In the past few years, earthmoving has gotten our attention several times:

• Dec 26, 2004 9.3 Sumatra (Indonesia)
• Feb 27, 2010 8.8 Off the Coast of Chile
• Mar 28, 2005 8.6 Northern Sumatra (Indonesia)
• Sep 12, 2007 8.5 Southern Sumatra (Indonesia)
• Jan 12, 2010 7.0 Haiti

I'll bet you weren't even aware of the last 2 Indonesian temblors

Reality check: in terms of magnitude,
• the recent Chile 'quake didn't make the Top 5
• the Haiti earthquake didn't make the Top 20

"So," says my imaginary friend, "I'll bet you're going to tell us about the really big earthquakes."

Said I, "Mañana, siempre mañana."

Then he said "the first clue was the "Part I in the title."

Skinput turns your hand into a touchscreen and your fingers into a keypad. Creative thinkers over at Microsoft Research have created Skinput, a Bluetooth-enabled device that allows you to use your own skin as a peripheral input device for devices like cell phones, MP3 players or gaming consoles.

Skinput uses an armband, which contains a small projector that beams the phone/player/console interface onto your arm ... or in the case of a certain Presidential wanna-be, onto the hand¹. At that point, your arm – or hand – becomes a touchscreen. Tap your skin to click on the virtual buttons being displayed. If you’ve just dialed a phone number, it sends the info to your phone and dials the call. Or you could scroll through your ArmPhone's selection of apps.

Now instead of just walking around appearing to talk to yourself, you can add tapping various parts of your body to the mix. The good news is that involuntary commitments are limited to 72 hours.

Besides, it sure beats getting caught with Sharpie-written crib notes on your hand.²

Read more about SkinPut

^1,2 The joke here is that politician Sarah Palin, who is two scoops shy of being a triple-dip sundae, tries very hard to convince people that she really is smart. Recently on a TV talk show she was trying very, very hard to impress — but got caught with crib notes scrawled on her hand. Once again she proves that she is not ready for prime time – not for prime-time TV, and most certainly not ready for the 4 years of prime-time as leader of the world's most important and powerful country.

1. Lincoln and JFK started in politics 100 years apart.
2. Lincoln and JFK were elected POTUS 100 yrs apart.
3. Lincoln and JFK had vice presidents named Johnson.
4. Lincoln and JFK have 7 letters in their last name.
5. It gets better:
   • Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy
   • Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln.
6. Here's the BIG ONE:
   • Lincoln, a week before his death, was in Monroe, Maryland.
   • Kennedy, a week before his death, was in Marilyn ....

Karl Rove was George W. Bush's closest aide throughout Bush's political career. There is a book about him entitled Bush's Brain. The book makes the case that anything that resembled a thought that Geo W. had was actually a thought grabbed from Rove's thought bubble and glued into Bush's thought bubble.

Rove has written a book that highlights (some would say lowlights is more appropriate) Rove's life and career and his time working for Bush. After a career of lying for Bush, Rove's book piles on more lies — in an attempt to shore up the previous lies.

Some examples:

• Lie: Rove admits that the U.S. wouldn't have gone to war with Iraq if the administration knew that weapons of mass destruction wouldn't be found.
  
  Truth: the U.S. wouldn't have gone to war with Iraq if Congress and the American public knew that weapons of mass destruction didn't exist.



• Lie:The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam, bring about regime change, and deal with Iraq's horrendous human rights violations."
  
  Truth: If Bush actually cared about "human rights violations," Iraq would not have been the first country to invade. Most certainly China and Myanmar (Burma) would have been higher on the list, as would several other countries. If Bush actually cared about "human rights violations," he would have invaded Guantanamo and taken prisoner our own CIA and Marines.
  


• Partly truth, mostly fiction: Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Rove argued, may have destroyed most of his WMD stockpiles or possibly moved them to other countries such as Syria before the war.

Partial Truth: Saddam destroyed (under the auspices of UN inspectors) his WMDs. He did so prior to Bush stealing the 2000 election. Bush (meaning Rove) sent 3 different teams of inspectors to look for WMDs. Saddam allowed the inspectors to comb over Iraq. They found nothing that conflicted with the reports from 6 previous years of inspections. When a team didn't give Bush (meaning Rove) the answers he wanted, he fired them and sent in a new team.


• Mostly fiction: (the claim that) Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein moved his WMDs to other countries such as Syria before the war.
  
  Truth: One word: Mossad (Israel's spy agency). If Saddam had WMDs, Mossad knew everything there was to know about them - including where he would have moved them. Besides, Syria would not have allowed it; two words: (1)Israel, (2)USA. Syria knew the price they would pay if they accepted Saddam's alleged WMDs. In case anyone missed it:
  
  
  
  • Israel will not allow an Arab nation (including Syria) to have WMDs.
  
