DISCLAIMER: None needed. Just a cool Facebook friend has this mermaid thing going on and well I like mermaids/merman. Figured I'd give them a shout out. Go Mermaids!
Lane 1 - SF Gate posts "Jury finds boat owner guilty in swimmer's death. A jury found a boat owner guilty Friday in the death of a noted university researcher whose legs were sliced by the boat's propeller while she was swimming at an Ogden-area reservoir last year. After less than two hours of deliberation, the six jurors convicted Skyler Shepherd, 22, of reckless endangerment, obstruction of justice and leaving the scene of an accident, the Standard Examiner reported."
Lane 2 - Speedo posts via youtube "Guess the Speedo athlete."
Lane 3 - Taipei Times posts "Swimming star breaks record, gives away medal. Ryan Lochte of the US smashed his own world record to win the 200m individual medley at the world short-course
championships on Friday and then shocked the crowd by giving his medal to a fan."
Lane 4 - Herald Sun posts "Ye Shiwen to help mend China's reputation in Perth. AUSTRALIAN world champion James Magnussen has backed China's controversial Perth-bound teen Ye Shiwen to help restore her country's damaged reputation in swimming."
Lane 5 - Yahoo Eurosport posts "Swimming-All Greek swimmers want for Christmas is coal. Naughty children can expect nothing from Santa Claus but a piece of coal, the tradition goes, but young swimmers in Greece are actually asking for the fuel this Christmas. Members of the youth academy at Olympiakos Piraeus, struggling to find funds to heat their pool through the winter, have written a
letter to Santa Claus asking for coal this Christmas."We collected wishes from the families of the swimming division of the club for the festive season and decided to put them into a letter for Santa Claus," swimming team manager Spiros Bitsakis told the club's website."
Lane 6 - The Telegraph posts "Mermaids are on a wave of fantasy. THERE'S a mermaid craze making a splash on beaches this summer. Coloured rubber mermaid tails, born out of a Byron Bay backyard, have become an unstoppable mania among young girls. The fins are so popular they have topped several online lists as the No.1 most wanted toy for Christmas for children under 15. The creator of the craze, Kazzie Mahina, said she never imagined the painstaking hours spent in her backyard developing the fins would have seen such a result."
Lane 7 - via youtube "Peter Waterfield interview from MSN. Peter Waterfield wearing Speedos, being interviewed before the Olympics."
Lane 8- LA Times posts "Swimming with John F. Kennedy. This is the famous photo by former Times staff photographer Bill Beebe. Eva Ban is on the right with a white towel on her shoulder."
USA Today spoils all the fun with "Fooled again by 'Mermaids: The Body Found' on Discovery? Discovery Channel aired Mermaids: The Body Found last night and it seems it got a lot of people (No. 1 on Google Trends) wondering if the mythical sea creatures could be real, particularly thanks to a scene showing a boy finding a freaky creature on the beach. In describing the show, Discovery says, "What if there's a kernel of truth behind the legend of this mythic creature? Is the idea of mermaids really so far-fetched? Maybe so, maybe not. The show itself, though science fiction, is based on some real events and scientific theory."
"U.S. Government Denies Evidence of Mermaids, So Mermaids Definitely Exist" "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently published a post on their "Ocean Facts" newsfeed titled "No Evidence of Aquatic Humanoids Has Ever Been Found," sort of debunking claims of mermaids' existence, but mostly giving everyone a great purple prose-y history lesson on the origins of the mermaid legend.The NOAA claims the post was prompted by a recently-aired Animal Planet television special called "Mermaids: The Body Found," that purported to show evidence of the existence of mermaids." via gawker / noaa
io9 posts "This sculptor builds incredible dead sea monsters trapped on land. The artwork of Argentinian sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas evokes such themes as fantastic adventure in the otherwise normal material realm, the passage of time, and the last days of humanity. Perhaps his most striking series of sculptures depict giant dead sea leviathans beached far from any bodies of water."