I dreamt of my Aunt Vera last night. Although she died when I was about 15 or 16, I have such fond memories of her and I think of her often. She was my fathers older sister and after their mother died when my father was 9 years old, she and my Aunt Celia raised him. Vera's name was actually Veronica but I didn't know that until her death. My Aunt Celia, whose name was actually Cecilia (her mother's middle name) died just last year at 84. One of my middle names is Cecelia, which was spelled incorrectly by my father when I was born - he was always bad at spelling! I kinda like the fact that's it's different, just like me.
My Aunt Vera and her husband, Uncle Charlie, and their kids lived in Burrillville on sort of a farm. It was always the best time when we went for a visit. Their oldest son was Charlie Jr., who, sadly, died of a heart attack when he was 16 years old. Next was Maureen, who was so brilliant that she was hard to figure out. In her 20's Maureen became schizophrenic and joined the Moonies. She died under mysterious circumstances a few years ago. Then there is Albert, who at a very young age fell down the cellar stairs and became epileptic. He still lives in the house. Next was Cathy, who was in leg braces and/or crutches most of her young life because of one leg being shorter than the other. She now lives in Norway with her husband and kids. The youngest is Eileen, who other than a voice that is so deep it scares you, seems to be as normal as any of us.
But when we were kids, none of that mattered. We ran around in their yard playing games and they had all these cement walks to the different outbuildings so it was fun to play on them. I remember riding a bike, roller skating and just hopping from one cement pad to another. Of the many buildings on their property, there was an outhouse that we kids were forced to use. It was a three seater, which always cracked me up, because who, exactly, would want someone sitting next to you when you were doing your business!
They had a building that was called a summer house - it was one big room inside with a huge fieldstone fireplace in the back corner. The entire front and sides were screened with wooden covers which were propped up with boards on the outside when the building was being used. When not in use, the boards were closed down over the windows. The sides and front had window seats with cushions, which, in the hot summer was a good place to sleep. Along the back wall was a kitchen! All the meals were prepared there when they had company. In the middle of the room were long tables and chairs where we all ate. We had some great meals there, including "dynamites" a northern RI term for sloppy joes.
Along the back of their yard was a barn where they raised sheep. That was probably the building that started my love of barns. It was a small barn with a loft. Inside on the right were several stalls that housed the sheep. Feeding the sheep was my favorite thing to do when visiting them. They were soft and cute and I liked their smell. We fed them out of a really big burlap bag that was full of pastries!! There were all kinds of different pastries and I knew they bought them as "day old", but I never understood why the sheep ate pastries in addition to the hay. I guess this will be a mystery unless I see one of my cousins, which is extremely unlikely. Needless to say, we all ate the pastries while feeding the sheep.
The last building they had on their farm was a chicken coop. They had lots of chickens and if we got their early enough we got to see my Aunt Vera going out there and chopping off the heads of one or two for our dinner later in the day. It is true that chickens run around after their heads have been chopped off and it's pretty interesting as well as gruesome to watch. My favorite part of the chickens were the baby chicks and getting the eggs.
My Aunt Vera was a lovely and beautiful woman, inside and out. Even though she had a tough life, she was sweet and kind to everyone she ever met and was a very good mother. She was fiercely loyal to her kids and was devastated when her son died. It was only a few years later that she died of, I believe, the same heart problem that took her son.
I got along pretty well with Cathy, so I would sleep over their house from time to time. Because of that I knew my Aunt much better than my brothers and sister. She was also friends with Mrs. Spellman, the secretary at the elementary school that I went to, so I would often see her while at school, which surprised me the first time I saw her and delighted me each and every time after.
I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to know and love her. I have missed her dearly since her death and love that she visits me in my dreams.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
The Idiot In DC Will Be Nice And Warm This Winter
Millions of poor and elderly people on fixed incomes rely on heating assistance to help pay their heating bills. But with home heating oil prices surging to record levels and wintry storms already hitting many states, Congress and The Idiot President can’t agree on how much money to give the government’s Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides heating and cooling subsidies for the poor.
Bush recently vetoed a sweeping Democratic health and education spending bill that included roughly $2.4 billion heating aid for the poor this winter. The amount was $480 million more than he requested — and would have boosted the energy assistance program by about $250 million from last year.
Lawmakers from cold-weather states are still pressing for the extra money before Congress adjourns this year. They say funding has been outpaced by rising fuel prices.
The fuel aid is caught up in the broader fight between Congress and the White House over where to draw the line on federal spending.
The fight pits cold-state lawmakers who say the program is underfunded against Republican leaders who want to keep spending increases down. Some lawmakers from warm-weather states complain the program favors cold-weather regions.
Until this year’s standoff is resolved, state agencies and others on the local level who distribute federal fuel aid can’t be sure about how much money they will have to work with this winter — particularly whether the proposed $250 million increase will stand.
The Energy Department estimates heating oil costs will jump about 26 percent this winter. That’s an average increase of $375 for customers. Propane costs will rise about 20 percent. Natural gas customers can expect to pay about 10 percent more.
Households are expected to pay an average $2,157 this winter, a $693 increase from last winter.
Bush recently vetoed a sweeping Democratic health and education spending bill that included roughly $2.4 billion heating aid for the poor this winter. The amount was $480 million more than he requested — and would have boosted the energy assistance program by about $250 million from last year.
Lawmakers from cold-weather states are still pressing for the extra money before Congress adjourns this year. They say funding has been outpaced by rising fuel prices.
The fuel aid is caught up in the broader fight between Congress and the White House over where to draw the line on federal spending.
The fight pits cold-state lawmakers who say the program is underfunded against Republican leaders who want to keep spending increases down. Some lawmakers from warm-weather states complain the program favors cold-weather regions.
Until this year’s standoff is resolved, state agencies and others on the local level who distribute federal fuel aid can’t be sure about how much money they will have to work with this winter — particularly whether the proposed $250 million increase will stand.
