the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

Bravo!! It was a great Documtary done 50 years after it was actually performed.........................

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/paul-mccartney-ringo-starr-director-012917158.html[/URL]

This is scary, but not surprising...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=6]National student test scores plunged during the pandemic[/SIZE][/HEADING]
The results fell to levels unseen for decades.

WASHINGTON — Test scores in elementary school math and reading plummeted to levels unseen for decades, according to the first nationally representative report comparing student achievement from just before the pandemic to performance two years later.

Math scores dropped seven points during that period, marking a first-ever decline, while reading scores slipped five points, producing the largest dip in 30 years on the National Assessment for Educational Progress, or NAEP, often called “the nation’s report card.” The students who took the tests – given from January to March in 2020 and in 2022 – were 9 years old and mostly in fourth grade.

“These results are sobering,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the tests. “It’s clear that COVID-19 shocked American education and stunted the academic growth of this age group.”

The falloff – which she called “historic” – left little doubt about the pandemic’s toll. The average math score of 234 this year was comparable to the average score recorded in 1999, and the reading score of 215 was similar to the 2004 score. How long it might take to catch up is unclear and not likely to be understood until further test results are analyzed.

Carr said the academic losses are part of a complex picture of pandemic schooling. Other studies have shown a rise in classroom disruption, school violence, absenteeism, cyberbullying, and teacher and staff vacancies, and schools also say more students are seeking mental health services. “There are a lot of factors that contextualize these data that we’re looking at,” she said.

Schools began to struggle in spring 2020, as school buildings were shuttered nationally and learning faltered during the last few months of the school year. Then, for at least part of the next school year, millions of students learned remotely or under hybrid schedules that blended virtual and in-person classes. Last year, schools opened for in-person classes, but many scrambled repeatedly to manage COVID surges, quarantines, mask mandates and staffing shortages. A number of educators called it the toughest time of their careers.

The stark results are likely to stir more debate about the wisdom of virtual learning and the speed at which schools reopened. There is wide agreement among educators that most students do better when they are in a classroom with a teacher.

The new data show that many of the most vulnerable students fared the worst. Children who performed at the lowest level lost the most in reading and math this year – with scores that plunged 10 to 12 points. By comparison, students who performed at the highest level fell an average of two to three points.

“While we see declines at all performance levels, the growing gap between students at the top and those at the bottom is an important but overlooked trend,” said Martin West, a member of the governing board that sets policy for NAEP and academic dean at Harvard Graduate School of Education, in a statement. “These results show that this gap widened further during the pandemic.”

“Supporting the academic recovery of lower-performing students should be a top priority for educators and policymakers nationwide,” West said.

Math scores for Black students tumbled 13 points, compared with eight points for Hispanic students and five points for white students. In reading, all three groups fell by six points. No statistically significant change in scores was reported for Asian, Native American or multiracial students.

Similarly, math scores sank seven to eight points for students who are economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities and English language learners. Reading scores dipped, too, except for English language learners.

Geography made a difference, with math performance falling eight points in the Northeast, nine points in the Midwest, seven points in the South and five points in the West. Suburban schools fared worse than schools located in urban or rural areas.

Amid all of the declines, flat scores drew attention: No measurable decline in reading was found in the West, in cities or in rural areas. “The fact that reading achievement from students in cities held steady – when you consider the extreme crises cities are dealing with during the pandemic – is especially significant,” Carr said

Seventy percent of the 9-year-olds tested this year recalled learning remotely at some point during the pandemic. More than 80 percent of higher-performing students reported always having access to a laptop, a desktop computer or a tablet. Among lower-performing students, about 60 percent had constant access.

NAEP testing is done at public and private schools across the country that are randomly sampled, according to NCES. The test for 9-year-olds included three 15-minute blocks of questions, most of which were multiple choice, with more time allotted for answering a questionnaire. Test takers are randomly sampled, too – 14,800 students in all, from 410 schools. More than 90 percent of schools were sampled in both 2020 and 2022.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement that the NAEP results cast the experiences of the last two years in “a stark light” but should remind people to press ahead with efforts to accelerate student learning, support student mental health needs and invest in educators. States should steer federal relief funds “even more effectively and expeditiously” to proven strategies including “high-dosage” tutoring and after-school and summer programs, Cardona said.

