Montenegro Votes to Secede from Serbia

by Karen Walrond on

From Yahoo!News:  With nearly all the ballots counted, it’s official — Montenegro has voted by a slim margin to secede from Serbia, and thus become their own separate nation. 

“I congratulate you on your state,” said the pro-independence prime minister, Milo Djukanovic. “Today, the citizens of Montenegro voted to restore their statehood.”

According to the article, “people fired celebratory shots in the air and drove up and down the main street, honking and waving the eagle-emblazoned flag used when Montenegro last enjoyed independence, from 1878-1918.”

World Cup Tickets on Ebay? Beware

by Erik Olsen on

We’ve done our mightiest to alert you, dear gadling reader, to the coming joy, thrill and mayhem promised with the start of the World Cup, the largest sporting event in the world. Amazingly, countries across the globe will relentlessly tune in on the Web, TV and by smoke signals to watch their favorite teams kick a little checkered ball around a big field, and fall down and flop around like girls given the slightest little kick in the shins. Well, for those interested in attending and who believe they might be able to pick up a few tickets on Ebay, think again

According to this piece, the Germans are saying that tickets for the month-long tournament starting June 9 are personalized with the buyer’s name. They will NOT be transferable, say officials, except under special circumstances. All this for security reasons.

So what that means for folks who want to pick up some tix on the Internet, you are perhaps gambling with a lot of dough. (on Ebay’s German Web site the top bid for a ticket for Brazil versus Australia on June 18 was $551). And if you think the Germans are going to be lax about their security apparatus, well, you probably don’t know much about Germany. So caveat emptor, folks. 

 

China’s Big Ferris Wheel

by Erik Olsen on

The Chinese are all about doing things bigger these days. Bigger highways, bigger buildings, bigger egos. Well, now for the amusement-minded, the Chinese are building what they say is the world’s tallest Ferris wheel in the country’s south. Personally, I hate Ferris Wheels. I think they are silly and so, oh, 19th century. But whatever. I post this for those who deign to concern themselves with such things. So, yes, here is the 525-foot-high Star of Nanchang, which opened in early May in a riverside park in Jiangxi province. 

The Ferris wheel (named for Ferris Buehler, who apparently designed the first one on one of his notorious “days off”) is a full 82 feet taller than the London Eye on the banks of the Thames in London which, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the current record-holder.

Top Beers

by Erik Olsen on

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: Hmmm, beer.

Yes, I love to sudsy stuff as much as the next guy, but like my relationship with coffee, a foodstuff about which I declare with pride that I am a bona-fide snob, I am also very particular about the kind of beer I drink. None of that watery belly wash Budweiser for me. nah, I’ll take a Bass or a Sam Adams or a Guinness that I have to cut with a knife before I’ll touch the domestic blue-collar stuff. Sorry. As I said, I am a snob.

And so for other snobs out there I offer a must have list of what are said to be the finest 100 beers in the world. The list is put together by Beer Advocate magazine, a fine source if ever there was one…better anyway than, say, Teetotaler Magazine or Mormons Weekly. As you might have guessed the majority of the brewski here are made overseas, Europe in particular, but there are some American bottles on the list, including the Dreadnaught IPA, which gets a 93 rating.

I know you’re going to find this list useful, so print it out.

Oriskany Video

by Erik Olsen on

I posted about the sinking of the warship Oriskany just a little while back and wouldn’t you know it, Willy over at Divester had already posted a lot about it. Figures. Willy’s always on the ball with that stuff. What’s more is that he’s not only got links to some stories about the scuttling of the ship, he’s also got some of the first video out from divers checking out the new, world’s largest manmade reef.