Stuff below the fold

Atlas Obscura has quite a few tourist spots for your browsing pleasure.

How about a crater lake in Romania, a neolithic village in the UK or a Roman arena in gay Paree?

or for somewhere closer to home: visit a 2000 year old stone circle in Miami
was this an outpost of the ancient Mayans?

more HERE, with lots of photos.

and TeaAtTrianon has another suggestion: Visit Chernobyl.

As evidence that the effects of radiation are not as bad as critics contend, they cite how wildlife has staged a remarkable comeback in the area around Chernobyl. Audits in the past have shown that the 18-mile exclusion area or "dead zone" around the plant is now home to 66 different species of mammals, including wild boar, wolves, deer, beavers, foxes, lynx and thousands of elk. (Read entire article.)

------------------------------------

Good medical news of the day:

HIV pills help prevent folks from catching HIV.

Good news: will protect women, especially in Africa, whose HIV positive husbands won't use condoms and studies show condoms are not vry good in stopping the spread of HIV (perhaps a quality problem, or because of the heat deteriorates latx) as much as in the US.
------------------------------------

Open coalmining causes birth defects. Yeah, that, and the destruction of the habitat (which is a lot worse than regular mining's slag heap pollution) is why we opposed it in our area of Pennsylvania.

Ah, but big coal has another reason: The hillbillies interbreed too much. Except in most of these areas, a lot of coalminers are third generation Italian or Eastern European immigrants.

for example:

here's another tourist place for you to visit:


The West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival will celebrate its 33rd year over Labor Day Weekend, September 2, 3, 4, 2011. The American Bus Association has rated the WVIHF among the "Top 100 Events in North America" and has also been rated as the Southeast Tourism Society's Top 20 Events.

----------------------------------

Harry Potter, the easy version

Gift item of the day

The gift item of the day suggestion comes from ManoloForTheBeautyBlog


your very own "nose Huggie", AKA "Nose up life shaping kit"...

think of it as a super clothes pin...

and I love what Amazon suggests for you if you like it:

So You'd Like to...

• Spare Yourself Shoulder Pain By Strengthening THESE Muscles: A guide by a Researcher

• Tennis Elbow Pain: Are You Treating the Right Problem?: A guide by a Researcher

• Be a Drag Queen: A guide by Ricky Pooski "cool"

Religion post of the day

Nano nano nano nano

WTF headlines of the day

JAMA wants parent of obese children to lose custody.

Yes, but why are they obese? Genes? Or something else?

so who do they blame? TV and fast foods, of course...or is it something else? Rant moved to my xanga blog...

-----------------------------------------

ATF loses track of 1400 guns...the right wing blogosphere is all over this one...

---------------------------------

What is Google+? Wired article explains it to you...

or for the rest of us: Father Z's readers explain it to him.

-------------------------------

Forbes asks: Has the gov't spent all of the social security trust fund?

-------------------------------------

After a week of headlines saying the gov't illegally gave 7 SUV's (actually seven vehicles, including pickups and ambulances) to certain Catholic bishops to use in charity work (but might have been used for religious reasons), the bishops apologized and gave them back.

This resulted in the Senate and Charity offiicials backtracking and saying no, it's okay to use them for charity...

Senate President Pro Tempore Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III, and Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson asked the bishops to reconsider their decision to return the controversial vehicles to the PCSO.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile later joined the call of Estrada, Sotto, and Lacson that the bishops should keep the vehicles which are being used for their charity and community work in rugged, mountainous areas in Luzon and Mindanao.

It's propaganda, of course: to punish them for opposing the RH bill, of course, and it diverts the public from the real scandals of diverted charity money

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago suspects that a media spin doctor has used the controversy involving some Church leaders and their government-donated vehicles to draw public attention away from an “unauthorized” P1.5-billion bank deposit made by officials of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) in 2009...

“Why concentrate on the P7 million given to the bishops when there are billions that were apparently abused or wasted? Why are we being led down this path? Who is manipulating the scenarios?” she stressed.

and then there is this testimony related to the Amputuan massacre trial:is

In the draft affidavits, Zaldy alleged that former Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman collected the P200 million in kickbacks in three farm-to-market road projects in Central Mindanao for remittance to then President Arroyo.

