Unsafe Abortion Kills 70K Women Annually

Guttmacher Institute estimates that unsafe abortion kills 70,000 women annually.

In totally unrelated news, abortion (safe & unsafe) kills 41 million children a year.

1/3rd Dino Species Never Existed?

From National Geographic News

There is a theory that as many as 1/3 of the known dinosaur species may not have been different species but rather they are different stages of the same animal. The video on page 2 cites the triceratops and a modern day bird, the hornbill, as examples of creatures with age related differences. The triceratop's horns grew in curved backwards and later turn to the front in the adult that most of us are familiar with. They give some reasons for this but unfortunately get too much into anthropomorphism in their reasoning. Basically the backwards curving horns would have prevented the juveniles from competing for mates but would have still been good for protection or grazing.

We will have to wait to see how this plays out, but it will give a good framework for future understanding of some of the world's coolest creatures. (Tho it might be a bad thing if your favorite dino wasn't its own species after all)

Solace

Solace by Project 86

We have waited for so long to occur this day
There are those who fly away to a distant place
But I think I'll stay and I wouldn't have it any other way
In this solace I see a light piercing the darkness
Coming on the winds of imagery, When all I know is crumbling
I am becoming something more than humanity
Could ever allow me to be
I remember a day when my dreams of escape seemed so far away

Let's go back in time, you and I to my
Initiation to your false empire
You greased, you aimed and then you spit while I
Once again pushed away my conscience

Yet always, it seems
I cannot fathom the plateau without first the pit

Against the goads there can be no pleading
Because every thought reaps an action
And for you, my former captor all the earthly wisdom and wealth
Cannot erase your susceptibility to brutal mortality
And the funny thing about justice
Is that it always comes when you least expect it
So friends it won't be long
seems I stole your smile
Right from wrong

So forever now we'll find our peace inside this
We'll find our solace in your silence
And though I once desired your twisted sense of fame
I know, I know that in myself I'm nothing
Nothing, Nothing
Nothing but the words of the "meaningless"

You have given me all I'll ever need
The nerve, the greed, the lust
the lust, the lust, the lust for justice
And now I will never rest
Until the meaningless become your silence.
And you're over, over, over, out!
Over, over, over, out!
Over, over, over, out!
Over, over, over, out!

Now I mean to thank you once again, with this
My, my, my goodbye kiss
You broke my heart but something tells me
that I won't, that I won't, and I won't miss it
And on this very day and on this very hill
While the heavens are hushed in anticipation
Beckoning we'll have ourselves a reckoning
And all of the oppressed will greet you
And you're over, over, over, out!
Over, over, over

Obama The Nobel (Noble)

Well, all kings and dictators need a name that will distinguish them from the average every-day, run-of-the-mill Dear Leader. Seems that the world has bestowed one upon Obama and he shall henceforth be known as Obama The Nobel (pronounced Noble)

OSLO (AP) - President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to build momentum behind his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.

Many observers were shocked by the unexpected choice so early in the Obama presidency, which began less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline and has yet to yield concrete achievements in peacemaking.

Seems that the glorification of our very own Dear Leader was already in the bag and that they just had to find a reason for it. And that reason is, for offering the world hope.

(Note: On second link I would have used the original but for the fact that it had already been edited to remove the blantant deification glorification adoration hero worshipcredit due to Obama so as to be "fair and balanced")

URGENT: Astronomy Buffs and Armchair Scientists

The short:
Intentional crashing of spacecraft into the moon to test for water will be shown LIVE, EARLY Friday morning on the NASA website.


LCROSS Lunar Impact
7:31 a.m. EDT/4:31 a.m. PDT
Friday Oct. 9

A live NASA TV Broadcast is planned for the LCROSS impacts starting at 6:15 a.m. EDT (3:15 a.m. PDT), Oct. 9, on NASA TV and www.nasa.gov/ntv.

The 1.5 hour broadcast includes:

Live footage from spacecraft camera
Real-time telemetry based animation
Views of LCROSS Mission and Science Operations
Broadcast commentary with expert guests
Prepared video segments
Views of the public impact viewing event at NASA Ames
Possible live footage from the University of Hawaii, 88-inch telescope on Mauna Kea.

Doubt I will be up for it but go to this page for more info

More AGW Scientific Fraud

There are two fields of science that continue to have fraud exposed, but yet these same two fields never suffer any ill effects from this. They are evolutionary biology and the Climate Change FraudField. The latest is the for the AGW crowd is that the study that heavily influenced the IPCC was found to have used cherry picked data that showed the authors bias. Worse, this fraudulent data foisted upon us the "hockey stick" graph that may have been the reason Gore created his movie "An Inconvenient Truth." If this can be verified I strongly recommend these scientists be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. But I digress...

Seems that these scientists took core samples from 254 trees and then used only 12 that proved the point they wanted to make. They made such statements as

"Late 20th century warmth is unprecedented for at least roughly the past two millennia for the Northern Hemisphere," wrote the two authors of Global Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2003 - Mann, and Phil Jones of CRU.

Briffa's 2008 paper concludes that: "The extent of recent widespread warming across northwest Eurasia, with respect to 100- to 200-year trends, is unprecedented in the last 2000 years."

Fortunately we are assured by the science fetishists that science is self correcting and the peer review process is used to weed out frauds like this. Sure glad that worked! Oh, wait, thats not how it worked. Seems that this got thru the peer review process several times. No worries still, because science is all about reproducing expirements and double checking data. Hmmm, seems that didn't work either...

Scientists have ensured much of the measurement data used in the reconstructions remains a secret - failing to fulfill procedures to archive the raw data. Without the raw data, other scientists could not reproduce the results. The most prestigious peer reviewed journals, including Nature and Science, were reluctant to demand the data from contributors.

Mann too used dendrochronology to chill temperatures, and rebuffed attempts to publish his measurement data. Initially he said he had forgotten where he put it, then declined to disclosed it.

Seems that Mann's research was accidentally discovered on his FTP server in a folder titled "BACKTO_1400-CENSORED" Oops! (I bet the person who "accidentally" found it was employed by Big Oil!) So from these 12 trees we have determined that the Medieval Warm Period AKA the Medieval Climate Optimum never happened and that we are now killing the planet due to greenhouse gasses.

Still, I predict that AGW will emerge unscathed from this as they do from every other fraud that is exposed. AGW is more about a worldview than it is about science and as such science could thoroughly debunk it and the AGWers would still believe it. Even if we went into a deep ice age it would be man's fault in their minds.

Longer School Year Update

I mentioned in my prior post how the additional schooling costs that the extra 12-15% [cost for the additional schooling] is more than any States economy can bare right now.

Well, out comes an item from Fox News titled
Extended School Year Would Have Dire Economic Effects, Critics Say.

Critics say the president's call for a longer academic calendar and a shorter summer vacation will bring on a host of unintended consequences -- including increased costs for school systems, major cuts to the nation's hotel and tourism industries, and a serious blow to summer camp operators.

The consequences would be much farther reaching than that of course. There would be additional taxation leading to a lower consumption rate leading to lower sales tax revenue (which is the cities main revenue generator) and lower employment. This would lead to higher demand for government social services while at the same time reducing the ability of the government to fund those services. And none of that even goes into the reprogramming of the children that will occur at an even greater rate with the longer contact time with the schools.

But on the plus side, at least they won't be getting religious instruction. Or will they?

Obama Calls For More School

Obama's administration has renewed a call for more school hours, saying "Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,"[Education Secretary Arne] Duncan told the AP. "I want to just level the playing field." The article states Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

I reported on this previously in April and had discussions about it with people in RL. I was appalled that none of them were the slightest concerned about it. Seems that people would prefer their kids spend additional time with their omni-benevolent nanny. But on this latest article the AP provides a bit more information. Seems that the Asian countries do attend school more days per year, but spend less time each year than we do. From the article: Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests - Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).

