People often struggle to find the perfect name for their dog. However, when an American movie maker decided to call a dog in the film, Anwar Sadat, after the late Egyptian president, he ended up in the middle of a dog fight.

One of the characters in the romantic comedy film ‘I Love You Man’, declared the dog was so named because of its resemblance to the late Egyptian president. Political and military leader, Sadat was shot dead by Islamic militants during a military parade in Cairo in 1981.

Sadat’s daughter is demanding the offending film be removed from local theatres and all copies seized.

“The film is insulting to the memory of my father. It undermines Egypt and its leading rule in the Middle East,” says Rukiya Sadat. She is suing the producer of the film, the actors and the company which distributed the film in Egypt. She has also filed a complaint against the Egyptian Minister of Information, Anas el-Fiqqi, for allowing the film to be released in Egypt.

Naming a dog is one of the most heavily researched items on the Internet. However you really need to call a name out a few times to see if it fits. Imagine calling out daily ‘Come here Jester.’ The day may come when you have to call out the name in a park somewhere, in front of strangers. You also need to ensure the name does not fall into the area of being an insult to someone.

Just in case you are running short of ideas for names here are a few suggestions you should leave behind, such as Mister Bubbles, or Bruiser? The are names that would not make for easy use on a daily basis. If you are looking for real confusion try to name your dog similar to one of the kids name, such as Moose if you have a son named Bruce. You will be amazed at who will come running when you call the name out.

We all know about dog movie stars such as Beethoven and Lassie, but maybe it is not a good idea to call your dog Marilyn, Brad or Schwarzeneger, or Tinkerbell? You would of course ignore Hitler, Genghis, or Nero.

A recent guest at a hotel picked up a stray and insisted on calling the black and white mutt Pompom. “No Pompom, No Pompom,” was heard all day long. A dog left behind by a gardener was called Police, so the police are frequently called in that neighbourhood.

It is of course, very difficult to change the name of a dog, so make sure the name you choose will suit for the length of the dog’s life and try to stay out of dog fights.

The next time you go to your hairdressers, you might  like to consider the value of what is left lying on the floor.

In the ‘Roaring Twenties’ the world was first introduced to the cultured pearl, which threw the pearl industry into spasms. Now the same revolution is taking place in the sparkling  world of diamonds, with the introduction of cultured diamonds.

These have the same quality as colourless diamonds, making it impossible for professional gemologists to tell the difference, either chemically, optically, or physically. Both stones have the same hardness, specific gravity, refraction index and dispersion factor.  Both are polished using the exact same techniques and equipment. The only difference is the point of origin.

The New Age Diamond company in Russia offers to create a cultured diamond from your hair, using the same conditions as when diamonds are formed  through extreme volcanic forces beneath the earth’s surface.

With approximately 1 gram’s weight of your hair, the company adds approximately 1 gram’s weight of carbon and runs it through their HPHT (high pressure, high temperature) machine. The ‘seed’ is heated up to 5,400 degrees. Slowly the diamond begins to form, atom by atom.  A diamond is crystalized over a 6-9 month period, created from your DNA.

The company however,  offers only cultivated diamonds that are yellow, green and red in colour, costing on average, one third the price of a natural diamond. Fancy colour diamonds represent the fasted growing trend in the diamond industry, worldwide.

The company also says it can create diamonds from a new-born baby’s hair, or hair from a pet dog, cat, horse or rabbit, or even from cremated ashes. Hair may even be collected from two or three different sources.

Now a United States company, VadenBiesen says it is going to create approximately 10 diamonds from a lock of Michael Jackson’s hair.  The company also claims it created three diamonds from locks of Beethoven’s hair in 2007 and sold one of them for around $200,000.

The first diamond was made from hair several years ago, from 40 grams of beard trimmings. It took quite a while to collect the amount of beard trimmings needed. Carbon was extracted from the trimmings and a .85 carat, 58 faceted diamond was produced.

The largest diamond made from hair to date, is 2.00 carat. That required around 100 grams of clean hair. Phoenix Diamonds has also created a diamond from an umbilical cord.

