it's semi-official!

My soon to be new daughter-in-law, Chantal. I've known for a couple of weeks but it's been fun keeping it from the rest of the family!

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What will BO's supporters do now!

This is so hilarious!



And so, so true!

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Read a Flag, On a Hill at ejectejecteject.com

Okay fine. We have the most left-wing radical president-elect ever. You want some comfort? Go read this:

A FLAG, ON A HILL

It will make you feel better, I guarantee it!

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Walter William's latest

Walter Williams makes a very good point doesn't he?

Affordable Health Care

by Walter E. Williams

One of the campaign themes this election cycle is "affordable" health care. Shouldn't we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the "affordable" housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care? Shouldn't we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine?

Read the rest here: http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/10/22/affordable_health_care

I fear for our country's future if the communist Barak Obama wins this election. I don't think things will be all that great with McCain either, but at least he doesn't hate our country as Obama does.

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All right! Ben Bova is on the right side of this one! The Washington Post printed this article:

DEAR MR. (FUTURE) PRESIDENT

AN ENERGY FIX WRITTEN IN THE STARS

Gadflies address the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

By Ben Bova

Sunday, October 12, 2008; Page B02

You're heading into some rough times as you move into the White House, Mr. Future President, what with the economy in recession, financial markets in turmoil, global warming, terrorism, war and soaring energy prices. But I can offer you a tip for dealing with that last issue, at least: Look to the stars.

That's right. You can use the powerful technology we've forged over a half-century of space exploration to solve one major down-to-Earth problem -- and become the most popular president since John F. Kennedy in the process.

Right now, the United States is shelling out about $700 billion a year for foreign oil. With world demand for energy increasing, gas prices will head toward $10 per gallon during your administration -- unless you make some meaningful changes. That's where space technology can help -- and create new jobs, even whole new industries, at the same time.

You'll have to make some hard choices on energy. Nuclear power doesn't emit greenhouse gases, but it has radioactive wastes. Hydrogen fuels burn cleanly, but hydrogen is expensive to produce and hard to distribute by pipeline. Wind power works in special locations, but most people don't want huge, noisy wind turbines in their backyards.

Solar energy is a favorite of environmentalists, but it works only when the sun is shining. But that's the trick. There is a place where the sun never sets, and a way to use solar energy for power generation 24 hours a day, 365 days a year: Put the solar cells in space, in high orbits where they'd be in sunshine all the time.

You do it with the solar power satellite (SPS), a concept invented by Peter Glaser in 1968. The idea is simple: You build large assemblages of solar cells in space, where they convert sunlight into electricity and beam it to receiving stations on the ground.

Click here to see the rest at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002450.html

Solar power is a nice idea, but to put a system big enough to actually do you some good would cost $40,000-50,000! And just about the time you pay for it, it's time to replace it! It's more cost effective to buy your power from the grid. But the sun shines 24 hours a day in space. If you collect the power there and beam it down to the power grid it becomes cost effective.

If you fear the microwave beams there is no need. The power is spread out over a wide area and you can make the beam self collimating (which simply means it shuts down automatically if it drifts off target since it uses feedback from the target itself to aim). With space based solar, nuclear, and coal, plus "drill here drill now!" we can reach energy independence in not ten years, but perhaps 20!

We can do it. "Let's Roll!"

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The religion of environmentalism

I've been thinking about modern day environmentalism and have come to some conclusions.

Environmentalism is anti-human, anti-freedom, and anti-Christian. It is a religion that must be taken on faith, because if you look at environmental principles rationally and using the scientific method, the whole environmental movement falls apart.

Scientists that buy into the global warming argument are either a) outside their area of expertise or b) funded by sources that will not allow them to show their evidence that it does not exist or is not a serious problem. Those scientists that do argue that global warming is a fraud are vilified and accused of altering their test results to mollify the source of their funding. Ironic, since it's the pro-warming crowd that either falsifies its data or modifies its computer models to give the proper results.

In the '70s the alarmists screamed that we were causing the globe to cool and disaster would surely follow. Twenty years later the same people were yelling the same thing about global warming. Now that the earth is cooling again, they've decided to hedge their bets by calling it "climate change." What utter nonsense. They tell us that the current cooling trend is only temporary and the earth will warm again. Well, yes! And then it will cool again and then it will warm again and, well that's the point isn't it? Climate always changes. There have been far greater fluctuations in the past and we're still here.