Perhaps Rep. Wilson would declare "You Lie" to Duncan and Obama on this. The facts show that 21 more days is only 11.67% longer in terms of days, but that in terms of hours the US has as many as 21.21% more contact hours. Sending our kids to the indoctrinators for more of the same is not going to help our kids be anything but more PC.

And if that wasn't enough, the costs are much higher. Extra time is not cheap. The Massachusetts program costs an extra $1,300 per student, or 12 percent to 15 percent more than regular per-student spending, said Jennifer Davis, a founder of the program. It received more than $17.5 million from the state Legislature last year. I dare say that the extra 12-15% is more than any States economy can bare right now. But no worries, Obama can just start providing bail outs to the States then. And then we can all start singing the latest school approved children's chorus "Joy to the world, Obama has come..."

Private Sector Unemployment 23%

Thanks to data from the BLS who gives the official unemployment rate of 9.7% we can give an approximation of the private sector under/unemployment rate which sits at 23% (22.978) Of course the data still shows that this is in fact a he-cession giving official rates of 10.1% unemployment for men vs 7.6 for women. Look for those numbers to diverge even more with the end of the construction season.

I found the below table regarding unemployment during the 1st Great Depression. Unemployment peaked at 24.9% in 1933 but was only 3.2% just three years earlier. We haven't seen that low an unemployment rate since 1952. The St. Louis Federal Reserve's "Fred" is kind enough to show that this "recession" is the longest since the Great Depression, and if you have a strong stomach, see the spike on the right hand side which is the increase in the monetary base.

Year -- Unemp. Rate
--------------
1929 -- 3.2%
1930 -- 8.7
1931 -- 15.9
1932 -- 23.6
1933 -- 24.9
1934 -- 21.7
1935 -- 20.1
1936 -- 16.9
1937 -- 14.3
1938 -- 19.0
1939 -- 17.2


Now looking at the above numbers and trying to compare them to our current situation is difficult because I do not have access to the number of public sector jobs at that time. Of course it is a fair assumption that the public sector grew by leaps and bounds at that time and one could make a reasonable assumption that the reason that the unemployment rate went down from its 1933 high is due in part to growth in the government sector. The extent to which that growth affects the unemployment rate is what is not known (to me at least.) But from my viewpoint we are looking at very similar rates of unemployment between the Great Depression and the Obama Depression. The early part of the last century the workforce was almost entirely in the private sector. There was an opportunity at that time to suck up a large amount of un/underemployed and put them to work in the public sector which of course is one of the ways the FedGov responded. But that is not such an easy option anymore as 1 in 3 jobs is a public sector job already. I don't think that it would be possible to get above 50% and even if it could be done it could not possibly be sustainable (without major exportation of natural resources.) Because of this I believe that we are on more fragile footing than we were at that time. There are less "easy" answers available to us since we used them up previously and never bothered to let those public sector people go back to private sector employment, plus not to mention all those who survive upon government money (retirees, social security, medicare, etc.)

For the record, to get to a private sector unemployment rate of 25% we would need to lose another 2.3 million jobs. I can't see that happening this year, but depending upon how christmas turns out we could potentially see that by late spring next year.

The so called experts are saying that we are now in a "fragile recovery" which I sincerely hope is true. I wouldn't bet on it, but I sure would like to see the economy recover.

Note, the BLS numbers are for August. I will try to post again once the September numbers come out.

It's All About Race Now

Burt Prelutsky writes "But merely as a public service, I thought I'd point out how to recognize if you're a racist. For instance, if you think that Jesse Jackson is an extortionist; that Al Sharpton is a con man; that Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright and Van Jones are three of a kind; and that the Black Congressional Caucus, ACORN, the SEIU, the Black Panthers, Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama, present a clear and present danger to our republic, you are what passes for a racist in 2009."

From even a cursory reading of the opinion columnists this is indeed the case. The pundits are calling EVERY disagreement with Obama as being based in racism. Disagree with bailouts? Racist! Disagree with health care "reform"? Racist! Worried about never ending spending/debt? Racist! Its not only tiring, its quickly losing its value as a way of stopping public discussion and will soon lose the social stigma attached to it. The boy who cried wolf comes to mind. Cry about it too many times when its not true and soon the townsfolk will ignore you.

Actually, as painful as the process of hearing the same tired canard ad nauseum is, depowering the word "racist" will actually further the goals of freedom. The sooner these key "conversation enders" become worthless, the sooner public discourse can begin again. But until it does lose its kick, I personally plan to cry racist every time a black person disagrees with a white person. It won't be true, but its been shown that truth need not be considered when painting someone as racist.

Update: Michael Barone writes "American liberals, unused to hearing dissent, have an impulse to shut it down." These are the "conversation enders" I was writing about.

Update 2: Had to add this pic

Acorn: Symptom of Post-Christianity

I haven't been paying a huge amount of attention to the whole Acorn scandals. I already know it is corrupt, so whats new? But with the latest revelations by two brave souls going undercover to uncover their corruption can't be ignored. Quite frankly, its appalling!

For those not in the know, Acorn has been exposed has helping a pimp to setup prostitution and take the profits for use in an upcoming political campaign. WorldNetDaily has an article with video. The Acorn employee talks about murdering her ex-husband (San Bernardino is currently investigating this woman's claim of homicide) and talks about her past experience running an "escort" business. Worse (and considering the above includes murder that is really hard to do!) she is told that they plan to import underage girls to use as sex slaves and she isn't even fazed by it! She just goes on as if they said they prefer chocolate ice-cream over vanilla. No, nothing objectionable here, unless you are some right wing kook. She also states, in affect, that its only the right-wing that would object to running a brothel. But "Um, cuz if they were liberal they would be helping you" (Transcript here)

So what does this have to do with Post-Christianity? It has to do with something Vox has written about. Women in a Post-Christian society will face the choice of the brothel or the burqah. Of course its important to note that the women will not be given the option of which to choose. Essentially this boils down to women losing the protections and rights that Christianity has afforded them (tho I think its obvious that they don't appreciate it) and that void that it leaves. To paraphrase, society abhors a vacuum. Either a stronger culture will fill the void (e.g. Islam) or baser human instincts. Currently we are experiencing the latter but that is the weaker of the two and will eventually be replaced by a stronger society.

I think it is telling that the women in Acorn have no problem with selling 13 underage foreign girls into sexual slavery. Heck, they'll even help you hide the business and figure out how to get the best tax loops. Will women one day look back at feminism and curse it for destroying the faith that protected them? Or the better question is, just how soon will women have that opportunity to curse it?

Ten Strong Things

Found this and thought I'd share

Ten strong things have been created in the world.

The rock is hard, but the iron cleaves it.
Iron is hard, but the fire softens it.
Fire is strong, but the water quenches it.
Water is strong, but the clouds bear it.
Clouds are strong, but the wind disperses them.
Wind is strong, but the body bears it.
The body is strong, but fear crushes it.
Fear is strong, but wine banishes it.
Wine is strong, but sleep makes one sober.
And death is stronger than all of these.

Tsedeka, however, saves one from death."

--as it is written in Proverbs 10:2--
"Tsedeka (Charity, generosity or righteousness)
delivers from death.

US Apportionment

WND is reporting on a lawsuit on behalf of Citizens of several States (website) regarding the discrepancy in representation in the House of Representatives. This is something that I have blogged on in the past, tho it was simply an idea in my head at the time. Perhaps they found my previous post?