The Energy Department estimates heating oil costs will jump about 26 percent this winter. That’s an average increase of $375 for customers. Propane costs will rise about 20 percent. Natural gas customers can expect to pay about 10 percent more.
Households are expected to pay an average $2,157 this winter, a $693 increase from last winter.
The Northeast, which is more reliant on oil heat than other regions, has been rocked by record-breaking oil prices and is feeling the pinch.
Rhode Island is decreasing benefit levels and expects to help about 15 percent fewer households than last year. The state reduced its average primary grant benefit from $475 to $350.
In Massachusetts, where about 40 percent of homes use oil heat, officials said they were so concerned about rising prices they recently provided an additional $15 million in state funds for fuel assistance.
Former Rep. Joe Kennedy, who provides low-cost heating oil to the poor through his Boston-based nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp., estimated it will cost about $800 to fill a 250-gallon home heating tank this winter in New England. He worries the cost will be crippling to poor people and families struggling paycheck-to-paycheck. “They don’t have $800 every two or three weeks to lay down just for the cost of keeping warm,” Kennedy said. “It’s a crisis for them.”
Officials in Maine, one of the country’s coldest states, worry that poor, elderly and working families will be more vulnerable as winter wears on and they use up their fuel aid for the season.
Homes there use about 860 gallons a year, on average. At current prices of roughly $3.20 per gallon, state officials predict it will cost an average household about $2,750 for heating oil this winter.
That means Maine’s average fuel aid benefit of $579 will only last most families about a month. Five or six years ago, the average benefit would cover about half of the heating season, officials said.
About 37,000 Maine households have applied for fuel aid so far, but officials expect that figure to rise to somewhere between 48,000 and 51,000 before winter ends.
A True Democrat
There's a quiz in today's Projo.com to help determine which of the 16 Presidential candidate suits you best. It helps to match your opinions with the candidates' positions by asking a series of questions that relate to today's most prevalent topics. Here's the link:
http://www.projo.com/sharedcontent/washington/quiz/
It told me several things, the first being what I already knew. I am a Democrat! It also matched me up to the candidates opinions. I was surprised by the 1st match and here are MY results:
80 Dennis Kucinich
78 John Edwards
76 Bill Richardson
71 Hillary Clinton
64 Joe Biden
64 Mike Gravel
64 Barack Obama
64 Chris Dodd
Needless to say the above are all Democratic candidates. I really got a kick out of the results for the Republican candidates:
50 Guiliani
30 Romney
26 Huckabee
25 Paul
21 Hunter
21 McCain
12 Thompson
5 Tancredo
I have to admit that there is not one Republican candidate that I would actually vote for, even if someone were holding a gun to my head.
I have been wanting to post my endorsement so now that we are on this subject, that will be coming soon!
http://www.projo.com/sharedcontent/washington/quiz/
It told me several things, the first being what I already knew. I am a Democrat! It also matched me up to the candidates opinions. I was surprised by the 1st match and here are MY results:
80 Dennis Kucinich
78 John Edwards
76 Bill Richardson
71 Hillary Clinton
64 Joe Biden
64 Mike Gravel
64 Barack Obama
64 Chris Dodd
Needless to say the above are all Democratic candidates. I really got a kick out of the results for the Republican candidates:
50 Guiliani
30 Romney
26 Huckabee
25 Paul
21 Hunter
21 McCain
12 Thompson
5 Tancredo
I have to admit that there is not one Republican candidate that I would actually vote for, even if someone were holding a gun to my head.
I have been wanting to post my endorsement so now that we are on this subject, that will be coming soon!
Friday, December 7, 2007
Geminid Meteors - Best Meteor Showers of 2007
What could be the best meteor display of the year will reach its peak on the night of December 13-14.
Here is what astronomers David Levy and Stephen Edberg have written of the annual Geminid Meteor Shower: "If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor."
The Geminids get their name from the constellation of Gemini, the Twins, because the meteors appear to emanate from a spot in the sky near the bright star Castor in Gemini.
Also in Gemini this month is the planet Mars, nearing a close approach to the Earth later this month, and shining brilliantly with yellow-orange hue. To be sure, Mars is certain to attract the attention of prospective Geminid watchers this upcoming week.
The Geminid Meteors are usually the most satisfying of all the annual showers, even surpassing the famous Perseids of August.
Studies of past find the "Gems" have a reputation for being rich both in slow, bright, graceful meteors and fireballs as well as faint meteors, with relatively fewer objects of medium brightness.
They are of medium speed, encountering Earth at 22 miles per second (35 kps). They are bright and white, but unlike the Perseids, they leave few visible trails or streaks. They are four times denser than most other meteors, and have been observed to form jagged or divided paths.
Geminids also stand apart from the other meteor showers in that they seem to have been spawned not by a comet, but by 3200 Phaethon, an Earth-crossing asteroid. Then again, the Geminids may be comet debris after all, for some astronomers consider Phaethon to really be the dead nucleus of a burned-out comet that somehow got trapped into an unusually tight orbit. Interestingly, on December 10, Phaethon will be passing about 11 million miles (18 million kilometers) from Earth, its closest approach since its discovery in 1983.
The Geminids perform excellently in any year, but British meteor astronomer, Alastair McBeath, has categorized 2007 as a "great year."
Last year's display was hindered somewhat by the moon, two days past last quarter phase. But this year, the moon will be at new phase on Dec. 9. On the peak night, the moon will be a fat crescent, in the south-southwest at dusk and setting soon after 8 p.m. That means that the sky will be dark and moonless for the balance of the night, making for perfect viewing conditions for the shower.
According to McBeath, the Geminids are predicted to reach peak activity on Dec. 14 at 4:45 GMT. That means those places from central Asia eastwards across the Pacific Ocean to Alaska are in the best position to catch the very crest of the shower, when the rates conceivably could exceed 120 per hour.
