Soldier Uses Body to Shield Comrades from Grenade and Survives

Lance Corporal David Croucher, a Royal Marine, was on patrol in Afghanistan when he accidentally set off a rigged grenade. In a fraction of a second he threw himself on top of the grenade and turned on his side, protecting his comrades from the blast. A backpack and his body armor were the only things protecting him. Thanks to the 24-year-old’s armor and backpack, he survived. His only injury was the burst of blood vessels in his nose due to the shockwave of the explosion.

The British soldier’s life was saved by his backpack and lithium battery for his communication equipment. “I knew a grenade like this has a killing circumference of about five meters. The lads behind me would have caught a lot too. I’m very tight with the other three guys. There have been a few times when they’ve saved my bacon. So I went down next to the grenade. I figured that if I could keep my torso and head intact I’d probably survive any other injuries — although I fully expected to lose a limb,” he explains.

His actions of bravery and sacrifice have caused him to be nominated for the Victoria Cross, the British army’s highest award for bravery.

Sharp Shooters

Some of the best brands in digital Cameras, Nikon, Canon, and Olympus, have completely upgraded their new line of Digital SLR’s with better auto-focusing capabilities.

Digital SLR’s can shoot as fast as machine guns, but those pictures can be useless if all of them come out blurry. Autofocus can sometimes fail in low-light situations with quick moving objects. Finally, 2 cameras have come up to the top to show just how good their auto-focusing capabilities can be.

First, the Nikon D300. It packs 1 autofocus points! That is the most ever for a D-SLR! it is designed to to hold focus on a moving subject, like say, a soccer players blue jersey. Users can lock the cameras central focus point on the player, and if he darts to the edge of the frame, the camera passes the auto focus to another point in less than a second.

Next, the Olympus E-3. Each of the E-3’s 11 focus points has an extra row of pixels. This lets it gather twice as much information, which lets it get a more precise reading. They also claim to have the worlds most fastest autofocusing camera.

Overall, the Nikon D300 matched High end Canon 1Ds Mark III, and slightly outperformed other cameras in low light. Did I mention that the Mark III is an $8,000 camera? The Nikon D300 is only $1,800. It is good for shooting in low light situations. Also, the focus tracking worked very well. Although the Mark III, the 8 thousand dollar camera, completely trounced the others, the Nikon performed better than the Olympus.

How Blue Whales Came To Be

In a land not far from the evil Fluffles’ lair, there was a huge neighborhood where a peanut butter dog and a kiwi cat lived as neighbors.  The peanut butter dog’s house was made entirely of peanut butter, and the kiwi cat’s house was made entirely of kiwi.

Every day, peanut butter dog would eat his whole house, while kiwi cat only nibbled about 1/3 of her house. One day, peanut butter dog ate his whole house, and was still hungry, so he went on a search for food.  Meanwhile, the kiwi cat was watching an ad for kiwi planet for cats, and she started to pack her bags.  Peanut butter dog had just snuck up to kiwi cat’s house and took a bite when kiwi cat stepped out the front door.  Peanut butter dog then exploded!  Kiwi cat, having nowhere to go, started on her way to kiwi planet, which by the way is right next to Mars.  When she arrived at the planet she saw other kiwi cats, and started to gorge herself.  What she didn’t know was the one factor that moves this whole story’s plot line on!  Kiwi cat got to the last little bit, and ate it whole, but it was peanut butter!  She commenced to explode into a big blob of guts.  Out of that blob came a giant dog that shark as it his earth.  The small dog was found by Bell Taco, founder of Taco Bell, and made into the slogan dog.  He only ate at Taco Bell for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Break fast was usually salad, lunch was always nachos, and dinner was a strict diet of tacos.  One day, they had run out of salad, so he ate some nachos for breakfast.  When he got back, they ran out of nachos, so he had tacos for lunch.  When it came to be dinner time, they had run out of tacos, and deciding not to mess up his diet anymore, he went to pizza hut.  He ordered an ultra large pizza, and had to rent a lot of 600 by 600.5 square feet to set it down.  As he swam to the center of the pizza on a pepperoni, he noticed an olive alligator chasing him.  He paddled as fast as he could to get to the pineapple in the center.  He stepped onto it and then the olive alligator ate him up whole, and grew to the size of Godzilla!  When he started to tear up the city, and all hope was lost, the real Godzilla cam and the two fought and fought.  They ended up both dead in the ocean on top of the blue fish.  Now the blue fish’s brother was a magician, and he promised all the fish that helped to save his brother to turn them into blue whales!  So they lifted the olive off of the fish and they got their wish!  And that’s how blue whale came to be.