Federal officials said the results are part of a special collection of long-term trend data. A more comprehensive look at student achievement is expected later this year. It will include national and state data, along with selected school district data for students in fourth and eighth grades in math and reading.

NAEP tests are a congressionally authorized project, sponsored by the Department of Education and administered through its statistical arm, the NCES.

This is irreverent as no child is left behind. They will all pass with flying colors as the curve is adjusted.

This is irreverent as no child is left behind. They will all pass with flying colors as the curve is adjusted.

Sad but true

[HEADING=2][SIZE=6]Judge Dismisses Suit Over Naked Baby Image on Nirvana Album Cover[/SIZE][/HEADING]
Spencer Elden, who was pictured as a baby on the cover of “Nevermind,” argued in his lawsuit that the grunge rock group had engaged in “child pornography.”

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a man who, as a baby, had graced the cover of Nirvana’s seminal album, “Nevermind,” and argued 30 years later that the iconic photo of him drifting naked in a pool had been a form of sexual exploitation.

The man, Spencer Elden, 31, [accused Nirvana in his complaint]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/arts/music/spencer-alden-nirvana-nevermind.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article') of engaging in child pornography after it used a photo of him for the cover of “Nevermind,” the 1991 album that catapulted the Seattle grunge rock band to international fame.

The judge, Fernando M. Olguin, wrote in his eight-page ruling that because Mr. Elden had learned about the album cover more than 10 years ago, he had waited too long to file his lawsuit, making his claims untimely.

Note to self: Stay off carnival rides and don't visit India

[MEDIA=youtube]sjFVFYNva0Y:47[/MEDIA]

And we think are politics are bad...

Scare bleu!! Ou est le beouf?

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Of Barbecues and Men: A Summer Storm Brews Over Virility in France[/SIZE][/HEADING]
A Green politician told men to get over meat and masculinity for the sake of the planet, setting off a sizzling argument.

PARIS — It’s “la rentrée” in France, the back-to-school, return-to-normal month after the vacations that is often marked by renewed social conflict. But nobody expected France to be up in arms over barbecues.

Barbecue has become the word on every front page, the subject of heated TV debates and the source of a crisis in national identity ever since Sandrine Rousseau, a member of Parliament from the Green Party, declared on Aug. 27 that “we have to change our mentality so that eating a barbecued entrecôte is no longer a symbol of virility.”

L’horreur!

Politicians across the political spectrum — from the far-right to the Communist Party — erupted. They accused Ms. Rousseau of impugning the deep Gallic attachment to the marbled beef prepared by the delicate incisions of French butchers, insulting and “deconstructing” men, projecting gender wars onto pleasant summer gatherings and generally spreading gloom.

“Stop this madness!” Eric Ciotti, a lawmaker from the Gaullist Republicans party [wrote on Twitter]('https://twitter.com/ECiotti/status/1563819429179310080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw'). Another party member, Nadine Morano, said, “That’s enough of accusing our boys of everything!”

Fabien Roussel, the secretary general of the Communist Party, took a different tack: “Meat consumption is a function of what you have in your wallet, not in your panties or your underpants.”

Ms. Rousseau, a senior member of the Europe Écologie-Les Verts party, said in an interview that she was surprised by the sizzling brouhaha. Her point was that “if you want to resolve the climate crisis, you have to reduce meat consumption, and that’s not going to happen so long as masculinity is constructed around meat.”

She offered no conclusive evidence of the virility involved in, or symbolized by, heating charcoal, laying sausages and slabs of red meat on a rack and standing there bare-chested in the billowing smoke to cook them.

But a [study]('https://www.anses.fr/fr/system/files/NUT2014AO23Ra.pdf') known as INCA conducted every seven years by the French ministries of agriculture and health suggests French men eat 59 percent more meat than women.

French society, Ms. Rousseau suggested, has its overwhelmingly male head in the sand when it comes to combating climate change, despite a summer of [severe drought]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/world/europe/france-drought-europe-heat.html') [and wildfires]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/world/europe/france-wildfires-heat-wave.html').

“These men react as if I am tearing out their hearts and lungs!” she said. “Yet, after a summer like this, we clearly need to think about how to replace conviviality around raw meat on a barbecue. We can grill bell peppers. We can have a picnic. We can reimagine what has value.”

