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Sandra wrote about our sugar glider scrat!. I enjoy playing with the little fella, but I have to tell you that he must believe that I am a restroom. Every time I get him out, he pees on me. So I think I will just leave him in his cage and let Sandra play with him.
I can tell you from first hand experience what the difference between wax and parchment paper is! I decided to make some cookies tonight, and while I was pondering UI design in .NET, I grabbed the wax paper instead of the parchment paper, put my cookies on it, and stuck it in the oven at 375 Degrees. Well let me tell you, about 10 minutes later, there was an odd melted plastic kind of smell in the air, and well.. you can guess the rest. Wax paper does not belong in the oven, it nearly caught on fire, while parchment paper doesn’t suffer from the same shortcoming.
So someone posted an ad on Craigs List, saying that Robert needed to leave the area suddenly, and that all his possessions, including his horse, were up for immediate grabs. The ad stated that everything was free for the taking. Well as you can probably guess, Salisbury did not place the ad, nor did he have any knowledge of the ad. So he was alerted by someone who became suspicious after going to the house to retrieve the free horse. Robert was then alerted as to what was going on, and he rushed home some 30 minutes later. As he got close to his house, he could see cars passing him in the opposite direction with his belongings hanging out. This must have been a really terrible thing to see, getting close to your house, not knowing what to expect, and then seeing cars loaded down with your stuff. Robert tried to stop some of the people taking his stuff, but they showed him the Craigs List ad, and said that because of the ad they were allowed to take whatever they wanted, and continued on their way. The police and Craigs list are now investigating.
You can find an article on fox here about it:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341089,00.html
Fact: Gasoline Prices Are At An All Time High
They are going to get higher. But why? Many factors affect the price of crude oil, and ultimately gasoline. One major influence is the economy. The US economy is weak (understatement of the year right?) and because of this weakness, and the dollar losing ground, people invest in crude oil as a “hedge”. When the dollar falls, things like crude oil, gold, silver, etc. become much more valuable. Oil prices make up about 80% of the price of a gallon of gasoline, and those prices have increased about 20% because investors are funneling money into commodities.
Believe it or not, the refineries are struggling to make any money at all. They get blamed sometimes for the prices, but as I have stated above, the prices are influenced by investors, and the companies that own the actual oil. The refiners are making about 6 dollars from every barrel of oil they process, when about a year ago they were making 35+ dollars per barrel. They currently are only operating at about 85%, but I ask you where is their incentive to increase throughput when they can’t turn a profit. So who is making money? BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc. Thats where most of the profits go, and that is who is stuffing their proverbial pockets full of our hard earned money.
I am sick and tired of not being able to go anywhere or do anything without being surrounded by a cloud of morons. Every time I go to buy groceries, I have to fight my way through crowds of sheep who can’t think for themselves. I can’t drive across town without getting cut off in traffic or almost run over like we are in a Nascar race. There are just too many people in the world. I am sick of the crowds, and standing in lines for every single thing. I think we would all be sick out of our minds if we knew exactly how much of our lives we spent standing in lines and waiting for one thing or another.
I would love nothing more than to completely drop off of the grid, live on my own like survivor man out in some remote wilderness. I am not a violent person, but I have had the impulse to get a tank and run every car in front of me over in traffic, or to break the arms and legs of the next person who cuts me off in traffic. I blame these feelings on the fact that the US is just too crowded. All these damn immigrants, who think they can just come here and live off the blood and sweat of my hard working, tax paying ass, while we support their 35 kids on welfare and food stamps. Why I pay a huge premium for health care because they are getting their health care for free. We have to do something.
Stop the immigration, do it under penalty of death if that’s what it takes. Make it a capital offense, make it a form of treason, but do something about it. And then limit the number of children people can have. I know that sounds harsh, but I think it is needed. We absolutely have to do something, before it is too late.
1. Ancient Mayans
The Ancient Mayans were obsessed with time, and their calendar was in some ways more accurate than our current calendar. The Mayan calendar is able to predict eclipses thousands of years in advance. It also turned out to be prophetic, as it predicted in the 8th century BC that “white skinned bearded gods would arrive from across the sea on March 5, 1519″, the exact day that Cortez and his Conquistadors arrive in the new world. The Earth and the Sun come into exact allignment with the center of the milky way galaxy on December 21, 2012. The Mayans reference a “Dark Mother” / Black Hole, at the center of the galaxy. (Which science has recently shown to have credence). This alignment only occurs 1 time every 25,800 years.
2. Cumaean Sibyl lived in ancient Rome around the 6th century BC. She was highly regarded by Roman authorities. Her scrolls were housed in the temple of Jupiter and were some of the most important religious documents of their time. She predicts the world will last for 9 periods of 800 years, and that the 10th generation will begin around 2000 AD, and that it will be the last generation. She accurately predicted the invasion of Hannibal 700 years before his arrival, and his defeat. She also predicted Emperor Constantine by name 800 years before his birth. It is also believed that she may have predicted Christ 20 years prior to his birth.