Bojangles

Bojangles; founded in 1977 by Jack Fulk to be a high quality, on the go place.  It may have started that way, but something happened in those 31 years to change that.  Truth be told, Bojangles is turning out to be anything but high quality.

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Karlly’s Korner

Joke: AT THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE
         A gorgeous young redhead goes into the doctor’s
         office and said that her body hurt wherever she touched it.
         “Impossible!” says the doctor. “Show me.”
         The redhead took her finger, pushed on her left
         shoulder and screamed, then
         she pushed her elbow and screamed even more. She
         pushed her knee and screamed;
         likewise she pushed her ankle and screamed.
         Everywhere she touched made her scream.
         The doctor said, “You’re not really a redhead, are you?
         “Well, no” she said, “I’m actually a blonde.”
         “I thought so,” the doctor said. “Your finger is broken.”

Some VERY cool phobias:1.     Ablutophobia- Fear of washing or bathing.2.     Alliumphobia- Fear of garlic. 3.     Anablephobia- Fear of looking up.4.     Androphobia- Fear of men.5.     Anglophobia- Fear of England or English culture, etc.6.     Anthrophobia or Anthophobia- Fear of flowers.7.     Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.8.     Arrhenphobia- Fear of men. Book Review:Do you remember Peter Pan, the magical boy who never grew old and flew around Never Land with his fairy Tinker Bell?  Did you ever wonder how Peter got to Never Land, or how Tinker Bell was created, if you did then you need to get reading!  In Peter and the Starcatchers, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson go back to when Peter was an orphan boy living in St. Norbert’s home for Wayward Boys in England.                  After living in St. Norbert’s for seven years, Peter is dragged out of St. Norbert’s in the early morning along with Prentiss, James, Tubby Ted and Thomas. They are on their way to a ship called Never Land, is what they are told by Grempkin, the mean grammar teacher and second in command at St. Norbert’s.  When the boys are loaded on to the ship, Slank, the second in command and first officer on the Never Land tells them that they are going to become servants for King Zarboff the Third in Rundoon, who when isn’t pleased with a servant’s work will feed them to his pet snake.  The five boys are then put into the basement of the ship with the rats, and when Peter escapes he runs into Molly, the ambassador’s daughter who he talked to when they first boarded before Slank took them away.                   When Peter and Molly become good friends and Molly tells Peter a secret about herself and her father that isn’t supposed to be told, Peter sees the world in a new magical way.  Soon Peter is flying, talking to dolphins and trying to escape an evil pirate.  To find out what happens to Peter and Molly, pick up the national best seller, Peter and the Starcatchers and get reading!  Once you finish that, read the sequel to the prequel, Peter and the Shadow Thieves.                                                                                                                ~Karina~Interesting facts about the creators or Karlly’s Korner, Karina and Kelly: (we didn’t have time to interview teachers, so we just wrote things about ourselves)1.     Both Kelly’s and Karina’s middle names are the same-except Kelly’s is spelled, Nichole and Karina’s is spelled Nicholle.2.     Karina dances ballet, jazz, modern, lyrical, and pointe3.     Kelly plays soccer and plays the piano4.     Both Karina and Kelly fell or were dropped on their heads when they where little. J5.     Kelly and Karina both love to read6.     Ever wondered who “Karlly” is? Well…we took the KAR from Karina and the LLY from Kelly…and that’s KARLLY!

