Tidbits From The Web Tidbits From The Web...: November 2009

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Tidbits From The Web #57


The great OJ scam...
Land of Talk...It's OK...
It's OK...you can laugh...they aren't your kids...
Which states will take longest to rebound with jobs?
Sesame Street turns 40...some interesting trivia and videos...
Google Earth shows you the ABCs...
Human enhancement...
Sony 360...
Holy barnacles!
The great milk scam...
Can you trust your eyes?
Introducing artist Tim Biskup...
If you ever wanted to know some of those additives in the flu vaccine...
Speaking of the flu vaccine...another conspiracy theory...
Snow makes Russian kids crazy...
When your job is lemons...make lemonade!
Street Fighter squared...
People of public transit...
The birth of an elephant...
The great artificial sweetener scam...
What is martial law and how does it apply to you?
Interesting take on little red riding hood music video...
The perilous path of home ownership...
Where is Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith when you need 'em?
What a douche... (*WARNING EXPLICIT LANGUAGE*)
One Eskimo...
Bringing down the (ware)house...




Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new President will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil, and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight. American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and to hope for the best. But is anyone prepared for the worst? Michael Ruppert is a different kind of American. He predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter "From the Wilderness" at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial.

Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation. He is especially passionate over the issue of "peak oil," the concern raised by scientists since the 1970s that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel. While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Ruppert doesn't hold back at sounding an alarm. He portrays a future that resembles apocalyptic science fiction. Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded; and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism. Smith lets viewers form their own judgments.



Today's Message

CHANGE BEGINS WITH CHOICE
by Jim Rohn

Any day we wish; we can discipline ourselves to change it all. Any day we wish; we can open the book that will open our mind to new knowledge. Any day we wish; we can start a new activity. Any day we wish; we can start the process of life change. We can do it immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.

We can also do nothing. We can pretend rather than perform. And if the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are. We can choose rest over labor, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make. But while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause. As Shakespeare uniquely observed, "The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves." We created our circumstances by our past choices. We have both the ability and the responsibility to make better choices beginning today. Those who are in search of the good life do not need more answers or more time to think things over to reach better conclusions. They need the truth. They need the whole truth. And they need nothing but the truth.

We cannot allow our errors in judgment, repeated every day, to lead us down the wrong path. We must keep coming back to those basics that make the biggest difference in how our life works out. And then we must make the very choices that will bring life, happiness and joy into our daily lives.

And if I may be so bold to offer my last piece of advice for someone seeking and needing to make changes in their life - If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree. You have the ability to totally transform every area in your life - and it all begins with your very own power of choice.


Dr. Goodword's Office The Alpha Dictionary

Today's feature, the Alpha Dictionary, is a site developed by the former 'word of the day' author and Bucknell professor, Dr. Robert Beard, affectionately know as Dr. Goodword. The subscriber who submitted the site describes it as 'humourous, educational and well designed, a site that 'lexophiles' will love (and should be required reading for all English teachers and other lovers of our native? tongue).' In addition to the daily 'Goodwords' posted and the language resources, there are fun quizzes for adults and children, plenty to maintain the interest of the whole family. Take the 'Rebel- Yankee Test' to see where your roots really are. Hope ya'll enjoy (no mystery about my roots!).



Listening to your Brain
Part of the 8-channel Wireless EEG Monitoring Platform developed by IMEC and the Holst Centre is a steel drum ceiling design to provide a responsive environment to confront visitors with an acoustic representation of their electrical brain activity. Wolfgang Eberle, Senior Scientist/Project Manager Bioelectric Systems and Lindsay Brown Researcher, Body Area Network introduce Joe Desposito of Electronic Design Magazine to the Steel Sky, a work of art by Christoph De Boeck.


CrimeReports Maps Out Local Crimes


If you want to check out a neighborhood you're planning on moving to or just want to see how things are looking in your corner of Sunnyvale, CrimeReports mashes up local police reports with a map of the area.

CrimeReports will display, when data is available, a variety of crimes including homicide, breaking and entering, robbery, theft, theft of/from a vehicle, assault, and sexual offenses by default. You can also add in other crimes like kidnapping, arson, alarm responses, and proactive police activity like community policing and vehicles stops.

