip together a political ad for $499, and even help you schedule it on local cable. Now that's low-rent politics. Just check out some of the template ads. It's uncanny how they've nailed our entire political discourse into 40 prepackaged insert-your-name-here adverts.

Woman sat dead in front of TV for 42 years

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THE remains of a woman have been found sitting in front of her TV - 42 years after she was reported missing.

Hedviga Golik, who was born in 1924, had apparently made herself a cup of tea before sitting in her favourite armchair in front of her black and white television.

...

A police spokesman said: "So far, we have no idea how it is possible that someone officially reported missing so long ago was not found before in the same apartment she used to live in.

"When officers went there, they said it was like stepping into a place frozen in time.


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Neighbours were shocked by the discovery.

Jadranka Markic was nine when Hedviga "vanished".

She said: "I still remember her. She was a quiet woman who kept herself to herself but was polite. We all thought that she had just moved out and gone to live with relatives."

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Hope I'm not doing a Lemur here; this was news May 16, but found it at some forum most recently.

Having a dog with a "nice personality" is one thing.

But taking it to shows? Is this wise? What of the soul-crushing disappointment of finding you own only the world's second ugliest dog?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7467474.stm

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Originally Posted by Viking

Woman sat dead in front of TV for 42 years



Hope I'm not doing a Lemur here; this was news May 16, but found it at some forum most recently.

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:speechless:

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Originally Posted by Craterus

:speechless:

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Yeah... I am utterly unsure what to say...

A sign you might be getting desperate...

Is it me, or are these guys getting whackier and whackier? He wants to make disagreeing with him a crime against humanity? :dizzy2:

And on a less political note, "I have here in my hand evidence of the dwarven subversion of our upstanding children!"

CR

Life 4 Sale

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Originally Posted by Craterus

Life 4 Sale

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I read about this a while back, but I had no idea it had started.

Surviving on coal for 36 days

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Surviving on coal for 36 days

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36 days of eating burned black lumps of overaged organic material?

Luxury. People have been known to survive on diets like that for well over 36 years in England.

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Originally Posted by Craterus

Life 4 Sale

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Life for sale spoiled

Virginia groom passes as bride

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The couple walked into a Norfolk, Virginia courthouse on a spring day, exchanged a few words, and within 10 minutes, were seemingly husband and wife.

It was an unremarkable ceremony -- except that several weeks later, officials realized the shapely bride might not have been a woman.

Now authorities in Virginia, where same-sex marriages are illegal, are weighing whether to file misdemeanor charges against the couple

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Shame-sex marriage?



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Stuck in a cleavage? Remove that bra!

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An American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday.

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

"She's a very smart girl, and she acted very resourcefully," said Rasp. "She kept her shirt and jacket for warmth, but thought the sports bra could work as a signal."

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Sports bra saves hiker stranded in Alps

Granny to teach Italian soldier how to fight

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...ese-woman.html

UFOs invade Britain's airspace

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UFOs invade Britain's airspace

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Anyone seen BKS?

Even when I close my eyes

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Originally Posted by Marshal Murat

Anyone seen BKS?

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BKS? He's a medicine student nowadays. Here he is, doing his daily routine at the Sacred Heart Hospital.

Sheesh. Keep up, will ya!? :no:

Not really news - more a wiki article, but its rather...funny.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Not really news - more a wiki article, but its rather...funny.

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Oh, we take Wiki articles, oh yes we do. Brilliant one, FH!

Other local politicians are named Lenin R. Marak, Stalin L. Nangmin, Frankenstein W. Momin, or Tony Curtis Lyngdoh. Hitler Marak told the Hindustan Times: "Maybe my parents liked the name and hence christened me Hitler... I am happy with my name, although I don't have any dictatorial tendencies."

-edit-

Looks like another deadly School Ninja Attack was barely averted: "Public schools in Barnegat were locked down briefly after someone reported seeing a ninja running through the woods behind an elementary school."

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Originally Posted by Lemur

"...after someone reported seeing a ninja..."