Spring Musical

Seussical is a fun-filled, family fun, action packed musical. There will be huge elephants talking to clovers all the way to sour kangaroos. The show times for this spectacular musical are May 8 th , 9th, and 10 th . There will be two night performances at 7:00pm (May 8 th and 9 th ) then a matinee on Saturday, May 10 th , followed by a night performance at 7:00pm. You can also see a sneak preview of Seussical’s opening song “Oh the things you can think” Thursday, April 12 at Wakefield Middle School in the auditorium. Times are listed below.

Thursday, May 8 th – 7:00pm
Friday, May 9 th -7:00pm
Saturday, May 10 th – 12:00pm and 7:00pm

The F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter

The Worlds most advanced Military Fighter Aircraft is finally making its appearance.

 Military Contractor Lockheed Martin is firing up the Jets 40,000 pound-thrust engine and is preparing for flight tests and analysis.  The jet can fly at supersonic speeds, and deflect radar signals.  Also, by the end of the month, Pilots are preparing to show off it’s most anticipating feature – the ability to take off and land vertically, or strait up and down, like a helicopter, then accelerate to high speed and fly like a normal fighter jet.

It is a variant of the original F-35, commissioned by the department of defense.  Its ability to take off and land vertically makes it perfect for taking off in small spaces, ships, and attack targets from much smaller spaces.  It also doesn’t need virtually any runway space to take off.  The service should put the $300 billon Lightning in service by 2012.  They are planning on replacing the militaries fleet of AV-8 Harriers and F/A-18 Superhornets at bases around the United States.\

What makes the Lightning Fly:

Most other fighter jets need at least 3000 feet of runway to take, the F-35 only needs 500 feet to take off.  The lift fan pushes air down, pushing the plane up.  When  is reaches about 290 miles an hour, it has enough beneath its wings to start flying like a normal airplane.

The Hidden Feature: Google Earth

The following is something I discovered in September of 2007.  It is a hidden feature in Google Earth that can be found in Google, but not really advertised.  Read on for more information.

If you know Google, you are aware of Maps and Earth.  And now, there newest feature is Moon.  But many people are not aware of a feature that they’ve passed through many times while visiting Google.  It is a flight simulator.

In order to have the flight simulator, you need to have version 4.2 of Google Earth.  To download Google Earth, click here.

Requirements

O.S.:  Windows 2000, XP & Vista, Mac OS X, Linux

Tips

For best performance of the flight simulator, it is suggested that you have a very fast computer.  If your computer is very slow, don’t download this software!  If your computer performs at moderate speeds, the display during gameplay will be a little “choppy” and will be less enjoyable.  In order to avoid “choppiness”, download Google Earth on a fast computer.  Performance is key if you want to use the flight simulator at its best.

Next:  Getting Started

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Once you’ve downloaded the software, you’re ready to get started.  Open Google Earth.  When it is open and the Earth is visible, enter this key combination:  CTRL + ALT + A.  A dialog box that looks like the image below should appear.  First, choose which airplane you would like to fly.  For beginners, I would suggest the SR22.  It goes really slow but it is good to teach you the basics of control.  If you are an experienced user I would suggest the F16, which can reach up to Mach 2.  That’s two times the speed of sound!

After selecting your aircraft, you need to decide your start position.  You have two choices now, but three later.  First, you can choose the current view that is displayed on the map.  Second, you can choose one from the few airports listed in the drop down menu.  Third, you can select “Last Position in Flight Simulator” after you have flown at least once.

If you have a joystick, it is supported by Google Earth.  Just plug it in, and enable it by checking the box in the last section of the dialog box.  Once you are done selecting your options, click “Start Flight”.

Next:  Controls

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Congratulations!  You’ve installed the software and set up the Flight Simulator.  Now you’re ready to fly!  How do you fly?  Here are all of the controls you’ll ever need.

	Command	Windows/Linux Keystroke(s)	Mac Keystroke(s)	Result or Comment