This is, of course, one project in one area...

In the meanwhile, we saw two soldiers guarding the parking lot in the mall (some shoplifters were caught a few weeks ago), and the cops are inspecting the various tricycles on the main road.

And finding loot:

Police and environment officials intercepted last June 30 a shipment of 19 geckos, locally called "tuko" at a checkpoint in Aliaga.

The geckos are used in Chinese and Korean herbal medicine to treat HIV and cancer.

but the real economic problem here is that smuggled onions from China are underpricing our local faremrs, and some of the mayors want to please the rich environmental lobby in Manila by banning plastic bags.

This is not a "grass roots" initiative...and carrying tote bags would work, but since these will allow folks to shoplift, one wonders how much money will be lost to petty theft from these laws.

And I wonder what the bribe will be to the cops to look the other way for using plastic bags?

Punching holes in clouds

no, not a rock lyric: something done by airplanes.

An airliner gaining altitude punches through the cloud layer, and leaves behind a void as if by a circular cookie-cutter... The ice particles grow at the expense of the supercooled water droplets and fall out of the cloud as snow. If the cloud layer is thin or if the water is not replenished the snow leaves a hole in the cloud.

headsup Spaceshuttlenews

Aluminum belts?

did the ancient Chinese have aluminum belt buckles?

Headsup Sunkencivforum


.........................................
more bizarre archeology: LINK


--------------------------
and the "don't mess with Sister Mary" post of the day:
Ani Pachen warrior nuns of the Himalayas.

Factoid of the day

NatGeo news notes that Neptune was discovered one (Neptune) year ago today...

but the article includes this factoid:

Ironically, Galileo Galilei spotted Neptune more than 200 years earlier but wrongly assumed the planet was just a star.

"He observed it and he thought it moved relative to background stars, but it became cloudy and he was unable to observe it further," said Rocky Alvey, director of the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory in Brentwood, Tennessee.

"If it hadn't been for clouds, Galileo may have been the discoverer of Neptune.

The planet Neptune, as seen from above its largest moon, Triton.

Illustration by Paul Hudson, National Geographic

interactive solar system HERE

Cat item of the day

and via Dave Barry: the really important news of the day:

The Vulcan pinch works on cats:

Stories below the fold

Spiked asks if the scandal against the UK Murdoch scandal sheet is being orchestrated, and if it's aim is to destroy freedom of the press.

What the News of the World was alleged to have done to Milly Dowler and other victims and relatives was not, of course, journalism. ...The irony is that the News of the World was also almost the only British newspaper that still put serious resources into investigating stories and making the news, rather than simply reprinting what it was handed...

Heh...reminds me of this:

Kay: We're gonna check the hot sheets.
[Kay pulls up to a newsstand and buys a pile of supermarket tabloids]
Jay: THESE are the hot sheets?
Kay: Best investigative reporting on the planet. But go ahead, read the New York Times if you want. They get lucky sometimes.

-----------------------------
murdoch's UK tabloid isn't the only one in trouble for shoddy reporting:

The manhandled maid sued Murdoch's NYPost after they wrote that she got huge tips for sex and this was known by the local union, who got a percentage of her "tips".

But the papers obtained by the WaPost poke holes in that story...

developing....

It's nice to be the king
.----------------------------
LA Times: Coppermining will crush Ancient Afghan site.

missing from the story: Afghan's history of Buddhism, Afghan's history of trading with the world, Afghan's history of being part of the Silk Road, the fact that China got the contract (did they bribe somone?), the story that the mining may destroy the environment there, and the fact that China is willing to destroy Afghanistan's history to get the ore it needs.

---------------------------------
Blackfive notes although the press is reporting the killing of Karzai's half brother as a success for the Taliban, he is not shedding any tears for the most corrupt SOB in Afghanistan...

------------------------------
Better than DDT:

Two Trillion insects killed on Dutch cars every year.

Headlines below the fold

I checked the headlines, and now Italy is broke, and Obama is fighting with the Republicans to have the US next in line.

So let's have some really important news you might have overlooked:
------------------------------------------

How Stuxnet works.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

-----------------------------------------


Smartphone app to diagnose Malaria.