  
  • Israel has kicked the asses of every Arab nation (including Syria).
  
  
  • Syria has been trying for decades to negotiate with Israel to regain the Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in 1967.
  
  
  • Israel already destroyed Saddam's only nuclear threat.
  
  
  • The USA did not look kindly upon Afghanistan's harboring of Al Qaeda. You might say that we invaded the country in response to that cooperation with terrorists. You might also say that it won't happen again.
    
  
  
  • No Arab country trusted Saddam or wanted to have anything to do with Saddam - he was a secularist and a loose cannon.
  
  
  • Why is it that nearly everyone who opposed the war had facts proving that there were no WMDs? Why is it that inspection teams — impartial, like the UN inspectors, and partisan, like Bush's (Rove's) hand-picked "inspectors" never found anything? Why is it that people who wanted to go to war believed the Liar-In-Chief (Rove) in spite of all facts to disprove the WMD claims and no facts to prove the claims?


• Lie: "Our weak response in defense of the president and in setting the record straight (about WMDs), is, I believe, one of the biggest mistakes of the Bush years."
  

Truth: The biggest mistakes were


• Lying to start a war.
  
  
• Lying about the real reasons for the war.
  
  
• Torturing captives.
  
  
• Lying abut torturing captives.
  
  
• Hiring officials based on party loyalty rather than on actual qualifications: "Heckuva job, Brownie."
  
  
• Running the country for the benefit of Republicans, rather than for the benefit of the American people. Someone turned loose the Crawford Hillbillies, and they stole everything that wasn't nailed down - and carried big pry bars to get the rest. Two words: "Jack Abramoff"
  


• Lie: He defends the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), arguing they were authorized by the Department of Justice in August 2002 and signed off by then-CIA director George Tenet.
  
  He also disputes claims that the administration failed to brief members of Congress on the use of these techniques. Democratic leaders had been briefed about them. Their silence made them complicit in their use," he wrote. "Nonetheless, when political winds shifted and memories of 9/11 faded, some Democratic leaders claimed that they had never been told about the techniques and that the Bush administration used EITs only in secret."
  
  Truth: OK, this is a he-said-she-said situation. Note two salient facts:
  
  
  
  1. Democrats invited to the "briefings" were not allowed to take notes or otherwise record the proceedings, so there is no proof of what really happened
  2. Which side has the track record for lying about everything connected to this war & its collateral damage?
  
  He singled out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, who charged in July 2009 that the CIA misled Congress in a secret briefing she received in 2002. Pelosi said the CIA failed to inform her and others at the briefing about harsh interrogation techniques being used on terrorism suspects.
  
  The CIA (at the direction of Cheney-Rove-Bush) responded by saying Pelosi was told about the harsh techniques, including waterboarding, at the classified 2002 briefing.
  


• Lie: Rove says the president "never authorized torture," but rather "did just the opposite" by making sure the techniques "did not cross the legal line into torture."
  
  Truth: Bush (meaning Rove)ordering the a partisan-packed Justice Department to create legal opinions that would justify torture. He did not ask an impartial or bipartisan commission to look into the legality of torture.


• Lie:"What's more, EITs did help our intelligence agents gather critical information to thwart future attacks," he added.
  
  Truth: the Bushies (Rovies) have never proven a case in which torture actually generated actual, real, usable intelligence. Nor have they proven which "future attacks" were thwarted. Note that evidence proving torture (that the Rovies say didn't existed) got misplaced or accidentally destroyed. On the other hand, now that it is safe to come forward with information (not that Rove is out of power), many interrogators have done just that: they have provided examples of torture, examples of bad information gained from tortured prisoners, and examples of good information gained when torture was not used.
  


• [Note: Rove (Bush) and his administration have been criticized for their response to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated much of the Gulf Coast in 2005. One incident Rove addresses in the book involves Bush flying over Louisiana in Air Force One rather than landing and surveying the damage.] Rove notes that while the decision did not help out Bush politically, it was the right thing to do so as not to take away vital resources that were needed for the relief effort.]
  
  Lie: Someone cared cared whether or not Bush's (Rove's) airplane landed in Naw-lins.
  
  Truth: The real issue is not if Bush looked at the destruction. The real issue was that the Rove Administration took 3 days to acknowledge that something was wrong and to start taking action. Another real issue is that political hacks were in charge of a gutted, underfunded operation (FEMA). Another issue is that Rove (Bush) predictably focused on a little bit of looting rather than a massive amount of destruction and misery. Also predictable was that Bush (Rove) sent in armed mercenaries (Blackwater) to deal with the small problem (looting), and bungled the big picture (everything else - food, water, shelter, sanitation, missing persons).
  