Perhaps institutions, like the armed forces, or prisons, that specialize in a certain type of hair style, could put all the ‘leftovers’ to better value, than just throwing the hair clippings into the rubbish. Hairdressers to the stars may find themselves with a valuable by-product to their business.

While bush fires, (many deliberately lit) and high temperatures have ravaged the southern part of Australia, with over 175 deaths reported so far, heroes and good samartians abound. From dedicated fire fighters to neighbours simply giving each other a hand.

There are also small incidents that can bring a smile in the midst of the tears of sorrow and frustration. As a group of cyclists out for an early morning ride, stopped for a water break they were approached by a lone Koala. Thinking it was just being friendly they first took only photos of the animal. Its persistent behaviour, as it tugged at their legs, finally alerted them to the fact that the Koala could smell their water bottles.

Koalas normally get their water requirements from the gum leaves they devour, but with the extreme and extended high temperatures, the Koala population has become badly dehydrated and desperate for any source of water they can find.

Once the cylists realized what the Koala needed, it was a simple matter to be a Good Samaritan to an animal in desperate straits. When things get real tough, it is a case of all hands on deck, to do whatever you can in your little corner of the world.

Sweltering under scorching winds and record temperatures, which have killed at least 32 people from heat-related conditions, Australians brave the worst heat wave in 70 years.  Railway lines buckle, arson lit bushfires rage across tens of thousands of acres of bushland and more than half a million homes have lost power for days, as the state’s power supply collapsed, under the increased use of air-conditioning.

The prime minister, Kevin Rudd, urged residents to check on their neighbours in the extreme heat, after having carried a collapsed woman from a church.

In Maude, a wild koala decided he had had enough of the searing hot winds and high temperatures. He crawled into the shade in a corner underneath the house, in northern Victoria. The quick thinking family filled a bowl of water for the obviously stressed animal.

Koalas normally get their water requirements from the leaves of the gum tree, but the north west winds have made life impossible for the Australian favourite. Not only did the koala eagerly drink the water, he grabbed the opportunity to climb right into the bowl, in order to rehydrate and gain temporary relief from the soaring temperatures.

Well done residents of Maude. A great example of helping a friend in need.

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Whether you are thinking about stealing a shark, or doing your own vasectomy, it is definitely a very bizarre fishy story.

Thirty year old Elbert Starks, of Freeport, Long Island, committed a bizarre shark heist, from Total Aquarium in Lynbrook, USA. He stalked up to an aquarium tank where a foot-long baby nurse shark, was swimming. The shark was worth $350.

Believing he was not being watched, Starks snatched up the shark, slipped it underneath his jacket and snuck out of the shop. Throwing the shark into the back of his car, he transported it without water to his home, where he placed it in an expensive 250 gallon aquarium. Unfortunately for Starks, Jared Goldenberg, 28, saw the entire incident and reported it to the police.

Starks however was not finished. He later stole a credit card and quickly purchased a moray eel at another pet store, in the Rockville Centre. Starks must have thought slipping a moray eel under his jacket was not a good idea.

Brendan Jones, a worker at Parrots of the World said, “Starks obviously made a poor decision when he started his thing for fish. He won’t be stealing too many fish where he’s going? More likely get the job gutting them.”

Earlier an equally bizarre fishy story had been reported when a 24 year-old man decided to lift a pair of live crabs. Placing them in his pants he sprinted for the door, only to be brought to his knees in front of the cashier. The sharp pincers of the crabs had unrelentingly locked onto his manhood.

The fast-holding crustaceans were removed with pliers by doctors at the local hospital. However, not before the man had undergone a very painful, self-imposed vasectomy. It was reported the shopkeeper did not press charges, as he felt the crab-nabber had already suffered enough.

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Launched in March 1959, in her striped bathing suit, Ruth Handler was credited with the creation of Barbie, the doll with adult characteristics and loved by millions. Now in the year of her 50th birthday, Barbie, also known as Barbara Millicent Roberts, appears to have been popularized by a Yale-educated man who was a swinger from the 70’s. Jack Ryan was a man with a need for manic sexual gratification.