Guess it's easier than lugging a microscope around with you.

-------------------------------
via dave barry:

jelly fish one, nuclear reactor zero.

-----------------------------

Mother Jones says the amount of mercury in the newfangled light bulbs is not as much as you get by burning coal.

Yes, but we use geothermal and hydroelectic power, and I worry about it here, and although the mall has a recycle bin for batteries, there is no push yet to safely discard lighbulbs.
--------------------------

Prince Galitzen remembered

From Librivox:

a biography of the Prince Gallitzen, a Russian nobleman who became a Catholic priest and worked in the rough lands of central Pennsylvania in the early 1800's...LINK more HERE. and PBS transcript HERE.

comic book HERE.

and the local state park is named after him, but most folks know it as "Glendale lake".... I took the kids there many times.


church photo from Terry's blog of unique places. and the blog also has photos of the "Peace Garden" in the old Schwab estate nearby. We also used to go there to view the flowers and goldfish.

This church and Prince Gallitzen's grave is still there, and is beautiful: The bad news is that when we lived there, the modernist clergy types in Altoona were threatening to make it ugly so that it would "correspond to (their idea of ) Vatican II...

This was an area full of stubborn Polish coalminers with "bathtub madonnas" in their yards (see below), and they didn't like the newfangled changes.

Between fights to "modernize" churches and the fight to close (half-filled and redundant) ethnic churches made lots of folks got angry and some simply switched to local Polish Catholic or Orthodox churches... and other churches were saved because they were listed as artistic treasures by the cities involved.

Not only was the bishop unpopular for the church renovation fiasco, but the main reason was because of the pedophilia, the scandal of gay friendly priests, and having our kids taught modern heresies in the Catholic schools... don't know what's going on right now, under the new bishop...I will have to ask my gay friends in Pittsburgh if the priests are still regular visitors at the local bars.

And no, I didn't worry about my boys, since they usually went to confession to the young priest who ran around on a motor cycle ( and later disappeared and married one of the catechists who helped in the church).

yup...the good, the bad and the ugly...if I remain catholic, it's because I've worked with many very good priests, whose deeds outshine the hypocrites and sinners.

Water buffalo take two

I'm not sure where this farm is, but as handplows replace the waterbuffalo in farming, there is a move to use them for milk.

Yes, we drink the milk of the water buffalo (usually in our coffee...it's very high in creme).

And thanks to Erap, there is now a growing industry to sell the milk.

more HERE.

one recipe using carabao milk is Pastillas de leche, but you can make them with full creme cow's milk too:

recipe HERE.

or HERE:

Musical interlude of the day

and yes, we have two...

Cat item of the day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Factoid of the day

The previously linked article on medicines in that Roman shipwreck mentioned similar medicines, surgical tools and obstetrical forceps had been found in Pompey...

so who invented forceps? EMedicine notes:

The history of obstetrical forceps is long and, often, colorful. Sanskrit writings from approximately 1500 BC contain evidence of single and paired instruments; Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Persian writings and pictures refer to forceps that were originally used for extraction following fetal demise to save the mother’s life.

related item:



Susruta was the Indian equivalent to Hippocrates, and probably lived between 800 and 1000 BC...Wikipedia article...his book is at internet archives

and youtube has a simple "How to" do a forceps delivery....

actually, this is the common "outlet forceps": the real problem deliveries are mid pelvic arrest and narrow outlet with a high head...usually a Caesarian section is done for this now.

Headlines below the fold

VOA has an article about archeology in Camaroon...

headsup GGG Forum FR
which links to Carthages' Hanno's voyage to westAfrica...

---------
and an ancient ship with herbal medicines has been found...

----------------------------
Now Mt Etna is closing airports...check great photos at link.

and the latest volacano eruption in Iceland is simmering, but has a history of dangerous eruptions.

-----------------------------
US Ambassador to the Philippines visits Baguio and remembers the Japanese attacks there, and the FilAm partnership in WWII.. the article also mentions the search for Yamashita's gold.

The Ambassador's father was stationed in the Philippines, so for him it's personal (but the dirty little secret is that although a quarter million common Pinoys fought the Japanese occupation, the elites compromised to stay in power... and a lot of Pinoy bigshots don't want to be reminded of what their grandfathers did)...