• Lie: Rove cites a particularly touchy subject that emerged during the 2000 presidential campaign: Bush's 1976 arrest for driving while under the influence of alcohol. Rove said that while Bush told a few people about it, including himself, the governor didn't want it to be made public. The DUI disclosure, which came out shortly before Election Day, was "suspicious," Rove says.
  
  He points a finger at Vice President Al Gore's campaign spokesman, Chris Lehane, as a possible source of the information getting out. "We had our suspicions and they centered on Lehane," Rove writes. "He had been raised in Kennebunk, was one of the Democratic Party's best opposition researchers, had run the Maine campaign for Clinton-Gore, worked on the White House rapid-response team handling scandals during the Clinton years, played around in Maine Democratic politics.
  
  
• Truth: Rove tries to distract attention from the actual issue: what was GW's driving record in Maine AND in Texas?
  
  'Splain me this:
  - Why, in his first week in office as Governor of Texas, did the Texas agency that managed drivers' licenses issue Bush a new license (one with no driving record attached)?
  - Why does the source of the "leak" matter?
  - Is the information true, or isn't it? That's what matters.
  


• Lie: Dick Cheney, a Defense Secretary under President George H.W. Bush and former Wyoming congressman, was tasked to help then-candidate Bush picking a running mate. But it would be Cheney's name that would resonate with Bush at the time. Rove says the governor was "starting to feel that Cheney was as good as any" [ ?!?! ] to fill the role. "I saw the man squirm as Bush pressed him to accept."
  
  Truth: Bush asked Cheney to find a good running mate for the 2000 election. Cheney picked himself. [duh!]
  


• Lie (OK, insignificantly possibly true):Rove writes that he faced a possible indictment [true] over leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the media -- an accusation he denies in the book. Upon finding out that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was not likely to charge him, he says he "placed the receiver in its cradle and wept."
  
  Truth: Who cares if Rove wept when he found out he wouldn't be going to jail? The fact is that Cheney and Skippy (or Scooter or something like that) Libby had to discredit Joe Wilson. reason: Cheney asked the CIA to prove that Saddam Hussien tried to purchase nuclear materials. The CIA sent Joe Wilson — former Ambassador to Iraq — to investigate the claim. Wilson returned and reported to the CIA that the claim was false ... not that there was no proof to support the claim, but that the claim was false. The CIA forwarded the non-classified information to Cheney. The Bush (Rove) administration ignored the report and continued to use the debunked claim to prove that Saddam was trying to make nuclear weapons. So Joe Wilson went public. In the New York Times he described the entire situation to the public, attempting to derail the use of false information. Cheney's response was to get some conservative "reporters" to identify Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA agent (which she was). She was a covert agent working, ironically, nuclear non-proliferation. If Bush's father, former CIA Director and form Commander-in-Chief is to be believed, the actions by Rove, Skippy, and their right-wing writers constitute TREASON. After months of pressure, Bush (Rove) relented and appointed a REPUBLICAN to be a Special Prosecutor to investigate the situation. The REPUBLICAN operative turned out to have more integrity than Bush-Rove-Cheney imagined. Granted, to those 3, integrity is a foreign concept, but still .... As the prosecutor closed in on Dick and Scooter, Scooter went into high gear to obstruct the investigation. Eventually Scooter-Skippy was convicted on 5 felonies involving obstruction of justice. The prosecutor gave up on investigating the Bush-Rove-Cheney triumvirate. And Bush commuted Libby's sentences in the conviction (on 5 felonies involving TREASON).
  

There's something truly ironic in Bush's nickname for his pal. Bush called Rove Turdblossom. A turdblossom is a flower that grows up, wild and uncultivated, from a seed embedded in a bovine, um .... turd. Turdblossoms are always found next to Post Turtles.

When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, you are looking at a post turtle. You know that

• he didn't get there by himself


• he doesn't belong there


• he can't get anything done while he's up there
  

and you just want to help the poor thing get down before he hurts himself.

"Post Turtle" image and text first posted at our ancestor site Entropy Pile on August 17, 2006

The internet is abuzz with the meaning origins of the expression hurt locker.

The short answer: a hurt locker is a place where one stores — or finds — hurt, pain, insufficiencies.

According to the publicist for Kathyrn Bigelow's 2010 Oscar-winning film (The Hurt Locker), hurt locker is GI slang for severe injury.

The film's screenwriter, Mark Boal, tells us "if a bomb goes off, you're going to be in the hurt locker. That's how they used it in Baghdad. It means slightly different things to different people, but all the definitions point to the same idea. It's somewhere you don't want to be."

