Water Bridge

Even after you see it, it is still hard to believe !

WaterBridge in Germany. What a feat!

Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.......now this is engineering!This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project.

It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. The photo was taken on the day of inauguration.

To those who appreciate engineering projects, here's a puzzle for you armchair engineers and physicists.

Did that bridge have to be designed to withstand the additional weight of ship and barge traffic or just the weight of the water?

Answer: It only needs to be designed to withstand the weight of the water!

Why? A ship always displaces an amount of water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded.

Pretty cool, huh?

Buscuits Wanted For Attempted Murder

BISCUITS WANTED FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER (the actual AP headline)

Linda Burnett, 23, a resident of San Diego , was visiting her in-laws,and while there she went to a nearby supermarket to pick up somegroceries.

Several people noticed her sitting in her car with the windows rolled upand with her eyes closed, with both hands behind the back of her head.

One customer who had been at the store for a while became concerned and walked over to the car.

He noticed that Linda's eyes were now open, and she looked very strange. He asked her if she was okay, and Linda replied that she'd been shot in the back of the head, and had been holding her brains in for over an hour.

The man called the paramedics,who broke into the car because the doors were locked and Linda refused to remove her hands from her head. When they finally got in, they found that Linda had a wad of bread dough on the back of her head.

A Pillsbury biscuit canister had exploded from the heat, making a loudnoise that sounded like a gunshot, and the wad of dough hit her in theback of her head. When she reached back to find out what it was, she felt the dough and thought it was her brains. She initially passed out, but quickly recovered and tried to hold her brains in for over an hour until someone noticed and came to her aid.

I think qualifies as a blonde moment.

Brain teaser

Richard is 33 years old today.

This is three times as old as his brother Philip was when Richard was the age that Philip is today.

How old is Philip?

.

Too easy?

The simplest answer...

...Is not always the most obvious one.

Mensa is an organization whose members have an IQ of 140 or higher.

A few years ago, there was a Mensa convention in San Francisco, and several members lunched at a local cafe. While dining they discovered that their saltshaker contained pepper and their pepper shaker was full of salt.

How could they swap the contents of the bottles without spilling, and using only the implements at hand? Clearly this was a job for Mensa!

The group debated and presented ideas, and finally came up with a brilliant solution involving a napkin, a straw, and an empty saucer.

They called the waitress over to dazzle her with their solution.

"Ma'am," they said, "we couldn't help but notice that the pepper shaker contains salt and the salt shaker..."

"Oh," the waitress interrupted. "Sorry about that."

She unscrewed the caps of both bottles and switched them.

Great picture

My brother in Iraq sent me this picture.

Enough said.

Product pick of the week, My Kia

I might have to write another post about how much we loved buying our car at Carmax and how great our experience was there, but for now I will focus on my car.

I have had my 07 Kia Sedona for almost a year. Mine is white like the one in the picture.

We compared side by side with other minivans and decided that the Kia Sedona was all over the best value.

For starters it has a 5 star crash test rating. I love the middle row captains chairs instead of bench. Available power dual sliding doors. The windows in the sliding doors actually roll down.

But here are my favorite features:

This is the fold down convex kid mirror. A push from one finger releases this from hiding in the overhead console, so I can keep an eye on my chitlins. When they are not in the car, it just as easily folds back up. But this is my favorite:

The rear seats fold completely into the floor. And it is so easy to do, you can do it with one hand. I even borrowed my friends baby, so I could prove that it could be done with one hand while holding a baby.

When the rear seats are up in normal position there is an extra deep cargo space where they othrwise fold in to. This is great for carrying extra groceries and making sure they don't roll around.

The middle seats can fold down, forward, or come out of the car very easily too, to maximize cargo space. We have easily transported furniture and even mattresses in our van. We had a trailer hitch installed too. The V6 engine had no problems pulling a loaded 6 foot trailer. (I'm sure it could pull something bigger, that's just what we have).

Let's not forget that this car has a 5 star crash test rating.

Downsides? Sometimes, especially after a cold night, the side doors stick and you really have to pull to get them open. They also don't retain their value as well as some.

Our model didn't come with built in dvd players, though I think that is an option. And there is not built in navigation. But we solve both of those problems with portable dvd players and our tomtom. It is cheaper to do it that way than have them come built in anyway.

As for price, the value for this car can't be beat. A brand new one starts at $21,400. So you'll pay $24,000 or so with good features. That's if you buy new.

We got our '07 in '07, used, with about 15,000 miles. Our purchase price was about $15,500. At the same time we looked at other minivans, Dodge, Chrysler, Honda and Toyota for starters.

Any other 06 or 07 that we looked at was about $19-23,000, even used. Other minivans in the $15-16,000 range were at least 4 years old with 60,000 miles or more.

We felt like we were getting a great deal with an almost new car for the same price as others that were much older.

We have had almost a year to drive and enjoy it. While it doesn't have many bells and whistles, it is a great family car, gets decent gas mileage, runs great, and was a great value. I love it.

Puzzle, Brainteaser

The owner of a pet shop is trying to persuade two mothers and two daughters, who entered the store together, to buy the three kittens in the display window. He made the sale. Each customer left the store with her own pet kitten. None of them shared a kitten. There were no other kittens in the shop except these three. How can three kittens be owned by two mothers and two daughters so that each has her own individual pet?