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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Go Woz Go!

Woz is Da Man.
gotta love a geek enjoying the limelight!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/24/wozniak.dancing.stars/index.html

Friday, March 20, 2009

week ending: march 20th, 2009

in the news this week:

- first day of spring
- president obama on jay leno's tonite show last nite
- michelle's garden
- tea parties

- - -

i dunno, i feel pretty good.  it's spring!  and we hit 90+ degrees yesterday!

i didn't watch the prez on leno last night, but the media is eating it up.

i was very very impressed that the first lady is putting a garden in, at the whitehouse.

the tea parties are interesting, just like the originals were.
they are starting out small, as the originals did.
hopefully they continue to grow, as the originals did.
of course, there is a contingent behind them, as there was with the originals.
( repcorps protesters & radicals now, vs. tea smugglers & radicals then )

and...
there are things happening in the big wide world, that are not being talked about.
(news is simply distraction, no meat, no meaning)
the woowoo sites i read are anticipating all kinds of SHTF... but i don't see it.

what i do see, is news not worth reporting.
and it's killing my braincell.

Happy Friday!

nothing much to say, just happy to be here...
:)

Thursday, March 19, 2009

in memory of...

SpaceBat - a glorious end for a mammal...

don't just unplug me, strap me on the outside of the shuttle, and light that fuse, baybee!!!
rock on spacebat, wherever ye may fly.

gardening at the whitehouse!

woot!
i love this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/dining/19garden-web.html?ref=dining

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

throw these in the pot too

http://www.buffalonews.com/180/story/611215.html

distasteful?

out here in da west, we have us a saying:
string 'em up!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090318/ap_on_go_co/aig_outrage

there's another saying too:
hangin's too good fer 'em !

i'm kidding, kinda...

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

and again...

getting it again.  wow!
i swear it is almost pushing me over.
leftside of my jaw, neck, shoulder, upper arm, and side are vibrating...

thrumming

i'm getting thrummed!
started about 10 minutes ago, on my neck...
now i'm feeling it all over my left side,
and progressing to other parts of my body.
even pushed me back into my chair.
feels really amazing.
powerful.

who are you?

Friday, March 13, 2009

parenting techniques

i thought this article was hilarious:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/03/13/p.techniques.use.husband/index.html

and, i especially love this quote:
"It worked. Fifteen minutes of quality time bought me an epic bath-and-magazine session,
and by the time I stumbled into bed, my husband was fast asleep"
;)

ciao'

Thursday, March 12, 2009

ice

i got an alert from this google news alert thing i setup, to watch for news articles that mention the wilkins ice shelf...
the article is here: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/37d38559748fef57cd9586aa75a635fe.htm
and here are some of the pertinent points:

  • The Northern Sea Route along the Arctic Siberian coast opened, and the Northwest Passage through the islands of northern Canada was also ice-free, for the second year in a row. These two passages have not been open simultaneously since before the last ice age started, some 100,000 years ago
  • The overall declining trend of sea-ice in the Arctic has now lasted three decades; the thickness of ice built up over the years is also decreasing
  • A large part of the Wilkins ice shelf in the Antarctic collapsed in February 2008. "The shelves often act like corks in a bottle, holding back glaciers on land, whose loss will raise sea levels." More cracks were recorded in the Wilkins ice shelf in December 2008.
  • The flow into the ocean of the Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier in western Greenland, one of the most important routes of ice loss, has doubled since 1997
  • The loss of ice from the West Antarctic ice sheet increased by 60 percent in the decade to 2006
  •  Ice loss from the Antarctic Peninsula, which extends from west Antarctica towards South America, increased by 140 percent
  • The USA's National Snow and Ice Data Center recorded the second lowest figure for the area of ice surviving the summer thaw in the Arctic Ocean since satellite monitoring began in 1979.
  • The atmosphere in the Arctic is warming twice as fast as in most other regions of the world; warming is amplified by the lower reflectivity of the earth's surface as ice and snow melt
  • The International Polar Year, a scientific programme that focuses on changing Arctic and Antarctic conditions, has found evidence of large-scale water drainage systems beneath the polar ice sheets, causing renewed concern about ice-sheet stability. The two-year programme, which began in March 2007, will draw to a close in March 2009
so, i'm wondering, will it be waterworld?
or we just start moving north into the newly temperate zones?

Monday, March 09, 2009

more asskicking

my ass hurts.  and my hips hurt.  and my knees hurt.
and everything between my ass and my knees hurts.
my calves feel close to cramping, and my big toenails are discolored from impact or pressure or whatever.
my feet feel ok.

futsal, baby!

Friday, March 06, 2009

futsal

so, played futsal again last night - and i'm sore, again.
my kids and my (former) players get a big kick out of it, especially when they smoke me and i fall on my booty.
and i think i'll get used to the "haha oldman!".

it's fun, and i'm very very slowly getting into shape, or something.
actually, it's just me noticing that i have a lower % of soreness in my whole body.
and that i can actually run up and down the pitch a few more times.
( um, 55% of the former, 4-5 times for the latter )

after the first day, i was sore from my nips down (for a whole week).
the 2nd time, i was sore from my bellybutton down (for most of the week).
last night was my 3rd time, and i'm only sore from the top of my buttocks down (one day & counting).


haven't been playing pirate so much lately, reading more books...
The Hammer of God - currently.


and been goofing off on facebook too, strange that i only started a page to check up on my kids,
and now i'm getting contacted from h.s. and college people.


a good quote from a class i attended last week:
"other than your job; what is it your friends, family, and community come to you for - that's your calling..."


namaste'
peace
later

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

did you know?

original: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Coup.htm


THE BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW ROOSEVELT

In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's "First 100 Days," America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.