All of the above have color coded flags that can be easily read on the map. The flags are identified in the left hand column or by mouse click—both give you the type of crime and the location. You can also adjust the range of dates displayed to the last few days, last week, two weeks, month, or a custom date range via calendar. CrimeReports is a free service and requires no login.

CrimeReports



The Batteryless Remote Control
Arveni is a European company that has developed a system remote that is powered by the ambient energy the user applies to the buttons on the remote control. While the technology is still being proto-typed, we got an exclusive look at the worlds only batteryless remote control.


Insight

MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE


Shall we have the temerity to declare that we are not responsible for the sores of the present-day world?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


I think what needs to happen for real social change to occur is to have two generations in a row that share a desire to change society.

Judy Wicks


Today's Quotes

LEARNING/EDUCATION

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” -- William S. Burroughs

"Learn to...be what you are, and learn to resign with good grace all that you are not." -- Henri Frederic Amiel

"If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability." -- Henry Ford

"The primary success factor is knowing how to learn from others and rely on yourself." -- Denis Waitley






All My Sons...

Four friends, who hadn't seen each other in 30 years, reunited at a party. After several drinks, one of the men had to use the rest room.

Those who remained talked about their kids.

The first guy said, "My son is my pride and joy. He started working at a successful company at the bottom of the barrel. He studied Economics and Business Administration and soon began to climb the corporate ladder and now he's the president of the company. He became so rich that he gave his best friend a top of the line Mercedes for his birthday."

The second guy said, "Darn, that's terrific! My son is also my pride and joy. He started working for a big airline company, then went to flight school to become a pilot. Eventually he became a partner in the company, where he owns the majority of its assets. He's so rich that he gave his best friend a brand new jet for his birthday."

The third man said: "Well, that's terrific! My son studied in the best Universities and became an engineer. Then he started his own construction company and is now a multimillionaire. He also gave away something very nice and expensive to his best friend for his birthday: A 30,000 square foot mansion."

The three friends congratulated each other just as the fourth returned from the restroom and asked: "What are all the congratulations for?"

One of the three said: "We were talking about the pride we feel for the Successes of our sons. ..What about your son?"

The fourth man replied: "My son is gay and makes a living dancing as a stripper at a nightclub."

The three friends said: "What a shame...What a disappointment."

The fourth man replied: "No, I'm not ashamed. He's my son and I love him. And he hasn't done too bad either. His birthday was two weeks ago, and he received a beautiful 30,000 square foot mansion, a brand new jet and a top of the line Mercedes from his three boyfriends."





Whiskey & Gunpowder
By Wayne Allyn Root
November 23, 2009
Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.


Why Haste in Healthcare But Not in War?

I’ll keep this short and simple. Our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan every day. Yet, Obama appears in no hurry to decide how best to support and protect them. To the contrary, Obama stalls and procrastinates claiming he’d rather do it right, than fast. Meanwhile our sons and daughters die…and the morale of troops disintegrates.

Yet, when it comes to reforming healthcare OBAMA DEMANDS WE RUSH. Instead of doing it right, he demands we do it fast. Even if it means an incompetent, bumbling, hapless, and corrupt federal government might take over 17% of the U.S. economy. Even though government-run Medicare and Medicaid already threaten to bankrupt America with waste, incompetence, theft and corruption. Even though the federal government has never before run anything successfully, efficiently and profitably. What kind of madman would rush this decision on adding trillions in new spending on a risky unproven scheme in the midst of the worst depression since 1929 (and in my opinion it is getting worse)? If there was ever a decision needed to be made right, rather than fast, this is it.

So why the rush? Obama knows anyone with common sense that has time to think about this plan (let alone read the actual bill), would never support it. Certainly not now in the midst of economic Armageddon. That is why Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are demanding Congressmen and Senators vote on it before they read it...and before we (the voters) hear about the details — the massive new taxes, the onerous new mandates, the rationing, the criminal penalties, he dramatic expansion of Big Brother in our lives.