That would be a tough adjustment in France where attachment to “terroir” — the land, the special characteristics of a particular parcel of it, the nature of its soil, the characteristics of the livestock that graze there — is passionate. The annual Paris Agricultural Fair, where farmers show off their hefty prize cattle, is a major national event, to the point that many politicians have lost any hope of high office by not looking comfortable patting the hindquarters of a cow.

And this country, the land of steak frites, will content itself with barbecued bell peppers?

It seems implausible, but times are changing. The planet is heating up. France just went through its second-hottest summer in more than a century. The United Nations estimates that livestock emissions make up some 14 percent of all man-made greenhouse gases, including methane.

Already, in the French presidential election campaign this year, it was clear that the politicization of food had gone a long way. The country split between the red-meat crowd, mainly on the right, and the quinoa and tofu brigade preaching the virtues of nuts and vegetables, concentrated among the Greens.

The land of gastronomy has become the land of heated debate over the cultural and political symbolism of food. Traditionalists detect signs of American-imported “cancel culture” in the attempt to put steak and lamb off-limits to save the planet. There’s even a new word — the “mangeosphère,” or roughly the eating sphere — coined by the French daily Le Monde for these discussions on the semiology of a ham sandwich or an apple.

Mr. Roussel, then the Communist Party presidential candidate, was fiercely criticized in January for saying all French people should have the right to traditional fare. “A good wine, good meat, good cheese, that is French gastronomy,” he said.

The comment was immediately attacked as xenophobic, with Ms. Rousseau in the vanguard of his critics. What about couscous and sushi? And the millions of French Muslims, who do not drink wine? And the vegans who are not much interested in “good meat?”

Nonetheless, Mr. Roussel’s popularity briefly surged, and thunderous applause at rallies greeted his cry of: “What are we going to eat? Tofu and soy beans? Come on!”

“There’s a difference between the sexes in the way we consume meat, and people who decide to become vegetarians are mostly women,” Clémentine Autain, a lawmaker with the Unbowed party, told BFMTV in a strong defense of Ms. Rousseau. “So if we want to go toward equality we have to attack virilism.”

She did not say how she would go about that.

Julien Odoul, a member of Marine Le Pen’s extreme right National Rally, was not impressed. He declared that men had always eaten more meat than women and that “it’s not virilism, it’s nature.” He vowed to pursue a “Cro-Magnon diet,” an allusion to cave-dwelling early humans in the French southwest.

Ms. Morano, the representative from the center-right Republicans, called for an immediate halt to the “deconstruction” of French men. Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher who died in 2004, coined that term but generally applied it to texts rather than French males.

As for Ms. Rousseau, she said: “I am not against men. I am against a patriarchal system that is taking the planet into a wall.”

I do not watch cnn but love to just randomly tune in and we Laugh our ass off since whenever you do they are Talking about President Trump……Almost every time.

They just cant get over him.
Love it.

Hey there's future hope for you North Fork Folks, maybe those weekend Bachelorette Winery Parties will head to Israel????

[HEADING=2]Desert Winemaking ‘Sounds Absurd,’ but Israeli Vineyards in Negev Show the Way[/HEADING]
As vintners around the world battle extreme heat and climate change, the pioneers producing wine in Israel’s arid south are testing ideas that might soon find global application.

SDE BOKER, Israel — Say “wine tasting,” and the words immediately conjure images of verdant hills in Napa Valley or Tuscany. What they don’t bring to mind: the desert.

But at a small cafe on a communal farm in the Negev Desert in southern Israel, a local winemaker was pouring a variety of deep crimson nectars last month, inviting some guests to swirl their glasses to release the fruity flavors and aromas.

As growers in more established wine-producing areas of Europe and elsewhere in the world battle unpredictable, extreme weather, including scorching heat waves, Israelis have found themselves at the vanguard of dry-weather wine production, testing approaches that might soon find more global application.

And the work is being done in the Negev, home to hundreds of technology start-ups and a futuristic solar tower — and long a laboratory for experimentation in Israel.