---------------------------------
You may have seen the video of that sandstorm that hit Arizona, but did you know that it was caused by UFO's? Photos (or photoshopped photos) HERE.

--------------------------------
Ten years ago the Buddhist Statues of Barniyan were destroyed by the Taliban.
more HERE.

Bookmarked for later reading: The Buddhist/Hindu roots of Afghanistan.

and the Penn Museum had a symposium on the Silk Road: here is Colin Renfew's talk:



-----------------------------------------
LATimes has an article on Mexican American Shrines to the Madonna of Guadalupe that dot the LA landscape.

Actually shrines to Mary dot the landscape in a lot of places...Wikipedia on "Bathtub Madonna" shrines (a name given to these grass roots devotion by those who think they are superior).

Kiss Me I'm Irish

In the news:

An international team of scientists has discovered that the female ancestor of all living polar bears was a brown bear that lived in the vicinity of present-day Britain and Ireland just prior to the peak of the last ice age -- 20,000 to 50,000 years ago.

photo source

headsup FR

Happy Independence day, Southern Sudan

South Sudan is now a new nation.
I once worked with a doctor who was from there. He and his brother as teenagers were refugees in a camp in a nearby country, and some Seventh Day Adventists picked out some of the smarter boys, including him, to send to get an education...he became a doctor...his wish was to go home and care for his people, but he knew that he would be killed if he did that, so he was working in Liberia instead. When I left that country, he had changed jobs to work in a rural Lutheran hospital in that country....that was before the Liberian civil war, so I don't know if he is still alive and able to go home.

But since I met him in 1980, it gives you an idea of how long these people have been suffering....

the bad news? The North is attacking along the border to get the oil fields given to the south, and will continue to try to destablize the government.

BBC report HERE.

And heh: the (right wing) Gateway pundit points out that the cowboy hat worn by their president in this photo was given to him by GWBush, who was pivitol in pushing for their independence.

The daughter of a British professor/blogger just moved there to work in anthropology, and has a blog HERE.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Michelle Bachman and Princess Vespa:



















on the other hand, maybe another macho female instead of a metrosexual male is what the US needs:

Yankovic beer songs

Al Yankovic the beer song



the (no relation) Frankie Yankovic beer song is five minutes into this video. But play the whole thing and enjoy!

How Beer Saved the World

Factoid of the day:

What did the Scorpion King drink? Beer...

Archeologists investigating the tomb of King Scorpion I (3150BC) found the residue of beer that was mixed with savory, thyme and coriander...

and the oldest barley beer? found in the mountains of Iran, dating 3400 B.C...


from: the beer archeologist from the SmithsonianMagazine:

Cat item of the day

Musical interlude of the day

some of you are old enough to remember it, others only know it from this play....

Fifth grade Assignment

A fifth grade teacher in aChristian school asked her class to look
At TV commercials and see if they could use them in 20 ways
To communicate ideas about God.


God is like.
BAYER ASPIRIN
He works miracles.

God is like.
A FORD
He's got a better idea..

God is like.
COKE
He's the real thing.

God is like.
HALLMARK CARDS
He cares enough to send His very best.

God is like.
TIDE
He gets the stains out others leave behind. ..

God is like.
GENERAL ELECTRIC
He brings good things to life.

God is like.
WAL-MART
He has everything.

God is like.
ALKA-SELTZER
Try Him, you'll like Him

God is like.
SCOTCH TAPE
You can't see Him, but you know He's there.

God is like..
DELTA
He's ready when you are.

You're in good hands with Him.

God is like.
VO-5 Hair Spray; He holds through all kinds of weather

God is like.
DIAL SOAP
Aren't you glad you have Him? Don't you wish everybody did?
(that one is my favorite)


God is like .
The U.S. POST OFFICE
Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet nor ice will keep Him from
His appointed destination.