3. I CHING
The I CHING The I Ching (Wade-Giles), or “Yì Jīng” (Pinyin); also called “Book of Changes” or “Classic of Changes” is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book is a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. The text describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy that is intrinsic to ancient Chinese cultural beliefs. Wiki says..
One of McKenna’s ideas is known as Novelty theory. It predicts the ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time. McKenna developed the theory in the mid-1970s after his experiences in the Amazon at La Chorrera led him to closely study the King Wen sequence of the I-Ching. Novelty theory involves ontology, extropy, and eschatology.
The theory proposes that the universe is an engine designed for the production and conservation of novelty. Novelty, in this context, can be thought of as newness, or extropy (a term coined by Max More meaning the opposite of entropy). According to McKenna, when novelty is graphed over time, a fractal waveform known as “timewave zero” or simply the “timewave” results. The graph shows at what time periods, but never at what locations, novelty increases or decreases.
Considered by some to represent a model of history’s most important events, the universal algorithm has also been extrapolated to be a model for future events. McKenna admitted to the expectation of a “singularity of novelty”, and that he and his colleagues projected many hundreds of years into the future to find when this singularity (runaway “newness” or extropy) could occur. Millenarians give more credence to Novelty theory as a way to predict the future (especially regarding 2012) than McKenna himself. The graph of extropy had many enormous fluctuations over the last 25,000 years, but amazingly, it hit an asymptote at exactly December 21, 2012.[18] In other words, entropy (or habituation) no longer exists after that date.
So, the King Wen sequence shows that the time line ends on exactly December 21, 2012. The same day the Mayan Calendar ends.
4. Merlin (Merlin The Wild) Myrddin Wyllt
Merlin, a 6th century British prophet, also foretells the end of the world. He predicted the first American colony by name. He predicted the British victory at Waterloo, the Nazi holocaust, and some of his farther reaching predictions may strike true in your thoughts, like this one “At that time shall a man, standing on the shore of England, speak instantly to a man in France through a speaking stone.” He also predicts that the sea will discharge into the river (i don’t know the spelling of that river) and that fish will grow multiple tales because of this. There happens to be a modern day nuclear reactor right next to that river.
Though her prophecies may have been fabricated in the 1800’s, I find it interesting that one of them reads something like “When pictures look alive, and ships swim like fish.. and men soar in the sky like birds, then half the world deep drenched in blood shall die”.
The book of Revelation has some chilling words of prophecy that most are familiar with. Including flood, famine, earthquakes, etc. Which also coincide with many of the other prophecies we have discussed.
7. The Web Bot Project
This was referenced on the History Channel, and I can not seem to find any solid information about it via the internet. It was said on the H channel that the web bot technology was created as a predictive model for the stock market, and at some point it began to predict future world events as well. The web bot is said to predict limited nuclear war and world disasters around 2008-2009 leading up to devastating world events in 2012.
What could happen?
It is now believed that a polar shift has happened in the past, and could happen again in the future. This shift would cause all of the same types of disasters that I have discussed in these prophecies. This would involved the magnetic poles of the Earth..well..shifting, and if this happened quickly (over days or hours) it could be devastating.
It is a sad, sad day for RPG fans everywhere. Dungeons & Dragons means a lot to most of us. Many a code monkey has fond memories of playing D&D with their friends, some Mt. Dew, staying up all night to kill the red dragon. D&D was not only a board game, but it influenced the entire game development community. Its dice techniques are still used even today. Even games like World Of Warcraft use a sophisticated system of simulated dice. This game in my opinion would only be second in influence to LOTR. Why when I was a boy scout myself (no jokes please) I can remember everyone gathering together after meetings to play D&D. I do not understand why it got such a bad stigma, as in my opinion it was completely benign. No computer game in my opinion can come close to the immersing experience of a really good game of D&D. So I salute you Mr. Gygax, and thank you for the legacy you leave behind.
MILWAUKEE - Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.
He had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm, said his wife, Gail Gygax.
Gygax and Dave Arneson developed Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys, and eventually was turned into video games, books and movies.
What kind of crazy government keeps coins in circulation that are worth more melted than their face value? Does this not seem odd to anyone else? So basically, the government could use blank coins, with nothing printed on them, and increase the value of our currency by billions of dollars….sigh…
By Barbara Hagenbaugh, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — People who melt pennies or nickels to profit from the jump in metals prices could face jail time and pay thousands of dollars in fines, according to new rules out Thursday.
Soaring metals prices mean that the value of the metal in pennies and nickels exceeds the face value of the coins. Based on current metals prices, the value of the metal in a nickel is now 6.99 cents, while the penny’s metal is worth 1.12 cents, according to the U.S. Mint.