“It is in the Negev that the creativity and pioneering vigor of Israel shall be tested,” read an inscription on the cafe’s wall — an iconic quote from David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, who lived out his last years about 50 yards away, in an austere wooden cabin.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2022/09/08/fda-ends-lucky-charms-probe-despite-continued-reports-of-illnesses/[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2022/09/08/fda-ends-lucky-charms-probe-despite-continued-reports-of-illnesses/[/URL]

LOL, not like anything around Teaneck could possibly cause green poops...

ROTHLMAO - Wait a minute, I thought the deal was you had to keep him???!!!!!

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Bill de Blasio Knows New York Is Tired of Him. He’s at Peace With It.[/SIZE][/HEADING]
On the eve of the former mayor’s return to his New England home, a frank exit interview about his time in New York.

For decades, as Bill de Blasio climbed the political ladder, he resolutely insisted he was a New Yorker. This insistence came even though he was raised primarily in Boston — well, nearby in Cambridge, technically — and kept his childhood fealty to the Red Sox.

As he ascended from councilmember to public advocate to mayor, New Yorkers grew to accept him. Not necessarily as one of their own — the man used a fork and knife to eat a slice of pizza, after all — but as a progressive leader who would restore the city to its left-leaning core after 20 years of non-Democratic mayors.

Yet this fall, with New York City having spurned his recent bid for Congress, Mr. de Blasio will pack his bags and head briefly to Boston — well, Cambridge — where he will leave his life in electoral politics behind and be a visiting teaching fellow at Harvard University.

The move isn’t permanent; Mr. de Blasio and his family will remain in Brooklyn. But, he said in an interview, it would “be sweet to spend a little time in the town I grew up in” and to head to Fenway Park to watch his beloved Red Sox. “Not that they’re doing so much this season,” he added with a laugh. After many highs in the past decade, the Sox are currently last in their division.

Mr. de Blasio, 61, may very well relate. After an energizing election in 2013, he left office last year as one of the most unpopular mayors in the city’s history. Then, in May, he announced that he would run for Congress but dropped out after two months of campaigning made it clear that his neighbors were not especially eager for his return to the political arena.

Tragic, while growing up around Pt. Jeff I always looked forward to Labor Day so I could start going to my favorite bars at night...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]In the Hamptons, the Rich Got Their Labor Day. The Workers Kept Working.[/SIZE][/HEADING]
Tumbleweed Tuesday, the unofficial holiday for the tourism industry in Long Island’s East End, is in jeopardy.

Mike Donelan has worked in restaurants in the Hamptons and on the North Fork, the popular Long Island destinations for summering urbanites, since he was 12. And every year, he and others in the service industry have looked forward to the day after Labor Day.

They call it Tumbleweed Tuesday.

Typically, the vacationers and second-home owners are supposed to depart, leaving the year-round residents who work in the hotels, bars and ice cream shops to enjoy some peace and quiet. After a party reclaiming their territories, of course.

“I remember as a kid, when I was bussing tables, all the servers and bartenders would go to Montauk Highway with signs that said, ‘See you next summer’ or ‘Thank God for Tumbleweed Tuesday,’” he said. “It was like a day to let loose, and people went all out.”

But because of ongoing remote work trends, inspiring many people to stay in their vacation homes into the cooler months, the tourist towns of Eastern Long Island are still as busy as ever, and the notion of Tumbleweed Tuesday has gone from being a beloved, robust tradition to an endangered one.

Many in the tourist industry no longer get the day off. For some, the milestone simply doesn’t feel worth celebrating. Others can’t risk a big night out knowing they have to report to still-bustling workplaces the following day.

“September and October are still really lucrative,” said Mr. Donelan, 48, now the manager at [Elaia Estiatorio]('https://www.elaiaestiatorio.com/'), a Greek restaurant in Bridgehampton. He added that work in the service industry can become more challenging after Labor Day because college-age employees go back to school, creating a staff shortage.

But Mr. Donelan was determined to honor the unofficial holiday this year. Although he had made plans to barbecue on the beach on Tuesday, he opted for dinner with friends because of the rainy weather. “But knowing business will pick up again shortly, it doesn’t feel the same as when I was a kid.”

Roman Roth, 56, the head winemaker for [Wolffer Estate Vineyard]('https://www.wolffer.com/'), where he has worked for 30 years, remembers how the area would drastically change after Labor Day. “You used to be able to walk down Main Street because there was no traffic, or enjoy an empty supermarket,” he said. “That has all changed and gone away. Ever since Covid it’s been like the Fourth of July every weekend.”