God is like.
Chevrolet. . . .the heart beat of America


God is like
Maxwell House. .... .
Good to the very last drop


God is like.
B o u n t y . . . .
He is the quicker picker upper. . Can handle the tough jobs. ..
And He won't fall apart on you

God is like.
The Energizer Bunny

He Keeps Going, Going, and Going

your email of the day from TiaMaria

How Northen Lights Form

The Aurora Borealis from Per Byhring on Vimeo.

via Scientific American

Headsup FreeRepublic

You may be alive because of this man

Ralph Nader was the one whose exposes revealed that some cars were dangerous, and that there were ways to save lives in accidents.

So fifty years ago, the Insurance Institute for Highway safety started pressuring car companies to make safer cars

Headsup Secondhandsmoke

Recipe of the day

see more Must Have Cute

IHeartBakingBlog has photos of how it was done.

and 6bittersweets has a printable recipe for lemon macarons on her website.

Gift item of the day

A Darth Vader HairDrier:

Buy it for someone you love.


see more Must Have Cute
Via: www.geekologie.com

Asian Headlines below the fold

The Philippine economy is growing, but there is a worry as some workers have come home from various trouble spots in the world. So this headline shows war is not the only problem:

140,000 Filipinos could lose their jobs in Saudi

90,000 maids may lose their jobs because Saudi doesn't want to pay a decent wage, but the real reason is that there have been a lot of complaints of abuse. The Phil gov't now insists that those employing maids register the address where the maids will work with the gov't ( a policy that enables the gov't to ensure they are not being abused). 2008 Report about abuse HERE.

Saudi has banned both Pinoy and Indonesian maids over these human rights issues.

But another policy that will result in more Filipinos coming home is "saudification": The new gov't reg that requires employers to hire a certain percentage of their employees locally.

Another 90,000 Filipinos of the 1.3 million working there could be affected by the new policy of imposing quotas for local staff, although the specialized skills of the majority should allow many to hang on to their jobs, she added... the “Saudization” policy would affect mainly unskilled workers like manual laborers, janitors, drivers and gardeners, she added.

Traditionally, Saudis work at cushy gov't jobs, while employers in the private sector hire hard working foreigners. This results in a 12 percent unemployment rate among locals, meaning more idle young men getting into mischief...

another factoid about Saudi:

These foreigners comprise 27 percent of the Saudi population...

-------------------------------------

Forbes has an article about China: Inflation and fewer workers mean a lot of empty buildings, and then there may be inflation.

then there is the rich/poor divide and the millions of unemployed sent home when overseas orders fall and fewer workers are needed.

The WSJ describes China as "resilient" but their economic and other aggression in taking over resources that belong to others (via threats, as in the Spratlys, or by bribing tyrants and politicians, as in the Sudan, Congo, and Zimbabwe) may backfire...

========================

another day, another earthquake...no it didn't hit here.
---------------------------------

The UN and "civil societies" (read US money) are pressuring the Philippines to pass a RH bill.
The bishops oppose it, so the gov't is accusing the bishops of taking bribes by accepting money to buy SUV's "for personal use" from the Charity sweepstakes office...

This in a country where 20 percent is the usual kickback on all contracts, votes are bought for 20 dollars a piece, and millions of pesos were diverted from fertilizer and rice imports to politicians...

Old lefty bishop Cruz tells of turning down two gifts from politicians: yet he doesn't condemn those who took charity money so they could help their people...

and for some reason, the Senate committee seems to be targeting Catholics: or maybe they are merely being caught in the cross fire over investigating our lovely ex president Gloria...

full report on the (pro Arroyo) Manila Bulletin.

Uriarte testified that the PCSO did not give Mitsubishi Pajeros to the Catholic Church but sent checks to religious leaders to buy 4x4 vehicles as requested for their charity and medical work in rugged, mountainous areas.

She stressed that the religious officials, in their requests to the PCSO, asked for these vehicles not for their personal use.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and the other senators – Franklin M. Drilon, Francis Escudero, Panfilo M. Lacson and Guingona - reminded Uriarte to be careful in her testimony as she linked former President, now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to the questionable PCSO intelligence operations.

the (anti Arroyo) Phil Inquirer report HERE.

Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, now Pampanga representative, may face charges of plunder over allegations that she had approved the allocation of hundreds of millions of pesos in charity funds for possibly nonexistent projects.