That has piqued concern among government officials that people will melt the coins to sell the metal, leading to potential shortages of pennies and nickels.
“The nation needs its coinage for commerce,” U.S. Mint director Ed Moy said in a statement. “We don’t want to see our pennies and nickels melted down so a few individuals can take advantage of the American taxpayer. Replacing these coins would be an enormous cost to taxpayers.”
—- This section was added by Shane —-
The US Government has no control over the value of our coinage or any other part of our monetary system. This is because we have a fiduciary monetary system that is based 100% on how the individual views the value of their money. The money itself is considered fiat, or unbacked by any physical asset such as silver or gold bullion. It is worth exactly what you and I think it is worth, based on mutual trust (fiduciary means “trustee”).
To explain this a bit further: Consider that you work for $10 an hour. After taxes, you most likely take home around $7.50 an hour. At the end of a 40 hour work week, you now have a total of $300 dollars. You now have a base idea of how much $300 is worth to you and you must then decide what you want to spend this money on. If you decide somewhere along the lines that you simply cannot afford to work for $10 an hour, you will either ask for a raise or move to a better paying position. In the meantime, if you don’t have any savings you most likely will not spend the whole week’s check on a $300 television set. Assuming that you are the average American, the manufactureres of the television set is probably aware of this and are willing to provide a model within your price range.
In this manner, you decide the intrinsic value of a dollar. Those in sales are constantly raising prices to make more money and the consumers are getting raises or new jobs to keep up. This in turn causes the employers who are in sales to raise their prices and so forth. Meanwhile, the value of the dollar drops and drops until a new system is brought to bear, perhaps one that is regulated federally such as the Chinese system. Since Americans as a whole are ignorant of their monetary system despite it being taught in public schools, they continue to blame their banking system and government over their money woes. In truth, we are doing it to ourselves and only we can stop it. Not that it would ever happen.
The American monetary system has been based on trust since it began. At one point it was based soley on the gold bullion backing it, of course that was long ago when other nations required any international trades to be backed by gold or silver bullion. Once the “money” grew larger than the value of all known bullion, we quietly adopted the fudiciary system and have been trudging along ever since, waiting for the bubble to pop.
When the first coins were minted, they were of precious metals whose very own value spoke for itself. From mid 1942 to 1945, the infamouse “war nickels” were created. These coins are 56% copper, 35% silver and 9% manganese. The only other U.S. coins to use manganese are the Sacagawea and Presidential dollars. Now that we find that copper has exceeded the trust value of a penny, the federal government should call for a return of all nickels and pennies and re-issue the coinage in baser metals, which is what happened to gold coins in the early 1800s. On February 8, 2008, a bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives that will allow for changing the metal components in US coins due to the rising cost of commodities and the rapidly declining U.S. Dollar.
Rubberbands made out of urine… What I really want to know is…why in the world are people providing grant reasearch funding for this? I mean.. ok, you made a rubber band that can “repair” itsself in minutes…it probably cost $10,000 to make one. This is just like Shane says… The US spent millions of dollars making a pen that would write in zero gravity…and the Russians used a pencil. Don’t you people have some diseases to cure?
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Anyone who has heard the snap of a rubber band breaking knows it’s time to reach for a replacement.
But a group of French scientists have made a self-healing rubber band material that can reclaim its stretchy usefulness by simply pressing the broken edges back together for a few minutes.
The material, described on Wednesday in the journal Nature, can be broken and repaired over and over again.
It is made from simple ingredients — fatty acids like those found in vegetable oils, and urea, a waste compound in urine that can be made synthetically.
The material would be an asset to industry and might even help shed light on the physics of elasticity, wrote Philippe Cordier and colleagues at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution in Paris.
Standard rubber bands, which can stretch up to several hundred percent then snap back into shape, are made from long chains of cross-linked polymers.
The new material is linked by short chains of a type of molecule called ditopic, which can associate with two other molecules, and multitopic molecules, which can associate with more than two molecules.
This network of molecules is strengthened by hydrogen bonds that allow the material to stretch up to several hundred percent, then snap back into shape.
If severed, the material mends itself when the ends are pressed together at room temperature, allowing these bonds to re-form.
“The mended samples are able to sustain large deformations and recover their shape and size when stress is released,” Cordier and his colleagues wrote.
The material can “withstand multiple fractures, needs no catalysts and is otherwise straightforward to produce,” Justin Mynar and Takuzo Aida of the University of Tokyo wrote in an accompanying article.
“A final blessing is that it can be broken down with heat and easily recycled — so it is environmentally friendly, too.”
This is great technology. My only concern is how long before the machines figure out they can power themselves?
From Reuters:
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cell phone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.
If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“The fiber-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement,” Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in a statement.
The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires — tiny wires 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair — embedded into the fabric. The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush.