"But," he adds, "maximum rates persist at only marginally reduced levels for some 6 to 10 hours around the biggest ones, so other places (such as North America) should enjoy some fine Geminid activity as well.
Indeed, under normal conditions on the night of maximum activity, with ideal dark-sky conditions, at least 60 to 120 Geminid meteors can be expected to burst across the sky every hour on the average (Light pollution greatly cuts the numbers).
The Earth moves quickly through this meteor stream producing a somewhat broad, lopsided activity profile. Rates increase steadily for two or three days before maximum, reaching roughly above a quarter of its peak strength, then drop off more sharply afterward. Late Geminids, however, tend to be especially bright. Renegade forerunners and late stragglers might be seen for a week or more before and after maximum.
Generally speaking, depending on your location, Gemini begins to come up above the east-northeast horizon right around the time evening twilight is coming to an end. So you might catch sight of a few early Geminids as soon as the sky gets dark.
There is a fair chance of perhaps catching sight of some "Earth-grazing" meteors. Earth grazers are long, bright shooting stars that streak overhead from a point near to even just below the horizon. Such meteors are so distinctive because they follow long paths nearly parallel to our atmosphere.
The Geminids begin to appear noticeably more numerous in the hours after 10 p.m. local time, because the shower's radiant is already fairly high in the eastern sky by then. The best views, however, come around 2 a.m., when their radiant point will be passing very nearly overhead.
The higher a shower's radiant, the more meteors it produces all over the sky.
But keep this in mind: At this time of year, meteor watching can be a long, cold business. You wait and you wait for meteors to appear. When they don't appear right away, and if you're cold and uncomfortable, you're not going to be looking for meteors for very long! The late Henry Neely (1878-1963), who for many years served as a lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium, once had this to say about watching for the Geminids: "Take the advice of a man whose teeth have chattered on many a winter's night — wrap up much more warmly than you think is necessary!"
Hot cocoa or coffee can take the edge off the chill, as well as provide a slight stimulus. It's even better if you can observe with friends. That way, you can keep each other awake, as well as cover more sky. Give your eyes time to dark-adapt before starting.
Bundle up and good luck!
Here is what astronomers David Levy and Stephen Edberg have written of the annual Geminid Meteor Shower: "If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor."
The Geminids get their name from the constellation of Gemini, the Twins, because the meteors appear to emanate from a spot in the sky near the bright star Castor in Gemini.
Also in Gemini this month is the planet Mars, nearing a close approach to the Earth later this month, and shining brilliantly with yellow-orange hue. To be sure, Mars is certain to attract the attention of prospective Geminid watchers this upcoming week.
The Geminid Meteors are usually the most satisfying of all the annual showers, even surpassing the famous Perseids of August.
Studies of past find the "Gems" have a reputation for being rich both in slow, bright, graceful meteors and fireballs as well as faint meteors, with relatively fewer objects of medium brightness.
They are of medium speed, encountering Earth at 22 miles per second (35 kps). They are bright and white, but unlike the Perseids, they leave few visible trails or streaks. They are four times denser than most other meteors, and have been observed to form jagged or divided paths.
Geminids also stand apart from the other meteor showers in that they seem to have been spawned not by a comet, but by 3200 Phaethon, an Earth-crossing asteroid. Then again, the Geminids may be comet debris after all, for some astronomers consider Phaethon to really be the dead nucleus of a burned-out comet that somehow got trapped into an unusually tight orbit. Interestingly, on December 10, Phaethon will be passing about 11 million miles (18 million kilometers) from Earth, its closest approach since its discovery in 1983.
The Geminids perform excellently in any year, but British meteor astronomer, Alastair McBeath, has categorized 2007 as a "great year."
Last year's display was hindered somewhat by the moon, two days past last quarter phase. But this year, the moon will be at new phase on Dec. 9. On the peak night, the moon will be a fat crescent, in the south-southwest at dusk and setting soon after 8 p.m. That means that the sky will be dark and moonless for the balance of the night, making for perfect viewing conditions for the shower.
According to McBeath, the Geminids are predicted to reach peak activity on Dec. 14 at 4:45 GMT. That means those places from central Asia eastwards across the Pacific Ocean to Alaska are in the best position to catch the very crest of the shower, when the rates conceivably could exceed 120 per hour.
"But," he adds, "maximum rates persist at only marginally reduced levels for some 6 to 10 hours around the biggest ones, so other places (such as North America) should enjoy some fine Geminid activity as well.
Indeed, under normal conditions on the night of maximum activity, with ideal dark-sky conditions, at least 60 to 120 Geminid meteors can be expected to burst across the sky every hour on the average (Light pollution greatly cuts the numbers).
The Earth moves quickly through this meteor stream producing a somewhat broad, lopsided activity profile. Rates increase steadily for two or three days before maximum, reaching roughly above a quarter of its peak strength, then drop off more sharply afterward. Late Geminids, however, tend to be especially bright. Renegade forerunners and late stragglers might be seen for a week or more before and after maximum.
Generally speaking, depending on your location, Gemini begins to come up above the east-northeast horizon right around the time evening twilight is coming to an end. So you might catch sight of a few early Geminids as soon as the sky gets dark.
There is a fair chance of perhaps catching sight of some "Earth-grazing" meteors. Earth grazers are long, bright shooting stars that streak overhead from a point near to even just below the horizon. Such meteors are so distinctive because they follow long paths nearly parallel to our atmosphere.
The Geminids begin to appear noticeably more numerous in the hours after 10 p.m. local time, because the shower's radiant is already fairly high in the eastern sky by then. The best views, however, come around 2 a.m., when their radiant point will be passing very nearly overhead.
The higher a shower's radiant, the more meteors it produces all over the sky.