Documented uses in history:

• 1966, according to the linguist's authority on words, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). The OED's New Words Group cites 1966 as the first usage of hurt locker. "It's from a Texas newspaper and it says
  
  'If an army marches on its stomach, Old Charlie is in the hurt locker'.
  
  Old Charlie is the Viet Cong. It is similar to the phrases world of hurt or world of pain. .
  
  [ Note: in the early days of the Viet Nam war, the US image of the VC was that of a group of inadequately-supplied soldiers. ]


• 2001, AP News, about the Los Angeles Police Department after the Rodney King debacle: 'Right now they're in the hurt locker. Healing takes a long time'


• 2002, Canada's Globe and Mail: "One of the Canadian Armed Forces' officers told me, 'We're gonna find ourselves in the middle of Baghdad, and realize we're in a hurt locker'"


• 2005, soldier-poet Brian Turner published Here, Bullet, a collection of poetry from his tour of duty in 2003-4. Among the poems was The Hurt Locker, about snipers and suicide bombers. The poem opens with
  
  "Nothing but hurt left here,"
  
  and includes lines such as
  
  "Open the hurt locker and learn
  How rough men come hunting for souls."


• When parsed, the components of the expression — as used in this context — might be much older: hurt, as in world of hurt (considerable pain); locker, as in small confined space.
  
  [note: I'm certain that I first heard world of hurt from VietNam-era GIs]

What about the future of the phrase?

• Hurt locker will see a spike in usage, at least temporarily," says Robert Groves, of Collins Dictionary.


• "As long as the expression is trendy, hurt locker will probably be used incorrectly," according to me¹.

¹ That would be I, as quoted in TruthForDummies.com in 2010.

Earlier this week the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to move city money out of banks that fail to invest in the community. The "responsible banking practices" motion creates something like a report card that evaluates banks looking to do business with the city based on their record of mortgage modifications and small business lending, among other things.

Banks that do not meet the standard would not receive city funds. Read more here.

When are YOU going to move your money from a bank that doesn't give a damn about you or your community? http://moveyourmoney.info/

Technically, I'm not reading it yet. I'm listening to it, while I drive, as a book-on-CD. However, the information (and conjecture therein) is so compelling that I want to have it available as a reference.

The author discusses the differences between the thinking of people whose dominant cognitive¹ function is "left-brain" or "right-brain."

Left Brain		Right Brain
Logical Sequential Rational Analytical Objective Looks at parts		Random Intuitive Holistic Synthesizing Subjective Looks at wholes

Everyone's thought processes are a combination of left-brain and right-brain, but each person's "style" is dominated to some degree by one or the other.

The author's premise is that American culture - especially the economy - has been dominated by left-brained thinking. We have evolved from an agrarian economy to a blue-collar economy to a "knowledge worker" economy - all largely "left-brained." The problem is that those parts of the economy - the jobs - can be done faster by machines (including computers), and cheaper by workers in less-industrialized countries. Those jobs are gone from the USA, and will never return.

The right-brained jobs will grow in significance. The left-brained jobs will become more right-brained (or they will disappear).

Right-brained work cannot be exported. Also, right-brained work cannot be farmed out to cheap imported labor (such as computer programmers from countries where labor is cheap, but working in this country on H1-B visas (work permits). 15 years ago I earned $68,000 per year - right next to an H1-B foreigner who was thrilled to work for $24,000. Add in a $24,000 American "administrative assistant" to fill in the foreigner's cultural gaps, and the company can get passable production for a fraction of the price of one person who brings the whole package to the job.

My work was superior to his, but not 2.8x better than his. How do you suppose that worked out - especially in a left-brained economy that looks at discrete components of the job, rather than at the big picture.

Back to right-brained work.

Imagine an MD, e.g., an internal medicine specialist. People's innards are the same, whether in Chicago or Istanbul. Hospitals can (and do) get away with hiring 3rd-world physicians who work for less than American-born doctors. Traditional American medicine runs on left-brained thinking.

Now imagine a psychiatrist. How could a psychiatrist born, raised, and educated in Calcutta be effective dealing with the emotional issues of someone born, raised, and educated in Sacramento? Sticking with the psychiatrist ... Japan's culture is, by US standards, rather melancholy. Suicide is more common there than in the USA. That is in part because of the more widespread desperation among the people there, and in part because of the role of "honor." Some types of dishonor make suicide almost a cultural imperative. Can a Japanese shrink just off the boat, treat a suicidal person in the USA? I fear that the outcomes might not be good. Mental health medicine demands a right-brained approach.

American health care is moving in the direction of holistic medicine. Medical schools might well be recruiting right-brainers - poets, meditators - instead of scientists.