The true purpose of environmentalism is to scare us into socialism. I always say follow the money. I can amend that to follow the power. Socialism is not a system that works well for the people that have to live under it. It is a system that can be manipulated to give a few enormous power and wealth and that is why so many people support it. They think they will be the ones that get the power and wealth, but for most they will be disappointed. Few of Lenin's fellow revolutionaries survived. As successful revolutionaries, they were just too dangerous for Lenin to allow them to survive. The same will be true for the vast majority of those who are using the environmental religion to advance their socialistic cause.

People, who value their religion, must stop the godless socialists. People who value freedom must stop the environmentalist who would steal it. All people must stop the anti-human zealots that would "save" the planet for less deserving plants and animals.

Some of the political aspects of the environmental movement are explored in Vaclav Klaus' book Blue Planet in Green Shackles. Klaus is a former president of the Czech Republic.

In Iain Murphy's book The Really Inconvenient Truths, Murray points out (quoting from the CEI website):

• How ethanol, the liberals' favorite fuel, is destroying the world's rainforests--and could cause global food shortages
• How Al Gore's hero Rachel Carson cost the lives of millions of Africans through her efforts to ban DDT
• How the environmentalists have covered up the polluting effects of contraceptive and chemical abortion drugs
• How the Endangered Species Act actually endangers species
• How Gore's vision of greater state control over the economy has already produced some of the greatest environmental disasters in history

Its interesting to not that even the World Health Organization is now in favor of legalizing DDT to combat the epidemic of malaria in Africa. It also should be pointed out that the mosquito that carries malaria is found in the U.S.! Malaria could easily be transferred from Africa or South America to the United States if it is not controlled soon.

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Student pictures

I don't believe I did that! I had some students asking about the pictures I took at the end of the last school year. They told me they couldn't find them, which I thought was strange, since I updated the site quite a while ago. Well I checked and though I did update the site, somehow I missed putting the link on the home page. It was updated on every other page, just not on the most important one! Well it's done now, finally!

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9-11-01 the tribute

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Our Heroes

I heard the dems were squealing about this ad. As I watched I'm thinking, "yeah I can see they wouldn't like this ad," and then the returned soldier walked away from the camera and I was in tears. Tears of gratitude for our heroes who are keeping us safe--and tears of anger at people like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barak Obama who are trying to lose this war for their own personal power. They are despicable and they should be stopped, no must be stopped!



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This is a rant!

Having been a mechanic for about four years I think I know a little bit about cars and how to treat them and the customer. After being a mechanic and finding out that working on other people's cars wasn't as fun as working on your own, what with the customer wanting it just right and right now! and dealing with bosses who want you to be a wizard with a wrench and be able to diagnose a problem using just touch and smell, I quit to go to the university and get a less demanding career. Yeah teaching. So much less demanding, right...

Anyway I can fix most things on my car myself, but for anything major, I hire a mechanic since I want it just right and right now!













Breaker Bar

A couple of months ago I had the rear struts replaced by a mechanic since I didn't have the tools to do the job myself. Today I rotated the tires and found that the lug nuts had been torqued down so tight it took a breaker bar and a cheater pipe to break them loose! For those who don't know, a breaker bar is a solid bar, about 18 inches long, that attaches to sockets when you need the extra leverage a ratchet wrench won't give you. If you really need extra leverage, you "cheat" and put a piece of pipe on the bar to lengthen it for even more leverage.










Woman using an air impact wrench













Air impact wrench

The problem is that when you have a flat or blowout on the highway, very few people have more than the lug wrench that came with the car. For most people, the only time they ever change a tire themselves is when they have a flat. So unless they have a good mechanic who torques the lug nuts properly, anyone who has a flat finds that the tire is impossible or nearly impossible to remove. I've been reduced to standing on the lug wrench and jumping up and down on it to loosen overly tightened lug nuts before. This is nonsense! When mechanics take those high powered air impact wrenches and hammer those lug nuts as tight as they'll go, it shows how ignorant and stupid they are.










Woman using a torque wrench










Torque Wrenches

I think from now on I'm going to tell them I want a torque wrench used on them and have them torqued to factory specifications so I can be sure it's done right. You can tighten them properly with an air impact wrench if you're careful. I do it. If you stop almost as soon as the impact wrench starts to chatter, they're tight enough. Simple!

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Fixed the link!

I fixed the tag below so that when you click on "If you're seeing this blog in a frame..." It actually works when you click it and will actually take you out of the frame!

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Sarah Palin's speech

The speech! Home run!

Full remarks as prepared for delivery and provided by the McCain campaign of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as she accepts the 2008 Republican vice presidential nomination on Sept. 3, 2008, at the Xcel Energy Center in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepts the GOP vice presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Palin and Sen. John McCain will face Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden in a battle for the White House.

(The Associated Press)
More Photos

Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored to be considered for the nomination for Vice President of the United States...