One of the fibers in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through a person’s body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity.
“When a nanowire bends it has an electric effect,” Wang said in a telephone interview. “What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity.”
His team made the nanogenerator by first coating fibers with a polymer, and then a layer of zinc oxide. They dunked this into a warm bath of reactive solution for 12 hours. This encouraged the wires to multiply, coating the fibers.
“They automatically grow on the surface of the fiber,” Wang said. “In principal, you could use any fiber that is conductive.”
They added another layer of polymer to prevent the zinc oxide from being scrubbed off. And they added an ultra-thin layer of gold to some fibers, which works as a conductor.
To ensure all that friction was not just generating static electricity, the researchers conducted several tests. The fibers produced current only when both the gold and the zinc oxide bristles brushed together.
So far, Wang said the researchers had demonstrated the principle and developed a small prototype.
“Our estimates show we can have up to 80 milliwatts per square meter of this fabric. This is enough to power a little iPod or charge a cell phone battery,” he said.
“What we’ve done is demonstrate the principle and the fundamental mechanism.”
Wang said the material could be used by hikers and soldiers in the field and also to power tiny sensors used in biomedicine or environmental monitoring.
One major hurdle remains: zinc oxide degrades when wet. Wang’s team is working on a process that would coat the fibers to protect the fabric in the laundry.
First a short excerpt from the news:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Immigration will drive the population of the United States sharply upward between now and 2050, and will push whites into a minority, projections by the Pew Research Center showed Monday.
“If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005,” an increase of nearly 50 percent, the study by the Washington-based think-tank said.
More than 80 percent of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving in the country and their US-born children, who will make up nearly one in five Americans by 2050 compared with one in eight in 2005, it said.
Think about that as your stuck in a traffic jam later this afternoon…. twice the population… twice the traffic. How do we control this insane level of illegal immigration?
Do we systematically execute illegal immigrants? Hmm…while that could work, I really doubt many people will agree to that.
What if we take over Mexico, and make it part of the US? Think about that for a moment… there would be no need to illegally immigrate to the US if you are already in the US now would there? But where does that mentality end?
Do we impose harsh taxes as penalties?
What do other countries do in this situation? What would China do if I illegally immigrated there? How about Lebanon? or North Korea?
Has the US government become a global sissy? Is there any agreeable solution?
First off, a warning: This posting is purely editorial in nature and will not contain any new information and is purely my own opinion based on available facts.
NASA has finally grown a pair! After 50 years of ass-kissing and ground-licking, the administrators and engineers have finally stood up the politicians and said, “Wait a second, this isn’t safe so we’re gonna check things out first, so back off and let us do our job!” And I for one am very proud of them. (more…)
In a move reminiscent of France’s opposition to the Iraqi invasion, and then their subsequent request to help with the rebuilding once all the hard work was pretty much over, Microsoft has attacked the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Organization and demanded that they upgrade their hardware in order to better fit their bloated, memory sucking and overly proprietary operating system XP onto the benevolent laptops. (more…)
I am sure many of our citizens and military personnel are confused and upset over the recent “misunderstanding” that occurred with the Kitty Hawk. For those of you living in a vacuum, an American battle group lead by the USS Kitty Hawk was recently turned away from a long-scheduled Thanksgiving R&R break in Hong Kong by Chinese officials who gave no explanation. This may not sound like much of a problem, however many of the sailors and soldiers on board had “hundreds” of family members who had flown in from all around the world to Hong Kong to meet them.
KHARTOUM, Sudan - Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.”
The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.
They massed in central Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace, where hundreds of riot police were deployed. They did not try to stop the rally, which lasted about an hour.
“Shame, shame on the U.K.,” protesters chanted.
They called for Gibbons’ execution, saying, “No tolerance: Execution,” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad.”
The women’s prison where Gibbons is being held is far from the square.
What in the name of everything holy is wrong with these crazy people in Sudan? A British teacher working in Sudan allowed a student to name a bear Muhammad, and now everyone is going crazy, they have put her in jail, and there are protesters everywhere with knives, axes, ect, chanting for her execution. I’m honestly surprised that these morons didn’t beat the child half to death for naming the bear that. Its ignorant governments like this that make me glad our military is far superior to theirs, else we might have some crazy rule like this.
I think we should all get teddy bears, stitch the name Muhammad on there, and mail them over to the Sudan government. If they can protest with guns and knives, we can protest with teddy bears. I understand the religious significance of Muhammad, and while I am a Christian, I have all the respect in the world for them to believe how they want. That right to believe the way they wish does not extend into the possible execution of an INNOCENT, person who allowed a child to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Its a child! If you are not as outraged as I am by the way Sudan has handled this situation, something is wrong with you.
I say this to you government of Sudan, get over yourselves, show a little understanding. Would your prophet want you acting like ignorant savages because a child named a teddy bear after him? I think not.