Computers - the epitome of left-brained functioning - can do much of what engineers do: strength calculations, process selection, cost estimating, and such. Computers cannot come up with the original idea. Computers cannot innovate.

The idea people, designers, innovators - the right-brained people - will thrive in spite of outsourcing, offshoring, mechanizing, computerizing, and H1-B-ing.

Given my thinking on such matters, this book is an excellent resource for me.

¹ cognition (n) the product of perception, learning, reasoning, and cultural influences.

Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.
-- Richard M. Nixon

Source: Nixon's Farewell Remarks to White House Cabinet and Staff, August 9, 1974

Sears supports our troops - with cash and employee benefits!

Since 1990 (for Operation Desert Shield-Storm) Sears has operated a program for military pay differential for its employees whose Guard/Reserve units are deployed. This program fills the gap between military pay and employer pay, and continues benefits for up to 60 months for eligible employees called to duty in the Reserves or National Guard.

While deployed, eligible employees can:

• Continue participating in SHC's life insurance, medical and dental programs.
• Receive annual merit pay increases and incentive pay.
  

All employers are required, by law, to hold jobs for deployed reservists. But Sears has encouraged and supported employees serving in the armed forces for decades. Records indicate that Sears provided support to employees serving in the military in 1916.

Yes, I confirmed this before passing it on. Snopes.com's Urban Legends website gives this story a big thumbs up.

For more information: Sears Holdings Heroes at Home Program

Do I have to tell you that you should support Sears by, um.... shopping (and purchasing) there?

Decision to Stop Making Hummers Saddens Assholes

Douchebags Seek New Way to Compensate for Tiny Penises

DETROIT (The Borowitz Report) – General Motors’ decision yesterday to stop manufacturing Hummers has struck at the heart of the group who loved the vehicles most: America’s assholes.
Across the nation, leading assholes spoke of a sense of loss and sadness caused by the decision, and suggested that they would now be searching for new ways to compensate for their small penises.

continued at The Borowitz Report

Read the rest at The Borowitz Report. While you're there, subscribe to Andy's newsletter.

1. How do you know that "silence is deafening" if you're not deaf?
2. How would a deaf person know the difference?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana

"Those who do not archive the past are condemned to retype it."
-- any student, anywhere, any time

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat 11th Grade¹."
-- damphyno

¹ The upside: one more junior prom. The downside: one more junior prom.

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace, and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies, all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.
Wolfram|Alpha.com/

If the water's dirty, how do you wash it off?

What do these people have in common?

Robert Aderholt, Spencer Bachus, Joe Barton, Judy Biggert, Rob Bishop, John Boehner, Jo Bonner, Henry Brown, Ginny Brown-Waite, Michael Burgess, Ken Calvert, Dave Camp, Eric Cantor, Joseph Cao, Shelly Capito Moore, John Carter, Mike Castle, Jason Chaffetz, Mike Coffman, Mike Conaway, John Culberson, Geoff Davis, Charlie Dent, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart, Vern Ehlers, Mary Fallin, Elton Gallegly, Jim Gerlach, Phil Gingrey, Louie Gohmert, Bob Goodlatte, Kay Granger, Parker Griffith, Sam Hall, Pete Hoekstra, Sam Johnson, Tim Johnson, Steve King, Jack Kingston, Mark Kirk, Leonard Lance, Chris Lee, John Linder, Frank Lucas, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Dan Lungren, Don Manzullo, Kenny Marchant, Kevin McCarthy, Michael McCaul, Thad McCotter, John Mica, Candice Miller, Tim Murphy, Sue Myrick, Randy Neugebauer, Pete Olson, Ron Paul, Todd Platts, Ted Poe, Bill Posey, Adam Putnam, Denny Rehberg, Dave Reichert, Mike Rogers, Mike Rogers, Tom Rooney, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Peter Roskam, Paul Ryan, Steve Scalise, Jean Schmidt, Aaron Schock, Pete Sessions, John Shimkus, Heath Shuler, Bill Shuster, Lamar Smith, Cliff Stearns, Glenn Thompson, Mac Thornberry, Pat Tiberi, Fred Upton, Greg Walden, Zach Wamp, Ed Whitfield, Joe ("You Lie") Wilson, Frank Wolf, Don Young, Bill Young

Lamar Alexander, Bob Bennett, Kit Bond, Sam Brownback, Richard Burr, Saxby Chambliss, John Cornyn, Mike Crapo, Jim DeMint, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jim Inhofe, Johnny Isakson, Mike Johanns, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby

• All of them are members of the current US Congress. Those in the first group are in the House of Representatives. Those in the second group are Senators.
  
  "What's the BFD?" you ask.
  
