Top Ten Box Office Movies of 2010 VIDEO LIST PLUS 2 YouTube ALL TIME LISTS

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YOUR TOP 50 MOVIES:

01. Avatar ( 227 )
02. Star Wars ( 172 )
03. Dark Knight ( 154 )
04. Back To The Future ( 129 )
05. Shawshank Redeption( 103 )
05. Terminator( 103 )
07. Fight Club ( 87 )
08. Hangover ( 83 )
09. Forrest Gump ( 79 )
10. Die Hard ( 74 )
11. Pulp Fiction ( 73 )
11. Godfather ( 73 )
13. Indiana Jones ( 70 )
14. Matrix ( 71 )
15. Zombieland ( 68 )
16. Saving Private Ryan ( 61 )
17. Shaun Of The Dead ( 55 )
18. Toy Story ( 52 )
19. Harry Potter ( 49 )
19. Monthy Python ( 49 )
21. Lord Of The Rings ( 48 )
22. Star Trek ( 43 )
23. Green Mile ( 42 )
24. Titanic ( 38 )
24. Pirates Of The Caribbean ( 38 )
26. Ghostbusters ( 33 )
26. Gladiator ( 33 )
28. Jurassic Park ( 30 )
29. Inglorious Basterds ( 30 )
30. Watchmen ( 29 )
31. Taken ( 24 )
31. Kill Bill ( 24 )
33. Reservoir Dogs ( 22 )
34. Wall-E ( 21 )
34. Spaceballs ( 21 )
36. Goodfellas ( 20 )
37. Scarface ( 23 )
38. Memento ( 18 )
39. Jaws ( 17 )
40. Braveheart ( 15 )
41. Apocalypse Now ( 13 )
42. The Rock ( 11 )
43. Equilibrium ( 10 )
44. The Prestige ( 9 )
44. District 9 ( 9 )
46. The Notebook ( 7 )
46. Shrek ( 7 )
48. Independence Day ( 4 )
48. Air Force One ( 4 )
50. Apollo 13 ( 2 )

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Archaeological Dig near East St. Louis points to widespread fire - CAHOKIA AMERICA'S LOST CITY (VIDEO)

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BY TERRY HILLIG  post-dispatch.com

Archaeologists who have found the remains of a prehistoric city beneath present-day East St. Louis have also uncovered a mystery: Why did Native Americans abandon the city of 3,000 or more people around the year 1200?

A much larger settlement to the east — at Cahokia Mounds, center of the Mississippian culture — would survive 200 more years, experts say, before it also ended abruptly and inexplicably.

One thing is clear from the archaeological work begun in 2008 ahead of the construction of a new Mississippi River bridge — the East St. Louis settlement was ravaged by fire in the late 1100s.
"We see evidence of a widespread fire around 1175," said Joe Galloy, coordinator at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey's American Bottom Field Station in Wood River.

He said an attack from outside, rioting or a ritual burning are among theories for the cause of the blaze. But nobody knows if the blaze ended the community. Continuing archeological investigation may provide more clues.

The archaeological survey is part of the University of Illinois' Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability and has conducted pre-excavation surveys for the Illinois Department of Transportation for more than 50 years.

When construction projects are planned, the agency surveys sites for archaeological value. If significant remains are found, a full excavation is done.

Work began this year on the planned new bridge to carry Interstate 70 and related projects that will cost about $670 million. The bridge is expected to open in 2014.

At the St. Louis end of the planned new bridge, archaeologists with the Missouri Department of Transportation are engaged in a similar project, one that is providing new insights into life in the city in the 19th century. Other than earthen mounds that survived into the mid-19th century, no clear evidence has been found that the Mississippians lived in what is now St. Louis.

No one knows what those Indians really called themselves. Mississippians is a modern name given to provide a frame of reference.

Cahokia Mounds, not near the present-day city of Cahokia, was the administrative center for the mound-building Mississippians, who flourished from around 700 to around 1400 over a vast reach of what is today the Midwest and Southeast.

Galloy said that in 1100, Cahokia Mounds had approximately the same population as London: 15,000 to 20,000 people. The United States would have no city as populous until Philadelphia in the late 1700s.

Galloy said Cahokia Mounds, the East St. Louis settlements and mounds in St. Louis were in near alignment. The only surviving mounds are in the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site at the western edge of Collinsville. Others on both sides of the river were lost to development long ago.

Most of the recent excavation has been focused along Collinsville Avenue, near downtown East St. Louis, and in and around the site of the old St. Louis National Stockyards, off Illinois Route 3. For security, archaeologists prefer not to be specific about dig locations.
Galloy said the project is the largest-ever archaeological dig involving the Mississippian culture and probably the most significant archaeology of any kind currently under way in the country.