-----------------------------------

Factoid of the day

I posted a day or two back about the Minaret of Jam...more here on Wikipedia

The Minaret of Jam is probably located at the site of the Ghurid Dynasty's summer capital, Firuzkuh (Firuz Koh). The 12th and 13th century Ghurids controlled not only Afghanistan, but also parts of eastern Iran, Northern India and parts of Pakistan.^[1

Map HERE

more HERE.


This map shows the expansion from TWC

something tells me I'm going to have to study more about middle East and Indian history.
However, notice that the Ghurids were probably Persian ethnics and spread Islam into Afghanistan...

Until the Mongols came through and wrecked everything.

The Trapp Story goes around the world

Here in the Philippines, we get lots of anime, including this one, a Japanese made version of the story:



but this one is actually a much nicer song (I think it's the Italian version) of the family singing in a contest in Salzburg: Turn up speakers and enjoy:



and then we have them as refugees fleeing on a ship (?in Arabic):

Stuff below the fold

I checked the headlines, and they are as usually bad.

So here are some random links to keep you diverted from depression:

If Charles Carroll is the American Cicero, then Cincinnatus is the Roman Washington.
Podcast HERE

-------------------------------
recharge your cellphone using a fire? The bad news? It cost $300...

maybe stick with the bicycle recharger.




---------------------------------



factoid: They needed money in the 1950's so sold the movie rights of Maria's book for a small amount, so they never made money from the Sound of Music.

and the movie changed the story: You can read
the real story HERE. including a follow up on where they are now.

Tolkien lectures

Trees and chainsaws is about the "green" themes of Tolkien.

Then there is this one at Youtube:

both are funny.

A more serious lecture: Tolkien in the war link link

the story of Beren andLuthian....in graphic novel style:

YO Baby

see more Daily Squee

The Gratuitous Lady Gaga post of the day

Build your own film plot

SavageChickens link NationalTreasure and WillieNelson..

Stuff below the fold

Photo by Bill Ward
LEGOMANIA at Brickworld Chicago 2011









----------------------------

From Instructables:

Photo:ineverfinishanyth

How to make your very own Duct Tape Kayak

more suggestions at the GreatOutdoor Ducttape contest

hmmm...ducttape in your first aid box? Yes...we just closed the wound on Papadog's tail with ducttape...it was after the vet closed, and he wouldn't let us sew it....

.and you can reinforce a broken cast with it, or make your own "soft cast" in an emergency..
--------------------------

A 3D Printer can make your own personalized Chocolate...

------------------------------
Big Brother at work:

Now they are criminalizing pranks involving Live Chickens.

-------------------------------------
The ancient Indus valley civilization has a script, but will they ever deciper it?

Be Our Guest

see more Must Have Cute

Via: www.hawaiikawaii.net

These remind me of this:



turn up speakers and enjoy!

Travel destinations

DarkRoastedBlend has some photos of a ruined 12th century city in Afghanistan.....including the Mineret of Jam, the second largest religious tower in the world...

--------------------

Webecoist suggests a less cheerful destination is the Gates of Hell, located in Turkmenistan...
Don't blame this on Satan: It is man made, from a botched drilling hole for natural gas that caught fire and collapsed....and it's been burnning for over 40 years.



----------------------------
Riskmanagement discusses thiat one and also the Centralia mine fire and the Pacific ocean garbage patch...

and Spike has a larger list of man made disasters, including the Molasses spill and Bhopal...



===============================
webecoist has more photos of man made and natural massive holed in the earth HERE.

Family news

Robin and all attended the Diego Family reunion in Chicago...

two photos from her facebook page:

Stuff below the fold

Otto Von Hapsburg just died, at age 98...Obituary here.

-----------------------------------
Asian Pollution slowed Global Warming.

--------------------------
Does Prozac increase the chance of autism in your child if you take it while pregnant?

------------------------------
All Bananas are closely related genetically...they were probably first domesticated in New Guinea...

and their narrow genetics makes them vulnerable to plant disease, which is bad news for populations that rely on them for food.
------------------------------

Greeks and Turks hate each other, but in this they agree:
Stop the Hate Israel propaganda flotilla.

It's not needed (the "activists" just refused to let Greece take the supplies there by legal means) and European bloggers and reporters found the activists have links to known communist and Islamicist terror groups.