Anyways, the suit brings up the fact that the 435 number was fixed in 1911 which was a good year for firearms, but not so much for representation. Since that year the population has increased continuously while the numbers of those represented by a single congressman increased tremendously. In 1910 the census gives us a ration of 212,020:1 Since then it has grown over three times that to nearly 650,000:1. But that isn't the main reason for this suit tho it is a reason.

The main reason is that some states are comparatively "over-represented." WND's article on the suit gives the following quote from the organizations website "In simple terms, it took 1.83 Montana voters to equal just 1 Wyoming voter, which is grossly unfair." They suggest that increasing the number of representatives to 1,761 would decrease that ratio to 1.11:1. This would also reduce the representation ratio to 159,809. Not quite as radical as my plan of 5,000 but I'd settle for this smaller number. It would still have the benefits listed in my previous post and be a sight deal better than what we have today.

Gov Spending Priorities

Most rational people already know that government has screwed-up priorities which are in many cases bought by special interests and paid for by the people. we gave out hundreds of billions to bankers for their part in the bubble, favored the auto unions over everyone involved in the used car market (parts, service, sales, and owners) and giving the lions share of "stimulus" money to female dominated markets during this He-cession. And lets not forget that this administration is championing Cap and Trade which would cost a trillion+ dollars but do nothing but destroy what is left of the American economy.

So in light of that, I read an AP report of the mercury mines in California that are releasing a tremendous amount of pollution into the water, ground and air. This causes "day-glo orange" streams and rivers to run into the larger waterways contaminating the food supply especially for the poorer residents who fish and hunt those lands. California produced ~90% of the mercury in the US and now there are between 550-2000 open mines that are polluting the water ways and there have been, apparently, only efforts at cleaning up ~10 such mines. But not to worry. Mining only stopped decades ago in California so we know that the gov is getting right on it as evidenced by this quote from Daniel Meer, EPA's assistant Superfund director for the region. "We are here to protect the environment, and sometimes we do it better than other times. We can't start cleaning up everything all at once." Oh, well that means they are working on it tho right? Let's see
what else Meer has to say: "It took a hundred years to occur," said the EPA's Meer. "And it may take a hundred years or more to solve." Well, there you have it. Gov moving with alacrity at protecting the citizenry from existing threats to the environment. With this kind of response I think we can all be proud of how our Gov will be able to solve AGW.

We could have paid off people's mortgages instead of paying bankers for being bankers. We could have spent the "stimulus" money on projects like infrastructure which is needed, and we could be looking at cleaning up real environmental problems rather than the bogey man of global warming. If I wasn't already so cynical about government I'd be appalled at how it pays off its special interests and wants the people to pay for things that do not benefit anyone but those interests. But as things stand, cynicism pays and pays well.

Microsoft Certified

Woohoo!

I did get it too late to get a Bill Gates signed certificate. I guess Steve Balmer will just have to do.

Crash Diet Retards

This article about a UK diet plan by LighterLife makes me shake my head and wonder at these people. The LL plan is, simply put, a starvation plan. Its 14 weeks at 530 calories a day. Shockingly, dieters report that they lose weight while starving their bodies of the basic nutrition it needs! And of course after losing all that weight many gain it all back and then some.

The story goes on to describe how some of the dieters end up dead or with numerous health problems, including one lady who lost so much weight that the fat deposits behind her eyes that support the eye muscle were depleted resulting in her inability to see straight and then she had to have her gall bladder removed. And what does she do? She goes on the diet again! Making her problems even worse! If this is not the definition of a retard I don't know what is?

The body needs somewhere between 1200-1500 calories just for an average sized person to lie in bed all day! That's basic maintenance on muscle, organs, brain and even fat that is used up regardless of whether or not you actually move your body around at all. And then on top of that the very food you eat requires calories to process it and turn it into something your body can use. Oh, and if you don't get sufficient calories, especially over a long time period, you send your metabolism into starvation mode and it will do everything it can to pack on weight so that it has stores should you ever again be in a starvation situation aka LighterLife diet.

Want to lose weight?
Eat sensible. Cut out the crap foods like soda, chips, ice-cream, burgers, fries and the megabucks coffees. Replace that with fresh fruits and veggies. Then go get a good nights sleep (7+hours) and do some physical exercise. I recommend starting off with pushups, pull-ups and squats. Oh, and its the weight bearing (aka muscle building) exercises that will burn fat. Cardio is good, but there is a reason for the saying "fat girls do cardio, models lift weights." After all, its muscle that burns fat, even when you are resting. If you build ten pounds of muscle (which is easier than it sounds[for the first ten anyways]) it will burn thru a pound almost every week just in daily maintenance. Transformetrics is a good place to learn simple, effective and low-cost muscle building exercises. I recommend them.

Kayaking the Nisqually Delta

Today Little Bear and I went to the Nisqually Delta. The delta is near Olympia Washington and abuts the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge which is about 3000 acres. It is used by some 275 species of birds which itself would be a treat for the nature lover.

We started off in the morning and launched in near glass still waters. The tide was coming in but while the current could be seen there were no waves, just a steady inpouring of water. We started of heading up river from the launch site at Luhr Beach and had not been in for even ten minutes when a bald eagle flew overhead. Unfortunately I wasn't able to pull out the camera but as it turns out that eagle is very active there and I was able to get pictures of him later on. After that we came across the first of two families of harbor seals. They all dropped in the water before we got close and despite staying still and quiet (quite the feat for a 3y/o) they wouldn't come out of the water. Worse, if you turned to look at them they would immediately dive so I wasn't able to get good pictures. But then I came across one that while wary was not so worried about us as to stop sunning.

We went in our sit on top kayak of course, a Malibu Two XL, which gives us great stability and lots of open area which I think is great for us, but I can't wait to get a more performance oriented kayak as the Malibu is somewhat of a lumbering beast. Its great for what I am using it for but I look with no small amount of envy at those with sleek kayaks that cut thru the water with little effort and make much better speed than I can.

All in all we were treated to blue heron, canadian geese, numerous species of ducks, a puffin and my first ever sighting of a bald eagle! And somewhere between 16-20 seals. Quite the sightings for a single trip. And with all the deciduous trees its on the list of places to go back to this fall. Well, thats for another day. Anyways, enjoy the pics.

As I noted in a May 1st post, soft tissue had been found in an alleged 65 million year old T-Rex. Well, in the Sept. 4th 2009 issue of Journal of Proteome Research is a report of an independent study of the bone marrow found seven peptides from collagen and apparently traces from hemoglobin.

In similar news, a fossil of a supposedly 150 million year old squid-like creature was found with an intact ink sac. But more than just intact, it was still usable as ink which was used to draw the below picture.

The UK Daily Mail notes that this same area was one of the first in the world to yield fossils of fragile muscle and stomach tissue.

DUH!

I need in on these studies. You know, the type of studies that conclude that water makes things wet. Take for instance this AP study that shows bankruptcies are higher in States that allow wages to be garnished. Is this really a surprise to anyone? Seriously. If a person cannot make their payments to you when they are bringing home the 60-75% or so that the State lets them bring home, how do you expect them to make it when you take 25-50% of the remaining? At that point you are simply asking them to go to extremes to avoid you. Worse for the company, in some States, including Colorado, if a person declares bankruptcy the Court will take the money that was garnished and divvy it up amongst all the creditors so they simply wasted money collecting it.

Drug Warriors Suppress Evidence

Seems that the Drug Warriors only want propagandainformation that supports their viewpoint. Anything else they suppress.