About 50 people are working full-time on the project, and that number swells to about 90 each summer.
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Throughout most of the nineteenth century, it was believed that the tens of thousands of earthen mounds that dotted the central United States were engineering feats created by a mysterious, lost race - a race that had been destroyed by the less civilized Indians. Poet William Cullen Bryant, in 1832, expressed the sentiment of the period:


The red man came,
The roaming hunter tribes,
warlike and fierce,
And the moundbuilders vanished from the earth.


By the late 1880s, it was becoming clear that the mounds were actually built by ancestors of the numerous native American groups that still inhabited the central states, such as the Natchez. This film reconstructs the history of ideas associated with the mounds and their builders, from the mid-nineteenth century explorations of curious citizens, to contemporary archaeological research in the Illinois River Valley. It is now known that there were at least two major mound-building cultures: the Hopewell, which flourished between 300 B.C. and 300 A.D., and the Mississippian, which peaked around 1200 A.D. Hopewellian mounds are usually conical, earthen structures concealing burials in which marvelously carved stone pipes and mica cutouts are found along with skeletal remains. The later Mississippian mounds tend to be square or rectangular, massive, flat-topped, mesa-like platforms on which houses or temples were erected. Archaeologists believe that a shift to settled maize agriculture had occurred by the time the Mississippian cultures appeared. Such an economic base permitted the growth of veritable metropolises, such as Cahokia, near East St. Louis, where the largest mound stands 100 feet high and covers an area of almost 15 acres. At Cahokia, over 100 mounds formed the heart of a city-state that may have had a population of 20,000 and dominated an area about the size of New York State.
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Debris hanging from trees in Robertsville Missouri VIDEO

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Missouri Governor Nixon Credits Storm Warnings with Saving Lives

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SUNSET HILLS  Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on Saturday credited the advance warning of the storm for saving lives and preventing major injuries from the New Year's Eve storm that ripped through the St. Louis area.

At a press conference here Saturday morning, Nixon said the National Weather Service gave residents between 12 and 30 minutes of warning of the tornadoes.
Despite many homes being leveled from eastern Franklin County to north St. Louis, no major injuries were reported in the St. Louis  area.

But to the southwest of St. Louis, the death toll rose to four Saturday. Ethel Price, 69, and Alice Cox, 74, were found Friday outside their mobile home about a mile and a half north of Interstate 44 near Rolla, a Phelps County sheriff's dispatcher said. Cox was pronounced dead at the scene. Price was airlifted to the University of Missouri hospital in Columbia, where she died Saturday.

Two people also died in Dent County, just south of Phelps County.  And at Fort Leonard Wood, the damage had left 300 people homeless.

After the press conference, Nixon toured the damage in Sunset Hills along Lindbergh Boulevard where a tornado ripped through an entire city block.

The area was clogged with traffic from people who had come to observe the damage.
Mehlville Fire Protection District Chief Tim White urged people to stay away from the damage unless they had a compelling reason to be there.

Emergency responders were having trouble getting into hard-hit areas because of all the spectators, he said.
At the press conference, St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom said tornadoes had caused the collapse of 12 buildings in north St. Louis.

Overall, about 8,000 people lost electrical power, but that number was down to 500 by noon  Saturday.
In Robertsville in eastern Franklin County, the Rev. George Fulgham, pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church, said Saturday he was still accounting for all the members of his church.

So far, he hadn't heard of any major injuries. The storm crushed  one the church's buildings and ripped through the offices of another.

Fulgham said the church of 90 people would meet Sunday at Glad Tiddings Church in Catawissa, about four miles away.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service said Saturday that the storm contained at least six tornadoes and possibly more.

The Weather Service sent three teams of surveyors to the Sunset Hills area, north St. Louis and Robertsville to get a better picture of the damage,  meteorologist Jim Sieveking said.

The Weather Service estimated the tornado that struck Sunset Hills to be greater than EF3 on what is called the Enhanced Fujita damage scale, which means the tornado produced "severe damage" and winds around 160 mph.
. Click Here for more info.

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Bikini Shakespeare - Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth Witches - 4 Kettlecorn Promo Videos

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By MunchBetterContest  December 21, 2010
Feature Popcorn, Indiana in a web video promo contest.
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New Year Celebration Images From Around The World - 7 of 30 photos

Melbourne, Australia

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Here are seven of 30 New Year's Eve Celebration Images from around the world.

London



Sydney



Munich



Vienna



New York City


Rio de Janeiro city, Brasil

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New Mexico Governor Refuses Pardon For Outlaw Billy The Kid

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by The Associated Press

January 1, 2011

The rehabilitation of Billy the Kid lies dead in the dust.
In one of his last official acts — or non-acts — before leaving office, New Mexico's governor refused to pardon the Old West outlaw Friday for one of the many murders he committed before he was gunned down in 1881.

Gov. Bill Richardson cited ambiguity surrounding the pledge of a pardon 130 years ago as the reason.

"I felt I could not rewrite history," Richardson told The Associated Press, hours after announcing his decision on ABC's "Good Morning America" on his last day in office.

The prospect of a pardon for the notorious frontier figure drew international attention to New Mexico, centering on whether New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace promised Billy the Kid a pardon in return for testifying about killings he witnessed.

Richardson concluded Wallace did make a deal, "but it's uncertain why he did not keep his promise," said the former U.N. ambassador and Democratic presidential candidate.

He said he could not pardon Billy the Kid given that ambiguity and the fact he killed two deputies when he escaped in April 1881 from the Lincoln County jail, where he was awaiting hanging for the 1878 killing of Sheriff William Brady.

A pardon document was even drafted, "but in the end, I didn't use it," said Richardson, adding that he didn't decide until Thursday night.

The proposed pardon covered only the killing of Brady, and not the deaths of the deputies or any other killings. According to legend, Billy the Kid killed 21 people, although the New Mexico Tourism Department puts the total closer to nine.

He was shot to death by Sheriff Pat Garrett in July 1881.
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"Viral" and "Epic" Top Annual "Banished Words" List for 2011

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Words "viral" and "epic" consigned to college trash

This story might be epic, and could even go viral, but not if Lake Superior State University has anything to do with it. Just sayin.'

The small college in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, released on Friday its annual list of "banished words" -- terms so overused, misused and hackneyed they deserve to be sent to a permanent linguistic trash can in the year ahead.

LSSU began its popular list in 1976, when it named "at this point in time," as substituted for the concise and elegant "now," as a linguistic dud. The college now receives well over 1,000 nominations each year through its website, lssu.edu/banished.
"Viral," often used to describe the rapid spreading of videos or other content over the Internet, leads the list for 2011.

"This linguistic disease of a term must be quarantined," Kuahmel Allah of Los Angeles said in making a nomination.

Runners-up included "epic" and "fail," often twinned to describe a blunder of monumental proportions.

A total of 14 words were on the list.

Cliched terms such as "wow factor," "a-ha moment," "back story" and "BFF" (Best Friends Forever) rated highly. The very au courant use of "Facebook" and "Google" as verbs got a thumbs down as well.. Click Here For the Rest
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AP - Skelton loss at the top of 2010 Missouri news stories - State’s budget mess #2

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By The Associated Press

Saturday, January 1, 2011

In a year dominated by big winners in the November elections, the biggest headline in Missouri was about who lost.

Voters ended the 34-year career of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton on Nov. 2, electing Republican Vicky Hartzler after a campaign in which the GOP worked furiously to connect Skelton to an unpopular President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The result was ranked as the top news story of 2010 in a survey of Associated Press member newspaper and broadcast editors.

Skelton had long maintained a strong grip on a 4th District that otherwise tilts toward Republicans by emphasizing his military expertise and social conservative views.

But Hartzler scored points with voters by casting Skelton as out of touch with his constituents and portraying her congressional campaign as a “fight to take back our country.”

The state’s budget mess was the second-ranked story. Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration has estimated that Missouri faces a shortfall of between $500 million and $700 million for the next fiscal year, a gap equivalent to almost 10 percent of the state’s general tax revenues.
Through two years of slumping tax revenues, the Democratic governor and Republican-led Legislature already have eliminated more than 2,000 state jobs and reduced funding for public colleges and universities, early childhood programs, public health clinics and home care providers for the disabled, among other things.

U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt’s ascendency to the Senate was ranked as the No. 3 story by editors after his 14-point win over Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.

It was the largest margin since John Ashcroft’s Senate victory in the Republican wave of 1994.

The rest of the top 10:
4) Missourians approved a ballot measure expressing opposition to a federal health care mandate and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder filed a lawsuit against it.
5) Because of the budget shortfall, Gov. Nixon warned the state’s public colleges and universities to prepare for tuition increases and significant funding cuts after two consecutive years of tuition freezes.
. Click Here for Rest of Top 10

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As Frustration Grows, Airports Consider Ditching TSA

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Some of the nation's biggest airports are responding to recent public outrage over security screening by weighing whether they should hire private firms such as Covenant to replace the Transportation Security Administration. Sixteen airports, including San Francisco and Kansas City International Airport, have made the switch since 2002. One Orlando airport has approved the change but needs to select a contractor, and several others are seriously considering it.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which governs Dulles International and Reagan National airports, is studying the option, spokeswoman Tara Hamilton said.

For airports, the change isn't about money. At issue, airport managers and security experts say, is the unwieldy size and bureaucracy of the federal aviation security system. Private firms may be able to do the job more efficiently and with a personal touch, they argue.

Airports that choose private screeners must submit the request to the TSA. There are no specific criteria for approval, but federal officials can decide whether to grant the request "based on the airport's record of compliance on security regulations and requirements." The TSA pays for the cost of the screening and has the final say on which company gets the contract.

 
Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), the incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has written to 200 of the nation's largest airports, urging them to consider switching to private companies.

The TSA was "never intended to be an army of 67,000 employees," he said.
"If you look at [the TSA's] performance, have they ever stopped a terrorist? Anyone can get through," Mica said in an interview. "We've been very lucky, very fortunate. TSA should focus on its mission: setting up the protocol, adapting to the changing threats and gathering intelligence."
. Click Here for more info.

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St. Louis Newspaper Post Dispatch to Drop 'War on Terror' Label deemed inappropriate

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 By Douglas Wong dwong@post-dispatch.com

Why we are dropping the War on Terror label

 When U.S. and allied forces invaded Afghanistan nine years ago to hunt down Osama bin Laden and the other members of the Islamic extremist group al-Qaida, the military operations were labeled a War on Terror.

When U.S. and allied forces invaded Iraq, military operations in that country also fell under the War on Terror label.


...with U.S. involvement in combat operations in Iraq winding down and military operations in Afghanistan focused more in combating the Taliban forces over control of that country, the War on Terror label seems inappropriate there, as well.

So we are going to drop the War on Terror page label, instead focusing on more specific labels, such as War in Afghanistan, Global Terrorism and Rebuilding Iraq.
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Breaking The War on Terror Facade
Uploaded by COAnews. - News videos hot off the press.
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Hermann MO News Wishes Everyone a Prosperous HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Virtual Fireplace - Warm your Toes Virtually!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR  !!! - Virtual Fireplace - 
Warm your Toes Virtually!!!
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 10 Minutes of Virtual Heart Felt Warmth - 
from Hermann MO News to You and Yours!!!
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Missouri Farm Incomes Could Set Records in 2011 Up 30 percent in 2010 Nationwide

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The overall economy may continue limping along in 2011, but American farmers could plow their way to record harvests.

Researchers at the University of Missouri predict the state's farmers could take home $3.29 billion next year, surpassing the 2008 record of $3.05 billion, while federal estimates hint at a nationwide farm income surge in the new year.

U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers released estimates showing farmers earned 30 percent more in 2010 than they did in a discouraging 2009.

Despite the dip in 2009, American corn growers have seen net incomes soar over the past decade, largely because of increased demand from overseas and from federal mandates to use ethanol in gasoline. While corn, for example, sold for $2.25 a bushel in the early 2000s, it costs about $6 now and has reached more than $7.

The price increases have helped boost farm incomes in six of the past 10 years.

The Missouri predictions are based on estimates of planted acres and prices. Economists have yet to make estimates for Illinois, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will not release its newest state and national estimates until February.
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CRAZY PARENTS - Texas Chainsaw Cheerleader Massacre - WAKE UP KIDS

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Parents decided to teach their children a lesson about staying up late and watching scary movies. 
CRAZY PARENTS - Texas Chainsaw Cheerleader Massacre - WAKE UP KIDS


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UPDATE PT3 Added: Area Radio 'Athlete of the Week' is Jake Schannuth from Hermann High School Missouri

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CONGRATULATIONS JAKE!!! 
Have a HAPPY NEW YEAR and 
GREAT Rest of the Season!!!
The KLPW Radio Athlete of the Week is Jake Schannuth from Hermann High School Bearcats. The 6-5 Junior Guard/Forward is averaging 18.2-points and 12-rebounds per game.
. Click Here for more info.

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PRESS PLAY TO HEAR STORY

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MISSOURI STORM DAMAGE 5 VIDEOS: Robertsville, Rolla, Fenton, Sunset Hills, Crestwood, Fort Leonard Wood TORNADO

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MISSOURI STORM DAMAGE 5 VIDEOS: Robertsville, Rolla, Fenton, Sunset Hills, Crestwood TORNADO Fort Leonard Wood
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