Trawling The Net

"I am beyond happy because I had to prove that (last year's victory) was not chance, so now I am totally at peace. I love to compete against myself and getting better and better," said Ronnie White, of Fort Worth, Texas. Fifty mental athletes competed all day in the 13th annual championship in lower Manhattan that included events such as memorizing the names of 99 people and their pictures, a 50-line poem in free verse and over 100 single numbers in the right order. In the category of speed numbers, computer science student Nelson Dellis, 26, won and topped White's previous record by remembering in five minutes 178 different numbers in their right order. White, who is able to memorize a deck of cards in 1.5 minutes, will go on to represent the United States at the World Memory Championships in Guangzhou, China in November. Mostly won by Britons, last year's world championship was clinched by Briton Ben Pridmore, who memorized a randomly shuffled deck of 52 cards in 24 seconds. Despite their astounding feats, most competitors profess nothing unusual about their prodigious memories, claiming that all it takes is regular mental exercise.

Lessons from Pearl Harbor The United States currently faces enemy forces far different than those we faced on December 7, 1941. But a relatively untold story of the attack on Pearl Harbor holds a warning that is still relevant. Just as the Japanese employed stealthy small submarines to penetrate the harbor and attack the U.S. battle fleet from below, today enemies of the nation could use the modern equivalents of these so-called "midget" submarines to infiltrate our shores.

Every time winter rolls around in Minnesota, hundreds of thousands of people are left with only two options: hibernate for the season, or get on with living. The Art Shanty Project was borne out of the latter mentality as a new take on the local sport of ice fishing, in which dedicated outdoorsmen and women trudge out into the cold, go sit on frozen lake in a little shack, drink beer, and stare at a hole in the ice... for hours.