The vote must happen before the average distracted American voter realizes they will be forced to buy health insurance or be fined $15,000 or sent to prison; before Americans realize 50 million patients will be added to an already overloaded, overburdened healthcare system — while adding no new doctors, or worse yet, causing tens of thousands of doctors to retire rather than work for lower wages, higher taxes, and heavier workloads; before anyone realizes that you don’t save money by spending an extra trillion dollars; before anyone realizes that government “experts” have always far underestimated the cost of every new proposed government program — in order to sell it — often by 10 times or more.

Do you need to know anymore about the reason Obama is rushing this pig of a bill through Congress? But there is more. Obama is afraid that Americans will realize the Senators and Congressmen, who are being threatened and bribed to vote for universal healthcare, know it is so bad that they themselves REFUSE to live by it. They have their own healthcare plan — no rationing or higher taxes (or both) for them.

Obama must rush the vote before anyone realizes he will not dare tax the top-of-the-line private health plans that could actually pay for this big government boondoggle — because those plans belong to the union members that supported Obama for President. Obama is owned lock, stock and barrel by the government employee unions, teachers unions, and auto unions.

And finally, Obama wants to rush through universal healthcare before anyone realizes that the taxes and surcharges to pay for it will cost millions of jobs and huge tax increases on EVERYONE!

The definition of a Ponzi scheme is to steal from one group of suckers to pay another. Eventually all Ponzi schemes fail — when you run out of suckers. In this case, the suckers are American taxpayers. Obama says only the rich will pay — don’t believe it. A program this big and corrupt will hit everyone, regardless of income in their pocketbook. The rich will certainly be hit. Some will retire; some will move offshore; some will go underground; some will cut back on hours because the reward is no longer worth the risk; and many will go out of business under the new burdens. Obama will learn that you CAN kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

The damage done to the rich will reverberate in deadly fashion to the middle class. First, jobs will be lost by the millions. Yes, millions MORE jobs than we’ve already lost. As my father used to say, “I’d love to hate the rich, but I’ve never gotten a job from a poor person.” And, when the tax revenues necessary to fund universal government-run healthcare fail to appear (because the rich have gone out of business, or refuse to work), Obama will turn to the middle class to pay the bill. It may take 5 years of massive, unimaginable budget deficits, but soon enough the middle class will be asked to pay dearly.

Disaster looms. Don’t say you weren’t warned. The only bright lining is that the end of Obama and Pelosi’s reign looms too. From now on, let’s call a vote for universal healthcare “Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional Death Panels.” Political suicide awaits the Democrats foolish and arrogant enough to pass this bill.

So, now you can clearly see why Obama can wait with a decision regarding Afghanistan (while our sons and daughters are fighting and dying), but he has no choice but to rush a vote on universal health care. Many of you may think it’s because Obama and his minions are inept. Well, they may be, but they are also disastrously devious and know the way to get “the worst bill in the history of America” passed is by rush, rush, rush, and what better time than when Americans are distracted by the Christmas holidays.

Regards,
Wayne Allyn Root


Peace, love and happiness...until next time...



Sunday, November 8, 2009

Tidbits From The Web #56



Mad skills on the tramp...
Obama makes a cameo...
Insane in the membrane...4 herbs for the brain...
Public breastfeeding...
In memory of Halloween...
If you ever wanted to know more about iPhones...
Astronomy pic of the day...
Oh by the way...the dollar is doomed...
Top 100 villains in comics...
Big Brother is watching soon...
A cool animated music video...
Why you should be upset...
God is watching...
Top 10 MLB offensive seasons...
The dollar is doomed part II...
Bloody charades...
Bailout lies threaten you savings...
5 year old gymnast...
Reclaiming our Central Bank and monetary policy...
30 little known facts about the United States...
Keep drinking that Kool-aid...or maybe not...
Brace yourself for higher for grocery inflation...
Flu vaccine exposed...
FAT kids falling...
Top 25 hardest video games of all time...
GTA vs Frogger...
Flu vaccine exposed part II...
We don't need no stinkin' fingerprints!

Circle the cat...if you can...


"What is Money?"







"FEELING GREAT"


John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!" He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"

He replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or...I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or... I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.

"Yes, it is," he said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live your life."