  
• All of them claim to disagree with the "Obama Stimulus" - a government spending program that is pumping several hundreds of billions of dollars into the USA economy. The "stimulus" is designed to create and/or save millions of jobs from the ravages of an economic recession.
  
  And?
  
  
• All of them spoke out against the 'stimulus' plan, claiming (among other things) that it would not create any jobs and would not save any jobs in danger of disappearing.
  
  Is there a point to all this?
  
  
• All of them voted against the "stimulus' bill when it was debated and approved by Congress.
  
  [ ... yawn ... ]
  
  
• All of them continue to this day to gloat and claim that the 'stimulus' has not created or saved any jobs. "We were right all along. The stimulus is just typical Democratic wasteful spending."
  
  
  So what? The 2 sides to the argument disagree. That's how it is in the USA.
  
  1. For openers, many of them have requested that funds for government-funded projects in their own districts or states. The justification: the projects funded by the stimulus will create lots of jobs in their districts and states.
     
     
  2. Many of them did get funding for government-funded projects in their own districts or states. And when those projects received the needed funding (from the 'stimulus'), those same people had ceremonies at job sites and bragged about how each of them helped their districts get funding for important projects and the resulting jobs.
     
     
  3. And they continue to claim that the 'stimulus' was merely government waste that created no jobs.
     
     Isn't that a contradiction?" you ask.
     
     It's more that mere contradiction.
     

     hypocrisy, n. insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have.
     hypocrite, n. one who practices hypocrisy.

     It's hypocrisy. If I had to choose one class of people whom I would never trust, that class would be hypocrites. One never knows which hypocritical statements to believe.
     
     It also explains those people's true opinion of YOU. They believe that you are too stupid to notice the hypocrisy.
  
  Those are the points:
  
  
  1. Today's Congressional republicans are hypocrites.
  
  
  2. Today's republicans don't think that you are worthy of honesty and integrity.
  
  
• Oh, one more thing:
  
  They are all republicans ... every last one of them is a republican. Think about that when you're trying to sort out whom to believe in American politics.

Did I mention that they are all republicans?

When an adult has a sudden cardiac arrest, his or her survival depends greatly on immediately getting CPR from someone nearby. Unfortunately, less than 1/3 of those people who experience a cardiac arrest at home, work or in a public location get that help. Most bystanders are worried that they might do something wrong or make things worse. That’s why the AHA has simplified things.
Don’t be afraid. Your actions can only help.

It’s not normal to see an adult suddenly collapse, but if you do, call 911 and push hard and fast in the center of the chest. Don’t be afraid. Your actions can only help. Take a minute and look around this site and invite your friends! Increasing the number of people who know about Hands-OnlyTM CPR will increase the chance that someone can help when an adult suddenly collapses, and more lives can be saved.

Check out this video to see Hands-Only CPR in action.
Source: Hands Only CPR.org/

Isn't calling it a "U.F.O." a way of, um-m-m-m, identifying it?

Total eclipse of the sun.
Crosses North America from Portland, OR to Charlie's Town, SC
August 17, 2017

USA!
USA!
USA!

Who Is More Intelligent?

1. Glen Beck


2. Sean Hannity


3. Rush Limbaugh


4. Bill Gates

Who Is The More Reliable Source of Information About Science?

1. Glen Beck


2. Sean Hannity


3. Rush Limbaugh


4. Bill Gates

Whom Should You Believe When Discussing Climate Change?

1. Glen Beck


2. Sean Hannity


3. Rush Limbaugh


4. Bill Gates

Assuming that your IQ is above 50, you should read this: Bill Gates Talks Climate Change. In that article Gates talks about, um.... climate change. He also talks about an interesting technology: Terra Power

Ribbon Hero is a game for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel 2007 and 2010, designed to help you boost your Office skills and knowledge. Play games (aka "challenges"), score points, and compete with your friends while improving your productivity with Office.
Ribbon Hero

Recently, a press release from German astronomers announced their discovery of two of the most complex molecules ever in space: butyronitrile and ethyl formate.

The story is important for two reasons:

1. it adds to previous findings that elsewhere in the universe there are abundant precursors to amino acids (which are precursors to life as we know it)
   
2. it points out that ethyl formate is abundant in the universe.

The implications of the first are significant, in regards to the possibilities of life out there.

The implications of the second are tastier: since Ethyl Formate is the fragrant ester molecule that gives raspberries their distinct flavor ....

It's a short leap to declaring that

• the universe tastes like raspberries ("um-m-m-m — raspberries")


• perhaps portions of it are raspberries


• maybe the entire universe is a raspberry. In that case, we humans are either druplets, seeds, or thorns (my money is on thorns).

