“Abu Yahya al-Libi urges anti-Gaddafi forces not to retreat; reports of mutiny among Gaddafi forces slowing attack on rebel-held Misrata.

A senior member of al Qaida urged Libyan rebels to continue their fight against Muammar Gaddafi and warned of the consequences of defeat, in a videotaped message posted on Jihadi websites, the Qatar-based Gulf News reported on Sunday.

The message from Libya native, Abu Yahya al-Libi, marked the first time a top ranked al Qaida commander had commented on the uprising in Libya. Gaddafi has repeatedly blamed al Qaida for inciting the unrest against him.

“The Libyan people have suffered at the hands of Gaddafi for more than 40 years ... He used the Libyans as a testing ground for his violent, rambling and disgusting thoughts,” Abu Yahya stated.

He warned that "Retreating will mean decades of harsher oppression and greater injustices than what you have endured.”

Abu Yahya also accused the West, and the US in particular, of having supported oppresive Arab regimes at the expense of the people…”

-- And the party don't start till...! I'm cleaning up the millions of browser tabs that I have open, so some things will not be as recent, but still very relevant. I promise.

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-- In February 1984, Mission Specialist Bruce McCandless II went further away from the confines and safety of his ship than any previous astronaut had ever been. This space first was made possible by the Manned Manuevering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. After a series of test maneuvers inside and above Challenger's payload bay, McCandless went "free-flying" to a distance of 320 feet away from the Orbiter. This stunning orbital panorama view shows McCandless out there amongst the black and blue of Earth and space.

Image Credit: NASA

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-- This guy is crayzay good!

-- Home of the real news. Well much better than what you get on TV anyway.

-- Gorgeous camera work and a good four and a half minutes of car porn. 5D MKII + 24-70mm L

-- If you read the story below you probably were thinking the same thing... So here it is.

Also if you've been following my blog you'll remember me posting a song and a music video that was inspired by exactly the events like the one described below, - well worth a listen and a look, - Wolf Parade - Yulia.

“So there's a cosmonaut up in space, circling the globe, convinced he will never make it back to Earth; he's on the phone with Alexei Kosygin — then a high official of the Soviet Union — who is crying because he, too, thinks the cosmonaut will die.

The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes — though no one knows this — won't work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, "cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship."

This extraordinarily intimate account of the 1967 death of a Russian cosmonaut appears in a new book, Starman, by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, to be published next month. The authors base their narrative principally on revelations from a KGB officer, Venymin Ivanovich Russayev, and previous reporting by Yaroslav Golovanov in Pravda. This version — if it's true — is beyond shocking.

In 1967, both men were assigned to the same Earth-orbiting mission, and both knew the space capsule was not safe to fly. Komarov told friends he knew he would probably die. But he wouldn't back out because he didn't want Gagarin to die. Gagarin would have been his replacement.

The story begins around 1967, when Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, decided to stage a spectacular midspace rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships...”

-- Can you even begin to imagine how he must have felt? Going on the mission? The hopelessness of his situation once in space? I've been forgetting to post this, please follow the link for the rest of the article and for audio!

A fascinating and sad story, but the not exactly surprising. Although most do not know this, Russia is rumored to have had two space programs, one for the public and world's eye and the other, "black" one, for the sake of winning the space at any cost, where all they cared about was getting results, everything else be damned.

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“Are kids slipping through the cracks in Facebook's just-ask age screening approach?

The social networking site kicks off around 20,000 underage users per day, its chief privacy adviser, Mozelle Thompson, told Australia's parliament this week.

He admitted that the site's way of weeding out those who don't meet the 13-and-up age requirement -- essentially a user-entry honor system -- is "not perfect," because there's no mechanism for detecting kids who simply enter a false age.

"There are people who lie. There are people who are under 13," Thompson said.

A recent Pew study found that nearly half of all U.S. 12-year-olds use social networking sites -- and privacy concerns in regard to Facebook's younger members have been growing of late. This month, Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) to argue for reforms in the site's privacy measures. "Under Facebook's policy, 13 million users under the age of 18 may be allowed to share their personal information just like adult users," Franken wrote. "These younger users are the most vulnerable to predators on Facebook and the rest of the Internet and it should be impossible for them to inadvertently share their phone numbers and home addresses with anyone."But Franken's figures don't factor in the unknown number of Facebook users under 13.

Other sites that are popular with kids handle the issue in differing ways. MySpace also requires users to be at least 13, but like Facebook, it has no practical way to verify that information. Disney.com allows children 12 and under to surf the site, and collects some personal information from them before they're eligible to participate in competitions, for example. Yahoo! doesn't allow kids 12 and under to register without the consent of a parent. Like Disney, it collects some limited idenifying information for participation in competitions and similar interactive features.”

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-- Dance, Android, Dance! Faster!

-- Haven't heard this song in awhile.

“Russia's head of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has appealed to the Nobel Prize Committee to revoke U.S. President Barack Obama's Nobel Prize, the party's press service said in a statement on Monday.

Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his commitment to non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

"The situation in Libya is yet another shocking act of aggression by NATO forces and in particular by the United States. This is a clear reflection of colonial policy. This is another crude invasion into the domestic affairs of an independent state. There is only one goal: to take control of Libyan oil and the Libyan regime and not saving the Libyan people," the press service quoted Zhirinovsky as saying.

The colorful and flamboyant leader of Russia's LDPR party plans to meet with Libyan Ambassador to Russia Amir al-Arabi on Wednesday to discuss the latest events in the North African country.

Earlier Zhirinovsky called on the Muslim world to support Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and sent an official letter to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen demanding the immediate stop to the military operation in Libya.

A military operation against Libya's strongman Gaddafi, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for more than 40 years, began on Saturday. On Monday, Western forces launched a second wave of air strikes on Gaddafi's positions under a UN resolution authorizing military action to protect Libyan civilians.

NATO has so far not indicated if it will participate in the operation.

Libyan television has reported that at least 50 civilians have been killed and over 150 wounded in the UN strikes and that many health and education facilities have been destroyed.”

-- Considering he shouldn't have gotten it in the first place it would only be fair. Mother Russia!!!

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"A missile production plant in southern Siberia has produced enough Bulava ballistic missiles to complete its tests and arm the first Borey class strategic submarine, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Monday.

"A batch of missiles sufficient to finish the tests and equip one submarine has been produced already. Larger production would cause the missiles to stock up," Ivanov said after a meeting of defense industry officials in the southern Siberian republic of Udmurtia.

The Bulava (SS-NX-30) submarine-launched ballistic missile carries up to 10 MIRV warheads and has a range of over 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles).

Despite several previous failures, officially blamed on manufacturing defaults, the Russian military has insisted that there is no alternative to the Bulava and pledged to continue testing the missile until it is ready for service with the Navy.

Russia is planning to conduct at least four Bulava test launches this year and deploy it on the new Borey class strategic submarines.

The tests launches will most likely be conducted from the Yury Dolgoruky.

The Yury Dolgoruky, which has recently completed sea trials in the White Sea, is expected to enter service with the Russian Navy in the near future, pending the outcome of the Bulava testing.

Three other Borey class nuclear submarines, the Alexander Nevsky, the Vladimir Monomakh, and Svyatitel Nikolai (St. Nicholas) are in different stages of completion. Russia is planning to build eight of these subs by 2015..."

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Apparently, the first ad is meant for the exterior of the bus, while the rest will be on the interior.

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