I reflected on what he said. Soon thereafter I left to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back. I saw him about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins...Wanna see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter," he replied. "Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or...I could choose to die. I chose to live."

"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked. He continued, "..the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses I got really scared. In their eyes, I read he's a dead man. I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said John. “She asked if I was allergic to anything ' Yes, I replied.' The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, Gravity." Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude... I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

This is Kristos, reminding you that to a large degree, happiness depends on your own perspective.




DRX9000 Spinal Decompression System

http://ct.email.engineeringtv.com/rd/cts?d=33-68005-894-433-2001-3445235-0-0-0-1-2-192 The DRX9000 True Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression System is designed to provide pain relief for compressive and degenerative injuries of the spine. As it relates to Axiom Worldwide's DRX technology, the theory behind non-surgical spinal decompression is a process whereby forces are applied to the spine in a manner that maximizes spinal elongation. Since its inception, the DRX9000 has shown promising anecdotal results in treating back pain caused by herniated discs, degenerative disc disease, sciatica, and facet syndrome

MegaConverter2

Today's feature is a site that will convert just about anything from one unit to a different unit, from angles, area to wire density and wire resistance with lots of units in between. There are links listed in the 'Other Sites' on the conversion 'that have applicability to the category chosen.' Ladies, don't despair. There's a kitchen measure converter that goes beyond the ordinary cookbook - how about 16 dashes equivalent to one teaspoon. MegaCinverter2 is a site to bookmark. You never know when you might need this type of tool!


NWUAV MEMS Fuel Injection System

The NWUAV MEMS Fuel Injection System uses Hewlett Packard Ink Jet technology to atomize a variety of fuels including JP5, JP8 and logistical fuels used in internal combustion engines. The system will allow longer duration flight times and reduced (green house gas) emissions as a result of the ability to digitally control the fuel delivery and droplet size to a level much smaller than is conventionally possible using carburetors and COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) fuel injectors.

Today's Quotes

OVERCOMING THE NEGATIVE

“Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.” -- Victor Hugo

"People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them." -- George Bernard Shaw

"We were not created to be eaten by anxiety, but to walk erect, free, unafraid in a world where there is work to do, truth to seek, love to give and win." -- Joseph Ford Newton

"One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself." -- Lucille Ball


In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

- Henry David Thoreau


Speak when you're angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.

- Lawrence J. Peter


Imagination was given to us to compensate for what we are not; a sense of humor was given to us to console us for what we are.

- Mark McGinnis


Insight

STAY GROUNDED


The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

Albert Ellis


Don't get too big for your britches. It's easy to get all caught up in the hype and start believing it.

Maxie Baughan




A Summer Skirt Situation...

As the bus stopped and it was her turn to get on, a lovely looking woman became aware that her skirt was too tight to allow her leg to come up to the height of the first step of the bus.

Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the bus driver, she reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little, thinking that this would give her enough slack to raise her leg. She tried to take the step, only to discover that she couldn't.

So, a little more embarrassed, she once again reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little more, and for the second time attempted the step

Once again, much to her chagrin, she could not raise her leg.

With a little smile to the driver, she again reached behind to unzip a little more and again was unable to take the step.

About this time, a large Texan who was standing behind her picked her up easily by the waist and placed her gently on the step of the bus.

She went ballistic and turned to the would-be Samaritan and yelled, "How dare you touch my body! I don't even know who you are!"

The Texan smiled and drawled, "Well, ma'am, normally I would agree with you, but after you unzipped my fly three times, I kinda figured we was friends."




Whiskey & Gunpowder
By David Calderwood
October 29, 2009
Revolutionary Language


Will You Be Middle Class Much Longer?

Many people write of the imminent destruction of the U.S. middle class (of which I consider myself a member) but few have explained specifically how this occurs. Understanding the mechanism seems important if I hope to avoid the fate of most of my peers.

An insight on this question came from an unexpected quarter.


A gentleman by the name of Fernando Aguirre, who posts on Internet forums and his blog as FerFAL, has written voluminously about his experiences as an Argentine citizen during and after the economic cataclysm that wracked his country in 2001. I first found a long forum post, and then a Google search of “FerFAL” revealed a larger web presence, including a recently published book.

