ITs JUST A PAR THREE

Forget pitch and putt - this tee-off point on top of a 1,410 ft. mountain in South Africa is the hardest golf shot in the world, and more than $1 million awaits the player who can score a hole in one.

Players must take a helicopter to the top to play the longest and highest par three on the planet.




Taking the shot also requires courage. A player needs to teeter terrifyingly close to the edge of the mammoth hillside.

Indeed, the Extreme 19th Hole is so high the ball takes almost 30 seconds to reach the ground.

Channel Nine cricket commentator Mark Nicholas recently joined an elite list to have the shot in just three swings.

"It was awesome, riveting and phenomenal," he said, "it's like the end of the world when you get up there and it's an awful lot of fun.

It's such an adrenaline rush taking the helicopter up and then rushing back down."

The hole is based at the Legends Golf and Safari Resort, within the Entabeni Safari Conservancy in South Africa's Northeastern Limpopo Province . The other 18 holes were designed by world golfing legends including Trevor Immelman, Sergio Garcia, Padraig Harrington and Australia's Robert Allenby.

A round of golf - including a buggy and lunch - will set you back R450 ($70).

The Extreme 19th costs is $1060 per four ball, that includes helicopter ride, souvenir cap, glove, and a DVD of you playing the hole.

So far, no one has even come close pocketing the million-dollar prize, but Harrington became the first golfer to conquer the hole within par.

Harrington said, "This is the type of innovation and excitement we need to get more people playing golf. There aren't many new innovative ways to play the game but this is certainly one of the best. I think this hole is awesome. I love the whole experience, the helicopter, the views, the drama and having the green the shape of Africa. And now I've got bragging rights over all the other professionals who have played this hole and not managed to make a three. I love everything about it."


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IRONY IN FULL BLOOM

HELP! I’M A CONGRESSMAN, GET ME OUT OF HERE!


This post by Nathan Hodge showed up on Wired.com - February 25, 2010

During yesterday’s Senate hearing on government oversight of security contractors, an interesting tidbit emerged. In his prepared testimony, Fred Roitz, executive vice president of contracts and chief sales officer for Xe (a.k.a. Blackwater), disclosed that his company, through its subsidiary Presidential Airways, evacuated a congressman from Niger during a recent military coup.




Turns out it was none other than Rep. Alan Grayson, the Florida Democrat who has made his reputation by going after military contractors. Irony alert! Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski confirmed that Grayson was spirited out of the country on a Xe helicopter, and offered this statement to Schulman: “The flight was arranged through the State Department … The congressman did not know, and frankly did not care, who owned the plane.”








How's that for gratitude? Isn't that the way it always is? You're a thug, a mercenary, a baby killer; to be spat on, hauled before Congress and grilled, then told to turn around and march to the sound of the guns all over again. But when they need you to save their sorry ass; you're the best thing they've seen since their wedding night - S.L.


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Sir Richard Francis Burton - BADASS

from the Worthy Blog of Note:

PowellsBooks.Blog


Why can't I write inspired sh*t like this? - S.L.


Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton was a completely crazy nutjob who had more adventures on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night than most lesser humans manage to cram into a two-week vacation inside the stomach of a still-breathing whale. This author, soldier, adventurer, explorer, geographer, translator, linguist, fencer, duelist, anthropologist, and pretty much anything else you can ever think of –ist spoke a mind-crushing 29 different languages and dialects fluently, wrote 50+ books ranging in content and sanity from travelogues to erotic fiction, explored uncharted lands in India, Africa, and the Middle East, and was the first person to translate the borderline-pornographic content of The Kama Sutra and The Arabian Nights into English. He also had a gnarly attitude, a glorious beard, and a hot temper that drove him to kill more people than a Dirty Harry movie.


MORE of this glorious MADNESS continues here . . .



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WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

The Nightmare of Government Healthcare


Walgreens: No New Medicaid Patients as of April 16

Walgreens will stop taking new Medicaid patients in Washington State as of April 16, saying it loses money filling their prescriptions.


They can't afford to pay for the Government healthcare programs we've already got now; what makes you think they'll be able to pay for what they're promising you down the future?



I could tell you horror stories about Government healthcare; I've suffered under it for over twenty-five years.

When my first daughter was being born, she was hung up in there. It was determined they would have to do a Cesarean. No problem, I said, let's do it. Well - there WAS a problem; we had to wait for the anesthesiologist to show up.

"Wait a minute, this is a hospital. Isn't there an anesthesiologist on call?" Well, sure there is. "Well, where is he?" Up in Raleigh (about an hour up the road).

My daughter has cerebral palsy, which is brain damage from birth, which is because she was deprived of oxygen while trying to come out, while we waited for the anesthesiologist to show up.

Oh, and forget about suing the government - you can't do that. The Army hospital conveniently lost the records when they did their move - of course it took them six years to diagnose what was wrong with my daughter in the first place.

You want some more horror stories about government medicine? I've got a rucksack full:

My family is on Tricare, which is government medicine for military dependents, which is similar to Medicare.