A study done by the WHO 14 years ago states that

health problems from "the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use." If that weren't enough, it states that "few experts describe cocaine as invariably harmful to health," and that problems "are mainly limited to high-dosage users." Indeed, "occasional cocaine use does not typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems . . . a minority of people start using cocaine or related products, use casually for a short or long period, and suffer little or no negative consequences, even after years of use."

This study was done 14 years ago, but the US pushed to suppress the study as it didn't like the conclusions. As a result is was never published and only came to light because it was leaked out.

If your only response to contrary evidence is to ignore or bury it your position cannot be terribly strong.

Missed Opportunities

Sigh

Dark Side Recruits

Looks like the Dark Side has recruited giant chipmunks!

Watch Out!

Current Unemployment Rate

From an AP article we learn that another 467,000 jobs were cut last month. Whats more is it gives us the current unemployment rate of 9.5% and then gives us a concrete number:

All told, 14.7 million people were unemployed in June.

So what does that mean? It means there are 14.7 million people who are out of a job, but are still looking for a job. This brings up the obvious question... what of those who just give up looking for a job? The simple answer is that they aren't counted. The article continues and gives us the rate that most of us care about:

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994.

16.5%?!?! So AP pegs those under or unemployed at 25,457,355. That gives a private sector unemployment rate of 22.27% (private sector being calculated from BLS numbers of all employed in 2008 of 154,287,000 minus approx 40,000,000 public sector employees)

Its good to know that we are in the good hands of a Kenyan after being in the good hands of a "compassionate conservative." Imagine how bad things would be if we had a more libertarian government with a Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin in office.

The Importance Of Words

One Sunday after his sermon, the pastor asked if anyone in the congregation would like to express praise for answered prayers. A lady stood and walked to the podium.

She said, “I have a praise. Two months ago, my husband, Tom, had a terrible bicycle wreck, and his scrotum was completely crushed. The pain was excruciating, and the doctors didn’t know if they could help him.”

You could hear a muffled gasp from the men in the congregation as they imagined the pain that poor Tom must have experienced.

“Tom was unable to hold me or the children,” she went on, “and every move caused him terrible pain. We prayed as the doctors performed a delicate operation, and it turned out they were able to piece together the crushed remnants of Tom’s scrotum and wrap wire around it to hold it in place.”

Again, the men in the congregation were unnerved and squirmed uncomfortably as they imagined the horrible surgery performed on Tom.

“Now,” she announced in a quavering voice, “thank the Lord, Tom is out of the hospital, and the doctors say that with time, his scrotum should recover completely.”

All the men sighed with relief. The pastor rose and tentatively asked if anyone else had something to say.

A man stood up, walked slowly to the podium, and said, “Hi, I’m Tom.”

The entire congregation held its breath.

“I just want to tell my wife that the word is ‘sternum’.”

Taylor Swift's Gone Gangsta

Taylor Swift, of country music fame, has gone gangsta and put out a track with T-Pain. Will she make it in the Rap Industry? See for yourself.

Ark To Be Revealed?

Yes! According to Abuna Paulos, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, it will be officially revealed at 2pm (Italy time) this friday, which means 8AM EST. I'm not holding my breath, but this would be an incredible thing if it does indeed happen. Might even signal a great time to get things right with Yeshua. No one knows when their time is up so it is always a good time, but now might be better than most.

Gun Safety For Kids

I just had a gun safety talk with my 3 year old. Trying to make sure that he has two rules down whenever seeing guns or bullets. Rule one: DON'T TOUCH. Rule two: Tell an adult, preferably Daddy.

I gave him a short quiz and asked him what should he do if he sees a gun. He replied: "Tell Daddy or an astronaut. Astronauts are people in space!"

Lay Offs Suck!

Prayers appreciated

TEOTWAWKI

I actually agree with Barney Frank! Its a sure sign of the apocalypse!

Thoughts on going off grid

Feral wrote a piece with some of the tech he was looking at for when he finally gets off-grid. And some of those things linked to were just awesome. Worm farms would be a great way to keep yourself from having to be in contact with the outside world because eventually you will need that septic tank cleaned out, but not so with the maintenance free worm farm.

So here are a couple of my thoughts on the matter.

Energy consumption will perhaps be the biggest factor in going off-grid. How you generate power will depend greatly upon your area with wind being a huge one in my area. But there is a very interesting tech being deployed in Israel which is a solar panel that looks much like a satellite dish where the dish is mirrored and point to a single collector. This is much more efficient than the standard panels and the investors had plans to bring it to the US before long. I apologize for the lack of links on that. I came across is on WND some time ago but cannot find a link. Another thing that Israelis do is passive solar water heaters. They estimate that this saves some 2,000 kWh per year. For more savings on heating water, look to tankless solutions. The only downside to them is that you might never get your teen out of the shower.

As for the home itself I think two things really should be considered if you are putting up a new building. Solarcrete is a very impressive technique for building which they claim will save 60-100% of heating and cooling costs versus traditional methods. And with an R-36 rating, its not hard to see why. A potential drawback is that these structures have no air transfer (other than windows of course) and so they specifically recommend not using gas to provide the heat for a home. I would think that applies to fireplaces as well? Other building styles are discussed in detail here. This site just might give you what you are looking for in building techniques. I personally also like the idea of an underground/buried home. This way the earth is sheltering and insulating your home. Here is another link you might find helpful.

With housing more or less covered, this brings us to food. I don't have links for greenhouses, but I do regularly drive by a house that now has two very large homebuilt greenhouses that utilize what look like aluminum fence poles and thick plastic sheeting. They recently put up the second one so I assume that the first worked out well enough for them that it was worth the cost. I don't know how they work out venting as I don't see any vents on it. Another idea I have seen is to partially bury the greenhouse. This provides insulation from winter weather but doesn't much cut off the light. All it would take is a couple feet, probably no more than three depending on how you set up the plants. Another interesting way I just heard about is someone who uses hydroponics and at the bottom is a fish tank that he keeps trout in. This way all the water flows down to the trout, the waste from the fish gets put back into the plants and fish are readily available at the same time. That way there wouldn't be any waste in the system at all.

Food storage? Underground. (I am sensing a theme here...) Its how our forefathers did it and it still works very well today. An underground pantry can keep everything cool in the summer which would greatly reduce the costs of keeping foods fresh. One could even keep a freezer down there and as the temp already stays low naturally that should reduce the amount of energy needed to maintain freezing temperatures.

So thats the end of the big stuff, here are some of the little things that can be done now. Still on the food storage bit, remember that a full fridge/freezer uses less energy than an empty one. This is because of air transfers. If ya can't fill it with food, consider bubblewrap. It will fill the space and prevent the cold air from escaping when your little ones stand there looking for something.

Energy needed to cook can be reduced by steaming vegetables instead of covering them with water. Its also quicker and healthier. Also consider using a pressure cooker. Depending on what is being cooked, they can even be faster than the microwave and no doubt use less energy in doing so.

I use, and LOVE, my blackout curtains. They block that annoying ball of fire that tries to get me up early on the weekends and they have an added benefit of greatly insulating the biggest energy hole in your house: your windows. I have also found that I can keep the windows open but those drawn and I will still get the fresh air in the house but avoid the direct sunlight that overheats the house in the summer. I would also one day like to replace the standard plastic hanging whatevers that everyone has on their sliding glass doors. No efficiency at all in those and not exactly good looking either. I figure it would cost less than 150 at wally world to get a set of nice curtains and the cheaper fancy double rods with valance.

Oh yeah, one last thing. TVs suck energy even when "off." In fact, anything that can be turned on by a remote sucks energy at all times. Use a power strip to cut off the power to them when not in use.

Slaying dragons and wooing fairies

Thats how we spent our day, how was yours?