Mr. Aguierre shares his thoughts on all sorts of related subjects, from food storage to guns to politics (he appears to really like Rep. Ron Paul). I personally found a great deal of value among what I’ve seen so far.

One brief passage struck me, however, because it related to the mechanism by which middle-class people become poor during an economic meltdown. The mechanism may be obvious, but it is important to see how theory actually worked in the real world.

Mr. Aguierre shares (in “Part IV”) how, while studying architecture following the 2001 crisis, a social studies teacher illustrated Argentina’s middle class’ slide into poverty. Quoting the teacher from memory, Mr. Aguierre writes,

“[Those in the] middle class suddenly discover that they are overqualified for the jobs they can find and have to settle for anything they can obtain, therefore unemployment sky rockets: too much to offer, too little demand. You see they prepare, study for a job they are not going to get. You kids, you are studying Architecture because you simply wish to do so. Only 3 or 4 percent of you will actually find a job related to architecture.”

We all sat there, letting it all sink in. After a few months, it all proved to be true. Even the amount of students that dropped out of college increased to at least 50%. They either [saw] no point in studying something that would not make much of a difference in their future salaries, had no money to keep themselves in college, or simply had to drop college to work and support their families.

This reads like a premonition.

The USA’s middle-class includes lots of people whose careers rest on higher education and specialized certification. While plumbers, electricians, factory employees and truck drivers typically are among the middle-class, most of those populating suburbia are accountants, middle managers, sales people, financial consultants, teachers, nurses, writers, etc. In other words, as manufacturing and now building activity contract, more of the middle class is made up of the college-educated in white-collar careers.

Factor in our current economic pickle and it’s easy to see the most likely path ahead.


With the economic expansion built on mass optimism and debt rolling over, conditions are now fertile for questioning the college degree system as jobs for the college-educated evaporate en masse. The ability of technology to replace white-collar jobs is widespread, and an increasing need to cut costs is finally driving its use, just as changing economic (and regulatory) conditions also drive the replacement of manpower with robotics in the factory.

Across the economy, the need to cut employment costs (not just payroll, but payroll taxes and benefits) is resulting in mass layoffs of sales people and white-collar office staff. When one considers how much work can be replaced now by accounting software, electronic sales presentations, flatter organizational structures, and “news persons” filing reports for free on the Internet via blogs, it is obvious that vast numbers of middle-class Americans teeter on the precipice of unemployability, not just unemployment.

When the “unique” skill sets that commanded $50,000 to $100,000 (or more) annual salaries turn out to be in vast oversupply, the only course left is to compete with those with neither a college degree nor technical education for jobs that can’t support a middle-class lifestyle.

Hands-on service occupations like nursing and medicine are also far from safe. At the end of the day, it is productivity that pays for such work to be done, and when vast numbers of people cannot find economically productive work, economic reality will land on these occupations, too.

When the economic tide goes out, all boats sink into the mud.

Too many people were goaded into illusory occupations by tax subsidies for higher education, government (rather than market) demand, and other distortions like the credit-without-prior-production of the central bank. Political pandering and central planning replaced the natural balance of an economy growing organically through the honest signals of the price system.

As long as there was enough optimism and ignorance to sustain the illusion, the distortions only grew larger.

Though the ignorance largely remains, there’s no more blind denial left to sustain the burden of all that wasted effort. If your job disappears, it may not come back.

This time it really is different. The final stages of that blind denial included fiscal imprudence that bordered on insanity. The mirage economy can’t return until after the pendulum has swung its full travel to the other side of the arc. That path leads through the valley of a crushing economic depression, one that will radically and permanently alter the lives of middle-class Americans who are almost universally unaccustomed to hardship.

Regards,
David Calderwood

A Parting Shot

I’m sure it was an honest mistake.

Seems the effects of the stimulus have been overstated.

“My bad,” says the White House…

“An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.”

In a couple of cases a lot of very temporary call center jobs were created, sometimes counted twice, and then almost immediately destroyed. Other times workers merely got raises, which were counted as newly created jobs.

But honestly, why would we expect anything different? This is what happens when easy money flows out of from the feds. Misallocations, theft and lies…surprise!

Peace, love and happiness...until next time...