Ryan’s wives included the vivacious Zsa Zsa Gabor. Ryans’ friend, Stephen Gnass  described listening to Ryan talk about Barbie, as if he was discussing a sexual episode. Ryan is said to have patronzed high-class call girls and staged orgies at his Bel-air mansion. Ryan is reported to have suffered from gonorrhea.

Over the years Barbie was meant to have portrayed what is seen as a ‘normal’ kind of life. In 2004 Barbie split from her long time boyfriend, Ken Carson, but in February 2006 they got back together again.

Barbie has been the proud owner of over forty pets which include cats, dogs, horses, a panda, lion cub and even a zebra. Not only was she a flight attendant, she also held a pilot’s license. She has ranged from being an astronaut to a doctor. There is even an Islamic Barbie, called Fulla, along with African and Hispanic Barbies.

In the late 1990’s, the term ‘Barbie’ came to represent any woman who is considered shallow and empty headed. A flow on from the old ‘blondes have all the fun’, syndrome of the 1980’s. The greatest criticism aimed at Barbie was her unrealistic body shape, with the danger of promoting anorexia in young girls. According to the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, any girl with such a shape would lack 17 – 22% body fat required for her to menstruate. Finally in 1997 the Barbie mould was redesigned and given a wider waistline. In 1997 there also came a friend of Barbie in a pink wheelchair.

It was revealed in 2005 that some girls can go through a ‘hate Barbie’ stage, where Barbie can end up being decapitated or put into a microwave oven, in an attempt to end their ‘Barbie Days’. Yet it is also claimed that 90% of well over 100,000 avid Barbie doll collectors are women over 40 years of age. On an average they purchase more than 20 Barbie dolls a year, with 45% of them spending over $1000 annually. An original 1959 Barbie sold for $3. Fully wrapped in a mint-condition box she re-sold for $3552 on eBay in October 2004. The highest recorded price ever paid for a Barbie was nine thousand pounds sterling, at Christies in London. The doll was a Barbie in Midnight Red from 1965 and was part of a private collection of 4,000 Barbie dolls sold by two Dutch women, Ietje Raebel and her daughter Marina.

The original 1959 Barbie has been reproduced to celebrate the 50th birthday.

While Dubai presents such a beautiful modern and glitzy face to the world, in the background there is an entirely different scene.

A British mother-of-two lost her appeal against an adultery conviction in Dubai. Her six month sentence has been halved, but it looks as if she is to still serve the remainder of a three-month jail sentence. This has been confirmed by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Marnie Pearce, aged 40 years old, was fined 3,000 dirhams ($817), faces deportation, besides the prison sentence. It was not clear whether she had been taken into custody following the case on Thursday.

Pearce  was arrested last March and found guilty by the court, of cheating on her Egyptian husband, in adultery with a British man. She told the UK’s Daily Telegraph the man was merely a friend and that she had already been separated from her husband.

The couple, who married in 1999, have two sons, aged seven and four. Pearce was forced to remain in Dubai on bail, while awaiting her appeal.

Several questions arise from this incident:

1. Firstly, why is it never the man who is jailed for committing adultery? Just as it was the woman who was stoned in the Bible – not the man.
2. How many jails would we have to build to hold all those who cheat on their marriage?
3. What about all those women who are forced into marriage in numerous countries, against their free will, by their families, such as the 32 year old British trained doctor?
4. Last and not least, can anyone take their partner to Dubai and have them charged with adultery, as it was an Egyptian and British subject involved? What ruling did a Dubai court have over them?

It seems we are nowhere near past the age of women being treated as mere chattels, in spite of the many who continue to fight for women’s rights. Maybe the White House ‘pantsuit brigade’ will rise to the occasion, just as Barak Obama, on his first day in office, overthrew the Mexico Gag Rule that was anti-abortion, for any NGO that received federal funds from the USA?

Educating the next generation is the only answer for these countries. You can join us in a once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity to help the Lesser Developed Countries. Check it out at Win A Resort. It could change your life too.

The secret to finding happiness is to first understand what happiness is. It is not the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It is more to do with your state of mind, rather than your situation. Your ability to focus on the positive, no matter how small, in spite of the negative. Remember, you can only think one thought at a time.