He used to host a large Tumbleweed Tuesday party at Wolffer’s wine stand on Montauk Highway, where he would invite all his clients (restaurants, liquor stores, and bars who buy the wine) for live music, food and drinks. “For some people it was the first chance they had to drink the wine all summer,” he said. “It was so great to be able to enjoy the beautiful setting ourselves.”

The last few years, however, Mr. Roth has limited the party — which has taken place later and later — to in-house staff. “No one else can join us anymore after Labor Day, because they are still open and busy,” he said.

Other restaurant owners are determined to celebrate the day, even at a cost to their bottom lines. James Mallios, the managing partner of [Calissa]('https://www.calissahamptons.com/'), a restaurant and club in Water Mill, remembers feeling surprised by the number of customers the restaurant served (95) after Labor Day last year. “I remember joking, ‘So much for Tumbleweed Tuesday,’” he said. In 2020, they served 170 customers.

Knowing Calissa would be busy again this year on Tumbleweed Tuesday, he closed it anyway. “Why can’t our staff be off after they’ve worked overtime for three months and dealt with some of the loveliest but also some of the least pleasant people out here?’” he said. “They need a break.”

Mr. Mallios threw two parties in the restaurant’s backyard: a barbecue over Labor Day weekend and a casual soccer get together with beer and snacks on Sept. 6. “I made sure me and my partner did all the work,” he said. “We wanted everyone to have a real break.”

The owners of [Stephen Talkhouse]('https://stephentalkhouse.com/'), a bar and live music venue in Amagansett, also gave their 40 staff members the day off, the first one since Memorial Day.

“When you work in nightlife you have to be up all the time,” said Max Honerkamp, one of the owners. “I’m sure some of the staff will hang out and go to the beach, but I think a lot will celebrate by going to bed.”
Some workers celebrated in their own ways, whether their workplaces threw parties for them or not. Jeffrey Liebman, 35, a maître d’ at [Rita Cantina]('https://www.ritacantinahamptons.com/'), a Mexican restaurant in East Hampton, took to his sofa this year because of the weather, watching Netflix and catching up with friends on the phone.

“It’s been a long season, some of us have had 60 hour weeks, so it still feels like an accomplishment to make it through summer, even if business won’t drop off that much,” he said. “It still feels a little bit like the last day of camp, even though it isn’t anymore.”

Well this sucks...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]New England displaces South among hottest housing markets[/SIZE][/HEADING]
[pressherald.com/2022/09/09/new-england-displaces-south-among-hottest-housing-markets/]('https://www.pressherald.com/2022/09/09/new-england-displaces-south-among-hottest-housing-markets/')

By Michele Lerner September 9, 2022

Both before and during the pandemic, migration patterns showed a preference for affordability and warmer climates. More people moved to Texas and Florida and to cities in the South such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville than to coastal destinations.

But the 2022 Hottest Zip Codes Report from Realtor.com shows a surprising twist: More than half of the hottest Zip codes for home buyers are in New England.

The annual report compares how fast homes sold in various Zip codes from January through June 2022 and how many people viewed each listing in that Zip code. The study includes only Zip codes with at least 15 active listings each month. In addition, the analysis narrows the field to just the hottest Zip code in a metropolitan area so that the list isn’t dominated by one metro area.

In the top 10 hottest Zip codes on the list, homes sold in an average of eight days and received nearly four times the buyer views than a typical listing throughout the United States. Nine of the top 10 are on the list for the first time in the eight-year history of the study.

Affordability continues to drive these housing markets, with most buyers searching from areas outside of the Zip code from more expensive markets. But instead of looking to move out of state, most of the buyers are looking for homes in a more affordable location that still offers convenience for an occasional commute to an East Coast city.

The median list price for a home in Boston was $759,000, $895,000 in New York City and $619,000 in Washington, D.C., in June, according to Realtor.com. Buyers from Boston, New York or Washington, D.C., were among the top five sources of buyer demand searching in these top 10 markets, according to Realtor.com.