But keep this in mind: At this time of year, meteor watching can be a long, cold business. You wait and you wait for meteors to appear. When they don't appear right away, and if you're cold and uncomfortable, you're not going to be looking for meteors for very long! The late Henry Neely (1878-1963), who for many years served as a lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium, once had this to say about watching for the Geminids: "Take the advice of a man whose teeth have chattered on many a winter's night — wrap up much more warmly than you think is necessary!"
Hot cocoa or coffee can take the edge off the chill, as well as provide a slight stimulus. It's even better if you can observe with friends. That way, you can keep each other awake, as well as cover more sky. Give your eyes time to dark-adapt before starting.
Bundle up and good luck!
SPECIAL COMMENT: Pathological Liar or Idiot-In-Chief?
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor,
Anchor,
'Countdown'
MSNBC
MSNBC
There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr. Bush has left us with tonight.
We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War III about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole, or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked, at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so, whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed were still even remotely plausible.
A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency an unapologetic warmonger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.
After spokeswoman Dana Perino’s announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear.
In August the president was told by his hand-picked major-domo of intelligence, Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what “everybody thought” about Iran might be, in essence, crap.
Yet on Oct. 17, the president said of Iran and its President Ahmadinejad:
“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”
“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”
And as he said that, Mr. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.
Or was it, Sir, to scare the Americans?
Does Iran not really fit into the equation here? Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the same template you used to scare us about Iraq?
In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, Sir, would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.
A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged, irrational Chicken Little of a president shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria and his own delusions of omniscience.
Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Bush.
The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, Sir, that you see in the mirror.
And the mind reels at the thought of a vice president fully briefed on the revised intel as long as two weeks ago, briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit of this imminent threat four years ago, who never bothered to mention it to his boss.
It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan’s presidency it was widely believed that he was little more than a front man for some never-viewed, behind-the-scenes string-puller.
Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance, it is inescapable that Dick Cheney is either this president’s evil ventriloquist or he thinks he is.
What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information of this urgency and gravity and wind up back at his desk the next morning, instead of winding up before a congressional investigation or a criminal one?
Mr. Bush, if you can still hear us, if you did not previously agree to this scenario in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you’re Remington Steele, you must disenthrall yourself: Mr. Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers, cut you out of the information loop and led you down the path to an unprecedented presidency in which the facts are optional, the intel is valued less than the hunch and the assistant runs the store.
The problem is, Sir, your assistant is robbing you and your country blind.
Not merely in monetary terms, Mr. Bush, but, more important, of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk, for centuries: honesty, law, moral force.
Mr. Cheney has helped, Sir, to make your administration into the kind our ancestors saw in the 1860s and 1870s and 1880s, the ones that abandoned Reconstruction and sent this country marching backward into the pit of American apartheid.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland — presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr. Bush.
Presidents who will be remembered only as functions of those who opposed them, the opponents whom history proved right.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland ... Bush.
Would that we could let this president off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.
But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian snake-oil salesman.
But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian snake-oil salesman.
The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post’s Web site.
It is staggering.
It is staggering.
March 31: “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon...”
June 5: Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons...”
June 19: “consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon...”
July 12: “the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons...”
Aug. 6: “this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon...”
Notice a pattern?
Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
Then, sometime between Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the president, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror but there may not even be a tree there....
McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.
McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.
Aug. 9: “They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program...”
Aug. 28: “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons...”
Oct. 4: “you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon...”
Oct. 17: “until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the **capacity**, the **knowledge**, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”
Before Aug. 9, it’s: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
After Aug. 9, it’s: Desire, pursuit, want ... knowledge technology know-how to enrich uranium.
And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003....
And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003....
And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on Oct. 17.
And that’s just a coincidence?
And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?
Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true, something like “what the definition of ‘is’ is,” but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.
Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial, but ethically it is a lie.
It is indefensible.
You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the other end had already hung up.
You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.
And moreover, you have just revealed that John Bolton and Norman Podhoretz and the Wall Street Journal editorial board are also bald-faced liars.
We are to believe that the intel community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?
And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?
You not only knew all of this about Iran in early August, but you also knew it was accurate.
And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent, you merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside.
While you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of, as you phrased it Aug. 28, “nuclear holocaust,” and, as you phrased it Oct. 17, “World War III.”
My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase “George Bush has no business being president.”
Well, guess what?
Tonight: hanged by your own words, convicted by your own deliberate lies....
You, sir, have no business being president.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Divorce Is Bad For The Planet
"Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E." Mother Nature probably agrees with Tammy Wynette. According to a recent Michigan State University study, divorce is taking a major toll on the environment.
Some of the findings:
* In the United States alone in 2005, divorced households used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water that could have been saved had household size remained the same as that of married households. Thirty-eight million extra rooms were needed with associated costs for heating and lighting.
* In the United States and 11 other countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been 7.4 million fewer households in these countries.
* The numbers of divorced households in these countries ranged from 40,000 in Costa Rica to almost 16 million in the United States around 2000.
* The number of rooms per person in divorced households was 33 percent to 95 percent greater than in married households.
But the researchers also point out that divorce is just part of the picture: In the U.S., multigenerational households have become less common over the past few decades. What's more, single people are putting off getting married, and hence living alone for longer. Seems like the only bright side about sky-high rent, then, is that it might actually make some cities greener (since fewer people can afford to live alone).
Not only is divorce bad for the planet, it's pretty bad for families, also.
Some of the findings:
* In the United States alone in 2005, divorced households used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water that could have been saved had household size remained the same as that of married households. Thirty-eight million extra rooms were needed with associated costs for heating and lighting.
* In the United States and 11 other countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been 7.4 million fewer households in these countries.
* The numbers of divorced households in these countries ranged from 40,000 in Costa Rica to almost 16 million in the United States around 2000.
* The number of rooms per person in divorced households was 33 percent to 95 percent greater than in married households.