I accept the call to help our nominee for president to serve and defend America.

I accept the challenge of a tough fight in this election... against confident opponents ... at a crucial hour for our country.

And I accept the privilege of serving with a man who has come through much harder missions ... and met far graver challenges ... and knows how tough fights are won - the next president of the United States, John S. McCain.

It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves.

With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost - there was no hope for this candidate who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war.

But the pollsters and pundits overlooked just one thing when they wrote him off.

read the rest here: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Conventions/story?id=5720910&page=1

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National Review article on Obama's Disturbing Connections

What a disturbing article! The following is a National Review article reprinted, with the unflattering smoking picture added, in the Information Vault way back in April of this year. It points out that Obama hates his country and his wife is a racist. Obama should be judged by the company he keeps and that company ain't pretty!

Obama's Disturbing Connections

Friday April 25, 2008 22:09

The Company He Keeps Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left. By Andrew C. McCarthy National Review Why is Barack Obama so comfortable around people who so despise America and its allies? Maybe it’s because they’re so comfortable around him. He presents as the transcendent agent of “change.” Sounds platitudinous, but it’s really quite strategically vaporous. Sen. Obama is loath to get into the details of how we should change, and, as the media’s Chosen One, he hasn’t had to. But he’s not, as some hopefully dismiss him, a charismatic lightweight with a gift for sparkling the same old vapid cant. Judging from the company he chooses to keep, Obama’s change would radically alter this country. He eschews detail because most Americans don’t believe we’re a racist, heartless, imperialist cesspool of exploitation. The details would be disqualifying.

The rest of the article is here: http://theinformationvault.com/politics/campaign-08/obama/37-obama/59-obamas-disturbing-connections.html

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Michael Moore does it again!

Michael Moore believes that he is so important that God will smite innocent people just so he can smirk that hurricane Gustav has ruined the Republican convention! I've known for some time that he is an arrogant blowhard, but this is beyond anything he's said before. Now he did apologize, but is he sorry for what he said, or sorry he got in trouble?



DNC national chair Dan Fowler was also amused that the hurricane was disrupting the Republican convention, but his comments were overheard on an airline and the video was apparently taken without his knowledge so I'm not posting it here.

But this is typical of the Democrat party. They are hateful and vindictive. There were no Republican operatives with feces and urine arrested trying to disrupt the Democrat convention, but there were Democrat operatives with feces and urine arrested trying to do just that at the Republican convention.

I keep pointing out to people that we have two parties in this country, the evil party and the stupid party. The Democrat leaders are evil and the Republican leaders are stupid for not recognizing they're evil. They just keep trying to get along with them.

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Blogger woes

When I started this blog I ftp'd it from Blogger to my webhost. Then I had the blog load in a frame on one of my web pages. Lately I wanted to add some things I'd seen on other blogs, but found out I had to have BlogSpot host the blog to use those features. So I moved the blog over to BlogSpot and wrote a redirection page as my home page.

It worked but I missed not having the blog embedded in a window on my page. I decided that I could leave the blog at BlogSpot but still embed it in the page of my site. Unfortunately I'd deleted the code and forgot how to do it! It took me hours to rediscover the method and still retain my style sheet format! The trick turned out to be this: put a table with one row and one column where you want the blog to appear and use the IFRAME tag with a width of 100%. (Apparently percents are an undocumented feature of the tag. You're supposed to use pixels. I had to use a set height in pixels, though.)

So it works. Yay... Now I'm going to bed!

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An inspired choice

An absolutely inspired choice! I can now vote with confidence! I should have seen this coming as I had heard that the mccainpalin.com domain name had been registered but none of the other possible pick name combinations had been.

This woman is a real conservative and the fact that she's a woman is not (or rather, shouldn't be) relevant. And, since she's the only governor in the race, she is better qualified than John, Barry, or Joe who are all senators who make poor presidents! Now this is change!

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Folding Electric Super Car

Peugot has a new green car that's pretty cool. Not that I like green stuff for the sake of being green, but when it's practical I'm all for it. Part of the article follows:

Peugeot 888 future car is a concept done right: shape-shifting and green

The Peugeot 888 is billed as the "personal vehicle for the future Metropolis." For designer Oskar Johansen from Norway, that means a car with space for two with room for luggage, as well as a nifty shape-shifting body. On the highway, the Peugeot 888 stretches itself out flat so that it's stable and aerodynamic. In the city, however, it scrunches up for easier parking and taking up less of the road in general.

Just to make sure it'll fit in with the eco-minded future, the 888 is powered by electric motors in each of its wheels, runs off of an array of lithium-ion batteries stored in the trunk, which, in turn, is covered with solar panels.