The 2022 Hottest Zip codes in order, are:
1. 14618 Brighton, N.Y. – Suburban Rochester – median list price in June $275,000
2. 03062 Nashua, N.H. – 47 miles from Boston – median list price in June $536,000
3. 43085 Worthington, Ohio – Suburban Columbus – median list price in June $467,000
4. 03038 Derry, N.H. – 42 miles to Boston – median list price in June $447,000
5. 04062 Windham, Maine – 113 miles to Boston – median list price in June $505,000
6. 18017 Bethlehem, Pa. – 69 miles to Philadelphia – median list price in June $424,000
7. 37604 Johnson City, Tenn. – median list price in June $329,000
8. 03106 Hooksett, N.H. – 59 miles from Boston – median list price in June $482,000
9. 02760 North Attleboro, Mass. – 43 miles to Boston – median list price in June $587,000
10. 04210 Auburn, Maine – 136 miles to Boston – median list price in June $267,000

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/autos/arkansas-town-no-longer-allowed-164600972.html[/URL]

[HEADING=2]Arkansas town no longer allowed to give tickets after issuing too many[/HEADING]

Police officers in Menifee, Ark., face an unusual problem: they're no longer allowed to issue [speeding tickets]('https://www.autoblog.com/2021/12/13/speeding-ticket-fine-amounts-worldwide/'). The year-long ban was prompted by an audit that revealed nearly half of the town's revenue came from traffic violations in 2020, which violates an Arkansas law.

"Clearly, they were writing substantially more tickets than other communities that were similarly sized," explained Tom Tatum, the 15th District's prosecuting attorney, in an interview with news channel [THV11]('https://www.thv11.com/article/traffic/menifee-police-banned-writing-speeding-tickets-for-year/91-62b435ab-82bc-4704-a370-24a420b297e3').

Located about 45 minutes northwest of Little Rock, Menifee has a population of around 300, yet it collected $120,000 in fines in 2020. Arkansas states no more than 30% of a city's revenue can come from traffic citations; Menifee's total stands at nearly 20% over the threshold. Officers will not be allowed to issue tickets for traffic violations until August 2023, and city officials disagree on who deserves the blame.

On one hand, Mayor Gary Green blames Menifee Police Chief John Randall, calling him "incompetent."

"When I hired him, I said 'we can't write tickets 10 miles and under.' But yet, these guys [were] writing tickets 10 miles and under," Green told THV11.

"The only reason why I could see he's got harsh words for me is because I'm enforcing the laws in Menifee," Randall fired back. He added an interesting detail: the $120,000 collected in 2020 includes unpaid fines issued in previous years. Menifee Alderman Derrick Hammond backed up this story, adding that Randall received "permission from the mayor and city council to go after past due and unpaid tickets."

THV11 examined a log of tickets issued by the Menifee Police Department between January 1, 2018, and August 24, 2022, and found that 771 were given by one officer. In comparison, second place on the list was an officer who issued 263 tickets during that timeframe. Looking through the town's records also revealed officers didn't issue a single warning between January 2018 and August 2022.

Good. When are they going to put a cap on camera ticket revenue?

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/absolute-genius-destroys-8-cars-with-grill-during-pats-dolphins-game/ar-AA11JFw4?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=7bf863cf0a3a4505a7eb3665644d33ec[/URL]

[SIZE=5]Like I need another reason to stay away from Florida, here's #3,457...[/SIZE]

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]A gator ripped off his arm. Then he got lost in a swamp for 3 nights.[/SIZE][/HEADING]
[pressherald.com/2022/09/12/a-gator-ripped-off-his-arm-then-he-got-lost-in-a-swamp-for-3-nights/]('https://www.pressherald.com/2022/09/12/a-gator-ripped-off-his-arm-then-he-got-lost-in-a-swamp-for-3-nights/')

By Jonathan Edwards September 12, 2022

Eric Merda didn’t see the eyes gliding toward him as he swam across a Florida lake in July. Not until it was too late.

When he finally spotted the alligator, Merda tried to turn and swim the other way. But the gator bit down on his right forearm and yanked it back. With his right arm trapped, the 43-year-old from Sarasota wrapped his left arm around the gator as it dragged him underwater three times. Each time, he fought his way back to the surface.

Then the gator did a death roll – a rapid, violent spin alligators use to subdue and dismember prey. The maneuver ripped off Merda’s right arm between the shoulder and elbow.

The gator disappeared, and Merda made it to shore.