But the researchers also point out that divorce is just part of the picture: In the U.S., multigenerational households have become less common over the past few decades. What's more, single people are putting off getting married, and hence living alone for longer. Seems like the only bright side about sky-high rent, then, is that it might actually make some cities greener (since fewer people can afford to live alone).
Not only is divorce bad for the planet, it's pretty bad for families, also.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Living Room Mouse Hunt
I got Hannibal on October 21, 2001 and during the following winter he caught 4 mice - outside -at the other house in EG. I always thought it was strange to have a dog who was a mouser, typically it's cats that provide that function.
PuddyCat, from next door, spent a lot of time in that house with me, pretty much ignoring Hookey and tolerating Hannibal when he was just a puppy (We moved to Wickford when he was 2 1/2 years old.) Puddy would, on occasion, catch a mouse or two in the kitchen. One time I actually heard the crunching as he ate one. He was a great mouser.
The last winter that I lived there I caught, and killed, 37 mice. There should have been 38 mice but one of them faked me out by pretending to be dead so when I opened the box (I kept their bodies in a shoebox that I would empty every other day) this little mouse jumped out, onto and over my shoulder and down the stairs, into the house. I never did find any trace of him, so who knows where he went to.
At the new house, there are 2 cats (=^o^=) that live upstairs; Scarlett and Sky. Neither of them seem to be good mousers, at least not to my knowledge. What they do do is sneak back into the house once they've been put out for the day. There's some sort of opening under the upstairs deck that allows the cats to climb inside between my ceiling and the upstairs floor, which then leads them into the storage/laundry area. Once in there they meow so loudly that I either put them back outside or let them upstairs into their home. I've never seen even a hint of a mouse where they are concerned. I just hope no other animal comes in their little passageway!
Since I moved to this house, Hannibal has been doing a mouse hunt - in the living room. It's all I can think of when he puts his nose to the rug and runs from one piece of furniture to the next -sniffing away. I've not seen any sign of mice, and when he starts his hunt, I turn on all the lights and hunt right along with him. I finally broke down and bought a couple of mouse traps that are long tunnels, where the mouse goes in to get the peanut butter, and you don't have to worry about your fingers getting smashed or seeing the mouse laying there dead on the floor.
Those two mousetraps are in the living room, just in case there are more than one mouse to be trapped. I've knocked one over and set it off a few times, Emilee set it off once when she was vacuuming so I didn't even notice the other day when the trap was laying on it's side. When I did notice and went to reset it, it wouldn't reset! I couldn't figure out what was going on until I looked inside - a mouse!! Hannibal had no interest in the dead mouse, he only likes to hunt the live ones. So this little mouse spent the next couple of days in the front hall waiting for me to get rid of him.
I just came in from outside where I dumped the little mouse body in the front yard -away from where Hannibal can reach when tied up - hopefully it will become a meal for an owl or a hawk. And not a meal for my little pup.
PuddyCat, from next door, spent a lot of time in that house with me, pretty much ignoring Hookey and tolerating Hannibal when he was just a puppy (We moved to Wickford when he was 2 1/2 years old.) Puddy would, on occasion, catch a mouse or two in the kitchen. One time I actually heard the crunching as he ate one. He was a great mouser.
The last winter that I lived there I caught, and killed, 37 mice. There should have been 38 mice but one of them faked me out by pretending to be dead so when I opened the box (I kept their bodies in a shoebox that I would empty every other day) this little mouse jumped out, onto and over my shoulder and down the stairs, into the house. I never did find any trace of him, so who knows where he went to.
At the new house, there are 2 cats (=^o^=) that live upstairs; Scarlett and Sky. Neither of them seem to be good mousers, at least not to my knowledge. What they do do is sneak back into the house once they've been put out for the day. There's some sort of opening under the upstairs deck that allows the cats to climb inside between my ceiling and the upstairs floor, which then leads them into the storage/laundry area. Once in there they meow so loudly that I either put them back outside or let them upstairs into their home. I've never seen even a hint of a mouse where they are concerned. I just hope no other animal comes in their little passageway!
Since I moved to this house, Hannibal has been doing a mouse hunt - in the living room. It's all I can think of when he puts his nose to the rug and runs from one piece of furniture to the next -sniffing away. I've not seen any sign of mice, and when he starts his hunt, I turn on all the lights and hunt right along with him. I finally broke down and bought a couple of mouse traps that are long tunnels, where the mouse goes in to get the peanut butter, and you don't have to worry about your fingers getting smashed or seeing the mouse laying there dead on the floor.
Those two mousetraps are in the living room, just in case there are more than one mouse to be trapped. I've knocked one over and set it off a few times, Emilee set it off once when she was vacuuming so I didn't even notice the other day when the trap was laying on it's side. When I did notice and went to reset it, it wouldn't reset! I couldn't figure out what was going on until I looked inside - a mouse!! Hannibal had no interest in the dead mouse, he only likes to hunt the live ones. So this little mouse spent the next couple of days in the front hall waiting for me to get rid of him.
I just came in from outside where I dumped the little mouse body in the front yard -away from where Hannibal can reach when tied up - hopefully it will become a meal for an owl or a hawk. And not a meal for my little pup.
Monday, December 3, 2007
National Debt Grows $1 Million A Minute
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute.
What's that mean to you?
It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.
Even if you've escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.
And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt — now at relatively low interest rates — rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.
So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.
But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending — leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.
A major economic slowdown, as some economists suggest may be looming, could hasten the day of reckoning.
The national debt — the total accumulation of annual budget deficits — is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009.
That's $10,000,000,000,000.00, or one digit more than an odometer-style "national debt clock" near New York's Times Square can handle. When the privately owned automated clock was activated in 1989, the national debt was $2.7 trillion.
It only gets worse.
Over the next 25 years, the number of Americans aged 65 and up is expected to almost double.
The work population will shrink and more and more baby boomers will be drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits, putting new demands on the government's resources.