Factoid of the day

Nat Geo has an article about the myths of US Independence day LINK

and sorry, National Treasure fans, the Declaration of Independence doesn't include secret messages.

National Treasure is right in saying Charles Carroll of Carrolton was the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence to die.

But National Treasure gets one part wrong:

from Wikipedia:

Charles Carroll was portrayed by actor Terrence Currier in the 2004 film National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage. He is accurately described as the last living signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Although the film does not explicitly state it, it is implied that Carroll died in Washington, D.C.^[22] It is inaccurately stated that Carroll was a Mason; Catholics weren't allowed to be members of the Masons...

He was known for his love of both Christianity and the classic virtues of Rome, and there is a new biography out about him "American Cicero"...interview with the author HERE.

Housecleaning day, so slow to blog.

Rain again...

Joy is okay after her surgery.

Shopping downtown shows a lot of cops doing security checks on vehicles. Don't know what's up, since Monday is Palenke day...there was a lot of security at the mall last week but not when we went Saturday...

Gift item of the day

Celebrate the holidays by giving one of these to your loved one:

"Large snow globe with red and blue floating stars. Wind it up and it plays "America the Beautiful".
Handcrafted construction and hand-painted details.
Imported."

July 4th music

some A_____ announced that when Americans celebrated patriotism, it made one "Republican".

So I guess true blue Boston MA haven't gotten the message:



I also remember a visiting hoity toity British professor writing a scathing essay on Americans who say "God Bless America": "Why does God need to be told to bless America"? He asked.

No, it's "God bless you", as one would say "Bless you sir" to someone who helps you.

Uh, it's because a lot of us know that our freedom and economics opportunities elsewhere are zilch. And some of the most patriotic folks aren't snotty upper class Brits, but Asians who know this.

Fireworks (take two)

The Physics of Fireworks

Scienceblog has a post on the physics of fireworks.

The burst charge can be as simple as more gunpowder, or it could be a more complicated (or even a multi-stage) explosive. The stars, on the other hand, are what actually go off in many directions, producing the beautiful display. When the fuse burns down to the point where it reaches the burst charge, it ignites!

This ignition, depending on how the firework is put together in the first place, will send the stars off into whatever pattern or direction it was designed for....


Just like lightning, the gunpowder explosion superheats the air, causing it to expand and become very rarefied (i.e., have such a low density that it's almost a vacuum). This heating and expansion takes place in a tiny fraction of a second, but it's not the heating and expansion that makes the sound! It's what happens in the instant afterwards. The air from just outside this rarefied area rushes in to fill up this low pressure area. It does so with such great speed that it actually breaks the speed of sound, creating a sonic boom! And that's what makes the "pop" or "boom" sounds that accompanies fireworks.

Happy July 4th

Factoid of the day

I was listening to StrategyTalk on my mp3 player, and they were discussing how France was arming the Berber tribes fighting against the dictator of Libya.

One (Jim Dunnigan?) mentioned they aren't Arabs, but that DNA shows links with many Egyptians.

Another factoid: They fought with Hannibal (before they fought against him)


more HERE.

Family news

Joy in the hospital overnight for minor surgery. Ruby posted this photo of her sitting around waiting...

The US Army Fife and Drum Corps

From StrategyPage:
The U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps marches on the parade field during the Armed Forces Farewell Tribute to honor Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at the Pentagon, June 30, 2011.
DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jacob N. Bailey
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The website for this group has downloads of audio and video stuff LINK

if you click on the audio album, it goes to another page to download the entire album in Zip format.

Happy July 4th weekend

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

A Gift from the Sea

BNReview discusses Anne Morrow Lindburgh, the writer. more HERE

writer, aviatrix, wife, mother, and bereaved mother who lost her son in one of the most horrendous crimes of the century.

Her book A Gift from the Sea, is a gem, and an excerpt of it can be found HERE.

I want first of all – in fact, as an end to these other desires – to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact – to borrow from the languages of the saints – to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, "May the outward and inward man be at one." I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.

Vague as this definition may be, I believe most people are aware of periods in their lives when they seem to be "in grace" and other periods when they feel "out of grace," even though they may use different words to describe these states.