He’d survived the attack, but it was only the beginning of a three-night fight for survival in the Florida swampland, he told The Washington Post. Eventually, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission would learn of the alligator attack on Merda near the Lake Manatee Fish Camp in Manatee County. A commission-contracted trapper went to the area and removed a nine-foot alligator and a six-foot alligator from the lake days later.

On the afternoon of July 17, Merda, who owns a business installing and maintaining residential sprinkler systems, had traveled from Palmetto to Parrish to shut off a system that had gone haywire. It took about 15 minutes.

After he finished, Merda had some time on his hands that afternoon and decided to drive south into the country. On a lark, he turned down a dirt road he’d never been and decided to take a walk in the woods. At first, it was good fun. But he’d left his cellphone in his pickup truck and soon got lost. After a few hours of wrangling vines, grappling with bushes and losing battles to thorns, he said he was “cut from head to toe,” thirsty and exhausted. He couldn’t find his way back to his truck.

He was desperate by the time he reached Lake Manatee. Merda knew there were alligators in the nearly 1,200-acre reservoir and that the smart play was to walk around it. But he didn’t want to fight through the foliage again. It was dusk and Merda, who was getting increasingly desperate, decided to swim for it, thinking he’d find his way back to the dirt road once he did.

“That’s gatorland, man. Everybody knows that around here,” he said, adding, “I felt like I was going to die as it was.”

Merda thought it would take about 15 minutes to cross what he estimated was a half-mile. At some point well beyond that mark, Merda knew he was in trouble. Since they were weighing him down, he stripped off his clothes – work boots, pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Now naked, he started swimming a backstroke. Then, he got a feeling that something wasn’t right, looked over, saw a pair of beady eyes coming right at him and knew exactly what that meant. He tried to swim away but lost that race.

“She grabbed my forearm from the outside and snapped it back,” Merda said. When he wrapped his left arm around it, the gator forced him under the water. “It tried to drown me a few times. . . . Three times we went under. I had an arm around the gator, the gator had its mouth on my arm, and I just kicked, kicked, kicked.”

When Merda made it back to the surface a third time, “that’s when the gator did the death roll and took off with my arm,” he said.

Having lost an arm but also the alligator, Merda made his way to the shore, where he slept as much as he could in marshlands.

The next morning, he found dry ground and a tree. He climbed it, despite his once dominant right arm being reduced to a nub of exposed bone, mangled flesh and a constant source of pain. He spent the next several hours shouting at passing airplanes. No one noticed. Eventually, he realized he’d have to save himself.

“I’ve got to get going,” he said, adding, “You can’t sit around forever.”

In the late afternoon, Merda ended up back at the lake where he’d lost his arm. He tried to stay as close to shore as possible, but the overgrowth sometimes forced him into chest-deep water as he tried to work his way around the lake’s edge. At one point, he spotted something about 200 feet behind him repeatedly popping up above and disappearing into the water – alligator eyes.

“It scared the living daylights out of me,” he said.

This time, he escaped. As the day waned, Merda found some concrete structures, which gave him respite from the swampy marshland. He got as comfortable as possible and slept there during his second night in gatorland.

Merda spent much of the next two days sleeping, eating a few “semi-tasty” flowers and cupping his hand to filter as much dirt out of marsh water as possible before drinking it.

He kept trying to find help, even though moving through the marshland was difficult. The ground tore up his bare feet, making “every little half step hurt.” He had to fight through tall grass, all while naked. Thick foliage stymied navigation, and Merda believes he was walking in circles a good chunk of the time. He used telephone poles to orient himself. And, of course, there was his arm, which started attracting flies.

“The pain was absolutely excruciating. I mean, I didn’t stop screaming. . . . The whole three days – screaming,” he said.

“I had a bone sticking out of my arm, and I was using my nub to push brush aside to get through it. I had to. You’ve got to survive, man.”

The fourth day started out with more grass, more swamp. Battered and weakened, Merda didn’t move much. When he did, he grabbed branches and dragged himself across the ground, much of which contained thorns. More and more flies started buzzing around his nub. He waited to see vultures.

“I was pretty much a dead man,” he said.

But then, he came across an old beer bottle sometime in the afternoon. People didn’t stray far from beaten paths in the Florida swampland, Merda thought, so he figured one was close. The ground also started to get drier.