These guaranteed retirement and health benefit programs now make up the largest component of federal spending. Defense is next. And moving up fast in third place is interest on the national debt, which totaled $430 billion last year.
Aggravating the debt picture: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates could cost $2.4 trillion over the next decade
Despite vows in both parties to restrain federal spending, the national debt as a percentage of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product has grown from about 35 percent in 1975 to around 65 percent today. By historical standards, it's not proportionately as high as during World War II — when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP, but it's a big chunk of liability.
"The problem is going forward," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poors, a major credit-rating agency.
"Our estimate is that the national debt will hit 350 percent of the GDP by 2050 under unchanged policy. Something has to change, because if you look at what's going to happen to expenditures for entitlement programs after us baby boomers start to retire, at the current tax rates, it doesn't work," Wyss said.
With national elections approaching, candidates of both parties are talking about fiscal discipline and reducing the deficit and accusing the other of irresponsible spending. But the national debt itself — a legacy of overspending dating back to the American Revolution — receives only occasional mention.
Who is loaning Washington all this money?
Ordinary investors who buy Treasury bills, notes and U.S. savings bonds, for one. Also it is banks, pension funds, mutual fund companies and state, local and increasingly foreign governments. This accounts for about $5.1 trillion of the total and is called the "publicly held" debt. The remaining $4 trillion is owed to Social Security and other government accounts, according to the Treasury Department, which keeps figures on the national debt down to the penny on its Web site.
Some economists liken the government's plight to consumers who spent like there was no tomorrow — only to find themselves maxed out on credit cards and having a hard time keeping up with rising interest payments.
"The government is in the same predicament as the average homeowner who took out an adjustable mortgage," said Stanley Collender, a former congressional budget analyst and now managing director at Qorvis Communications, a business consulting firm.
Much of the recent borrowing has been accomplished through the selling of shorter-term Treasury bills. If these loans roll over to higher rates, interest payments on the national debt could soar. Furthermore, the decline of the dollar against other major currencies is making
Treasury securities less attractive to foreigners — even if they remain one of the world's safest investments.
For now, large U.S. trade deficits with much of the rest of the world work in favor of continued foreign investment in Treasuries and dollar-denominated securities. After all, the vast sums Americans pay — in dollars — for imported goods has to go somewhere. But that dynamic could change.
"The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the Saudis say, `we've bought enough of your paper,' then the debt — whatever level it is at that point — becomes unmanageable," said Collender.
A recent comment by a Chinese lawmaker suggesting the country should buy more euros instead of dollars helped send the Dow Jones plunging more than 300 points.
The dollar is down about 35 percent since the end of 2001 against a basket of major currencies.
Foreign governments and investors now hold some $2.23 trillion — or about 44 percent — of all publicly held U.S. debt. That's up 9.5 percent from a year earlier.
Japan is first with $586 billion, followed by China ($400 billion) and Britain ($244 billion). Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting countries account for $123 billion, according to the Treasury.
"Borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from China and OPEC puts not only our future economy, but also our national security, at risk. It is critical that we ensure that countries that control our debt do not control our future," said Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, a Republican budget hawk.
Of all federal budget categories, interest on the national debt is the one the president and Congress have the least control over. Cutting payments would amount to default, something Washington has never done.
Congress must from time to time raise the debt limit — sort of like a credit card maximum — or the government would be unable to borrow any further to keep it operating and to pay additional debt obligations.
The Democratic-led Congress recently did just that, raising the ceiling to $9.82 trillion as the former $8.97 trillion maximum was about to be exceeded. It was the fifth debt-ceiling increase since Bush became president in 2001.
Democrats are blaming the runup in deficit spending on Bush and his Republican allies who controlled Congress for the first six years of his presidency. They criticize him for resisting improvements in health care, education and other vital areas while seeking nearly $200 billion in new Iraq and Afghanistan war spending.
"We pay in interest four times more than we spend on education and four times what it will cost to cover 10 million children with health insurance for five years," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "That's fiscal irresponsibility."
Republicans insist congressional Democrats are the irresponsible ones. Bush has reinforced his call for deficit reduction with vetoes and veto threats and cites a looming "train wreck" if entitlement programs are not reined in.
Yet his efforts two years ago to overhaul Social Security had little support, even among fellow Republicans.
The deficit only reflects the gap between government spending and tax revenues for one year.
Not exactly how a family or a business keeps its books.
Even during the four most recent years when there was a budget surplus, 1998-2001, the national debt ranged between $5.5 trillion and $5.8 trillion.
As in trying to pay off a large credit-card balance by only making minimum payments, the overall debt might be next to impossible to chisel down appreciably, regardless of who is in the White House or which party controls Congress, without major spending cuts, tax increases or both.
"The basic facts are a matter of arithmetic, not ideology," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates eliminating federal deficits.
There's little dispute that current fiscal policies are unsustainable, he said. "Yet too few of our elected leaders in Washington are willing to acknowledge the seriousness of the long-term fiscal problem and even fewer are willing to put it on the political agenda."
Polls show people don't like the idea of saddling future generations with debt, but proposing to pay down the national debt itself doesn't move the needle much.
"People have a tendency to put some of these longer term problems out of their minds because they're so pressed with more imminent worries, such as wages and jobs and income inequality," said pollster Andrew Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
Texas billionaire Ross Perot made paying down the national debt a central element of his quixotic third-party presidential bid in 1992. The national debt then stood at $4 trillion and Perot displayed charts showing it would soar to $8 trillion by 2007 if left unchecked. He was about a trillion low.
Not long ago, it actually looked like the national debt could be paid off — in full. In the late 1990s, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office projected a surplus of a $5.6 trillion over ten years — and calculated the debt would be paid off as early as 2006.
Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently wrote that he was "stunned" and even troubled by such a prospect. Among other things, he worried about where the government would park its surplus if Treasury bonds went out of existence because they were no longer needed.
