Now you know and knowing is half the battle...GO JOE!
Holding on for dear life...
The most popular YouTube channels...
Play YouTube's "Spot the Difference" game...
NYC Subway map circa 1907...
Calling Dick Tracy!
President's Day approaches...remember Honest Abe...
If Guitar Hero was made for the NES...
And 50 of the greatest guitar solos...
And the goat jumped over the notch...
When you just gotta put the controller down...
A classic geek vid...Lightning Bolt!
Facebook users...beware the engagement ads...
Instant architecture...
How toys make there way into combat...
What a flame looks like in space...
Feeling depressed...try these alternatives...
The Life of Christ in Cats?
Newton's codex...the year 2012..and the Temple at the Center of Time...
Funny toilets from around the world...
Durex animals get it on...
If Da Vinci created the iPhone...
Driving at 225 MPH...
Probably the best intervention video ever...
The world's biggest boobs...38 KKK...
No need to press the snooze button again...
Quantum holographic storage...
The amazing flipping deer!
Donald Duck's humongous family tree...
Some art from Mark Frauenfelder...
Legalization...yes we can!
Maury has nothing on Ackbar...
It's 10PM...do you know where your kids are?
All About Snow; the Cryosphere Where the World is Frozen
The severe weather that has been taking place recently makes All About Snow the place to be. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) makes it possible for the snow bunny to find out the pertinent 'Snow Facts' as well as research the entire cryosphere, 'the portion of the Earth's surface where water is in a solid form, usually snow or ice.' Start with 'Cold Facts: Earth's Snow, Ice, and Frozen Soils' for an introduction to the various forms of solid water, then move to the impact that each form can have on our ecosystem, get an overview of the on-going projects and research in this area; rap up your visit with a summary of the latest cryospheric news. No need to don your winter woolens; here's your opportunity to get all the cold facts without leaving the warm indoors!
Be humble for you are made of earth.
Be noble for you are made of stars.
-- Serbian Proverb
Lord, where we are wrong,
make us willing to change;
where we are right,
make us easy to live with.
-- Rev. Peter Marshall
If something is important enough to you, you will find a way. If it is not, you will find an excuse. Often, difficult circumstances can challenge you, but they cannot stop you.
Only you can stop you.
Others can give encouragement, can teach you and help you or they can hold you back. Only you can decide what to do with it all and what to make out of what you've been handed.
There are some roads that lead to success and others that lead to despair. The path you are on depends entirely on the path you have chosen.
Whether you see your life filled with beauty and positive possibilities, or whether you see no hope at all - Your own perception will turn out to be a self fulfilling prophecy. So which one will You choose to see?
The world which you choose to experience and the world you choose to live in is precisely the world where you will be in.
The choice is yours.
This is Kristos, reminding you and reminding me that we all need to get up off the couch and start using our God given gifts and talents to better the world.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
"The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital." -- Joe Paterno
"The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing." -- Michael E. Gerber
"Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised." -- Denis Waitley
"I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through - then follow through." -- Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker'
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a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at
life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities."
- Dr. Seuss
Is It Because...
A girl came skipping home from school one day.
"Mommy, Mommy," she yelled, "we were counting today, and all the other kids could only count to four, but I counted to 10. See? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!"
"Very good," said her mother.
"Is it because I'm blonde?" the girl said.
"Yes, it's because you're blonde," said the mommy.
The next day the girl came skipping home from school.
"Mommy, Mommy," she yelled,
"we were saying the alphabet today, and all the other kids could only say it to D, but I said it to G. See? A, B, C, D, E, F, G!"
"Very good," said her mother.
"Is it because I'm blonde, Mommy?"
"Yes, it's because you're blonde."
The next day the girl came skipping home from school.
"Mommy, Mommy," she yelled, "we were in gym class today, and when we showered, all the other girls had flat chests, but I have these!" And she lifted her tank top to reveal a fully developed chest.
"Very good," said her embarrassed mother.
"Is it because I'm blonde, mommy?"
"No Honey, it's because you're 24."
Geek Trivia: The reigning wind
No matter how persistently bad the weather may get in your vicinity, you can always comfort yourself with the knowledge that -- at the very least -- you aren't trapped within the scope of an anticyclonic storm three times the size of planet Earth. That problem likely won't inconvenience humans until we find a way to colonize Jupiter, because the ultra-storm we're talking about is that planet's Great Red Spot (GRS).
However, dealing with extraterrestrial cyclones is a problem that the colonists of many local planets will face, though no storm is so visible or as long-lived as the GRS. Several planets in our solar system have observable mega-storms, with the GRS merely the largest and most famous example.