The way it works is, there is a schedule of payments for whatever it is you need done to you, and it's typically about 70% the medical community's going rate. In every community, there is a doctor that takes Tricare patients, but you have to look to find him, because no doctor in their right mind wants to be underpaid for his services.

But these Tricare doctors are around; some poor bugger the Government has their hooks into for tuition loans, or whatever. They have to take the Tricare patient, but they sure as hell ain't glad to see you coming, because the second you walk into the doctor's office, he just took a 30% cut in pay.

I'll leave it to you to imagine the quality of care you get on the Government dime: "Aspirin above the waist, foot powder below," just like in the Army.

A couple of years back, I had a gig coming up in Yemen, and I needed a yellow fever shot. Now, I'm not in the Army anymore so I'm out on my own trying to track down some outfit that does yellow fever inoculations. Some place downtown could do them for $90. Ouch. Double ouch, in fact. So I decided to give the government system a go and I found myself at the Cumberland County Department of Public Health.

The place looked like a rundown Greyhound bus terminal. I mean, the walls were even gray! There's all kinds of propaganda on the walls for venereal disease testing & treatment, free milk and food stamps under the WIC program, where to go to get your abortion; all that good stuff. I rock on up to the counter, tell the guy why I'm here, and then I start sizing up the situation.

The kid behind the counter had on a white lab coat, but I could tell just by looking at him he didn't have any kind of college education. In fact, I'd be surprised if he had a high school diploma. The operation he had going behind that steel counter-top looked like some of the medical facilities I've witnessed in Africa:



You think this looks bad, you should see this place from the inside . . .


The kid starts rummaging through this beat up old refrigerator, pulls out a tray full of ancient looking vials, turns around and says "Oh here it is, I found it!"

I was already beating feet for the place down the street that handed yellow fever shots out for $90 bucks.


The truth in Life is you get what you pay for, and if it's free, it isn't worth doodley-squat.



That's why the old Sergeant Major - he was a full-blooded Payute - used to say:

"If you expect the Government to take care of you, you will get what the American Indians got . . . "


PEOPLE INSTINCTIVELY KNOW THIS!

This is why we're out in the streets, clamoring for Congress NOT to pass this thing. This is why the Democrats - a.k.a. the "PROGRESSIVES" - have to pull all kinds of Kabuki theater to shove this thing down our throats:


"Deem???"

"Reconciliation???"

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?


What ever happened to" "Let's put it to an up-and-down vote right now!" Wasn't Obama saying that just a couple of weeks ago?

The truth of the matter is they know if it they put to a vote right now, it would go down in flames - BECAUSE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DO NOT WANT THIS.




STORMBRINGER proudly supports the Tea Party movement and everything it stands for.

POST-MODERN SCAVENGERS

To: STORMBRINGER

From: Dan O'Connell

I thought you could use this mate as part of your safety training on why you don’t mess with electricity. Not sure where these were taken. Most likely Europe or Africa based on the insulators.






















Interesting to note there's no evidence that the eyes pop out and explode, as suggested in those "Faces of Death" movies . . .









They are Crispy Critters!


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BE ADVISED:

I will be in a travel window over the next three / four days . . . postings to Blog STORMBRINGER will be intermittent at best . . .

S.L.

ONLY IN AFRICA . . .

THOUGHTS ON AFRICA . . .

Africa is my old stomping grounds; that is where I did a LOT of my soldiering.

The name Africa came into Western use through the Romans to describe the northern part of the continent, as the province of Africa with its capital Carthage, corresponding to modern-day Tunisia, and the most northern parts of Algeria and Libya. The Roman suffix "-ca" denotes "country or land". The later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name.

Egypt was already known territory to the Ancients, but further South was unknown land. Around 2,000 years ago "Aethiopia" seems to have been used to describe the land found south of Sahara.

The origin of the word is still a little uncertain . . . "Africa" may not even be an African word: in Greek aphrike means ‘without cold’; the Latin aprica means ‘sunny’; or possibly the Phoenician `afar, meaning dust.

The Romans called it Africa Terra which translates "Land of the Afri". So the word Africa may come from Afri, a name attributed to several peoples who dwelt in North Africa near Carthage . . . perhaps a Berber tribe, although possibly of European or Asian origin. Their name is usually connected with the Phoenician `afar.

One theory has the name Africa stemming from a Berber word ifri or Ifran meaning "cave", in reference to cave dwellers. Ifri or Afer is name of Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania (Berber Tribe of Yafran).

The 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.

The historian Leo Africanus (1495-1554) attributed the origin to the Greek word phrike (φρικε, meaning "cold and horror"), combined with the negating prefix a-, so meaning a land free of cold and horror. But the change of sound from ph to f in Greek is datable to about the first century, so this cannot really be the origin of the name.

The name "Africa" later came to describe the entire continent. Somewhere along the line it changed from the Land of Warmth and Sunshine to "The Dark Continent".