Not to worry. That surplus quickly evaporated.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, said he's more concerned that interest on the national debt will become unsustainable than he is that foreign countries will dump their dollar holdings — something that would undermine the value of their own vast holdings. "We're going to have to shell out a lot of resources to make those interest payments. There's a very strong argument as to why it's vital that we address our budget issues before they get measurably worse," Zandi said.
"Of course, that's not going to happen until after the next president is in the White House," he added.
WASHINGTON - Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute.
What's that mean to you?
It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.
Even if you've escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.
And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt — now at relatively low interest rates — rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.
So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.
But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending — leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.
A major economic slowdown, as some economists suggest may be looming, could hasten the day of reckoning.
The national debt — the total accumulation of annual budget deficits — is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009.
That's $10,000,000,000,000.00, or one digit more than an odometer-style "national debt clock" near New York's Times Square can handle. When the privately owned automated clock was activated in 1989, the national debt was $2.7 trillion.
It only gets worse.
Over the next 25 years, the number of Americans aged 65 and up is expected to almost double.
The work population will shrink and more and more baby boomers will be drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits, putting new demands on the government's resources.
These guaranteed retirement and health benefit programs now make up the largest component of federal spending. Defense is next. And moving up fast in third place is interest on the national debt, which totaled $430 billion last year.
Aggravating the debt picture: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates could cost $2.4 trillion over the next decade
Despite vows in both parties to restrain federal spending, the national debt as a percentage of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product has grown from about 35 percent in 1975 to around 65 percent today. By historical standards, it's not proportionately as high as during World War II — when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP, but it's a big chunk of liability.
"The problem is going forward," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poors, a major credit-rating agency.
"Our estimate is that the national debt will hit 350 percent of the GDP by 2050 under unchanged policy. Something has to change, because if you look at what's going to happen to expenditures for entitlement programs after us baby boomers start to retire, at the current tax rates, it doesn't work," Wyss said.
With national elections approaching, candidates of both parties are talking about fiscal discipline and reducing the deficit and accusing the other of irresponsible spending. But the national debt itself — a legacy of overspending dating back to the American Revolution — receives only occasional mention.
Who is loaning Washington all this money?
Ordinary investors who buy Treasury bills, notes and U.S. savings bonds, for one. Also it is banks, pension funds, mutual fund companies and state, local and increasingly foreign governments. This accounts for about $5.1 trillion of the total and is called the "publicly held" debt. The remaining $4 trillion is owed to Social Security and other government accounts, according to the Treasury Department, which keeps figures on the national debt down to the penny on its Web site.
Some economists liken the government's plight to consumers who spent like there was no tomorrow — only to find themselves maxed out on credit cards and having a hard time keeping up with rising interest payments.
"The government is in the same predicament as the average homeowner who took out an adjustable mortgage," said Stanley Collender, a former congressional budget analyst and now managing director at Qorvis Communications, a business consulting firm.
Much of the recent borrowing has been accomplished through the selling of shorter-term Treasury bills. If these loans roll over to higher rates, interest payments on the national debt could soar. Furthermore, the decline of the dollar against other major currencies is making
Treasury securities less attractive to foreigners — even if they remain one of the world's safest investments.
For now, large U.S. trade deficits with much of the rest of the world work in favor of continued foreign investment in Treasuries and dollar-denominated securities. After all, the vast sums Americans pay — in dollars — for imported goods has to go somewhere. But that dynamic could change.
"The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the Saudis say, `we've bought enough of your paper,' then the debt — whatever level it is at that point — becomes unmanageable," said Collender.
A recent comment by a Chinese lawmaker suggesting the country should buy more euros instead of dollars helped send the Dow Jones plunging more than 300 points.
The dollar is down about 35 percent since the end of 2001 against a basket of major currencies.
Foreign governments and investors now hold some $2.23 trillion — or about 44 percent — of all publicly held U.S. debt. That's up 9.5 percent from a year earlier.
Japan is first with $586 billion, followed by China ($400 billion) and Britain ($244 billion). Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting countries account for $123 billion, according to the Treasury.
"Borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from China and OPEC puts not only our future economy, but also our national security, at risk. It is critical that we ensure that countries that control our debt do not control our future," said Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, a Republican budget hawk.
Of all federal budget categories, interest on the national debt is the one the president and Congress have the least control over. Cutting payments would amount to default, something Washington has never done.
Congress must from time to time raise the debt limit — sort of like a credit card maximum — or the government would be unable to borrow any further to keep it operating and to pay additional debt obligations.
The Democratic-led Congress recently did just that, raising the ceiling to $9.82 trillion as the former $8.97 trillion maximum was about to be exceeded. It was the fifth debt-ceiling increase since Bush became president in 2001.
Democrats are blaming the runup in deficit spending on Bush and his Republican allies who controlled Congress for the first six years of his presidency. They criticize him for resisting improvements in health care, education and other vital areas while seeking nearly $200 billion in new Iraq and Afghanistan war spending.
"We pay in interest four times more than we spend on education and four times what it will cost to cover 10 million children with health insurance for five years," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "That's fiscal irresponsibility."
Republicans insist congressional Democrats are the irresponsible ones. Bush has reinforced his call for deficit reduction with vetoes and veto threats and cites a looming "train wreck" if entitlement programs are not reined in.
Yet his efforts two years ago to overhaul Social Security had little support, even among fellow Republicans.
The deficit only reflects the gap between government spending and tax revenues for one year.
Not exactly how a family or a business keeps its books.
Even during the four most recent years when there was a budget surplus, 1998-2001, the national debt ranged between $5.5 trillion and $5.8 trillion.
As in trying to pay off a large credit-card balance by only making minimum payments, the overall debt might be next to impossible to chisel down appreciably, regardless of who is in the White House or which party controls Congress, without major spending cuts, tax increases or both.