Check out the gallery below for more views of the Peugeot 888.

Read the rest here: http://dvice.com/archives/2008/08/peugeot_888_fut.php?p=1&cat=undefined#more

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My friend's blog

A good friend, a man I've known since junior high school has his own blog. As you can see he likes to fish! He keeps asking me to go up and visit so we can go fishing. I've really got to do that some time!

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This is so cool! Schlock Mercenary is probably the best comic strip on the web. I've had a link to it on my comic page ( http://www.richardbush.net/comics/comics.htm ) for a long time now. Now Howard Taylor has released a script so I can put the strip right on my comic page. I'm happy and grateful to now have his fine strip on my own website. I left the link to his website on the page, because, it's just so cool and Howard's website is worth the visit for more than just the comic strip.
Check it out! I'll post it below just once so you can see the current strip.



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A company is ready to start building plants that convert trash to oil. The following is from World Net Daily.

BLACK-GOLD BLUES
U.S. green lights 'anything into oil'
Defense Department OKs facilities turning natural produce into energy

---

Posted: August 13, 2008
8:45 pm Eastern

By Joe Kovacs
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A Georgia company looking to solve America's energy problem has finally teamed up with the federal government, hoping to make millions of barrels of oil every day from virtually anything that grows out of the Earth.

Bell Bio-Energy, Inc. says it has reached an agreement with the U.S. Defense Department to build seven test production plants, mostly on military bases, to quickly turn naturally grown material into fuel.

Read the rest here: http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=72275

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Quite by chance found this parody of the "I'm in love with Obama video." Unfortunately it's not as well done as the original but it is funny just the same!



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The biotic (fossil) versus abiotic oil rages. On the one side the peak oil crowd argue that since we find microscopic bits of animals and plant in the oil then oil is biotic and thus a limited resource. They argue that if it seems capped wells are refilling it is just residual seepage from the surrounding rock. They further argue that if there is abiotic oil (thus giving support to the abiotic theory!) it’s way too deep for us to get at! They even admit that Russia is pulling oil out of the ground that has no sign of biological organisms at all. You can see the true agenda of some of these groups when you discover that they are alarmed at the abiotic theory because if the oil doesn’t run out soon, the earth will die faster! Here’s the quote:

If it's true that there's plenty more oil, it just changes the character of the coming crash -- it will be through toxicity or ecological catastrophe instead of lack of energy, it will take longer, and the earth is a lot more likely to die. Here's an excerpt from William Kötke's summary of the 1972 "Limits to Growth" study:

http://ranprieur.com/crash/abiotic.html

You notice the reference to the “Limits to Growth study” that has been wrong in almost all its predictions of disaster so far.
More of these arguments can be found here: http://www.rense.com/general58/biot.htm

The abiotic theorists point out that never has a fossil been found below 18,000 feet but we regularly find oil below 30,000 and that we’ve already used more oil than could have come from plant remnants deposited in some ancient ocean.

This abiotic theory just received an enormous amount of support with the find of hydrocarbons on Titan: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/titans-organic.html and http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47675

A good overview of the abiotic theory can be found here: http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/1130.html and a good list of links and articles can be found here: http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/Theory/SustainableOil/

An interesting commentary that I’m taking with a large grain of salt can be found here: http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Peak_Oil___Russia/peak_oil___russia.html The grain of salt is because of his claim that oil companies and Dick Cheney conspire to hide the abiotic oil origins. Yeah, sure they do…

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This is a cool song! I heard it first on Geekbrief


Ones and 0s by Geoff Smith from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

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Okay, I've got the 2007-2008 student pictures up at Winkflash. I had so much trouble with the site I might stop using them entirely. I was using Dot Photo but they didn't allow right clicking, which is stupid. Anyway, they are up here at rabush.winkflash.com. I hope the link works. I can't get it to show the latest year without using Internet Explorer. Firefox will only show the 2006-2007 pictures. if that link doesn't work there is a link on each of my other webpages that does try here and look for the link under pictures on the right. That link works but it's hard to type.

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Okay I haven't published the 2007-2008 student pictures yet., but I have done a redesign of the site layout. I saved the other home page here and put the blog up as the new home page.

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I've decided to—instead of putting this blog in a window on one of my website's pages—make this blog the home page of my website. This may mean I update more often. May mean, we'll try it.

To show you how far behind I am in my reading, I just finished reading an excellent article in the November 2007 issue of Guns Magazine. It’s the gun rights column called “A Fair Question” by David Codrea. Here’s an excerpt:

“Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?”

What with all the calls to do just that, and all the laws building up to it, that sounds like a fair question.

