Tag: news

Finally, He Gets to Shave

EAST WENATCHEE, Wash. – A teacher who vowed nearly 10 years ago not to cut his beard until Osama bin Laden was captured or proven dead said he cried Sunday night upon hearing of the terrorist’s death.

“I spent my first five minutes crying and then I couldn’t get it off fast enough,” said Gary Weddle, 50, who lives in East Wenatchee but teaches middle school science in Ephrata.

Weddle has wanted to cut his beard for years. His wife, Donita, has wanted him to cut it, too. But for Weddle a vow is a vow and so he hadn’t even trimmed it until Sunday night.

Tsunami Surge Video – San Francisco Bay

You’ve all no doubt heard about the huge earthquake and devastating tsunami in Japan. Our thoughts are with everyone there.

You may have also heard that tsunami warnings were issued for the American West Coast, not far from the BRI headquarters. (We are too far inland to be in any danger, just to note.)

Just two hours and change west of us, Crescent City, California, got hit pretty bad. Andd just to the north of there Brookings, Oregon, got it, too.

Further to the south, someone took a video of a surge entering San Francisco Bay. (No word on damages there.)

UJBR Blog: Year in Review

This is our first year in the great big blogosphere, and therefore our first UJBR YiR. We had an executive meeting of the BRI crack staff, and decided that the theme of our first ever YiR should be…weird bathroom news. I mean “bathroom” is right there in our name and everything! How weird is that?

Getting right on with it:

In February, Toronto, Ontario, restaurant Mildred’s celebrated Valentines Day by encouraging patrons to have sex in its bathrooms. “Have you given any thought to moving beyond the bedroom?” they asked on thei website. “Check out Mildred’s Sexy Bathrooms throughout the weekend of Big Love. You get the picture.”( We do get the picture—and it ain’t pretty!) Bizarrely, Toronto Public Health said it was alright: “As far as bodily fluids,” said Jim Chan, manager of the food safety program, “it’s pretty much similar to the other human functions going on in there.” (Photo: Rene Johnson, Toronto Star)

It’s World Toilet Day

Everyone please take a moment to walk down the hall, open the door to the WC, have a look at that old, taken-for-granted commode, and say, “Thank you, toilet. You’ve been very good to me. So thank you, thank you, thank you.” Everyone, right?

On a more serious note, today is World Toilet Day, brought to us by the World Toilet Organization:

World Toilet Day is celebrated on November 19 of every year. The World Toilet Organization is the main driver for this global event. WTO, a global non-profit organization committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide.

Vote!

Hey, BRI fans, here’s a special shout out from Uncle John and Mrs. Uncle John to those of you who haven’t gotten around to voting yet today: Go on, vote—you’ll like it! It makes your breath smell better, aids digestion, takes the aches and pains out of your feet and legs, and makes people think you’re a bit more handsome and pretty than usual. It really, really does.

Tubeless Toilet Paper Rolls

The technology you thought would never come is finally here. Yes, it’s the tubeless roll of TP:

On Monday, Kimberly-Clark, one of the world’s biggest makers of household paper products, will begin testing Scott Naturals Tube-Free toilet paper at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores throughout the Northeast. If sales take off, it may introduce the line nationally and globally — and even consider adapting the technology into its paper towel brands.

No, the holes in the rolls aren’t perfectly round. But they do fit over TP spindles and come with this promise: Even the last piece of toilet paper will be usable — without glue stuck on it.

Why, you might ask, are they doing this?

The 17 billion toilet paper tubes produced annually in the USA account for 160 million pounds of trash, according to Kimberly-Clark estimates, and could stretch more than a million miles placed end-to-end.

Not bad, eh?

Hey Northeast BRI fans:

Russian Spies and UVB-76—a Link?

A few weeks ago we posted on the mysterious Russian shortwave radio signal known as UVB-76:

Long story short: It’s a shortwave radio station broadcasting from near Moscow, Russia, that has emitted a pulsed buzzing sound every day, all day, for the past 28 years. Nobody knows why. Sometimes very faint voices can be heard behind the buzz, and twice in all those years it stopped for a few seconds…and a man could be heard saying something Russian.

And now…it has stopped.

And now we have yesterday’s news that eleven Russians have been arrested in the U.S. for spying:

Welcome to the United States of British Petroleum

Ignore that man behind the oil slick:

Last night CBS Evening News aired a segment on the oil spill and included a clip of BP contractors turning the CBS crew away from investigating part of the oil-drenched Louisiana shoreline under threat of being arrested if they proceeded. The contractor, or a Coast Guard…it’s not quite clear, told CBS that they were merely enforcing BP’s rules.

BP’s rules? That was a public beach! Unbelievable!

Here’s the video:

Here’s a NASA pic of the slick from two days ago:

Politalks: Gordon Brown and the “Bigoted Woman”

Woo hoo. This one’s a doozy. Like we said in the last post, we love politics. Especially this kind.

Setup: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, eight days out from an election in which Brown’s Labour Party is predicted to lose their majority for the first time since 1997, is out on the stump. He comes across one Mrs. Gillian Duffy, aged 65, on a Rochdale, England, street, who had just popped out for a loaf of bread.

He has a nice and seemingly substantive little chat with Mrs. Duffy, surrounded by reporters and cameras.

He says goodbye, and gets in his car…but his microphone was still on. And this conversation is soon played to the world:
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