Yay!

Meeting minutes

Following Joel's footsteps, here are my 'notes' from a meeting today:

Amelia Earhart's remains possibly found!

Taken from the Ottawa Citizen:



WELLINGTON, New Zealand - US aircraft history buffs are hopeful that tiny bones along with artefacts from the 1930s found on a remote Pacific island may reveal the fate of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart.

In one of aviation's most enduring mysteries, Earhart took off from Lae, in what is now Papua New Guinea, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe via the equator in 1937 and was never seen again.

A massive search at the time failed to find the flyer and her navigator Fred Noonan, who were assumed to have died after ditching their Lockheed Electra aircraft in the ocean, according to the Amelia Earhart Museum.

Now aviation enthusiasts from US-based group The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) say they have evidence suggesting the pair made it safely to Nikumaroro Island in Kiribati and lived as castaways.

TIGHAR executive director Rick Gillespie said the group, which has carried out 10 expeditions to Nikumaroro over the past 22 years, found three small bone fragments on the uninhabited island earlier this year.

Gillespie said the bones appeared to be part of a human finger, although they could also be from a turtle, and had been sent to the Molecular Science Laboratories at Oklahoma University for DNA analysis.

"We're very hopeful that this will produce the result we're looking for," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Thursday.

Backing Gillespie's theory that Earhart ended her days stranded on Nikumaroro, he said TIGHAR also found artefacts dating from the 1930s, including a woman's make-up compact, broken mirror and small US-made bottles.

"We have every reason to believe that this is the site where Amelia Earhart lived and died as a castaway," he said.

Gillespie said his decades-long quest to determine Earhart's fate had involved "many ups and downs", so he was not yet claiming to have definitive proof she washed up on Nikumaroro but the possibility was worth investigating.

"The magic of the Earhart mystery is such that just having a bone, that may be a human bone, that may lead to DNA that may turn out to match Earhart's DNA is of great interest," he said.

He said even if the Oklahoma DNA tests showed a link to Earhart, the bones would be tested by a second independent laboratory to verify the findings.

"This has been a very rigorous investigation," he said.

Old tattoo ideas.

In light of Joel's interest in possibly getting a tattoo, I found some designs from 2009 that I was contemplating for my own:





I really like the second one.

10th severed foot found. Weird.

Holy crap this is weird!! A TENTH severed foot was found!!


The remains of a human foot still encased in a shoe was found washed ashore near Tacoma about a week ago, raising to 10 the tally of feet found on Pacific Northwest beaches since 2007.

On Dec. 5, a man walking along the shore spotted the foot and called police.

The foot has not been identified yet, but police believe it belonged to a juvenile or small adult.

"Our best guess someone in their mid-to-late teens," Tacoma Police spokesman Mark Fulghum said.

The shoe, a boys' size 6 "OzArk Trail" hiking boot, was sold in Wal-Mart Stores in 2004 and 2005.

The boot could have floated in from the Puyallup River or the Puget Sound. Police have not drawn a connection between this foot and any missing-person case in the area.

The discovery of this foot adds yet another layer to the unsolved mystery of several human feet that have washed ashore in recent years in British Columbia and Western Washington.

All of the previous nine were in running shoes.

The last one was was found Aug. 27, 2010, on Whidbey Island in Washington State.


The first severed foot, discovered in August 2007 on Jedediah Island, northeast of Nanaimo, was associated with a deceased man whose name police withheld at the request of his family. A man's right foot found on Gabriola Island in August 2007 remains unidentified. Two feet found on Valdez and Westham islands in July 2008 belonged to the same man. And two female feet found in Richmond in December 2008 belonged to the same woman.

Timeline of found feet. All but two of the feet were found in British Columbia:

• The first foot was found on Aug. 20, 2007, on Jedediah Island, northeast of Nanaimo. The right, male foot was in a Campus shoe, size 12, that is available for sale primarily in India. It was linked to a depressed man who went missing in early 2007.


• The second foot was found on Aug. 26, 2007, on Gabriola Island. The right, male foot was in a Reebok, size 12. The brand was first produced in 2004 and is no longer for sale.


• The third foot was found on Feb. 8, 2008 on Valdes Island. The right, male foot was in a blue and white Nike, size 11. The model was made between February and June 2003.


• The fourth foot was found on May 22, 2008, on Kirkland Island at the mouth of the Fraser River. The right, female foot was in a size 7 New Balance shoe. The model was made beginning in June 1999.


• The fifth foot was found on June 16, 2008, on Westham Island at the mouth of the Fraser River. The left, male foot had DNA matched with the third foot found on Valdes, but the man’s identity is unknown.


• The sixth foot was found Aug. 1, 2008, near Pysht west of Port Angeles, Wash. The right, male foot was in a men's low-rise, dark hiking-type athletic shoe, made by the Everest Shoe Co., size 11 or 12.


• The seventh foot was found Nov. 11, 2008, on a Fraser River beach in Richmond. The left, female foot had DNA matched with the fourth foot, found on Kirkland Island, and the woman was identified.


• The eighth foot was found in Richmond on Oct. 27, 2009. It was a man's right foot.


• The ninth foot was found Aug. 27, 2010, on Whidbey Island in Washington State. The right, bare foot likely belongs to a woman or child, officials said.

Video games becoming just as awesome as movies.

The Mass Effect 3 trailer just came out and I am horrendously excited about this game. I've played ME1 and ME2 so much (I could still play them continuously), and I love these games. I love these game almost as much as I love some movies. It's a funny age we live in, when some video games are just as highly anticipated as some blockbusters.

I seriously can't wait for this.



EDIT - Another thing to be excited about:

First post!

Well, here it is. Hi. I don't much to say at the moment... just trying to get this thing up and running. My last blog was on Livejournal. Still have the account, but I don't use it.

Well, for now, this will have to do.

Cheers,

Amy.