Boob Racing

Seems too many of us are getting a bit flabby around the waist. Due to the rising costs of health care associated with this extra weight there are some groups looking to promote new activities to ensure a happy healthy populace. While many of the activities are mundane like manually changing the TV channel and getting your own beer from the fridge, some are truly new and exciting. Personally, I find the following demonstration quite exhilarating, don't you?

Amy Alkon is the best

Amy Alkon is the best relationship columnist out there. The following is just one of the many reasons.

Dating customs vary from culture to culture. In some cultures, a girl shows she's available by putting a flower behind her ear. Like a lot of girls in this culture, you just put your ankles behind yours.

Breakfast Smoothies

For those who don't know, I have celiac's which means I can't eat anything with gluten in it. That means wheat and its various cousins, which leaves me with very few food options so I tend to eat the same old stuff again and again. Steak, chicken, cheese, veggies, rice. Not terribly exciting. So I have started making a smoothie most mornings so that I can eat healthier than I have been.

So here is my recipe, more or less. It varies tremendously by what is on sale.

The night before I fill up a cool whip tub with the following:
frozen spinach
frozen mixed veggies (corn, cauliflower, broccoli, whatever)
cherries
peaches
blueberries
blackberries
finely ground flax seed

I put the container in the fridge overnight then add it to 2 cups OJ and 1/2 cup of milk and then add an orange, banana, nectarine, or whatever is available to get the consistency right. Put it in a nice big insulated cup (has to hold 32+ ounces) and drink that over the course of the morning. I still need some protein but this otherwise satisfies my cravings and is surprisingly good. I don't notice the spinach and gets a lot of healthy food into my diet in a somewhat sneaky way. And I don't think my tastebuds have noticed just yet that I'm not popping snickers all day long.

Notes:
Some people suggest adding an egg to the smoothie. Prolly wouldn't taste it but I have little desire to try it.
If you use cauliflower, or lima beans for that matter, don't put in too much. It requires copious amounts of liquid and therefor doesn't play nice with the blender (unless you are lucky enough to own a BlendTec)
I am sure I am saving money by buying fresh cherries on sale, but pitting them is a royal pain in the arse.

Reason To Homeschool #17

Indoctrination

Its comforting to know that they will review the mandatory curriculum after it has been in place for a full year. Just long enough to let the sheeple go lose steam and energy so that they can continue with this constant indoctrination.

Green Day has gone retarded

Yes, thats right, retarded.

Seems Green Day is upset that Walmart will not sell their CD. Why? Because Walmart has a long standing policy to not sell ANY CD with a Parental Advisory warning on it. What Walmart WILL do is sell an album that was sufficiently edited so as to remove that PA label. And you know what? Radio stations do the same thing. They required edited version of songs so that words are removed in some form or another if it violates certain standards. So this isn't anything new. But Green Day doesn't want to "feel like [they are] in 1953 or something"

Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt said: "As the biggest record store in the America, they should probably have an obligation to sell people the correct art." But do they have an obligation to sell it? GD wants to stay "true" to their art, but don't want that same freedom for others. I guess in Dirnt's mind, the artist has a right to be heard, but the responsibility falls on others to make sure that he is heard. Dirnt doesn't understand that a right does not work that way. A right encumbers no one except in that they not infringe upon that right. The proverbial my right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins. If Walmart has a responsibility to sell GD's music as GD sees fit, then what they have is not a right but a form of mastery over Walmart, placing them in a form of servitude, or slavery if you will. And requiring someone to take an action, in this case selling an item, is arguably worse than a prohibition against an action but I suppose that is a topic for another blog post.

The article ends by quoting Dirnt saying "It's like a game that you have to play. You have to refuse to play it." And in that he is somewhat right. It IS a game. There are no real rules, but the goal is to attract customer dollars and there are a great many teams in the game, all playing by their own rules. Walmart established theirs many years ago and has come out on top year after year. If you want your music sold to their customers you have to play by their well known, long established rules. If you don't like it, don't play with them. In the end, both parties lose a little, but Walmart's loss is minuscule in comparison to the loss GD will take in sales.

Number of

pushups done today... 150

Woohoo!

CPR

Colorado Jobs

Looks like the grocery unions in Colorado might be striking come May 9th. Kings and Safeway are about to start advertising for temp workers.

The unions lost out pretty bad the last time around (I know, I was working grocery at that time) and now looks even worse for them. Honestly, with the economy in the shape it is in the stores should have exactly zero problems getting their stores staffed. If the union strikes now they may just find that the grocers just stop dealing with them. But anyways, if anyone is looking for work, I suggest getting an application into Safeway or King Soopers on the double. It might only be for a short time, but any amount of money is good when you don't have a regular job.

Dino Blood and Protein recovered

Seems like Jurassic Park isn't such a far fetched idea. Seems that the scientist who recovered soft tissue from the T Rex in 2005 has not only duplicated it with an "older" dinosaur, but has had it independently verified by several other teams. The dinosaur, a hadrosaur, was excavated from "80 million year old rock" using sterilized tools and encased in glass for their trip back to the labs. You can see a short article in the New Scientist or in the May 1st edition of Science.

And heads roll

or soon will. There is no way that the people who wrote this article at the AP will have their jobs for much longer. Its a very good article, and is an example of what the AP should be doing.

"That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance.

His assertion that his proposed budget "will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating.

Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama's last two years as Illinois senator. Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush's final months — a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.

To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.

Bravo to AP writers Kevin Freking and Jim Kuhnhenn. I certainly hope that this week does not find you in the unemployment lines along with so many others since Obama took office. Maybe you can get hired on with an ammo manufacturer. Their business is booming (pun intended)

Stun Gun suspected in death

Colorado Springs police officers are investigating the death of a man who may have been killed by a stun gun this morning. Apparently there was an altercation which lead to a taser being used.

I'm a bit confused by this. We are reliably told that tasers don't kill people. Its somehow always just a coincidence when someone dies after being tasered.
So how is it that there have been at least 405 coincidences so far? In fact, our very own police department has been noted for relying on them at much greater rates than departments of even significantly larger size than our own police force.

Questions questions.

Denise Richards: Funbags

Frankly, I am disappointed. I called the number but there was no answer!
Denise Richards' "Fun Bags"

Seven Seas Sabbath

Its not news to anyone who has been paying the slightest attention that the oceans are becoming over fished. Due to an ever increasing human population and a lack of ability to grow food like we do on land, (not to mention sometimes stupid and counter productive laws) we are seeing continually reduced population of some very important fish. Of course the call is for ever more government but it is undirected at best, and really doesn't address any of the actual issues.

The Bible addresses sustainable farming for the land by giving the land a periodic break as given in Leviticus 25:2-5 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: [for] it is a year of rest unto the land. Allowing this rest allows for renewal and refertilization of the soil as well as allowing the various insects and animals that naturally control pests and aerate the soils to do their necessary work. In fact this is a common practice in modern agriculture where the land will be divided into sections so that one field can lay fallow while the others are in use. This allows for the rest of the land, but still provides sufficient crops to provide the food required by the people.

I don't see a reason why this same principle cannot apply to the oceans. The idea would be to give each commercial fish species a sabbath every seventh year so that their numbers could be replenished. By allowing the fish to replenish their numbers would allow for sustainable fishing as well as healthier oceans and in the case of salmon, healthier rivers as well. Salmon return to the place of their birth to spawn at which time they die and then fertilize the rivers providing food for inland animals and even fertilization for the plants in and around the river.