"The basic facts are a matter of arithmetic, not ideology," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates eliminating federal deficits.
There's little dispute that current fiscal policies are unsustainable, he said. "Yet too few of our elected leaders in Washington are willing to acknowledge the seriousness of the long-term fiscal problem and even fewer are willing to put it on the political agenda."
Polls show people don't like the idea of saddling future generations with debt, but proposing to pay down the national debt itself doesn't move the needle much.
"People have a tendency to put some of these longer term problems out of their minds because they're so pressed with more imminent worries, such as wages and jobs and income inequality," said pollster Andrew Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
Texas billionaire Ross Perot made paying down the national debt a central element of his quixotic third-party presidential bid in 1992. The national debt then stood at $4 trillion and Perot displayed charts showing it would soar to $8 trillion by 2007 if left unchecked. He was about a trillion low.
Not long ago, it actually looked like the national debt could be paid off — in full. In the late 1990s, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office projected a surplus of a $5.6 trillion over ten years — and calculated the debt would be paid off as early as 2006.
Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently wrote that he was "stunned" and even troubled by such a prospect. Among other things, he worried about where the government would park its surplus if Treasury bonds went out of existence because they were no longer needed.
Not to worry. That surplus quickly evaporated.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, said he's more concerned that interest on the national debt will become unsustainable than he is that foreign countries will dump their dollar holdings — something that would undermine the value of their own vast holdings. "We're going to have to shell out a lot of resources to make those interest payments. There's a very strong argument as to why it's vital that we address our budget issues before they get measurably worse," Zandi said.
"Of course, that's not going to happen until after the next president is in the White House," he added.
Bam Bam And Santa
If this isn't the sweetest picture, I don't know what is.
It seems that Ben found the real Santa! Rosy cheeks and all.
This young man has had quite the life in his 10 months and I've got the pictures to prove it. Theme clothing for all holidays so far this year. I cannot wait to see him in his Christmas finest.
He's been to the zoo at least a couple of times, a pumpkin patch in New Hampshire, the I-Way and now a visit with Santa.
I can only imagine what the next year of his life will bring.
Stay tuned....
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Andromeda Takes Center Stage In Night Sky
Now that the bright moon has left the evening sky, it's a good time to turn our attention to one of the most amazing sky objects, which is passing almost directly over our heads this week between 7:30 and 8 p.m.
This object was known as the "little cloud" to the Persian astronomer Abd-al-Rahman Al-Sufi, who described and depicted it in his Book of Fixed Stars in the year 964. But it may have been commonly known to Persian astronomers at Isfahan as far back as 905, or even earlier. An expert on star nomenclature, Richard Hinckley Allen, once reported that it also appeared on a Dutch star map from the year 1500.
The light from that "little cloud" is actually the total accumulation of light from more than 400 billion stars. It is listed as Messier 31 (or M31) in Charles Messier's famous catalog — a list of hazy objects that resembled comets but later proved to be galaxies, nebulae and star clusters.
Here is the most distant object that can be seen with the unaided eye.
Bigger than the Milky WayM31 has been estimated to be nearly 200,000 light-years in diameter, or one and a half times as wide as our own Milky Way galaxy. Its bright nucleus is the hazy patch that is visible to the unaided eye. Like our own galaxy, M31 has several attendant satellite galaxies. Two of these, M32 and M110, can be picked out with low magnification in a small to medium-sized telescope, in the same field of view as M31. There are yet two other smaller companions (NGC 147 and 185) that are much fainter and placed much farther away, close to the border of nearby Cassiopeia.
As you look at the Andromeda Galaxy you'll be doing something that no one else in the world except a stargazer can do; you will actually be looking back into the distant past.
There is a good reason why this patch of light appears so faint to the naked eye. When you see it, consider that this light has been traveling 2.5 million years to reach you — traveling all that time at the tremendous velocity of 671 million mph.
The light you are seeing is around 25,000 centuries old and began its journey around the time of the dawn of human consciousness. The light you are now getting is at least 480 times older than the Pyramids; the distance it has traveled is so inconceivable that even to write the number of miles is all but meaningless.
When it began its nearly 15-quintillion-mile journey earthward (that's a 15, followed by 18 zeros!), mastodons and saber-toothed tigers roamed over much of pre-ice-age North America, and prehistoric man was struggling for existence in what is now the Olduvai Gorge of East Africa.
Nebula or galaxy?For a long time, M31 was popularly referred to as the Andromeda "Nebula." Although big reflecting telescopes such as Lord Rosse's 72-inch at Birr Castle in Ireland were in operation during the mid-19th century, its true nature was not confirmed until astronomer Edwin P. Hubble finally resolved M31 into individual stars with the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in 1923.
Nevertheless, there were those who many decades earlier suspected that M31 was much more than just a luminous cloud. Read this prophetic comment out of W.H. Smyth's "A Cycle of Celestial Objects," written back in 1844:
"Sir John Herschel ... concludes that it is a flat ring, of enormous dimensions, seen very obliquely. It consists probably, of myriads of solar systems at a most astounding distance from ours, and affords a distinct lesson that we must not limit the bounds of the universe by the limits of our senses."
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Whoops
Hmmm, seems the Pentagon is now saying the bills asking soldiers for reimbursement of their recruitment bonus because they didn't finish their sentences, um, I mean, tours of duty was a mistake!
They will, from now on, only bill for reimbursement of soldiers who didn't finish their tours of duty if they weren't injured, or, if their reimbursement was deferred.
I just wanted to set the record straight.
Who said you can trust a man in uniform? Never mind a pentagon of them.
They will, from now on, only bill for reimbursement of soldiers who didn't finish their tours of duty if they weren't injured, or, if their reimbursement was deferred.
I just wanted to set the record straight.
Who said you can trust a man in uniform? Never mind a pentagon of them.
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