Where is Colombo when we need him

when rich guys get off by smearing their victims, one just longs for Colombo to finagle the perpetrator.

Brian Sibley remembers Peter Falk



The first TV show I remember seeing him in was The Price of Tomatoes...for which he won an Emmy..


trivia question of the day: Who played the original Detective Colombo?
Answer: Bert Freed

Freed played Columbo in a live 1960 episode of the "Chevy Mystery Theatre" seven years before Peter Falk played the role

Stuff below the fold

Why guzzling diet drinks could make you FATTER - they can trigger the appetite

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2009055/Why-guzzling-diet-drink-make-fatter--trigger-appetite.html#ixzz1Qu76btyW

and sweets before meals could keep kids from getting fat...

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more serious: more studies that BisphonalA in plastic can affect humans

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Dengue cases increase in the Philippines...

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Rich sex abuser finds dirt on his victim (much of it seems to point to her being the pasty for her fiance who used her identity for his drug business)

.... so the blogosphere ignores that the abuser lied about what happened, but that she isn't changing her story...

so where are Al Sharpton and the feminists? will no one defend this obvious hit job?

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Headline of the day

400 trillion trillion pints of beer lost in space

G34.3 from Owen Chikazawa on Vimeo.

Well, not beer exactly. But they did find alcohol: ethyl alcohol, to be precise, the active ingredient in all major alcoholic drinks (antifreeze Jell-O shots, quite obviously, are exempted from this category). Three British scientists, Drs. Tom Millar, Geoffrey MacDonald and Rolf Habing, discovered this interstellar Everclear floating in a gas cloud in the contellation of Aquila (sign of the Eagle, the mascot of Anheuser-Busch! Hmmmmm). Millar and his compatriots have estimated the size of this gas cloud at approximately 1,000 times the diameter of our own solar system; there’s enough alcohol out there, they say, to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer.

headsup DaveBarry

Musical interlude of the day

Here is my heart and I give it to you
Take me with you across this land
These are my dreams, so simple and few
Dreams we hold in the palm of our hands....

Lyrics HERE.

Factoid of the day

I always figured the holly species was poisonous, but apparantly the American Indians made a ceremonial tea from one type of holly, the Ilex vomitoria aka Yaupon Holly.

photosource JSPIPPEN

the holly contains caffiene, and is similar to yerba mate used by some South American Indians.

and archeologists found a shell with residuals of the tea in the Craig mound at Spiro Mounds in Okalahoma, the only public mound site in the state.

Stuff below the fold

the killer EColi has been traced to Egyptian seeds via a German importer...

but still no "smoking gun"...

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an easy oral pill to treat African sleeping sickness is being tested.

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is a germ in the gut the reason why wallabys don't emit methane?
.
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Via Archeoblog: Photos from Tanis...

and no, they didn't find the arc of the covenant there...
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Men are hit more by lighting than women.
Why? because women are smart enough to get out of the rain

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There's oil in them thair hills...or rather in them their valleys:

Oil found in Israel near Jerusalem.
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Rants of the day

It's housecleaning day, so bookmarked for later reading:

To paraphrase HOTWp1

It's good to be the king....

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Remember Blazing Saddles?

Bart: [low voice] Hold it! Next man makes a move, the n...... gets it!
Olson Johnson: Hold it, men. He's not bluffing.
Dr. Sam Johnson: Listen to him, men. He's just crazy enough to do it!

well in this case, it's :"Don't attack the dictator or Israel gets it...
never mind that a major war would be suicidal...
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"I am woman hear me roar.
Or maybe hear me meow;
Hillary's stuck in the puffy pink world of women's issues.

and with war breaking out in North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, and the China sea, where is our Sec't of State taking care of business? She's visiting the hotspot of the world,( Hungary !)

and gets a lecture from their president.

“Indebtedness, whether of households or entire countries, clearly limits freedoms,” Orban said. He borrowed the words of President John Adams, who said there are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation — by the sword and by debt.

when asked about the real news, she has to parrot the party line: telling us how "the Obama administration" is making nice with terrorists.
notice the rest of the article quotes other folks...

Earth To Hillary:

QUIT and run against Obama. He's got you sidelined doing scut work while he's screwing up the world.