An important element of this plan includes keeping the fisheries running and their people employed. It would require an occasional change in the type of fish brought in, which would likely require some additional equipment and certainly different techniques needed for a different crop. But as this change only needs to be on the seventh year there are ways that this could be gotten around by rotating the equipment and crew leadership. In this way the economic impact would be minimized tho certainly not eliminated.

This plan would require an international effort and would be its biggest challenge. The technical issues could be answered easily enough by a free market, but getting the various groups to hammer out such a deal? It would require fisheries, scientists and governments to agree on setting a schedule to harvest particular fish which may vary by locality e.g. Pacific or Atlantic. This would no doubt include environmentalists who, ironically, could be the biggest impediment to such a plan with their all or nothing mentality.

So there it is. I could flesh out my idea for setting up a Sabbath for the oceans but I think this lays out a simple enough foundation and a complete plan would require a vastly greater knowledge of commercial fishing than I care to ever have.

So what do you all think?

Personal Dress Code

I was asked the other day if I ever wear jeans. The answer is no, for several reasons. I wear cargoes and docker-style pants because I have found that the cargoes are more useful (extra pockets)they look dressier and an added benefit of being more comfortable. But there is more to it. People judge you based on your appearance. The part that is perhaps most important is that people perceive the value of your work to be greater (and therefore your importance to the company) when you are well dressed.

For example, Beach Bum Joe comes in flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts and puts out 100 widgets a day. You, dressed in slacks and wingtips puts out 90 widgets a day. From an empirical standpoint, Beach Bum Joe is of greater value to he company, but he will not be perceived as such. And until humans are no longer in charge of the decisions that perception will matter greatly. Especially since most of what we do in our modern economy cannot be quantified like widgets can.

So I have taken to trying to look nicer, wearing polos and full buttoned shirts. At the moment that is all that is required to be better dressed than most others in the office, but if this article is correct it might not be enough before long.

Men's Health

May or may not be true. But I sure don't want to risk the health of my male readers!

Roseanne Barr a jew?

I guess she fancies herself as one anyways. she has some rather interesting writings but not anything I would classify as Jewish. She also claims the name of Christ numerous times but from her writings understands nothing of the Son of Man so cannot be classified as a Christian either. This short section shows she has a spirit of fear and if you click through to her blog you will likely come to the conclusion that she is also not of a sound mind. 1 Tim 1:7

as soon as i decide to retire everyone likes me. As soon as I go to work, my private life suffers. As soon as i have a happy private life and a fulfilling career, I am so scared that I will get cancer of the anus or warts of the eyes and die. I am so afraid to leave my house again, what with the germs and communicable diseases. I am so afraid of people it's actually laughable. If people would listen to what I say they would do alot better

But wait, there's more!

how best can we destroy satan?

i feel that i can best destroy him by declassifying all the "holy secrets" kept from the people by the evil priest class. All of the holy secrets of kabballah, judaism are that god is female, and women are her living representatives. The biggest fear of patriarchy is that women will talk to each other about this!
There is a mother in heaven, and she is called binah. In this realm, lives prophecy. it is a meditative state, not a religion! anyone can see the future and talk to eloheim (states of godmind).

I am thinking that this very idea would offend both the Messianics and the Jews that visit this blog. In fact it does. This woman is no Jew, at least not as per the religion and her ancestry is of no import. And her claims that G-d is female and that women are (apparently) "her" only representatives? I would say this woman is more into mysticism and Kabballah than Judaism or Christianity.

"Kabbalism is a system of Jewish mysticism and magic and is the foundational element in modern witchcraft. Virtually all of the great witches and sorcerers of this century were Kabbalists." -William J. Schnoebelen, The Dark Side of Freemasonry

If Roseanne is a Jew it is only by birth, and a poor representative of them. Not to mention her goddess "binah" A.K.A. nature

Oh, and just when I thought I was done, it seems she fancies herself a prophet as well

SATAN WILL COMPLETELY DIE FROM THIS SPHERE THIS SHABBAT! prepare yourself little man. you will exist no where but in the hearts and minds of those who invoke your name both for good and for evil. when those who invoke you are gone, you will not exist. that day is coming. on the first night of passover, the angel of death (who is the energy vampire) will pass over your homes. if you have no blood in your house, he will leave your house. no blood, no vows no secrets no debts no hidden negative thoughts no cruelty. You have made a vessel of connection! Your channel is clear and you become the word. speak the word. write the word. invent the word.
the word is: BIOPHILIC (invented by Mary Daly)

Pimp Your Tank

I am hoping to have one of these come the apocalypse.

Obama to push saturday school

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told hundreds of Denver schoolchildren Tuesday that American school reform must include longer class days.

Duncan says reform proposals coming from the Obama administration will include longer school years, plus Saturday school and longer days.

Why not? Its worked so well giving them up to educrats, why not just give them up for even longer periods of time.

Of course the real reasons this administration will push this is to remove the parental influence over the children. As it is the influence is slight compared to the concentrated hours that school has to indoctrinate and then send the child home with hours of homework to keep them too busy to receive moral instruction from the family.

And more troubling is that when I mentioned that here at work, no one has the slightest problem with it. Seems that the demoralization exKGB agent Yuri Bezmenov warned us of in 1985 is complete, or nearly enough.

Obama: The Obamanable Foreign Relations

Obama was supposed to make us respected among the nations again. Hailed as the PR Savior (in addition to all-round Savior) the one who would restore relations with nations and peoples across the globe. His supporters were quite adamant about that. So lets see how the Administration has done.

The first item comes from appointee Hillary Clinton. Clinton attempted to "reset" the relations between the US and Russia by handing their government a red button with the word "Reset" on it. The problem is that the button didn't say reset, it said "Overload"

Hillary followed this up with a trip to China to beg them to continue buying our debt. It was successful, but only because the Chinese know that if we fall, economically, so do they.

Obama himself has snubbed the U.K. PM because he just had more important things to do than to tend to our closest ally.

Obama then refers to our ally "England" rather than the proper United Kingdom.

Next comes a huge social gaffe from Michelle Obama. While visiting the UK she placed her arm around the Queen of England. A large enough gaffe to brand a prior Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, as the "Lizard of Oz"

Next comes the most recent event, where Obama gives a full waist bow to the king of Saudi Arabia.

Vox was right, this will be one seriously entertaining administration as one Hope after another Changes to despair.

Reading Bleg

Okay Parents, I have a request. How did you teach your children to read?

You see, its time I made a concerted effort to instill that into my boy and I am not exactly sure which way works best. So if there is a methodology that seemed to have worked well for you please let me know. My boy already recognizes most of the letters and can draw a few. Just last night he drew a C and then turned it into a G for me (o=

Any tools, programs, videos etc would be appreciated.

Photoshop Magic

The pic says it all, nothing more needs to be added.

Half-Baked Evolutionary Ideas

I rarely come across a site where the stupidity rises to such a level that I feel I must respond. One such site is www.ReligiousTolerance.org. This site pretends to be even handed, but puts up strawmen to knock down and makes Christians who actually believe the Bible look stupid. Unsurprisingly this organization cites TalkOrigins in several of their articles about science. The web page is put out by a group called Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Its members are a Atheist, Agnostic, Christian, Wiccan and Zen Buddhist. One finds elsewhere that the "Christian" is actually a Unitarian. As Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ they can hardly be considered Christian.

Having admittedly not read the whole site I thought I would point out some glaring examples. The first thing I saw was an assertion that the Karroo Formation contains 800 Billion fossils. 800 Billion. Now of course this number of fossils has not been excavated. Nor do the number of archeological sites indicate the excitement that would exist if there were indeed that many fossils. But lets go away from numbers that were postulated in 1932 (yes that is when that number comes from) and we find that the director of the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontology in Johannesburg estimates some 40,000 fossils have been excavated. Lets put that number into perspective shall we? Since 1906, more than one million bones have been recovered from the La Brea tar pits.