It’s posed by Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser in the Spring 2007 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Kates is an American criminologist, lawyer and constitutional scholar. Mauser is a Canadian criminologist and university professor. Both are published authors of numerous articles and books. Both are well recognized as top experts in their fields. You don’t earn their reputations in academic and legal circles by being demonstrably wrong, so people on both sides of the gun control debate would do well to consider their findings…

You can find the rest in the Guns Magazine online archives here: http://www.gunsmagazine.com/Rights11.html

The writer, David Codrea, has a blog at http://waronguns.blogspot.com/

I’ve decide I need to use key words for better searching of these articles. I realize not many read this blog, but I’ve often searched my own work and have had considerable trouble finding what I wanted. “Did I post that? Where did I read it? Etc.” so tentatively I’m going to use the labels that follow”:

Climate change
Commentary
Cutting edge science
Energy
Freedom
Global warming
Guns
Gun rights
Political
Science
Science fiction
Space
Technology

Wow I didn’t think I’d come up with so many! Let’s try them for now

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Mutiny at the American Physical Society (APS)! Although the society (in this case physical refers to physics) has accepted the notion that man-made gases are affecting our climate, some of their member aren't buying it. The following article excerpted from the APS Physics site uses extensive analysis to show that the models used to prove global warming are flawed and in fact exaggerate the affect of CO2 as much as 500 to 1000%, there has been no warming since 1998 and in fact a cooling trend is indicated for the last six years

Here's an excerpt:

Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review, since that is not normal procedure for American Physical Society newsletters. The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007: "Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO₂ emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity:

1. Radiative forcing ΔF;
2. The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter κ; and
3. The feedback multiplier ƒ.

Some reasons why the IPCC’s estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained. More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.

See the entire article here: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm
Warning! There's a lot of math, this is not light reading!

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Ann Coulter has nailed it with another great column. She says, I think correctly, that George Bush will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. She says, "Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and I'll consider downgrading Bush from 'Great' to 'Really Good.'" She goes on to point out that Al Quaida is nearly defeated and that our fine troops have killed nearly 20,000 of them in Iraq. A fine accomplishment, I think.

You can read Ann's column here: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26979




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http://www.fusor.net/ displays the efforts of amateur fusion researchers who are experimenting with low cost fusion. Anyone with a little ambition and some technical expertise can build and test a demonstration "fuser" that achieves some fantastic effects without achieving actual fusion (which would require shielding from the neutrons produced). Once a demo machine is perfected one can introduce a little deuterium and achieve actual fusion (while using the proper safety procedures to contain the neutrons of course).


Then there's "Rods from God" that shows Thor is not dead. Thor is a "smart rock" concept suggested by Dr. Jerry Pournelle waaaaay back in the sixties.
I think this is something we should be working very hard on. Dropping "rocks" on the bad guys heads from space has a certain appeal!

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I'm glad that more and more music services are moving to DRM (Digital Rights Management) free music, but the change is slow in coming.

I subscribe to Rhapsody Music Service and have for years. Rhapsody is a streaming service. For a monthly fee I can stream nearly anything I like. If I want to own it I can download it for $0.89. This is 10 cents cheaper than Amazon and iTunes, two other services I use. Those two are strictly download services, though you can listen to a sample.

I’ve just started using Amazon, having just discovered it because of Pepsi points. All their music is DRM free and in MP3 format. Even at $0.99 I often download from them because Rhapsody does not have all its titles in DRM free MP3 format, though more and more of their music is. The music that isn’t is in RAX format.

In order to get it as an MP3 I have to burn it to CD and then rip it. This works but it takes a lot of work for Windows Media Player to recognize it and download the album art. Then it thinks it’s smarter than me so it tries to name the song using the album name. It’s a pain. If it’s in RAX I don’t buy there anymore.

iTunes also uses its own format. Usually all I get from them is their free songs of the week, since I mostly use the service with my iPod Shuffle (screen? I don’t need no stinking screen!). When I want to turn one of theirs to an MP3 it’s easy to burn it to CD and turn around and rip it to MP3 and iTunes remembers what it is—200% better than Windows Media Player!

So why download from Rhapsody at all? Coke points! I use my Coke points to download Rhapsody music that’s in MP3 and I use Pepsi points at Amazon for everything else. As you can see from above, a lot of my music is free. I love free, don’t you? I know, I know, I’m cheap.

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Sign the "Drill here, drill now, pay less" petition to ask congress to allow drilling our own oil reserves. Click here: http://www.americansolutions.com/actioncenter/petitions/?Guid=54ec6e43-75a8-445b-aa7b-346a1e096659

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I've mentioned before in this blog that I'm searching for the perfect phone. I've related my problems with the Palm Treo and with my current phone. Out of all the phones out there, my son's LG EnV remains the best all around phone. Good music player, stereo BlueTooth support, decent camera, and a QWERTY keyboard. It also supports custom ringtones, wallpaper, etc.