So in the coming months, when I'm harvesting raspberries, I'll be singing
"He's got I have the whole world universe, in his my hands."
"He's got I have the whole wide world universe, in his my hands."
"He's got I have the whole world universe, in his my hands."
"He's got I have the whole world universe, in his my hands."

Do As I Say, Not As I Do - Why I had to leave the GOP (I got tired of making excuses for fools). By the way, I'm not positive, but I think the guy in the blue jacket — sitting next to Reagan — is my long-time bestest old buddy¹.

It's highly likely, since

• He was an advisor to and speechwriter for Reagan
• He met with the Taliban - unofficially - on at least two occasions ... he has a photo on the wall of his living room to prove it. In other words, he was friendly with both sides.
  

¹ It's hard to tell because the picture is not big enough and sharp enough to be sure... but I'd be willing to wager on it. Compare it with this:

White Noise Insanity

If by a ‘Liberal’ they mean

• someone who looks ahead and not behind
• someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions
• someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties
• someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad

If that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal,’ then I’m proud to say

“I am a ‘Liberal.’”

John F. Kennedy, 1960

Thomas Paine was one of the Founding Fathers. He was a prolific and persuasive pamphleteer — the intellectual leader of that august group. Many of his revolutionary ideas became part of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

His principal contributions were the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The [American] Crisis (1776-1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Later works include Agrarian Justice (discussed below) and The Rights of Man.

His best-seller Common Sense (1776) was the rallying cry for seeking independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

He wrote The [American] Crisis¹, a series of pamphlets intended to

• bolster the wartime morale of the American warriors
• remind the American public of what we were doing and why
• appeal to the English people, to help them understand the issues at stake in the war

Were Paine's pamphlet sales adjusted to reflect population growth in the past 225+ years, he would be - by far - the best selling American author of all time. Also, his pamphlets were widely exchanged and passed around, thereby reaching an even larger audience.

Agrarian Justice is the title of a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine, published in approximately 1796In that publication, Paine advocated the use of an estate tax to fund a universal old-age and disability pension, as well as a fixed sum to be paid to all citizens on reaching maturity. If that sounds familiar, it should. Agrarian Justice laid the foundation for Roosevelt's New Deal - especially Social Security.

Having read a sermon by Richard Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, which discussed the "Wisdom ... of God, in having made both Rich and Poor", Paine decided to publish Agrarian Justice. In it he argues that "rich" and "poor" are not divinely created distinctions.

¹ The [American] Crisis begins with familiar and eloquent words: "THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

Now, onward toward Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice. It is short (12 pages, spaced like a term paper), and it's an easy read.

Quick summary:

In Agrarian Justice, Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor.

Keep in mind that then, as now, many people are one paycheck away from poverty. Even the most industrious of people can be devastated by medical expenses, infirmity, aging, economic downturns, accidents, crime, deaths, separations in families, and other tragedies. Being poor, then as now, is not a luxury enjoyed only by the lazy and the wastrels among us.

Under Paine's plan, the money would be raised by taxing

• direct inheritances at 10%
  
• "indirect" inheritances - those not going to close relations - at a somewhat higher rate.

He estimated that this would raise around £5,700,000 per year in England.

Around two-thirds of the fund would be spent on

• pension payments of £10 per year to every person over the age of fifty, which Paine had taken as his average adult life expectancy
  most of the remainder allocated to
  
• making one-time payments of £15 to every man and woman on reaching the age of twenty-one, the age of legal majority
• the small remainder would then be able to be used for paying pensions to "the lame and blind."
  

For context, the average weekly wage of an agricultural labourer was around 9 shillings, which would mean an annual income of about £23 for an able-bodied man working throughout the year.

Now, click to read or download Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice.

Another encounter with Hoyt Axton — second-hand — .was when a friend of mine, a journalist at the time, met H.A. at NBC Studios when Hoyt was leaving after an appearance on Johnny Carson. My buddy told him that in our college days we saw him play in those little clubs mentioned in an earlier post. He gave my friend a gi-mongous "Hoyt Axton" brass belt-buckle, and signed a couple of his albums (vinyls - remember those?) to give to me. I still have them.

Playing 6 Degrees of Separation,

1. I'm 2nd degree to Hoyt Axton


2. 3rd degree to
   
   • The guys in 3 Dog Night and Steppenwolf
   • Linda Rondstadt
   • Ringo Starr
     
   • Johnny Fever and Loni Anderson (WKRP in Cincinnati), since Hoyt performed on that show
   • The Maytag Repairman (he was the boss on WKRP in Cincinnati)
   • Johnny Carson
   • Doc Severinsen (Seattle musician, remember?)


3. 4th degree from
   
   • Elvis Presley (via Hoyt's mother)
   • John, Paul, and George (via Ringo)
   • Joan Baez ²
   • John Denver ³
   • Waylon Jennings — who in turn gets me to 5th degree from Willie!
     

