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Paws Up!Our Salute to the Awesome!
From Solid Cat: 70 - Big Lists Kristi Harrison On a Cracked.com blog, Kristi Harrison gave us perhaps the most motivational words as we say goodbye to 2013 and head into 2014. In her piece titled, "5 Old News Stories the Media Pretended Were New This Year," we find this excerpt... History always punishes conservatives, not because conservatives are bad or wrong, but because they are, by definition, stuck. If you're standing still while the world is moving, you're going to get left behind. Now remember, the word "conservative" isn't just a political term. If you want something to stay the same, whether we're talking about your religion, your music choices, or your hairline, you're conservative in that respect. Civilizations that turn inward and reject progress fall behind every time. Before Europe even figured out how boats work, China was already navigating their way to the Middle East and Africa. They should have been the ones who colonized the world -- except around the year 1500, the Chinese decided "we're good here" and ceased all exploration to the outside world. While European powers were clamoring all over each other to discover/take over different parts of the globe, China officially banned all sea travel. By the time European countries got their sights on China a few hundred years later, the technology gap was too wide to cross. Europe won. The exact same thing happened in Japan. Beginning in 1633, Japan went into isolation mode: no one could come in and no one could leave. Two hundred years later, England had the firepower and technology to force their way in to get access to that delicious Japanese trade money. In both cases, both cultures started out ahead, then shut in on themselves for whatever reason, therefore missing every opportunity to see new things, experiment, and improve on others' ideas, or move forward in any way. They were conservative. And they got stuck. Read the full blog post at Cracked.com here. To Kristi Harrison, for reminding us all that things don't go well when we get stuck, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 69 - Christmas Music Spectacular Balasz Sarmai Hungarian designer, Balasz Sarmai, has graced us with this capital idea, personal massagers based on Marvel's The Avengers. It's pretty epic. Check them out at his Tumblr here. To Balasz Sarmai, for assembling a pretty slick combination of originality, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 68 - Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Hovding - the Invisible Bicycle Helmet A couple of young Scandinavian inventor have created what is being billed as an invisible bike helmet. Think of an automobile airbag, but around your head. Check it out at hovding.com. To the Swedes at Hovding, for reminding us innovation isn't dead, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 67 - Cinema Time The Bakersfield Condors The minor league hockey team will be wearing special jerseys commemorating the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The front of the jerseys are cream with a sublimated black and white depiction of President Abraham Lincoln reading his famous speech on November 19, 1863, with a Condors logo (complete with Lincoln's famous stove-pipe hat) a banner below acknowledging the anniversary. On the back, the words of the speech are written out, the opening line "Four score and seven years ago" bolded and featured right under the collar. Finally a scene from the Battle of Gettysburg is shown at the bottom. Read about it, and see the jerseys, at Chris Creamer's Sportslogos.net here. To the Bakersfield Condors, for patriotic pride, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 66 - Candy Cannon Ed Bolian The Atlanta man set out to break the Cannonball Run record, and after years of preparation, tricked out a Mercedes Benz CL55 AMG and scorched the record with a total cross country time of 28 hours, 50 minutes and 30 seconds. Read about it at CNN here. To Ed Bolian, for living the dream and hauling ass, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 65 - Muffnuts Edwards Landing Lights Some had the bright idea to do a Halloween light display and make their house sing... "What Does the Fox Say?" by Ylvis. And it is epic. Check it out at YouTube here. To Edwards Landing Lights, for such viral showmanship, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 64 - Space Cowboy's Birthday Rays of Sunshine Emilia Palmer, 8, suffers from an unspecified, very rare lung condition that makes her reliant on constant oxygen. She made an amazingly cool request through Rays of Sunshine, a charitable organization in England that's similar to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Her request: "I wish I could ride in a pink Lamborghini driven by Richard Hammond." A few days later, in a donated Lamborghini Aventador Roadster that was temporarily sprayed fuchsia and the Top Gear presenter at the wheel, it happened. Read about it at Yahoo! here. To Rays of Sunshine and everyone involved, for making the magic happen, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 63 - Fashion Week Cookisto In a similar vein to Airbnb, Lyft, and the like, comes Cookisto. Office workers, students and busy parents are connecting online with local cooks - anybody who loves cooking and can do it well - who provide them with a meal for less than they would be likely to pay anywhere else. In Athens, the price is usually between three and four euros (£2.50 to £3.40). Read about it at BBC News here. To Cookisto, for tapping into the Greeks blatant overcooking and sharing it, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 62 - Buffy Gianfranco Ravasi Vatican cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi said Jesus Christ is the original tweeter. "Christ used tweets before everyone else, with elementary phrases made up of fewer than 45 characters like 'Love one another,'" he said. Read about it at CBC News here. To Gianfranco Ravasi, for #tryingtomakeSonofGodhip, we salute you. PAWS UP! From Solid Cat: 61 - Drink Your Tears Modern Farmer magazine If sharks can have an entire week dedicated to their behaviour, history and cultural significance, why not goats? Modern Farmer has answered that question by taking action and declaring this, the third week of September 2013, the first ever "Goat Week." The magazine's website features a series of articles, photo galleries and a live-streaming goat cam that has been receiving plenty of Internet love. Read about it at CBC News here. To Modern Farmer, for giving us something we didn't even know we needed, we salute you. PAWS UP!
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