Well LG has just announced the LG EnV2! It has all the above in a smaller package! "Great," I said. There's just one problem, they took out the flash!. What's the point in having a camera if there's no flash? Thus they took a great phone, made it better, then blew the whole thing by taking out the flash.

Why can't I have the phone I want? Music with stereo BlueTooth, ringtones, wallpaper, camera (with flash!), QWERTY keyboard, (and no, I seldom text, but a QWERTY keyboard is still nice when you're entering addresses and so forth) removable memory card, and a calendar that supports weekly, biweekly, and triweekly appointments? (And no, the EnV doesn't have that either, (Apparently that's a Palm thing) but it should!)

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Here's yet another article supporting global cooling!

Climate facts to warm to

Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. ...

Read the rest at the Australian News: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html.

I recently read the Popular Science editorial where the editor said "The threat of human-influenced global warming is no longer in serious debate," (April 2008) and I wrote him an email refuting that statement. Of course he did not reply. Hey Mark Jannot! You edit a magazine called Popular Science. You know, science. Not politically correct non-science.

I once subscribed to Science Digest. One article told about a volcano in the Antarctic that has been erupting for hundreds of years. A letter to the editor pointed out, (this was when the ozone hole was big news) that chemicals from the volcano must be contributing to the formation of the hole more than man-made freon. The editor replied that of course there was no mechanism to move the chemicals from the lower to the upper atmosphere. I was outraged! If there was no mechanism to move chemicals from a volcano spewing them high into the air, what was the mechanism to move freon from ground level to the upper atmosphere? It was such a stupid, politically correct response from the Science Digest editor that I canceled my subscription. I told them I thought I had subscribed to a science magazine! Oh, my mistake!

Unfortunately scientists and science writers can be just as self-righteous and opinionated as anyone. This has always been the case, sad but true.

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It is now official: there is not only no global warming, but we're actually entering a cooling phase. All the major climate centers (the legitimate ones that are not corrupted by political correctness) agree that there has been no warming for the last few years and that the cool temperatures have more than erased the warming we've had before that. The arctic ice has more than recovered this winter and the nation has suffered under a particularly cruel winter.

Thomas Sowell sums it up well with his article that I read in the Las Vegas Review Journal, but I'm linking to Jewish World Review's version, since the LVRJ's is on a subscription site.

Jewish World Review Feb. 28, 2008 / 22 Adar I 5768 Cold Water on ‘Global Warming’ By Thomas Sowell http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It has almost become something of a joke when some "global warming" conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather. But stampedes and hysteria are no joke — and creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global warming "crisis." They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all "scientists" and then claim that "all" the experts agree on a global warming crisis. Their biggest argument is that there is no argument.

The rest if the article can be found here: http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell022808.php3 check it out.

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We had a huge windstorm on Wednesday. I was in the cellar when the power went out. I felt my way out (not thinking about the cell phone I was carrying that could have lit my way!) and went towards the garage where I knew there was a flashlight. Something huge swept past me and there was a huge crash. I decided to go in the house to get a flashlight instead. The flashlight told me I was probably lucky I wasn't killed or injured, since it was a huge chunk of my garage's roof!

Though it's not obvious, that's four pieces of roof steel in the picture. That's heavy gauge steel and the sheets are 13 feet long. It came off as one piece then the wood holding it all together splintered so the pieces separated. I had to replace many of the wood runners before I could reattach the steel sheets. This time I bolted them down instead of just screwing them into the runners. The photo shows the roof with some of the runners already replaced.

I started yesterday afternoon and got up early this morning and worked all day. I'm pretty much done except for the cap at the peak. I'll have to go to the city to get that.

The roof steel must have been accordioned in because the roof is now two inches shorter than before. If I had noticed earlier I could have stretched it but it was already attached except the last piece, so it'll have to do.


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The abiotic theory of oil formation says that oil is not a fossil fuel, but is continually being produced in the earth. this of course upsets the enviro-loonies who insist we're running out of oil.
The following article has more evidence that the theory is correct:

BLACK-GOLD BLUES
Discovery backs theory oil not 'fossil fuel'
New evidence supports premise that Earth produces endless supply

---

Posted: February 1, 2008
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a "fossil fuel" derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs.

The lead scientist on the study – Giora Proskurowski of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle – says the hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the mantle of the earth.

The abiotic theory of the origin of oil directly challenges the conventional scientific theory that hydrocarbons are organic in nature, created by the deterioration of biological material deposited millions of years ago in sedimentary rock and converted to hydrocarbons under intense heat and pressure.