The next thing they try to do is to take that absurdly high number and then make the assumption that the WHOLE earth was covered equally, which is observably false and a patently silly argument until we see that it originate from TalkOrigins which perfectly explains the whole situation. The extrapolate this to "prove" that there were "50 land animals per square feet(sic) of land" at the time of Noah. But if they want to extrapolate numbers, lets do that with humans/cro-magnon/Neanderthals. The stone age lasted, we are told, for 100,000 years. During this time these men were burying their dead just like we do today. And thanks to their shorter (estimated) lifespan during this time some 4 billion people lived and were buried. As men have always congregated around water these graves are in the same places that we are today. Yet we do not find these bones, or at least not in the numbers that should exist. Paleontologists and anthropologists should be tripping over these remains and they should be about as exciting as a common rock.

I mentioned in the previous paragraph that the whole earth is not covered equally in fossils. This is because these remains were planted via flood. The currents that existed at the time washed animals to certain areas where they were then dropped, very often headless. Headless? “[F]inding the head of a dinosaur is like finding a needle in a haystack.” (Nat. Geographic On Assignment, Lucy the T-rex, 2000) The head of course, is the least attached body part and its weight could see it torn from the body under conditions such as could occur in a large scale flood.

RT states that if the flood were true "Remains of ground-hugging plants would tend to be in the deepest layers of rocks; larger trees would be in rocks closer to the surface. But there would be the occasional fossils of a fallen tree that would be trapped in a deep layer of sedimentary rock among "ground-huggers"." They offer no evidence to backup this assertion, but I assume that they are talking about how in the fossil record the "older" rock contains smaller plants before it contains trees. But umm isn't that what we already see? Supposedly less evolved plants before more evolved plants? Hmm. How does that help them? Then throw in their next quote which really doesn't help their case at all. Its a bit out of context, but they grabbed it out of context so I will just bring it forward over here. "As we dug deeper and deeper beneath Thebes, everything would be the same; we would find hand axes, clams and dinosaurs mixed together all the way down." If they were mixed together, wouldn't that just negate their whole argument? Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I will assume that they either did not set up the quote or just chose a very poor section to quote from.

"One would expect to see that deeper rocks would contain more primitive forms of live, and shallower fossils would be of more highly evolved species." Erroneous assumption. There is no such thing as a simple life form. Each one is uniquely suited to its environment and mission. The DNA/RNA and the enzymes that enable them to exist are such that even if you completely discount Intelligent Design you cannot discount the amazing amount of information that must be in place for life to exist. One of those enzymes considered "“absolutely essential” for binding RNA and DNA, speeded up a 78-million year reaction into thousandths of a second."

"geologists and paleontologists ... have found that the species of fossils in the rock layers do not resemble the scenario required by the flood of Noah. They match exactly the scenario required by the theory of evolution." Personally I have appreciated how the aforementioned experts have fully explained polystrate fossils. A Polystrate Fossil is one that goes through multiple layers of rock. If you have ever driven through the mountains or a canyon then you have seen how rock is set down in layers, sometimes strikingly distinct layers. Each of these layers is supposed to represent tens of thousands or even millions of years. But there are literally tens of thousands of polystrate fossils found the world over. They are usually both rootless and branchless and either laid down, standing straight (as in Spirit Lake) or even upside down. Some of these have actually been found to contain as many as 17 animals inside of them, always found at the bottom of the trunk of an upright polystrate tree. Actually, thinking upon Spirit Lake, we may well find that those trees will end up polystrate as well. With no normal vegetation in or around that lake the sedimentation rate must have increased tremendously.

Anyways, I intended to go over multiple pages but only managed one. I may do another later, but its enough for now and its LATE.

fluff

Provided by Merchandize Liquidators a wholesale company

China Testing the U.S.

China is again testing the U.S.

This current test comes at approximately the same time in the new presidency as the last test. This week China has been harassing a unarmed US Navy vessel, the USNS Impeccable. The Impeccable (what a name to live up to!) was mapping in international waters when Chinese ships surrounded and harassed a Navy mapping ship in international waters off China, at one point coming within 25 feet of the American boat and strewing debris in its path. The crewmen of the impeccable used fire hoses against that vessel as they are unarmed (where is the wisdom in an unarmed Navy vessel?)

Pentagon officials said the close encounter followed these other incidents last week:

_On Wednesday, a Chinese Bureau of Fisheries Patrol vessel used a high-intensity spotlight to illuminate the Victorious, an ocean surveillance ship, as it operated in the Yellow Sea, about 125 nautical miles from China's coast, the Pentagon said. The next day, a Chinese Y-12 maritime surveillance aircraft conducted 12 fly-bys of Victorious at an altitude of about 400 feet and a range of 500 yards.

_On Thursday, a Chinese frigate approached USNS Impeccable without warning and crossed its bow at a range of approximately 100 yards, the Pentagon said. This was followed less than two hours later by a Chinese Y-12 aircraft conducting 11 fly-bys of Impeccable at an altitude of 600 feet and a range from 100-300 feet.

_On Saturday, a Chinese intelligence collection ship challenged Impeccable over bridge-to-bridge radio, calling her operations illegal and directing Impeccable to leave the area or "suffer the consequences."

For those who don't remember the Chinese similarly tested George Bush in 2001 when their fighter jet, while harassing a US surveillance plane, collided with it forcing the surveillance plane to land in China. That happened in late March of 2001.

Now some will point to this and say that China is rising and possibly trying to provoke an incident with us. I am not too sure of that. I think what they are doing is testing the new regime's response. This will indicate to the Chinese just how belligerent they can be in the region. By choosing an American target they can get a feel for how we will respond to their overtures towards neighboring countries, whereas if they tried this with say a Taiwanese vessel our response would be layered and take more time.

Now China is in a relatively better position vs the US than they were 8 years ago. Our economy is on the verge of collapse (who ever could have thought THAT might happen. Well, besides the Austrians that is) and we now have a significant portion of our military tied up in two little hell holes half the world away. Further the American appetite for armed conflict is nearly full. An action in the south pacific would not be looked on favorably. It could well be said that we must pass this test. I don't know just what that response should be as I am not a military man, nor versed in diplomacy. But one thing I can be sure of, is that I don't trust Obama and Hillary Clinton to be up to the task. Hillary as president would have be slightly better than the poser Obama, and McCain (much as I dislike him) would not tolerate such behavior so his response would likely have been better than what we will ultimately do.

Final thought: Is this the beginning of the event prophesied by Joe Biden? Should we be holding classes on "Loin Girding?"

Shabby Vogue going out of style?

Say it ain't so!

As Trevor Kaufman, the guru of "CEO Casual," told the Wall Street Journal in an article written at the top of the boom, "A suit has become something you wear when you're asking for money."

Uh, right.

In the bust, your clothes need to send a different message. There are fewer resources to spare. Everyone is conserving. The goal of your life becomes different. You are no longer permitted to pretend that your very existence is a blessing to the world. Instead, you must add more value to the world than you take from it. This is especially true in your work life.

In fact, this should be your professional motto: I can add more value to this firm than I take from it.

This is what every employer — who these days is reluctant to hire and reluctant to promote and pay — is actually seeking. No more fluff in the workforce. No more fluff in fashion either.

So should I go with a fedora, or tin foil?

Church Shooting

Illinois pastor shot and killed during church service

One more reason to never go anywhere without a firearm. That firearm may not be able to protect you. Sometimes violence is simply too random or unexpected. But that firearm may just be able to save the life of another. One never knows, so one should take steps to always be prepared, because at the very least your preparation will mitigate the circumstances you find yourself in.