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Not a very good ninja...

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

UFOs invade Britain's airspace

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"But it is certainly not advisable for police helicopters to go chasing what they think are UFOs," he added.

:laugh4::laugh4:

Street sweeper sucks!

I reckon they were just trying to give him the brush off...

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The Department of Sanitation offered its condolences to Mr Machin and his family but added: "It is important for all New Yorkers to remember to maintain the safety of their animals while walking city streets."

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:shame:

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...1214430589.jpg

What the heck? North Carolina issues around ten thousand license plates that begin with the potentially mis-readable WTF letters, later forced to recall them after hundreds of teens choke to death from snickering. DMV also forgets to remove the plate with "WTF" from their website.

Could be worse, they could be the Wisconsin Tourism Federation. I don't see a way out for them.

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...rmania/wtf.gif

-edit-

Or the World Taekwando Federation ...

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...a/logo_wtf.gif

Inexplicable signs:

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...Discomfort.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...dSmashedIn.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...dLiverWash.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...natingRoom.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...irdsFriend.jpg

The second to last picture should be "Control Room", and the last picture should be "Let us be friends with the birds" (:dizzy2:)

Pretty funny though :smash:

News? No. Weird? Not really. Fun? Absolutely!

Don't know where else to post it, so I'll dump it here: Stuart Jeffries considers the perils and pleasures of school swaps, while Guardian writers recall their most memorable experiences

Confused teenage Briton in Germany:

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"I don't like it here. Please give me my passport back so I can go home, you wicked Bavarians"

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Confused teenage Briton in France:

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"The whole family would sit down in front of the telly to watch soft-porn films together.

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It's a veritable treasure trove of memorable quotes!

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The moment I saw her long, mournful Gallic face, I knew I was doomed. Sure enough, after watching my best friend Sarah and 28 other classmates be swept off in expensive cars to plush appartements et immeubles in desirable Parisian arrondissements full of dazzling glamour, promise and lean, olive-skinned young men with dangerous eyes and permanent erections, I was bundled into the back of a 30-year-old Peugeot 205 that smelt of sheep and despair and driven - as it seemed to me - to the arse end of rural France. La Ville de Merde-Douche, I think it was.

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:laugh4: :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

Don't know where else to post it, so I'll dump it here: Stuart Jeffries considers the perils and pleasures of school swaps, while Guardian writers recall their most memorable experiences

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:laugh4:

But...

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I discovered Spezzi, a daring orangeade/cola hybrid

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Spezi! ONE Z!

I am done. ~;)

EDIT: Not quite.

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Then we went swimming. It was when Karin readied herself for a plunge from the high diving board and lifted her arms above her head that my English chums and I first noticed. She didn't shave her armpits! If text messaging had been invented in 1996, I would surely have sent a massive "OMG, WTF?!?!" back to Morecambe. Having been taught by Just Seventeen to scythe our body hair the moment it sprouted, we were disgusted. And being horrible teenage girls, we came up with a suitably catty nickname for the unfortunate Teuton: from then on, Karin became the "Schwarzwald", aka "the Black Forest".

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Oh dear Lord that is hilarious! :laugh4:

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I am sure this visit is why I still have a French accent I can be proud of, but which sadly far exceeds my mastery of the language itself. The result, I have realised on subsequent trips to France, is that I am often taken not for an Englishman who is clever enough to speak French, but for a very stupid Frenchman.

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I am having so much fun right now.

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Was Sarah scarred for life by the trauma? "Nah. I had a great time. We just played pool and drank a lot. It was much easier to drink underage there than here. I was just disappointed that the boys we came across were a bit ugly and wore terrible clothes."

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:laugh4:

but this is a classic....

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La Ville de Merde-Douche, I think it was. Apparently, this was where Delphine (it means "mute and sullen" en français) and her rotten French family spent their rotten French summer holidays every rotten French year.

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That does mean what I think it does? ROFLMFAO. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Lemur

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...irdsFriend.jpg

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Is that where the exploding wiki birds come from? :inquisitive: