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Huge Pumice Rock 'Island' Seen Floating In South Pacific
First time accepted submitter ZombieBraintrust writes "Pumice, the lightweight stone used to smooth skin, is usually found in beauty salons, but on Thursday sailors from New Zealand's Royal Navy found nearly 10,000 square miles of the lava rock bobbing on the surface of the South Pacific Ocean."
...the sailors who made the discovery had the clearest skin that the reporter has ever seen.
It's just Cthulhu turning over in his sleep.
If it's like previous pumice rafts, it's more like a large area of debris than a big island. Here's a random photo showing a boat plowing a path through one made up of smaller pieces. Not really the kind of thing you can walk around on, though the description of this one having an edge like an ice-shelf makes it sound like it may have larger rocks in it. Here is a NASA satellite photo of a 2006 occurrence with a more obvious origin (it's adjacent to an erupting volcano).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They've finally worked out their disagreements with Atlantis and have united to force the Surface world to bow to their will!
Is there no treachery beneath them?
Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
But I'll keep waiting for the news about the turtle and the elephants :-).
Why can't
"Pumice, the lightweight stone used to smooth skin, is usually found in beauty salons."
Ha! I'll use that line next time I see a mechanic wash his hands with a Lava Bar.
Life is not for the lazy.
First time accepted submitter ZombieBraintrust copy and pastes from CNN.com
Seriously?
What did you expect, a land based army?
The NZ Navy is composed of two main groups: the officer corps, and the radio corps. The officer corps directs the radio corps; the radio corps calls for help when things go bad. Their two main geographical zones are west (a phone number for Australia) and east (a phone number for the US).
An island rising in the south Pacific can mean only one thing!
Fuck! Nature is amazing!
It could be scooped up and sold, but at $25 a ton, it's not worth it.
Another entry for Tobin's Spirit Guide - the most significant event since the 1908 Tunguska cross-rip.
it is a stunt by Blizzard to draw attention to the upcomong expansion pak for WoW, which involves a floating island.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
A few of their ships showed up in Pearl Harbor for RIMPAC. They probably spotted the pumice on the trip back to New Zealand.
I thought Dr. Doolittle took care of that floating mess.
For further terminology bending, the Daily Mail calls it a rock ice-shelf [dailymail.co.uk].
They then go on to blame it on illegal immigrants and ask if it is likely to affect house prices.
However, they haven't yet determined whether pumice is the latest miracle food or whether it's this week's innocuous substance that has been found to cause cancer in those gullible enough to believe scaremongering journalism.
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If Hank Johnson (US Representative) learns about this, he'll worry about NZ capsizing.
Though they weren't given permission to actuall dock in Pearl Harbour. Possibly because we (New Zealanders) don't allow nuclear powered vesseles in our waters.
We are a small nation surrounded by a vast expanse of water, we have a number of our own islands or those which we administer, hundreds even thousands of kilometers distant, we have Antarctic claims to the south and regularly need to render assistance to Polynesian islands to the north, and importantly we have economic and environmental interests to police in a large area of ocean.
So yes, we do have a Navy.
It's not a Navy of pure war ships though, you're not going to find a destroyer, a carrier, or a submarine in our fleet. Our ships are by necessity multi role.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
And New Zealand does have an army (and an air force) in addition to a navy. All organizations are very small, and are not set up for offensive warfare. They are most often used for humanitarian missions. There is a contingent of the NZ Army SAS active in Afghanistan for several years now.
And, going back to the original posting, the proper term for the navy of NZ is "Royal New Zealand Navy", not "New Zealand Royal Navy". "Royal Navy" is British.
Yes, just don't ask about our Air Force. You've already seen that, the entirety of it raided Kim Dotcom's house.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Just enter the code every 108 minutes and we'll all be OK.
Have gnu, will travel.
its probably good that your ship didn't dock at Pearl Harbor, as they may have got snagged on all the wrecks from the mighty sunken navy that was brought down by a few japanese fighter planes... i guess size doesn't always matter
there's always the RAAF :)
maybe the floating islands are his shoes... screw the gourd... follow the shoe!!!
This island could actually tip over unlike Guam.
I have many years ago seen beaches in New Zealand composed entirely of pumice. I saw them north of Gisborne on the North Island and pumice was quite literally the only thing you could see on the beach and it went at least as deep as my hand. On another small beach nearby the surface was covered entirely by pieces of abalone shell - an ancient Maori midden beach I assume but those beaches are all deserted and there's no-one around to ask.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
Not a chance. The heat receive from the Sun and retained by the Earth is several orders of magnitude greater than all volcanoes put together. Volcanoes are insignificant in that regard.
Someone really ought to call the authorities about this and find whoever is to blame then arrest them then send then to GITMO for ecological terrorism! God bless America.
> "Royal Navy" is British.
So is New Zealand. "... united by common allegiance to the Crown."
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
The Crown is a separate entity to that of the countries - there is a Queen of New Zealand, who happens to also be the Queen of England (and several other places, such as Australia and Canada), and the Crown is united, while the parliament of Great Britain has no say or power in the other countries. So no, New Zealand isn't British.
An island rising in the south Pacific can mean only one thing!
Lex Luthor finally gotten rid of that pesky illegal immigrant and can continue his real estate development!
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Convince hippies it's a green place to live. Drop them off with buckets of paper mache to glue it together. Don't go back.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So what your saying is you have Coast Guard you call a Navy?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Way off topic post. What on earth do you think you are trying to say? I certainly cannot make any sense of this post.
The fucking royal family will eventually be fired multiple times by multiple nations.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'