Archive for April 2007
Finally! Proof That Heat Does Melt Steel!
Thankfully, nobody was killed in the gas tanker explosion in San Francisco that destroyed the ramp of three interchanges off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. I bet any minute that Tokyo Rosie will be ranting about White House conspiracy to destroy San Francisco’s economy due to their lack of support for the military.
Mercury News reports:
CBS News says:
[…]California Department of Transportation director Will Kempton said intense heat from the flames caused the steel beams holding up the roadway to buckle and bolts holding the structure together to melt. The cost of repairs would likely run into the tens of millions of dollars, and the agency was seeking federal disaster aid, Kempton said.
I won’t be holding my breath waiting for a retraction from Tokyo Rosie while she takes a break from her vitriolic rants. I can’t believe millions of liberals believe whatever they are told. I just can’t.
The End To Extension Cords Everywhere?
The back of my desktop workstation is covered with them. Surge protectors, computer cords, battery chargers, and miscellaneous hardware. I have eight cords underneath and five electrical cords on top. Yes, I have them all in proper multiple outlet boxes and wired properly but I am so wired that one day they will all be gone and my desktop and underneath it will be clear!
I will once again post that everyone who is working in any career should be constantly monitoring what’s going on in their industry and beyond. This little invention is the death knell of the cable manufacturing companies, or at least job diversifying. Those in the electrical market will be shocked in ten years when they have job lay-offs, and they will say they didn’t see it coming. Tom Geller reports that the desks and walls could one day light up electronics without the need for electrical cords.
Annoyed by the tangle of power cords under your desk? A sheet of plastic invented by researchers in Japan could one day make for tables and walls that power devices placed on them — without any need for wires or plugs. Computers could be powered through the desks on which they sit, for example, or flat-screen televisions through the walls where they hang.
The team of seven researchers at the University of Tokyo has produced a sample sheet of the plastic, which is about the size of a very thin magazine — just one millimetre thick and weighing 50 grams. It can deliver up to 40 watts of power to products on or near it that contain a special ‘receiving coil’: enough to power a lightbulb or a very small laptop. They say that scaled-up production of such sheets could be inexpensive enough for widespread installation in desks, floors, ceilings and walls, ushering in a “new class of electronic devices”.
The plastic, described today in Nature Materials, has as its base a layer of transistor featuring pentacene, an organic molecule whose electrical conductivity can be controlled. Topping that are layers holding copper coils that can sense whether a compatible electronic device is nearby, microelectromechanical-system (MEMS) switches that serve to turn on and off the power, and copper coils to transmit electricity.
When the sheet itself is plugged in, it can power devices — such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) strung on a Christmas tree — that are built with a matching receiver coil. When these are placed within 2.5 centimetres of the sheet, the nearest MEMS switch turns on, feeding power to the closest sender coil, which powers the device’s receiving coil through induction.
The researchers say the transmission of power happens with 81.4% efficiency — compared to 93% efficiency in the wired grid network as a whole — with a “quite low” level of leaked electromagnetic radiation. As a demonstration of the product’s safety, the paper shows it powering an LED at the bottom of a bowl containing water and a live fish.
All four layers are produced by literally printing them — the coils using screen printing, the switch and transistor layers with an ink-jet printer (using special electronic inks). So the product is thin, lightweight and mechanically flexible.
Do you know what bright idea is being invented in your industry? You better… it might affect your job and your future.
Obama Leading Hillary In Polls
Rasmussen is reporting on Fox News that in a national telephone survey of 765 likely Democratic Primary voters during a poll April 23rd – 25th, that Senator Obama is beating Senator Clinton by 2%. That’s with an error margin of +/- 4%, which is a statistical tie.
Groom’s Brother Gets The Bride
How’s this for quick thinking?
Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom’s more sober brother instead, police said Monday.
“The groom was drunk and had reportedly misbehaved with guests when the bride’s family and local villagers chased him away,” Madho Singh, a senior police officer told Reuters after Sunday’s marriage in a village in Bihar state’s Arwal district.
The younger brother readily agreed to take the groom’s place beside the teenage bride at her family’s invitation, witnesses said.
The groom apologized for his behavior, but has been crying that word will spread and he will never get a bride again,” Singh said by phone.
Reading The Landscape
As an American with no Irish ancestry you might wonder what I am doing here in Sligo. I have the best of landscape with Knocknear in the back yard and Ben Bulben up the road but surely, the historyof Ireland is ‘write’ in the names of the towns and counties.
The prefix ‘drum’ in a name indicates a ‘fort’ and there were plenty of forts in Ireland. For example, near Cookstown are Drummond, Drumard, Drumgarrell, Drumearn, Drumcarn, Drumraw and Drumballyhugh. In Dublin we have Drumcondra and Dundrum. Leitrim which is also known for its ridges has its Drumshanbo and Drumahair which is where I went to visit the famous abbey.
But see how much more the name can tell us about a place:
- Donegal is the fort of the foreigner (‘gall’ in Irish means foreigner)
- Kildare is the church of oak (‘cill’ in Irish means ‘church’, ‘dara’ means ‘oak’)
- Kilkenny is the church of St. Candice.
- Sligo is named after the Shelly River.
- Dublin has its black pool in the Phoenix Park(Dubh-Linn, from Gaelic, ‘the black mire’)
- Derry is Doire, the oak again.
- Ardboe in the North means ‘hill of the cow'(from the Irish word ‘bo’ meaning cow).