While organic theorists have posited that the material required to produce hydrocarbons in sedimentary rock came from dinosaurs and ancient forests, more recent argument have suggested living organisms as small as plankton may have been the origin.

Continued at World Net Daily: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59991

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I put a funny greeting on our voice mail, but my wife said that she'd like something that identifies us. So I played with Audacity a bit and inserted a little clip identifying the Bush house which then leads into the funny greeting. Audacity is a powerful audio editing program. I'm still learning its features though. The voice mail supports appending to the message, so I could have recorded it that way, but Audacity was a more elegant a solution.

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I've made the decision to retire my ancient answering machine. It was a great answering machine, a PhoneMate 4300, and I've never found anything that I liked as well. The problem was that the tapes were wearing out. Now I could have replaced the message tape, but the continuous loop greeting tape is impossible to find. Although mini-tapes are still available if you look hard enough, my machine used full sized tapes.

What finally made me make the switch was the phone company began offering packages of features that gave me more for less money. Who can resist that, right? Even more irresistable was the 50% increase in my broadband speed. Another part of the package was voice mail. I decided to try it and found to my delight that my Uniden phones (TCX 805's) have a blinking light when there's a message waiting. If I glance at any phone I can see that there's a message. Really cool!

Of course what I need to do now is to record one of my pre-recorded gag messages onto my voice mail. The one on my answering machine went like this: "Hello, I am a digitally enhanced answering unit. Who are you? Please leave a message after my obligatory tone and we will respond as soon as humanly possible. Chou baby."

Yeah, I've got to have that back!

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A few years ago I went to see SpaceShipOne and its carrier the WhiteKnight fly. It was great! SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo are about ready for roll out. Here's the article.

Entrepreneur Unveils New Tourist Spacecraft

Chip East/Reuters

Richard Branson and aircraft designer Burt Rutan unveiled two new aircrafts Wednesday in New York.

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: January 23, 2008

Burt Rutan took the cloak off of his new spacecraft on Wednesday.

Mr. Rutan, the creator of SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed craft to carry a human into space, traveled to New York to show detailed models of the bigger SpaceShipTwo and its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo.

The rest is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/science/space/23cnd-spaceship.html?ex=1359003600&en=462bf8c769b65f6c&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

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Check out the darkest substance ever!

Carbon nanotube carpet darkest thing ever made

• Michael Kanellos
• 6 comments

A loosely packed "carpet" of carbon nanotubes is the darkest material ever made, according to researchers from Rice University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The carpet consists of nanotubes--hollow, honeycombed tubes made from carbon atoms-- standing vertically. Instead of being tightly packed together, the researchers went for a low density arrangement, complete with spaces and gaps, sort of like a box of dried spaghetti. Light striking the nanotubes as well as the gaps gets absorbed. When light gets absorbed, black (the absence of light) results. The nanotubes were also specially manufactured to have a more random arrangement of atoms, further reducing reflectivity. (Again, think of trying to look into a box of spaghetti. Not easy.)

The nanocarpet is in the middle. Former record holder to the left.

(Credit: RPI)

This resulted in a material that reflects only 0.045 percent of the light that strikes it. (Put another way, 99.955 percent of the light that hits it gets absorbed.)

Conventional black paint reflects 100 times more light. The previous record holder for darkness, a nickel-phophorus alloy pitted with light-trapping craters, reflected four times as much light.

The rest is here: http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9855485-1.html?tag=nl.e501

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When are they going to stop selling crappy cell phones?

I’ve been kicking myself ever since I bought a Samsung SCH-U740. The QWERTY keyboard and the music player appealed to me, and the dual flip was just too cool! It might be one of the smallest phones on the market with a full QWERTY keyboard. At first, the phone appears to be well designed and have all the right features, but soon the critical flaws show up.

Why so many of the Samsung phones do not have a standard 2.5 mm headphone jack I will never know. When I got the phone, I went out and bought a nicer set of headphones than those that came with the music kit. Unfortunately, soon after trying to listen to music and work around the yard, I found that the adapter would slip out of the non-standard jack. After just a few attempts to work and listen to music, I switched to an IPod Shuffle. I’ve never had the wire slip out unless I caught it on something and really yanked it. Another problem for middle aged eyes is the small keys make it hard to see, but I could have lived with that if not for the other problems.

Since it’s impossible to use the phone to listen to music this way then you’d think that stereo Bluetooth would be the answer, right? Nope. The phone doesn’t support it.