The happiest people in the world surround themselves with family and friends, don’t care about keeping up with the Joneses next door and lose themselves in daily activities. This is the truth of Vanuatu, with a low ecological footprint, voted the Happiest Country on Earth, in 2006. A South Pacific tropical island nation where the GNP was rated 207, out of the 233 countries around the world. Money, or lack of, is not the key to happiness. Neither can happiness be bought.

Martin. E.P. Seligman, Pennsylvania psychologist says, “The happiest people judge themselves by their own yardsticks, never against what others do, or have.”

Others claim the happiest people are the ones who forgive easily. Psychologists now say gratitude has a lot to do with life satisfaction and a feeling of well being.

Western society commonly perceives happiness as the outcome of what you achieve and what you acquire. These people live by the ‘If only…’ syndrome. Most people agree that you can have everything in the world and still be miserable. Or you can have relatively little and feel unbounded joy.

Another perspective of happiness was quoted by a young man in danger of losing his eyesight. “An eyeball is worth at least five million dollars. You have two of them? You’re rich. If you really appreciate your eyesight, then the other miseries are nothing. Yet if you take it all for granted, then nothing in life will ever truly give you joy.”
The experts agree it is possible to intellectually understand how to attain happiness, yet not put it into practice, for happiness is an attitude of choice.

It is a fact that some people prefer to be comfortable and unhappy, rather than endure the discomfort of changing their habits in the search of true happiness.

For some people the key to happiness is based on being considerate to the people around them, as we unconsciously mimic those around us. Try this simple experiment. Walk into a roomful of people with a smile on your face. Half an hour later walk into the same room with a frown on your face.  Watch the instant reaction of those around you.

It is now widely accepted in the scientific community that happiness is becoming more scientific and a field of vital exploration. Though one researcher states: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness,” American social philosopher, Eric Hoffer.

Perhaps happiness in January 2009, is not having lost a fortune on the stock market in 2008.
Here are a few quick tips that may assist you in your quest for happiness:

• Realize bad times are an inevitable part of the life cycle
• Rationalize and adjust to the low times as quickly as possible
• Visualize current and future events in isolation
• Trust in your own resilience – you can always go a lot further than you think you can
• Always remember tomorrow is new day. A chance for a new beginning.

A simple formula to happiness is to sit down with your spouse, partner, or roommate every evening and discuss one pleasure that each of you had during the day. If you are a family, incorporate this into your family routine so that your children also learn to appreciate their daily pleasures.

Life is full of those once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunities, that can make or break you. Success it not happiness, but failure to try, leads to a life full of regrets.

Here’s wishing you all the happiness you can find in 2009.

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This started out as a short research on where New Year resolutions came from and has led to the discovery of amazing once in a year Blue Moon New Year whacky traditions.

We all know about the Waterford Crystal ball dropped in Times Square, New York, but how about the lighted strawberry dropped from Hilton Harrisburg and Towers, in downtown Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?

Maybe dropping a 20 foot, 600 pound walleye (fish) from the sky in Port Clinton, Ohio is more your speed, or is the dropping of the live possum in a cage in Brasstown, North Carolina. A giant crab drops in Plymouth.

Raleigh, North Carolina drops a massive copper acorn, while a giant gumbo pot is dropped on the Mississippi.
In Port Royal they will drop a sprint racing car from 130 feet, while in Carlisle, Pennsylvania they drop an Indy car.

A red rose is dropped in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at a non-alcoholic family night of celebration, while York prefers a white rose.

An 800 pound peach is dropped in Atlanta and a giant 25 pound marshmallow candy dropped in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Then there is a huge cheese dropped in Plymouth, Wisconsin.

How about the 7 ½ foot edible bologna dropped in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, before being donated to local charities? An 18 foot sausage is dropped from the sky in Elmore, Ohio and a three foot high glowing pickle drops 45 feet in Mount Olive, North Carolina. A huge olive is dropped from Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, into a huge martini glass.

Now if food and drink is not to your taste you may prefer a pirate ‘wench’ dropped seventy foot from a schooner in the harbor, or the Drag Queen Sushi, dropped in her glittering six foot high heeled shoe, Key West, Florida.