UPDATE:
Pastor deflected first four shots with Bible.

Our dear commenter Briana thinks that more guns would lead to more violence. What it seems like to me is that after four shots from a .45 I would have had enough time to draw my gun and fire it. Instead of a dead pastor we WOULD HAVE HAD A DEAD ASSAILANT. Accidentally pressed the caps, but the emphasis is perfect. Churches are seen as Gun Free zones, or more accurately as a Victimization Zone. J. Neil Schulman made his book Stopping Power available for free in PDF format that addresses some of these issues. Mr Schulman made this book available for free after the Virginia Tech shootings, VTU being another Victimization Zone where people were unable to defend themselves and shot dead with a lowly .22LR pistol. Schulman rightly believes that wider dissemination of this information and its incorporation will save innocent lives. Lives like that of Rev. Fred Winters.

My advice to the Church. Grieve today. Prepare tomorrow. Don't let these crimes happen again.

Proposal to fix the Federal budget

I think I figured out Obama's plan to "half the deficit." See, everyone thinks he will do it by raising taxes or cutting spending. No. He is much smarter than that and has come up with a plan that has never been conceived of before.

Obama is going to nominate every tax cheating politician for some cabinet level position thereby forcing them to pay the same rate they would try to force on the populace. The latest is Ron Kirk who was nominated for U.S. Trade Representative. Now Mr Kirk's tab of only $10,000 is small fries compared to what Tim Geithner had to pay back. But Mr Kirk obviously is not as brilliant Mr Geithner who is touted as the only man "smart enough" to understand TARP, and just so happens to now be in charge of the IRS. If Mr Kirk was that smart he no doubt would now be paying a bigger payment (tho no penalty)

Before I digress too much, I figure if Obama just keeps putting these people up for cabinet positions then he will have found himself a source of revenue no previous President has ever even known to tap.

Now for some digression...

If Timothy Geithner cannot understand the 66,000 page tax code, and he is the ONLY man SMART ENOUGH to understand a single (out of the many) bailout program, just how is ANYONE supposed to be able to comply with the illegal tax code? 66,000 pages is more than the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and the Apocrypha put together! However, studying these books would take a years of dedicated study, and the tax code is revised every single year thereby negating any understanding one had previously. I refer back to the SCOTUS Doctrine known as Void For Vagueness "A statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law." I mean, if some super brilliant person like Geithner is unable to understand this code, how is some lowly person like myself who is only 2-3 standard deviations above the average IQ supposed to understand it?

BTW, its been 9 years and I STILL can't find a law requiring the average American to pay an income tax. Nor have I seen any SCOTUS ruling that overturns their numerous rulings stating that the 16th amendment "confers no new powers" to the Federal Government, nor their overturning of the 1894 income tax as unConstitutional. (Hint: if the 1894 income tax was unconstitutional, and the 16th amendment conferred "no new powers" then the 1913 income tax is every bit as unconstitutional as the 1894 version)

Oh just read my previous rant on this. Nothing new to add really.
Or this rant
Or this one
And then there is this follow up to the one above.

For those in IT

You simply must check this out!

Microsoft will provide technology training to up to 2 million people over the next three years to help them succeed in the 21st century economy.

The initiative, called Elevate America, will offer a website where people can understand the technical skills they will need for the jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities of today and tomorrow and provide the resources to help acquire these skills.

The Web site, http://www.microsoft.com/ElevateAmerica, provides access to several Microsoft online training programs, including how to use the Internet, send e-mail and create a resume, as well as more advanced programs on using specific Microsoft applications

It looks like the courses are entirely online. I haven't fully explored it but this may be just the ticket for some of us looking for a leg up in this economy.

Net Fluff

Joining in with Heidi...

Type (”[your name] needs”) INTO YOUR FAVORITE SEARCH ENGINE and see what comes up. Make sure to use the quote marks. List the first 10 sentences that make sense

1) Erik needs an heir in order to receive aid in regaining his title, lands, and children stolen from him by his treacherous brother, Nicholas. Already have an heir, but would love to have more kiddos!

2) i'm not running for student counsel this year so erik is. he needs good campaign slogans/pictures. Student counsel seem to be setting my sights a bit low!

3) erik needs a team. Not sure what to make of this one

4) Erik needs to get off his ass -
The title says it all. Wow, they really know me!

5) Erik needs Portland women to interview on camera! Must look good in (and out) of a bikini!

6) We also have a short film by Justin on why Erik needs to wear glasses Ooh, scientific

7) Erik needs your phone numbers Especially nubile callipygous women!

8) Eric needs Cable Petition

9) MySpace profile for Eric needs medication with pictures, videos, personal blog, interests, information about me and more

10) Erik needs to speedily retract and denounce his earlier comments on the subject, not defend them. They are indefensible. I wonder how many have thought this?

Dinosaurs

Today I took my boy to a Dinosaur museum, Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center to be exact. It's a neat place to visit and if you are traveling hwy 24 through Woodland park you can't miss it as there are colorful models of a T-Rex and a styracosaurus standing guard at the front of the building. If you go during the weekday you can also see the guys working in the lab as they remove bones from the rock and make casts.

After looking around for ourselves we joined in on a tour. Some pretty good information but I, as a creationist, took exception to one statement (tho I didnt argue it on the tour as the thought hadn't fully formed) The guide stated that the large Sauropodomorphids (the "long necks") were less advanced than "later" dinosaurs such as the hadrosaurids (including duck-bills) because the sauropodomorphids did not chew their food and instead used stones (like in a gizzard) to grind their food. Gizzards are a less efficient method than chewing, I am not arguing that point. To be honest I don't have knowledge of that myself but I can certainly agree to it.

The exception I take it that it is less efficient for a large beast, some of which weighed up to 110 tons, would find chewing more effective. If we drop it down to just half that and say 55 tons its really just a race to get food into the mouth and into the body. I can't imagine that there would be near enough time for a creature to chew the amount of food that would be required to feed such an enormous beast.

I do not know the calorie requirements of a dinosaur, and of course no one does. But I have seen stated that a reptile can survive on approx 10% the calories required for a similar sized mammal because of it taking on external heat rather than creating its own. Still this leads to a requirement of 220,000 calories a day for a 55-ton animal. And that is survival, not growing/thriving. The above number was reached at assuming only 2 calories/lb, which is the same amount of calories that is consumed by each lb of fat (in humans) each day. It would seem to me that the number for daily living would be somewhat higher but going with the number above that would equal out to be 500 McDonald's double cheeseburgers each day, or 50 an hour assuming 10 hours of eating each day. Or 785 cans of corn. or 3150 cans of green beans. I feel sorry for the Brachiosaurus stuck eating green beans! Of course these figures would all be doubled at a minimum for the largest of the Sauropodomorphids. Anyways, my point is that a gizzard would be a more efficient way of taking in and processing food when the intake is so high. One "might" even say an example of a perfectly designed creature.

Final thoughts:
There is a school of thought that the sauropods dwelt in water which helped support their weight. This could put an increased caloric demand on the dinosaur, even accounting for warmer weather.

There is also a theory that the earth was far more oxygen rich back in the time of the dinosaurs. It is hard to imagine how such large beasts could breather in enough oxygen otherwise but that they did so somehow is obvious.

There is yet another theory that there was less gravity at that time. Intriguing but I don't see how it is possible and I am not stating I hold this view, just throwing it out there for consideration. Some valid points are certainly raised with regards to leverage and mechanics. There are other statements in the link that are problematic. Maybe I will address those another time.