It’s a new surgical technique designed to minimize scarring and speed up recovery time.

The process is called NOTES, short for natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery.

And it’s not just limited to the one orifice. I won’t name the alternatives (read this Washington Post Article for the whole story) but let’s just say women have more options than men.

Creepy.

They use to send it to South Carolina to dump it, but now they can’t, so they just leave it on site.

So screw trying to sneak the stuff in across the border or in a shipping container. Just get a minimum wage job at the local hospital and steal it.

Source: Fox News

In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the 20,000 Leagues refers to distance traveled, not depth.

80,000 km under the sea wouldn’t really be possible. The distance around the Earth is 40,000 km. 20,000 Leagues is twice around the Earth. The distance to the moon is 394,000 km.

Source: wiki

That’s another one of those historical figures that I always thought existed a long time ago, but apparently was around in my lifetime.

Cousteau investigated the wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald in the 80′s.

Source: History Channel

Devil’s Triangles are not just for Bermuda anymore. I guess there’s a corresponding triangle of mystery and death that exists in Lake Michigan.

It’s not as famous, mysterious, or deadly as it’s Caribbean counterpart, but it’s spooky enough to get 1/2 hour of a History Channel special.

The wikipedia article is really weak, but the show shared some interesting tidbits about the Great Lakes in general.

• The Great Lakes have been the site of about 6,000 – 10,000 shipwrecks.
• The death toll from these shipwrecks: 30,000.
• If you drained all of the water from the Great Lakes and dumped the water onto the rest of America, it would cover the country to the depth of 6 feet.

Random quote from a Fox News article:

During some videotaped commentary about the Muppets Henson’s longtime collaborator Frank Oz remarked that if Henson didn’t know how to end a skit, he’d do one of two things: one Muppet would eat the other one. Or, one Muppet would blow the other one up.

Not usually on Sesame Street, I would suppose.

Oh, and Jim Henson used to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Source: Fox News

BTW, it seems that Disney (who bought The Muppets a few years ago) is planning a major Muppets Renaissance- complete with The Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana.

From perusing the web site of the State Department:

• Antigua and Barbuda – Former British Colonies in the Caribbean
• Benin – Africa, borders Nigeria
• Bhutan – Between China and India
• Burkina Faso – Africa, Borders Niger
• Burundi – Africa, by Rwanda
• Cape Verde – Island 300 miles off west coast of Africa, slightly larger than Rhode Island, former Portuguese colony
• Central African Republic – Africa (obviously), by Chad and Sudan
• Cote d’Ivoire – Africa, by Liberia and Ghana, formerly French territory
• Cyprus – In the Mediterranean. Technically independent, but with ties to Greece and Turkey
• Djibouti – By Somalia
• Dominica – In the Caribbean
• Equatorial Guinea – Western Africa
• Eritrea – By Ethiopia
• Gabon – Borders Equatorial Guinea
• The Gambia – Crazy shaped African nation that borders a river. Is surrounded on 3 sides by Senegal
• Guinea-Bissau – Also borders Senegal
• Kiribati – Group of islands kind of by Hawaii
• Lesotho – Completely surrounded by South Africa
• Macau – Next to China
• Maldives – Group of 1100 islands in the Indian Ocean
• Mauritius – Island the size of Rhode Island in the Indian Ocean
• Nauru – Tiny island (21 sq. km) in the South Pacific
• Netherlands Antilles – Dutch controlled islands in the Caribbean
• Oman – Next to Saudi Arabia
• Palau – 250 islands in the Pacific
• St. Kitts and Nevis – Islands in the Caribbean
• St. Lucia – Caribbean
• Sao Tome and Principe – in the Gulf of Guinea
• San Marino – surrounded by Italy
• Seychelles – islands in the Indian Ocean
• Slovakia – What became of the other half of Czechoslovakia
• Slovenia – Between Austria and Croatia
• Timor-Leste – The other half of the island that contains Indonesia
• Vanuatu – Islands in the South Pacific

… is the current US Ambassador to the United Nations. He is originally from Afghanistan, and came to the US as a high school exchange student.

He replaced Alejandro Daniel Wolff, who replaced John Bolton, who had the coolest mustache of any UN Ambassador in history.

As US Ambassador to the UN, Mr. Khalilzad is #22 on the Order of Precedence, BTW.

Source: wiki

The Chief of Protocol of The United States advises the President, the VP, and the Secretary of State on matters of diplomatic protocol.

They have a ton of official duties, like coordinating visits by foreign heads of state and organizing treaty signings, and they also accompany the President on all official international travel.

The Order of Precedence is what dictates the relative importance of people in diplomatic situations. For instance, if the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is present, they outrank former Presidents. If several governors are present, ranking is determined by the order the states were admitted to the union. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is just edged out by The Postmaster General. Former VPs are way down on the list, after sitting Senators and Governors, but at least outranking the Governor of Puerto Rico and the Solicitor General.

The list is mostly ceremonious, but I bet it dictates how cold your catered steak will be.

And a Bachelor’s degree in Jewish Studies.

Six tried her hand in becoming a country music star.

I will now admit I spent some time with a “Child Stars: Where are They Now” feature that was linked from what was probably a very important story I was reading on the economy or something.