- Lissan means ‘Anne’s Lis’ who was a Fairy Queen and guardian spirit of the O’Connor family.
- The Irish word for Ulster is ‘ulidia’ meaning ‘the land east of the river Bann’.
- Tyrone is from ‘tir Eoin’ – the land of Owen.(in Irish ‘tir’ means ‘land’)
- Lough Swilly is the lake of shadows.
- Tulluhogue is the hill of youth(in Irish og, ogue, means ‘young’)
- Howth in Dublin is derived from the Danish hoved or head (The Vikings landed here!)
- Glendalough in Wicklow is the valley of the two lakes
- Naas in Kildare is really ‘Nas Na Ri’, Naas of the kings
- Meath, a central county is ‘Midhe’- the middle,
- Dowth is from the Irish for ‘darkness’, found at Newgrange
- Cork is from ‘Coraigh’, a marshy place.
- Killarney is from ‘Cill Airne’, the church of the sloe
- Omagh is the seat of the chiefs
- Belmullet in Mayo is ‘Beal a Mhuirthead’, the mouth of the Mullet.
Andrea Santillo goes on to say “Reading the landscape can give one an insight into what has gone before. I urge all people coming to Ireland to get off the beaten path and look into the least traveled sections of this, my adopted home – somewhere where you can have your own personal link with the past.”
John Edwards Flips The Fingers
John Edwards is flicking the two fingers at the middle class when he says that tax increases for the rich aren’t out of the question.
Democratic presidential contender John Edwards said Sunday he would consider raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to fund programs such as universal health care.
Edwards has long said he wants to repeal the tax cuts on upper-income earners enacted during the Bush presidency, but Sunday he seemed to go further, by saying he was open to raising them higher than they were before George W. Bush took office. He also said he would consider taxes on “excess profits,” including those made by oil companies.
How about taxing the pants off of lawyers who earn excessive fees from trial cases?
Edwards said it was more important to level with voters than to worry about the political consequences of advocating higher taxes.
“It’s just the truth,” Edwards said during a news conference following his speech to the California Democratic Party convention. “It’s the only way to fund the things that need to be done.”
Edwards said his plan to provide universal health coverage would cost $90 billion to $120 billion a year.
Tax cuts improve economy and when you increase taxes, you increase poverty. That’s the real truth.
You want tax increases? Vote foolishly for Edwards.
The Cato Institute’s 2001 Foreshadowing of Prosperous Economy.
President Bush’s 2007 State of the Economy.
Gore’s Hypocritical Footprint Growing
Appearing first in the Middle Ages, indulgences relieved the consciences of the warmongering nobles and kings so that they could continue warring without dooming their souls to Hell.
Then came carbon credits, so that those using too much carbon, could continue to use the carbon while paying money to relieve their consciences and make it appear to the world that they really did have good intentions. Now Gore, (the father of carbon credits?) has ridiculed Canada’s energy plan.
Gore said the plan did not make clear how Canada would reach its 2020 emissions goal. He also criticized the plan for allowing industries to pollute more if they use emissions-cutting technologies while increasing production.
“In my opinion, it is a complete and total fraud,” Gore said Saturday. “It is designed to mislead the Canadian people.”
Isn’t this like the pot calling the kettle black here? I mean…green. Gore actually owns the “investment” that he calls ” paying carbon credits”.
High On The Hill Was A Lonely Goatherd
The secret to a long life is no sex and no curiousity? So says a 116-year old goat herder in Russia.
Grigoriy Nestor said: “According to my Christian beliefs there is no sex before marriage, so I never had a wife. People that were not married like me live longer. People who get married just argue all the time, and that’s not good for your health. I believe that’s why I have lived so long, that and the fact I have never been curious. People who know too much always come to a nasty end. Better to stay stupid and not wonder too much about anything.”
Mr Nestor, who lives in the village of Stariy Yarichev, close to capital Kiev, claims he only ever attended school for two days, long enough to learn how to write his name.
Is he warning quidnuncs everywhere? I’m going to have to do a search on how long do quidnuncs live.
Historic WWII B-47 Pilot Dies
Without the brave young men in our military like Robert Rosenthal, we would not have won World War II. Robert Rosenthal, the most famous of the B-47 bomber pilots, planes which were affectionately called “Rosie’s Riveters” was once quoted as saying “A human being has to look out for other human beings or there’s no civilization.”
Robert Rosenthal, a World War II bomber pilot who twice survived being shot down in raids over Europe and later served on the U.S. legal team that prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, has died at age 89.
Rosenthal, who lived in Harrison, N.Y., died April 20 of multiple myeloma, according to a son, Steven Rosenthal, of Newton, Mass.
With 16 decorations including the Distingushed Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for heroism, Rosenthal was a quintessential example of the young Army pilots, some barely out of their teens, who defied seemingly hopeless odds to carry out daylight strategic bombing raids against Germany’s industrial war machine from 1942 to 1945.
After the war, Rosenthal also participated as a lawyer in the the Nuremberg Trials. He personally interviewed the ex-Luftwaffe commander Herman Goering, the highest-ranking Nazi defendant. Goering, committing suicide, would never pay the price of hanging for his war crimes. Read all about the man who was designated as a honoree in the Jewish-American Hall of Fame.
New York City?????
Naw… it’s not really New York City, it’s the United Nations that have sent an invitation to Pope Benedict XVI. He has accepted although no timetable has been established.
How much you want to bet the invitation from the corrupt organization is a move is in effort to embarrass President Bush?
Sma' Talk Wi' T 