The spider monkey is on fire

This article makes it very clear that pirates aren’t dead are a dying breed. In fact the author of this article makes it very clear that piracy is alive and well thriving even. For the first part of the article it kind of has a so what attitude its not till the middle that you get to the meat of the story to think a bunch of former fishermen are hijacking 100,000 + ships in motor boats while dodging 300 + million dollar destroyers and cruisers is mind boggling to say the least. And the writer makes it clear that they are turning a profit as 20-30 million dollars have been paid out in ransom.

 A tale intrigue, and spy games well they might sound exiting but this article about bin laden on the run and on his last legs having only enough energy to keep him self barely one step ahead of the US and ally troops is not exciting at all. The writer does absolutely nothing to entice the reader in to reading the rest of his article. His article basically reads like a grocery list Obama to put increased pressure on bin laden (uh check), um let see bin laden running out of places to hide (um check). Even though this is a newspaper article the writer could have given it some more pizzazz.   

If you compare these two clips you will see the impact the introduction of numbers on the game of football. If you take a look at the first clip which is a 1903 recording of a football game between Yale and Princeton. You will notice a disorderly form of the game we call Football . Also in this video you can see that the code of offsides had not been introduced yet either. But If you look at the second video you will notice that the players are wearing numbers you will also notice something else order. Player number were probably the best rule football ever invented .It not only gives players instructions on what to do besides run forward and hit the guy across from you but it it also gives the fan to identify their favorite player.      

The next chapter of polar shift is much like the shift in recent TV show. They are both really good if you really like not knowing what the hell is going on in the show or story. It seems like Clive Clusser seems to like going off on random tangents. This chapter starts out with a new character Austin (which I assume is the main character of the book) leading a kayak race then getting attacked by killer whales only to get rescued by a guy with a spider tattoo on his head. Of course the randomness of the first chapter is explained somewhat as Austin is sent by NUMA to find the southern belle the ship that sunk in chapter 1.

If Clive Clussler was trying to make his readers confused while reading his book Polar Shift. Then he did an excellent job of it. From reading the first two chapters I cant even begin to guess the direction of where this book is going. The first chapter starts off in 1944 Prussia with an anti-Nazi German kidnapping some Hungarian electrical scientist; to keep him away from the Germans and the Russians. Then the book does a one-eighty and you are on a modern-day freighter and all of a sudden a giant 90-foot rogue wave sinks the freighter. Where Clive Clussler is going with this? I haven’t got a clue.

Kelly Whiteside does a masterful job of  “putting two puzzle pieces together that don’t fit ” in this article about college football. It might be hard to think that economic depression can lead to college football success, but Whiteside found a connection. White side notes that during the great  depression Wallace Wade (duke university coach in 1929) made almost quadruple what the average professor at Duke made during that same year. Whiteside further connects the trend to the fact that most major college football stadiums were built during the depression. White side further connects this phenomenon to the financial crisis of today by noting that college football attendance, cost of broadcast rights, and coaches salaries are at an all time high 

Reading an article about running is supposed to be more of a glance through then an in depth read right. Not so fast Dick Patrick actually made and article about running interesting. He eloquently mixes interviews of people exclaiming that they predict that the 2-hour marathon will happens by 2015(Dave martin prediction of a female breaking the 2:20 marathon in 2002 happened 4 months earlier in September 2001); with the nay Sayers like Alberto Salazar and bill Rodgers. Who say, “The 2 hour marathon wont happen in our life time, and that 2:02 is the limit.” Mr. Patrick’s use of statistics really gives you the sense of how impossible the goal of a 2-hour marathon by the likes of Haile Gbrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele really is.

Why is perfection such a big part of our lives? In this section of the book every thing is about perfection. Whether Glinn buying 20 Lincoln convertibles, and making an exact replica of Dealey plaza to make sure he can get the perfect recreation of the jfk assaination. Or its EEG perfect record or their reluctant to sign the contract which Lloyd museum till they know it’s going perfect. There are many other examples of perfection in this chapter; but why do people try to be perfect. In my opinion perfection stems from the fear that if you fail people will judge you on your failure.

Ice limits takes a very strange turn one second they are drilling for oil in a cold tundra the next they are meteorite hunting in Africa. In this part of the book Macfarlane is trying to convince San Bushmen to search for the Okavango meteorite for him. After Macfarlane is gave his speech in the Bushmen’s click language; the Bushmen tell him they are afraid of his machines (which really is just a metal detector). It is completely understandable that a primitive tribe would be so weary of a device that we take as somewhat primitive. The bushmen get an even greater culture shock when a Blackhawk helicopter flies towards them with its spotlight shining at them; they probably thought is was some type of monster which justifies them running in to the night.

In the play Lysistrata, Aristophanes takes what one can assume was a big risk for a playwright of his time. Instead of havening the normal male hero and a plot that included mostly male characters and few females; Aristophanes does the opposite and createsd a cast made up of mostly women, with a female lead. The mostly male audiences of Aristophanes time must have gawked at the self restraint that Aristophanes gave to the females in the play; because women with self restraint in those times was pure fiction to Greek men.