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unknown wrote an interesting post today on
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Looks Are Deceiving…
A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun thread bare suit, stepped off the train in Boston, and walked timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University President’s outer office.

The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard & probably didn’t even deserve to be in Cambridge…
“We’d like to see the president,” the man said softly.
“He’ll be busy all day,” the secretary snapped.
“We’ll wait,” the lady replied.
For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away.  They didn’t, and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was a chore she always  regretted.
“Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they’ll leave,” she said to him! He sighed in exasperation and nodded.
Someone of his importance obviously didn’t have the time […]

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attendingtheworld wrote an interesting post today on
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Barack Obama before 80,000 people in a Denver stadium tonight delivered a high impact speech which traveled across time zones to audiences around the world. It is no secret that this election is one which has awakened interest in politics deep in America as well as provoked interest around the world. There is no doubt his oratory skills, his message of change, his connection to the Kennedy presidency and legacy and other factors which have reflected Barack Obama’s presidency has catapulted this junior Senator to the world stage.
The BU household wishes Barack Obama best wishes and God speed in his quest for President of the United States - WIN, LOSE OR DRAW.

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unknown wrote an interesting post today on
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Image via Wikipedia
RACHEL PAPO : Serial No. 3817131
This is very cool. It’s art photos of women in the Israeli military. Military service for 2 years is mandatory in Israel for everyone regardless of gender. Women in the Israeli military may serve in closer to front line combat than is currently allowed in the US.
Photo on the right is a similar style as the ones on Rachel Papo’s website, but is not by her.

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Joey Seiler wrote an interesting post today on
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The Democratic Convention: Obama Accepts Historic Presidential Nomination

Tonight, the 2008 Democratic National Convention has moved to Denver’s Invesco Field so that more Americans can be a part of the fourth and final night of the Convention, where Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination for President. Invesco’s doors will open at around 4:00 p.m. (local time-Denver, MST), and the event will end at 10:00 p.m. (local time). A crowd that is now estimated to be larger than 80,000 people is expected to attend the final convention assembly to hear Obama’s acceptance speech.

Oscar-winning singer and Broadway actress Jennifer Hudson (from Chicago) will sing the National Anthem near the conclusion of the first segment of the event (4:00-6:00 p.m. local time). Between 6:00-7:00 p.m., there will be live performances by will.i.am (accompanied by John Legend, Agape choir, and band) and Sheryl Crowe. Stevie Wonder […]

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disembedded wrote an interesting post today on
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BERLIN (AP) — The U.S. Department of Defense says the United States plans to cease operations at 15 minor Army facilities in Germany amid a wider effort to realign the military’s overseas structure.
A statement Thursday says the department has determined that the facilities are surplus to requirements because of changes already carried out “and the attendant reduction in installation and personnel support requirements.”
They include barracks, family housing areas and storage areas at Idar-Oberstein, Dexheim and elsewhere. Their current annual operating costs total some $15 million
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pbtt wrote an interesting post today on
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Anyone living in London in the late Nineties couldn’t fail to notice that the city’s British Asian population was basking in its own Britpop moment. On Brick Lane, in the city’s traditionally poor East End, new restaurants and bars opened their doors to an influx of young artists attracted to cheap rents and good transport links in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Bangladeshi teenagers in Union Jack T-shirts patrolled the area with their pet boxer dogs, the status symbols du jour of national pride. Musicians like Talvin Singh, Asian Dub Foundation and Nitin Sawhney graduated from the ethnic press to the glossy pages of style magazines like The Face, Dazed & Confused and iD. Fans of those artists could even subscribe to a new magazine called Second Generasion – the title probably seemed clever at the time, but has aged with the same grace as Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, […]

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pbtt wrote an interesting post today on
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CNN:
SOCHI, Russia (CNN) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.
Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush — although he presented no evidence to back it up.
“U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict,” Putin said. “They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is theirleader.”
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino blasted Putin’s statements, saying they were “patently false.”
“To suggest that the United States orchestrated this […]

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disciplepete wrote an interesting post today on
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LONDON (Reuters) - Eighteen sailors on a Royal Navy warship have failed a routine drugs test during deployment in the South Atlantic, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Thursday.
It was the biggest such incident in the Navy’s history.
The results came during a regular compulsory drug test onboard HMS Liverpool, a Type 42 Destroyer.
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pbtt wrote an interesting post today on
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A KGB spy who switched allegiances at the height of the Cold War and was considered by the CIA as its “most valuable and economical defector” has died.
Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko defected in Switzerland in 1964. Confined to a safe house in Clinton, Md., the former Soviet spy was interrogated for about four months in 1965 until transferred to a specially constructed jail because he was suspected of being a double agent, according to decades-old CIA documents released last year. He was held until October 1967, then resettled under an assumed identity.
“While I regret my three years of incarceration, I have no bitterness and now understand how it could happen,” he said, according to the documents.
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pbtt wrote an interesting post today on
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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The Air Force announced Thursday that two officers who worked at a missile base in North Dakota have been taken off the job while the military investigates allegations that they took home classified components used in underground launch control centers.
The officers were supposed to have destroyed the two devices and had signed documents stating that they had, said Maj. Laurie A. Arellano, an Air Force spokeswoman. The Band-Aid-sized devices, now obsolete, were used on equipment inside the launch control center to detect equipment tampering.
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