Finally, Merda spotted a fence and a man – the first person he’d seen in more than 72 hours. From about 20 feet away, Merda yelled to the man, who didn’t seem to hear him. Instead of reacting to Merda, he walked toward the driver’s side of his pickup.

“Oh, hell no, that’s not happening,” Merda recalled thinking.

He sprang to life and hustled to the fence – “the easiest walk I had in three days.”

The man, who was part of a group, came to Merda and stayed with him as someone with him called for help. He waited with him until paramedics arrived in a helicopter about 20 minutes later and flew him to a hospital.

Merda recovered there for three weeks. Nearly two months after the attack, Merda’s still getting used to life without most of his dominant arm. He’s scrapped his 23-year career in sprinklers. He plans to parlay his experience into a new one as a motivational speaker and comedian. He said he’s got a gig lined up later this month to talk to about 80 executives in St. Petersburg, Fla. He hopes it’s the first of many.

At the heart of that story is the realization that he was close to never being able to tell it. The alligator could have kept attacking him after taking his arm. Another one could have joined in. Merda could have given up at any point in the following three days.

But he didn’t.

“I had a choice. Do or die, man. I just couldn’t find a reason to give up. That’s what kept me alive,” he said. “But there were no guarantees, man. There’s no guarantee out there.”

WTF is going on with this world? Video is beyond shocking....

[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/teen-runs-over-drags-man-in-wheelchair-in-shocking-video/[/URL]

[SIZE=5]Oh no, now Kanga and Roo are lethal, that is if you're stupid enough to keep them as a pet...[/SIZE]

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Australian man killed by kangaroo in rare fatal attack[/SIZE][/HEADING]
[pressherald.com/2022/09/12/australian-man-killed-by-kangaroo-in-rare-fatal-attack/]('https://www.pressherald.com/2022/09/12/australian-man-killed-by-kangaroo-in-rare-fatal-attack/')

Associated Press September 13, 2022

PERTH, Australia — A man who may have been keeping a wild kangaroo as a pet was killed by the animal in southwest Australia, police said Tuesday. It was reportedly the first fatal attack by a kangaroo in Australia since 1936.

A relative found the 77-year-old man with “serious injuries” on his property Sunday in semirural Redmond, 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of the Western Australia state capital Perth.

It was believed he had been attacked earlier in the day by the kangaroo, which police shot dead because it was preventing paramedics from reaching the injured man, police said.

“The kangaroo was posing an ongoing threat to emergency responders,” the statement said.

The man died at the scene. Police are preparing a report for a coroner who will record an official cause of death.

Police believe the victim had been keeping the wild kangaroo as a pet. There are legal restrictions on keeping Australian native fauna as pets.

Western gray kangaroos are common in Australia’s southwest. They can weigh up to 54 kilograms (119 pounds) and stand 1.3 meters (4 feet 3 inches) tall.

The males can be aggressive and fight people with the same techniques as they use with each other. They use their short upper limbs to grapple with their opponent, use their muscular tails to take their body weight, then lash out with both their powerful clawed hind legs.

In 1936, William Cruickshank, 38, died in a hospital in Hillston in New South Wales state on the Australian east coast months after he’d been attacked by a kangaroo.

Cruickshank suffered extensive head injuries including a broken jaw as he attempted to rescue his two dogs from a large kangaroo, The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported at the time.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/cosmetics-billionaire-convinced-trump-u-121218552.html[/URL]

WASHINGTON — One of the odder moments of Donald Trump’s presidency came when he publicly floated the idea of buying Greenland. It caused a predictable furor, generated gales of late-night television jokes and soured relations with Denmark, which rejected the idea of selling the giant Arctic territory.

But it was no passing whim. While many assumed at the time that it was just Trump being Trump, expressing a far-fetched thought that came into his head, in fact the idea had been planted by one of his billionaire friends and became the subject of months of serious internal study and debate that flabbergasted Cabinet secretaries and White House aides.

The notion came from Ronald S. Lauder, a New York cosmetics heir who had known Trump since college. “A friend of mine, a really, really experienced businessman, thinks we can get Greenland,” Trump told his national security adviser. “What do you think?” That led to a special team being assigned to evaluate the prospects, resulting in a memo that laid out various options, including a lease proposal akin to a New York real estate deal.

:oops: