The world's tallest man meets the world's shortest man

A few years ago, the world's tallest man met the world's shortest man.  As it happens, they both live in the same region of China's Inner Mongolia.  The world's tallest man, Bao Xishun met He Pingping who claims to be Earth's shortest.  Bao Xishin stands 7 feet, nine inches tall, and He Pingping is two feet, four inches.


Read the original story in the Mail Online here.

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Alien Lore No. 197 - An interactive map of 15 years of UFO sightings.

By Jack Brummet, Paranormal & Unexplained Phenomena Editor

A few months ago, Slate published an interactive map detailing fifteen years of UFO sightings as collected by the National UFO Reporting Center.  NUFORC was located in Seattle, but has now moved to a former Intercontinental Ballistic Missile base in eastern Washington. The article includes some fascinating data and maps.  NUFORC has, over the years, collected accounts of of over 30,000 close and not so close encounters with, well, something. Read the article from Slate here.

Recent Alien Lore articles on All This Is That:

Alien Lore No. 196 - The Nation of Island and UFOs
Alien Lore No. 195 - The Krill Papers & the tenth planet, or some other armada

Alien Lore No. 194 - The first UFO visit, and the first UFO crash 114 years ago?
Alien Lore No. 193 - Poem: When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King

Alien Lore No. 192 - UFOs over Jerusalem
Alien Lore No. 191 - Four UFO sightings in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood

Alien Lore No. 190 - A new Wikileak that reveals a U.S. v. UFO war near Antarctica
 

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Julian Assange: I pitch, I don't catch

By Mona Goldwater, European Affairs Editor

In his first formal public appearance since being arrested on rape charges, Julian Assange told reporters that he planned to sue the Guardian--for libel!--over a book two of their writers published. The book quoted Assange as saying that if informers were killed due to his WikiLeaks disclosures, well, then, "they had it coming to them."

It's fascinating to see this champion of open-ness in government and the press now resorting to using the libel laws to go after his detractors.  There are a lot of things you can say about this, like "If you can't take the heat..." or "Beware when you spit in the wind, because the wind blows it back," or probably most accurately, borrowing a phrase from Tennessee Williams, "I pitch, I don't catch."

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List: How to lose friends and irritate people

By Jack Brummet, Editor at Large

This is another one of those lists that has been circulating the internets since the early days.  It's impossible to tell who actually originated it, or how pristine it is.  I suspect it's been fiddled with and diddled with many times over the last few years.  But nonetheless, it's pretty good. 

• Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.
• In the memo field of all your checks, write "for sexual favors."
• Specify that your drive-through order is "TO-GO."
• If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.
• Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.
• Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up."
• Reply to everything someone says with "that's what you think."
• Practice making fax and modem noises.
• Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and "cc" them to your boss.
• Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.
• Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophesy."
• Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears and grimacing.
• Disassemble your pen and "accidentally" flip the ink cartridge across the room.
• Holler random numbers while someone is counting.
• Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you "like it that way."
• Staple pages in the middle of the page.
• Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a croaking noise.
• Honk and wave to strangers.
• Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints at the cash register.
• TYPE IN UPPERCASE.
• type only in lowercase.
• dont use any punctuation either
• Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole streets.
• Repeat the following conversation a dozen times.
• "DO YOU HEAR THAT?"  "What?"  "Never mind, it's gone now."
• As much as possible, skip rather than walk.
• Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce "No, wait, I messed it up," and repeat.
• Ask people what gender they are.
• While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.
• Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.
• Sing along at the opera.
• Go to a poetry reading and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.
• Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something about "psychological profiles."

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The Crypt of Civilization

By Jack Brummet
Paranormal and Unexplained Phenomena Editor

The Crypt of Civilization is an airtight chamber situated at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.  The chamber is filled with artifacts specially preserved for the long haul.  It is "scheduled" to be opened in the year 8113.  The 1990 Guinness Book of World Records calls the crypt the "first successful attempt to bury a record of this culture for any future inhabitants or visitors to the planet Earth."  They even included generators, power sources, and various media players in order for the discoverers to be able to dig right in. 

That's probably true, although we did send off the Voyager into deep space with some of the same sorts of artifacts, in hopes they might be discovered many many centuries from now.  We sent a golden "record" and a player that contained all sorts of photographic and audio information about us, and how we live.  You can read an article on the golden record on All This Is That that we published six years ago.

The Crypt of Civilization chamber sits on Appalachian granite bedrock located in the foundation of Phoebe Hearst Memorial Hall at Oglethorpe University.  The room was converted from a swimming pool from 1937 to 1940 and the walls were lined with enamel plates.

The crypt contains airtight receptacles with microfilm on cellulose acetate film with 800 classic works of literature, including the Bible, the Koran, Homer's Iliad, and Dante's Inferno. There are approximately 640,000 pages included, as well as audio recordings and other cultural bits and pieces.  The Crypt room is 20 feet long, 10 feet high and 10 feet wide  under a stone roof seven feet thick and over a two-foot stone floor.   It is sealed with a stainless steel door welded in place.

Wow.

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Drawing/painting: 16 heads on the brink

By Jack Brummet
[pen and ink on 24 x 24" muslin drawcloth; digitized and manipulated in Photoshop]

click to enlarge

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John Updike: what is a "she-male?"

Marc Alan DiMartino posted this funny letter from John Updike to the manager of the (now defunct) Gotham Book Mart (which was one of my favorite bookstores in NYC).  The manager has sent Updike a copy of a book wrapped up in a piece of the Village Voice personals section. . .