The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires. This included some of America's richest and most famous names of the time:
  • Irenee Du Pont - Right-wing chemical industrialist and founder of the American Liberty League, the organization assigned to execute the plot.
  • Grayson Murphy - Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a group of J.P. Morgan banks.
  • William Doyle - Former state commander of the American Legion and a central plotter of the coup.
  • John Davis - Former Democratic presidential candidate and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan.
  • Al Smith - Roosevelt's bitter political foe from New York. Smith was a former governor of New York and a codirector of the American Liberty League.
  • John J. Raskob - A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party. In later decades, Raskob would become a "Knight of Malta," a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John McCone.
  • Robert Clark - One of Wall Street's richest bankers and stockbrokers.
  • Gerald MacGuire - Bond salesman for Clark, and a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion. MacGuire was the key recruiter to General Butler.
The plotters attempted to recruit General Smedley Butler to lead the coup. They selected him because he was a war hero who was popular with the troops. The plotters felt his good reputation was important to make the troops feel confident that they were doing the right thing by overthrowing a democratically elected president. However, this was a mistake: Butler was popular with the troops because he identified with them. That is, he was a man of the people, not the elite. When the plotters approached General Butler with their proposal to lead the coup, he pretended to go along with the plan at first, secretly deciding to betray it to Congress at the right moment.

What the businessmen proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs," to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course, would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. But MacGuire assured Butler the cover story would work:
    "You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second…"
The businessmen also promised that money was no object: Clark told Butler that he would spend half his $60 million fortune to save the other half.

And what type of government would replace Roosevelt's New Deal? MacGuire was perfectly candid to Paul French, a reporter friend of General Butler's:
    "We need a fascist government in this country… to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight."
Indeed, it turns out that MacGuire travelled to Italy to study Mussolini's fascist state, and came away mightily impressed. He wrote glowing reports back to his boss, Robert Clark, suggesting that they implement the same thing.

If this sounds too fantastic to believe, we should remember that by 1933, the crimes of fascism were still mostly in the future, and its dangers were largely unknown, even to its supporters. But in the early days, many businessmen openly admired Mussolini because he had used a strong hand to deal with labor unions, put out social unrest, and get the economy working again, if only at the point of a gun. Americans today would be appalled to learn of the many famous millionaires back then who initially admired Hitler and Mussolini: Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, John and Allen Dulles (who, besides being millionaires, would later become Eisenhower's Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively), and, of course, everyone on the above list. They disavowed Hitler and Mussolini only after their atrocities grew to indefensible levels.

The plot fell apart when Butler went public. The general revealed the details of the coup before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, which would later become the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. (In the 50s, this committee would destroy the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans with its communist witch hunts.) The Committee heard the testimony of Butler and French, but failed to call in any of the coup plotters for questioning, other than MacGuire. In fact, the Committee whitewashed the public version of its final report, deleting the names of powerful businessmen whose reputations they sought to protect. The most likely reason for this response is that Wall Street had undue influence in Congress also. Even more alarming, the elite-controlled media failed to pick up on the story, and even today the incident remains little known. The elite managed to spin the story as nothing more than the rumors and hearsay of Butler and French, even though Butler was a Quaker of unimpeachable honesty and integrity. Butler, appalled by the cover-up, went on national radio to denounce it, but with little success.

Butler was not vindicated until 1967, when journalist John Spivak uncovered the Committee's internal, secret report. It clearly confirmed Butler's story:
    In the last few weeks of the committee's life it received evidence showing that certain persons had attempted to establish a fascist organization in this country…

    There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned and might have been placed in execution if the financial backers deemed it expedient…

    MacGuire denied [Butler's] allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made to General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principle, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various form of veterans' organizations of Fascist character.
Needless to say, the survival of America's democracy is not an automatic or sure thing. Americans need to remain vigilant against all enemies... both foreign and domestic.

- - -

the link has a short biblio at the bottom...

back on 2.18.09

i thought i had seen something, but i think the blinders were slipped on for awhile...
here is something from 2.17: http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/16286/wilkins-ice-shelf-collapses
and this too: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1460070.php/Researchers_spot_huge_split_in_Antartic_ice_shelf_

kinda "funny" that i couldn't actually find anything on the 18th...
:-/
# end

duck!

so, we had an asteroid pass between the earth and the moon?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090304/ap_on_re_us/asteroid_close_call;_ylt=Ao0dmNyFv8HZOTpSNburoZqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpZWlpM2g1BHBvcwMyNQRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDcGhld2FzdGVyb2lk

this makes me ask:
  • are there any others in the same orbit?
  • did this near miss change its orbit?
  • how soon will it be back?

templates r teh suxor

totally effed up my template... *sigh*
i'll fix it later!
/stomps off

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Happy Squareroot Day!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090303/ap_on_fe_st/odd_square_root_day

jim rogers "We're still going to eat, probably"

saw this article on urbansurvival.com, about jim rogers buying farmland...
(he's some kinda investment guru, btw)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29477080

another quote from that article:
"If I'm right, agriculture is going to be one of the greatest industries in the next 20 years, 30 years."
Food inventories are at their lowest in 50 years,
Rogers said, while the oil and mining sectors are also good bets.

i got my playpool, i got my seeds, i got my soil...
;)

urbanfarmer - woohoo!
now i need a website too...
:P

Monday, March 02, 2009

What do your friends and neighbors ask of you?

i asked someone a question the other day, becuz i'm constantly struggling with the idea, of "what should i be doing?".
he had a great answer: "outside of your work, what do your friends and neighbors ask of you?"
this turns out to have tremendous value to me.

ask the right question, they say...
:)

sites to visit

sites i would like to visit:
just a start...
;)