Things will then get a little breezy in the New Year’s panty drop. They didn’t give a location for this one, which is probably just as well.

For most of us we will settle for the usual fireworks, bonfire and maybe a balloon drop or two. Either way, have a great New Year and let’s all hope and pray that 2009 has better things for us all.

Postscript:
The lists of drops does not stop with the above. A total of 19 states make a drop, with Pennsylvania topping the list with a grand total of 36 cities and towns ‘dropping celebrations’ New Year’s eve.

There is still no explanation as to where all this dropping the last few minutes of New Year’s eve originated, except perhaps the ball dropping in Times Square beginning in 1907.

The list of articles dropped for New Year celebration include:
·    Anchor, Antique trunk and Apple,
·    Bag of potato chips, Beach ball, Bottle of Yuengling beer, Boasted chicken,
·    Canal boat, Carp, cigar, Cigar held by a lion, Coal, Conch shell, Cow,
·    Ford Edge, Frog, Goat,
·    Hard hat, Hershey Kiss, Hog, Huckleberry,
·     Indy car,
·    Lollipop,
·    M&M, Moravian star, Mossbunker fish,
·    Nugget,
·    Orange,
·    Pear, Pine cone, Ping pong balls, Planet earth, Pretzel,
·     Red rose,
·    Sardine, Sled, Sphoctogon, Spring, Star, Steamroller, Sunburst,
·    Ukulele,
·    Wildcat, Wooden duck, Wrench

There seems about only one other whacky drop left they haven’t tried yet…

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It has been revealed that the Somali Pirates operate a world wide information gleaning network. In particular they look for illegal cargo, such as the 33 tanks being carried on the MV Faina, hijacked a few months back.

A  Somalia expert at Purdue University in Indiana, Michael Weinstein says “The huge Somali world wide diaspora (200,000 living in Canada alone), have taken to piracy as they would to any other business enterprise. Just as you would buy shares in any syndicate, you get a cut of the ransom dollars, when you buy in.”

The world piracy capital, Eyl, an outback, run down fishing village in Somali, where numerous hijacked ships are docked, receives only a small portion of the millions being paid in ransom.

Suleyman, one of the pirates  said, “We have negotiators, translators and agents in many areas of the world.” Acting as money changers and agents for the pirates, they earn a percentage of the ransom payments. Many are Somali expatriates.

They have agencies in Mombasa, Piraeus, Naples, and Rotterdam.  Information is received through spies working at shipping and marine insurance firms in the Gulf, East African and European ports. Anywhere the merchant vessels heading for the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean dock.  The pirates are briefed on the number of security guards and weapons available on board the vessel, a well as the cargo.

Though the pirate leaders are known by sight and by name, rather than exposing themselves and their exact location, they use their proxies to negotiate the ransom and terms for releasing hijacked vessels. These front men also are the buyers of the latest in navigation equipment, GPS, speed boats, communications gear, food, fuel and any other supplies needed by the pirate community.

As Somalia is a bank-failed state, only cash and an informal transfer network, called ‘hawala’ is used. In ‘hawala’ an operator receives the money at one end and then instructs a relative, friend or another agent to hand a like amount to someone else. This has created a paperless system, based merely on trust and oral agreements.

More and more however, the pirates are opting for cash settlements, in an attempt to bypass government surveillance. They warn strongly against anyone using false money on them. Early in the year the pirates asked for money delivered to the Gulf. Strangely, no one would volunteer to carry it.

The ultimatum for the ransom payment of $25 million for the MV Sirus Star, the Dubai owned oil tanker, taken on Nov 18th, carrying $100 million in crude oil, is drawing to a close. “We do expect a favourable reply,” said the leader of the group Mohammed Said.

Armed private-security agencies from Dubai see this as a once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity to make a score. They are now offering their highly paid services to protect vulnerable shipping. However in a recent brazen attack on a Liberia-flagged oil and chemical tanker, three men jumped overboard and were fished out of the water by a German helicopter. They were former British soldiers providing security for the MV Buscagalia.

Crew aboard the MV Faina line the ships rails. Somali Pirates surround them.

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