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Bird - Painting by Jack Brummet

[acrylic, pen and ink on 12x12" canvas]

click to enlarge

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Drawing: Faces No. 199 - The monthly office ("morale builder") birthday party

By Jack Brummet

[12x18" scratchboard drawing digitally reversed]

click to enlarge

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Speaker of the House John Boehner on the brink: An All This Is That Editorial Twofer by Fanque and Brummet

Pablo Fanque (National Affairs Editor):

As he began sensing an Egyptian-style revolt from his newly-emboldened and newly-elected colleagues of the Tea Party-persuasion who intend to increase--no, double--the spending cuts this year, Speaker John Boehner threw his juggernaut into reverse and said no, I never agreed to any specific numbers with President Obama.  

Smelling blood in the water after Boehner's weaseling, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer in the Senate rallied Democrats and charged that The Speaker was afraid of his own party's "Tea Party extremists."   Sure, Boehner has said he agrees with the Draconian reductions advocated by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, but Ryan himself admitted his proposal may well leave his party's flanks open to political assault as the Democrats get their act together and recover from their shellacking in November. 

It seems highly likely that The Speaker will not emerge from this fracas whole.  On the other hand, the majority of his party realize they are walking through a mine field and may well come to their senses and turn their backs on their deranged colleagues.  We will know in the next day or two. Good luck, Mister Speaker!

Weeper of the House Boehner with Ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Jack Brummet (Arts, Paranormal, and Satire Editor):

SOTH John Boehner is either facing his eminent downfall, or if the winds blow just right, a massive consolidation of power.  He has, unfortunately (for him) been unable to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. [1]  In particular he has had difficulty with his enemies, who are not Democrats, but the Tea Party wingnuts of his own Grand Old Party.  He has to feel a little bit like Damocles right about now. 

Damocles was in the entourage in the court of Dionysius II of Syracuse. Sucking up to Dionysius one night, Damocles went on and on about how fortunate he was to be a great man of power, sitting in the cat-bird seat, surrounded by opulence.  Dionysius called him out.  He offered to switch places so that, he too, could enjoy that great fortune.  Damocles eagerly accepted the King's offer, sat down in the throne and prepared to party on.  But wily Dionysius had arranged for a massive sword to to be hung over the throne, suspended by a single hair of a horse's tail wrapped around the sword's pommel.  Damocles was unable to ever really enjoy the wine, women, and song because he could never stop thinking about that sword.  He soon begged Dionysius to switch back, because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate.  I am pretty sure not an hour that goes by that John Boehner doesn't wish Ex-Speaker Pelosi was sitting in the seat he was so eager to own.

[1] The phrase "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" is usually attributed to Sun-tzu, the Chinese general and author of the brilliant Art of War. But, there is no documented history of this. It was actually first said by Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II.

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Two Marines: Betty & William Jennings Bryan Jones

My mom, Betty Echo Jones, and her father William Jennings Bryan Jones in about 1943.  My grandpa had re-enlisted in the Marines when World War II started (he had also been in the Marines in World War I). 

This picture was taken by one of the Seattle newspapers as part of a "human interest story" when my mom enlisted in the Marines during World War II.  The photo did not please her mother, who had long since divorced my grandpa.

click to enlarge

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America, you've been Trumped -- Donald Trump surges ahead in the polls

By Pablo Fanque
ATIT National Affairs Correspondent

We now know that Donald Trump has the same sort appeal to the knuckleheads as Sarah Palin once did, and as, say, Ross Perot did when he was running strong.

In a stunning poll released yesterday by the Wall Street Journal/NBC polling organization, Ex-Governor Mitt Romney was running in first place, but real estate "tycoon" Donald Trump surged into a surprise tie with Ex-Governor Mike Huckabee for second place.

In the poll of likely Republican primary voters, Romney snagged 21% of the vote in the field of nine candidates.  Trump was tied for second with Huckabee, with both drawing 17%.  Ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich polled 11% and just nosed out Ex-Governor Sarah Palin at 10%.  Ex-Governor Tim Pawlenty-- a favorite with the milktoast crowd-- that most pundits think will come on strong (even as he continues to languish in obscurity) pulled only 6%.  Congressperson Michele Bachmann of Minnesota had 5%, Ex-Senator Rick Santorum Drew 3%, and Mississippi Gov. Haley "KKK" Barbour drew an awesomely pathetic and wonderful 1%,

The pollsters say a big factor in Trump's numbers was his 96% recognition.  We also think it is because the public perceives him as a truth-teller (despite his execrable recent conversion to raising the flag for the "birther" "movement).  He's the guy who yells "You're fired!"  And the American public loves people who make money, especially when they've done it more or less honestly.  Nevermind that he started out with all his dad's money and property and has racked up one failed venture after another.  He has said publicly that he'd be willing--if he decided to make a run--to spent $600 million of his cash cache on the campaign. 

Then again, you have to consider his looks.  As we wrote here many years ago, no matter how charming Steve Forbes was (he wasn't), or how smart his flat tax proposal was (it was, sorta), he could never be a serious candidate for President if only because of his looks.  Alas, The Donald falls into that same category.  Not that there aren't at least fifty other reasons why Donald Trump should not be President. . .

Donald Trump is enjoying all this and is not seriously considering a run for the White House.  We also suspect his fame and this popularity bubble will be even more fleeting than, say, the ones Mike Huckabee or Howard Dean experienced.  In what's sure to be a turbulent political season, it will be, at the least, fun to watch.

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