Since the phone isn’t working for me and I use a Palm Pilot, I thought I’d try to replace it with a Treo 700P. I spent several days bidding on EBay and finally won a phone at a good price. The 700P has a standard headphone jack and even supports stereo Bluetooth (with third party software).When it came though, it was a 700W (The P stands for Palm OS, the W for Windows OS, get it?) making it incompatible with my current Palm Pilot data files. Wow, I got to box it up and ship it back (after multiple emails to the vender).

Once again I spent several days bidding and won another phone—from the same vendor. This time when it came it was the right one. But it was not in as good a shape as the first and the headphone jack didn’t work in stereo. The right side headphone wouldn’t work. Once again—emails to the vendor and I got to box it up and will ship it back tomorrow. This time I noticed what I failed to notice with the 700W, it uses only midi ring tones and I can’t find a way to add my own. Plus the camera has no flash, which is strange. I’ve never seen a camera phone with no flash before! So I think I’m glad this one was broken. It would have been nice to consolidate my phone with my Palm but, basically Palm took a Palm Pilot and added a poor phone to it. It’s a shame, since it could have been a great product.

I’ve been looking around for a phone that offers a QWERTY keyboard, a great music player with a standard headphone jack, stereo Bluetooth headphone music capability, a decent camera, and of course, the other goodies--ring tones, speakerphone, etc. I couldn’t find anything better than my son’s LG enV! The only thing it doesn’t have, that it should, is the ability to multi-task (play music while doing other things with the phone) but that’s apparently a brand new feature so I’ll have to wait for the successor to the enV. I can’t get another phone through Verizon for another year anyway (and I’m not finding affordable enV’s on EBay). There will probably be better phones by then. Maybe an IPhone style phone without all the mistakes Apple made with theirs. You know, like no stereo Bluetooth capability!

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Well, will you look at this. A 300 mpg car and congress didn't mandate it! This is free enterprise at it's best.

Aptera: The 'Wingless Bird'

A California startup says its airplane-inspired vehicle can deliver 300 mpg for under $30,000.

By Jacob Gordon of TreeHugger.com

Slated for initial production in late 2008, the Aptera will come in all-electric and plug-in hybrid models. Its name means "wingless" in Greek, and the Aptera's body materials and aerodynamics are borrowed from light aircraft.

When Steve Fambro got bored building robots at a San Diego genetics company, he figured he could help keep his brain busy by building a kit airplane in his spare time. But his wife deemed the hobby too dangerous, so Fambro decided to build a car instead, one with low emissions and absurdly high mileage. Called the Aptera (Greek for "wingless"), the machine now exists as a working prototype. It has 2.5 seats, three wheels, weighs a feathery 1,500 pounds, and Fambro says his company will put the Aptera into production next October.

Specs may change between now and autumn 2008, but the current numbers look like this: 300 mpg, a price tag below $30,000, and 0-60 acceleration of 11 seconds (about a second slower than the Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid).

See the rest at http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=444375&topart=passenger.

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Another great energy story:

Left: Frank Pringle [right] and Hawk Hogan [left] feed the Hawk recycler, which extracts oil and gas from waste like tires.

Green Tech
THE MICROWAVE MAGICIAN

Frank Pringle has found a way to squeeze oil and gas from just about anything

I’m not sure if I’m watching a magic trick, or an invention that will make the cigar-chomping 64-year-old next to me the richest man on the planet. Everything that goes into Frank Pringle’s recycling machine—a piece of tire, a rock, a plastic cup—turns to oil and natural gas seconds later. “I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me,” Pringle says without sarcasm.

This is amazing! You need to read the rest here at http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/innovator_2.html.

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Newt Gingrich gave a speech where he talked about our war with radical Islam. Here's a piece of it:

Published: November 29, 2007

Sleepwalking Into a Nightmare

Speech by Newt Gingrich

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich delivered the following remarks to a Jewish National Fund meeting Nov. 15 at the Selig Center.

...We need first of all to recognize this is a real war. Our enemies are peaceful when they're weak, are ruthless when they're strong, demand mercy when they're losing, show no mercy when they're winning. They understand exactly what this is, and anybody who reads Sun Tzu will understand exactly what we're living through. This is a total war. One side is going to win. One side is going to lose. You'll be able to tell who won and who lost by who's still standing. Most of Islam is not in this war, but most of Islam isn't going to stop this war. They're just going to sit to one side and tell you how sorry they are that this happened. We had better design grand strategies that are radically bigger and radically tougher and radically more honest than anything currently going on, and that includes winning the argument in Europe, and it include s winning the argument in the rest of the world. And it includes being very clear, and I'll just give you one simple example because we're now muscle-bound by our own inability to talk honestly....

The rest is here: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/terrorism.php?id=1385641

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