Topps has produced a number of presidential trading card sets in the past.  The most notable set was produced to commerate President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s.

This is the dramatic moment a ransom of $3million was paid to Somali pirates to end the world's biggest ship hijacking.

The canister full of cash was parachuted onto the Sirius Star - observed by the U.S. Navy who provided these images - and the two-month ordeal of the 25 crew, including two Britons, was finally over.

However things went badly wrong for the pirates soon after the drop - they squabbled over how to split the money and then a wave washed off their getaway boat and drowned five of them.

FABULOUS!  Everyone's stupid!  No word on what happened to the money, nor if any of the pirates survived.  Of course the best possible outcome would be no surviving pirates and the three mil lost forever at the bottom of the sea.  The fruits of stupidity!

People don't seem to like fish. They're slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least. Plus, the small ones nibble at your feet when you're swimming, and the big ones—well, the big ones will bite your face off if Jaws is anything to go by.

Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You've done enough damage, buddy. We've got it from here. And we're going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it's time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

So what fish have is an image problem which PETA says can be solved by simply calling a fish a kitten.  Right!  I wonder if PETA knows that they also have an image problem.  They look like a bunch of lunatics.  Heck, they act like a bunch of lunatics, and should I ever have the misfortune of being close enough to a group of PETA members to sniff 'em,  I suspect they'll smell like lunatics too. 

Please take a few minutes to click through to their "Save the Sea Kitten" web site.  Look around, it's entertaining.  But be warned, signing their online petition will get your invitation to my weekly Friday night fish fry rescinded.

London (PTI): Have you suffered a major shock in the recent past? Play Tetris, for a new study has revealed that the popular computer game can wipe out the bad memories and reduce distressing flashbacks.

Researchers at Oxford University have found that playing Tetris, which involves moving coloured building blocks around, after a major shock can help in reducing the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to them, because the brain is split into two -- one section is sensory and the other is analytical -- and as there are limits to people's abilities to do two things at a time, the computer game is able to "interfere with the way our memories are retained in the brain".

"Tetris works by competing for the brain's resources for sensory information. It specifically interferes with the way sensory memories are laid down in the period after trauma and thus reduces the number of flashbacks that are experienced afterwards," lead researcher Dr Emily Holmes said.

In their study, the researchers showed 40 volunteers traumatic images of injury from various sources, including adverts highlighting the dangers of drink driving. After waiting for 30 minutes, 20 of the volunteers played Tetris for ten minutes while the rest did nothing.

The researchers found that those who had played the computer game experienced significantly fewer flashbacks over the next week, The Daily Telegraph reported.

I even put a link to a free online Tetris game on the right sidebar.  So why don't you chill, and play Tetris for 30 minutes.  Maybe the flashbacks will subside!  What do we have to lose but some really bad memories!

MEXICO CITY -- The country that gave the world chewing gum is getting gummed up: The average square yard (meter) of Mexico City sidewalk has 70 blobs of discarded chew.

Now Mexico is responding with innovations ranging from expensive sidewalk steam-cleaners to natural chewing gum that breaks down quickly. It's even telling its citizens (gulp!) to swallow their gum.

The general in the war on discarded chewing gum is Ricardo Jaral, Mexico City's director for conservation of public spaces. He bemoans the blackened gobs that mar the newly restored 700-year-old downtown area, whose rough, porous paving stones serve as stubborn gum traps.

Jaral has purchased 10 German-designed machines that treat sidewalks with steam and chemicals, and plans a large-scale cleanup starting Feb. 1. He is also looking to launch a public-awareness campaign.

"When you finish chewing a piece of gum, you either have to put in a piece of paper and deposit it in a trash receptacle, or swallow it," Jaral said.

Not so fast, says Dr. Nick Desai, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee. He said swallowing gum isn't a good idea. It usually passes through the digestive system, but can ball up with other objects and cause an intestinal blockage.

"It's nothing to get too upset about if it happens," Desai said. "But we shouldn't make a habit of it."

Jaral shrugged off such concerns Wednesday: "I've always swallowed my gum, and it's never done me any harm."

The sticky problem involves the long-lasting, synthetic chewing gum base used since the 1940s to replace the latex-like chicle resin that ancient Mayans had long collected from the Sapodilla tree. The Mayans chewed unflavored chicle to clean their teeth.

Modern chewing gum was born in the 1860s when Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna brought some Mexican chicle to U.S. inventor Thomas Adams, who first experimented with it as a possible rubber substitute but later added flavorings and sold it as a treat.

Mexico largely forgot its natural, biodegradable gum base and wholeheartedly adopted U.S. synthetic gum. Mexicans now chew an average of 2.6 pounds (1.2 kilograms) of gum each year, half what the average American chews but still among the highest rates in Latin America.