On Sunday, December 30, 1973 in an affluent suburb of London, a young man opened the front door of the mansion, where he was employed as a butler, only to be confronted by a young, dark-complexioned man with a gun. The man pointed the gun at the butler and demanded in heavily accented English, to be taken to Joseph Sieff, the owner of the house. Sieff at sixty-eight, was one of the most successful and influential Jewish businessmen in London. Not only was he the president of Marks and Spencer, one of the largest department stores in England but, more importantly to his uninvited guest, was also an honorary vice-president of the British Zionist Federation, an organization that had been instrumental in raising millions of pounds for Israeli charities.

A long summary of the career of Carlos the Jackal.

Carlos The Jackal: Trail of Terror

Shows the technique on how to 'suck up' your testicules back into your body, a technique used by samurais before battles.

Praying Mantis Kung Fu Master

Kung Fu Tricks

Hole in dude's nose makes my nose hurt.

Picture of Nasal Septal Perforation * Otolaryngology Houston

Purpose: While an individual's risk preferences are assumed to influence decisions that involve uncertainty, risk perceptions may also play a role. Belief in personal luck is one factor that may influence how individuals perceive risk. In this preliminary work, we examine the relationship between belief in luck and two kinds of decisions involving uncertainty, in a sample of cardiovascular patients.

This was a lucky find.

THE INFLUENCE OF BELIEF IN LUCK ON CHOICES INVOLVING UNCERTAINTY

The psychology of luck

This project explores why some people live charmed lives, and develops techniques that enable others to enhance their good fortune. The project began in 1994 and has involved hundreds of exceptionally lucky and unlucky people. These findings have been published in Prof Wiseman's bestselling book The Luck Factor. Current work examines how these ideas can be applied in organisational and business settings.

Richard Wiseman - luck

Fu is a lucky word. It is very easy to say it.

Fu - Chinese word for 'luck'

One of the earliest published writer on luck was the 16th century Florentine, Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli wrote extensively on the cause of good fortune. In his short book, The Prince (written in 1514, but published posthumously in 1532), an essay of advice to his patron, Lorenzo de Medici, Machiavelli explains that fortune favors the bold thus advising his Prince, not without controversy, to always act decisively:

Fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her.

I've been thinking about luck alot lately, as I observe people attribute luck to the variance of purely deterministic systems.

The Great Seduction: A SHORT HISTORY OF LUCK

The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner was televised on C-Span Saturday evening. Featured entertainer Stephen Colbert delivered a biting rebuke of George W. Bush and the lily-livered press corps. He did it to Bush's face, unflinching and unbowed by the audience's muted, humorless response.

Astonishing. Colbert is on fire "delivering truthiness to power" as I heard it described. Honestly, Colbert has brought satire back to a prominence long missed, and he's doing it in an extremely hostile environment here. The press corps and guests are visibly stunned.

Daou's analysis here is worth reading, but watch the video first. There are links scattered about, but if you've got the time and bandwidth, get the high res torrent here : http://www.mininova.org/tor/296239

The Blog | Peter Daou: Ignoring Colbert: A Small Taste of the Media's Power to Choose the News | The Huffington Post

The History of India is an iterative function with the following structure:

char History_of_India(int residents = Dravidians)
{
int intruders;
char Indian_history[ENDLESS];
.
wend{
.
intruders = Hindukush::read_stack();
if (intruders==0,Intruders = British Empire,);
working_their_way_down_the_ganges(intruders);
Indian_history = Squabble(residents,intruders);
.
residents = intruders;
}while t lt END_OF_TIME
.
return Indian_history
}

India - Uncyclopedia

Indian culture may be hard to grasp for people from other countries, except Californians and drunk street salesmen from Barcelona. Most countries keep themselves with a national mainstream culture, a daft upper class high culture and a lot of misfit outbursts called subcultures. India needs no more than a few blocks around your tourist Hotel at Connaught Place to cover that part. If you dare to go further away to see something more, remember to wear a mental helmet of etnocentric bigotry to protect yourself from whatever is going on, or you might easily find your self drowning, like generations of intruders before you, in the Indian vortex of continously expanding cultural confusion.

India - Uncyclopedia