Jupiter is also home to the rather unpoetically named Oval BA storm (sometimes called Red Spot, Jr.), which appears just south of the GRS and was formed when three smaller storms called White Ovals converged. While the GRS has been observed for three centuries, Oval BA was first noticed in 2000, and the White Ovals that formed it were first recorded in 1939. Oval BA is younger and smaller than the GRS, which is to say its average diameter is "only" equal to that of planet Earth.
Outside of Jupiter, Saturn probably hosts the most well known extraterrestrial cyclones. The ringed planet's most notable storm is the Great White Spot (GWS) -- or should we say, Great White Spots. The GWS is a periodic storm that appears at roughly 28.5 year intervals, when Saturn's northern hemisphere is tilted in the direction of the sun. The GWS is usually a few thousand kilometers across when it first appears, then stretches out to a wide latitude, occasionally encircling the entire planet. Saturn is also home to the Dragon Storm, another periodic cyclone that glows a bright orange-pink when it appears.
Venus has two unnamed pairs of mega-anticyclones, one pair near each of its poles. Mars has also been shown to experience extremely brief (perhaps only hours-long) polar cyclones, some over a thousand miles wide. Neptune, meanwhile, has both the Great Dark Spot and the Wizard's Eye, two megastorms observed in 1989 by Voyager 2, with the former varying in size from the diameter of Earth to no bigger than all of Europe and Asia.
These storms are not only massive but intense. The GRS alone boasts peak wind speeds in the vicinity of 267 miles per hour (430 kilometers per hour), and that's not even close to the fastest wind in the solar system.
WHICH OF THE GREAT PLANETARY "SPOTS" PRODUCED THE FASTEST WINDS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM?
To find out, check out the Geek Trivia answer on TechRepublic.
Whiskey & Gunpowder
By Dan Denning
January 22, 2009
Melbourne, Australia
The big sleeper so far this year is oil. Oil prices have fallen 25% since rallying to just over $50 last week. The leverage is out of the oil market. And with a global recession, the IEA now predicts oil demand will fall for the second year in a row. It’s the first time that’s happened since 1983.
But the real story is how the falling oil price is hammering oil producers. Multinational oil companies are cutting back exploration programs. They’re not looking for oil. And you can’t produce what you can’t find.
As for the national oil companies in Mexico, Venezuela, and Russia, well they too are being hit hard by the falling oil price. During the big run up to $150, national oil companies were cash cows. But it now appears that little of the oil bounty was reinvested in new production or even maintenance of existing production.
So what do we have now? We have a situation here. A situation where the falling oil price is leading a big reduction in oil production. This will match, for a while reduced demand for oil. But we also think it’s baiting the trap for a huge blowback in oil prices. And the spark for that could be geopolitical. More on that next week.
It didn’t seem possible, but things are getting worse for America’s largest commercial banks, Citibank and the Bank of Amerika. “The U.S. government, recognizing that the banking crisis is far larger than originally thought, is laying the groundwork for a second phase of its rescue attempt, with plans to purge bad assets that are paralyzing the financial system,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Aha! Remember that phrase from last week, “incorporating the public debt?” This was the alchemical process by which a huge slab of outstanding debt was transferred to a new entity and converted into, ahem, “capital” in 17th century Britain. It now looks like you’ll see a new large national financial institution in America this year. It may even resemble a giant vacuum, or a garbage dump.
No matter what it looks like, it will be the receptacle for the metastasizing debt that is killing the financial sector. The Journal says that the discussions for the new “Bad Bank” between the Fed, the Treasury, and the FDIC, “show how the rapid deterioration of bank assets is outpacing the government’s rescue efforts. Banks are now struggling not only with the real-estate investments that sparked the crisis, but also with the car loans, credit-card debt and other consumer debt that have taken a hit with the faltering economy.”
We may as well get on with full nationalisation of the financial system. Thus far, it’s been incremental. But the end game is increasingly obvious now. Governments will either begin guaranteeing all mortgage lending and corporate debt (as plans in the U.K. suggest) and/or assume responsibility for the toxic assets impairing financial balance sheets (in exchange for equity).
What this means for stocks, paper currencies and gold bears more discussion.
If President Obama were to abolish the Fed and repeal the income tax laws, I’d find that worth celebrating. If he were to use his charm to talk us through the credit and debt detox — without any quantitative easing — I’d find that pretty encouraging, too.
Peace, love and happiness...until next time...
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