And the beat goes on....

¹ I went to Long Beach State U, also known as Surfer Tech

² Via another route, I'm 2nd degree to Joan: the same journalist friend was a friend of Ms. Baez

³ Via a different route, I'm 2nd degree to John Denver: another friend was JD's personal security guard when JD did his Lake Tahoe ski tournaments; my friend's wife baby-sat the wee little Denvers.

My earliest encounters with singer/songwriter Hoyt Axton were in my college days — late 60s — when he played at folk music clubs like Cosmos (in Seal Beach, CA) and The Golden Bear (in Huntington Beach, CA).¹

As a quick aside, his mother, Mae Boren Axton, co-wrote the early rock 'n' roll song Heartbreak Hotel: Elvis Presley's first hit.

Like his mother, he was a songwriter much in demand. His hits were performed by

• The Kingston Trio
  
  • Greenback Dollar
    


• 3 Dog Night
  
  • Joy to the World ("Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog...")
  • Never Been to Spain
  
  
• Steppenwolf
  
  • The Pusher (think: Easy Rider)
  • Snowblind Friend
    


• Ringo Starr
  
  • The No-No Song
    
  
  
• Singing with Linda Rondstadt
  
  • Lion in Winter
  • When the Morning Comes
    
  
  
• Hoyt's Solo hits
  
  • Boney Fingers ("Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get? Boney fingers, boney fingers")
    
  • Della and the Dealer
  • Jealous Man
    
  • Officer Ray ("Officer Ray / May you have a bad day / May your wife run away / With a hippie.")
    
    
  and many more, performed by such notables as Joan Baez, John Denver, and Waylon Jennings...

Washington, My Home applies to many influential musical groups besides the Kingsmen (Louie, Louie). To whit:

• Alice In Chains
• Bonnie Guitar
• Dave Lewis (Little Green Thing)
• Death Cab for Cutie
• Doc Severinsen
  
• Green River (the first grunge band)
• Heart
• Ivar Haglund
• Jimi Hendrix
• Merrilee Rush
• Mother Love Bone
  
• Mudhoney
  
• Nirvana
• Pearl Jam
• Queensrÿche
• Quincy Jones
• Ron Holden
• Sleater-Kinney
• Soundgarden
• The Brothers 4
• The Fleetwoods
• The Gallahads
• The Seattle Symphony
• The Ventures
• The Viceroys
• The Wailers

and

• Gypsy Rose Lee (technically not a musician, but still ...)
• J. P. Patches (not a musician, but worthy of note as the inspiration for Krusty the Clown from The Simpsons)
• The Flying Karamozov Brothers (OK, not music, but internationally hilarious) performers

Look 'em up yourself. Your best friend might just be Google.

• Did I mention Heart?

Now for some unfinished business: technically, the Kingsmen were from Portland (OR), just across the river from Washington. Washingtonians could hear them playing without leaving home. They went from garage band playing for tips in smokey dives to international fame when, as young men in an inexperienced band, they came north. They 1st played in Portland, but they became real musicians in Seattle.

Besides, Oregon claims Mason Williams (Classical Gas) because of how long he lived there (35+ years) and Hoyt Axton (who lived in Roseburg for a while after becoming rich and famous).

If we were to include (as do our little brothers to the south) musicians/group who bedded down in Washington, the list would be much longer. For example, Ray Charles, who recorded his first single and made his first TV and radio appearances in Seattle.

• Did I mention Heart?

Back in the 80s there was a groundswell of support to change the Washington State Song from Washington, My Home (not the official link to the official version) to Louie, Louie. Yes, that Louie, Louie.

Besides being the anthem for frat boys everywhere, Louie, Louie is held in especially high regard along the Greek Rows at University of Washington ("Yew-Dub") and Washington State University ("Wazoo"). The UW marching band proudly plays Louie, Louie at all sports events and parades. Of course, they also play Tequila, but I digress.

Besides being a great party song, Louie, Louie has its roots in Washington. The Kingsmen, who made Louie, Louie famous are homegrown Washingtonians.

While Washington, My Home remained the state song, we did get something from the effort: a few proclamations declaring a day to be the official day of Louie, Louie in the state. The City of Seattle once passed a similar proclamation.

Stuff about Louie, Louie.

We gotta go....

What do these have in common?

Coat of Arms, Motto, Flag, Song, Flower, Bird, Tree, Fish, Animal, Wildlife Animal, Domesticated Animal, Dairy Cow, Mineral, Rock, Symbol of Peace, Insect, Soil, Fossil, Dog, Beverage, Grain, Dance, Microbe, Bacterium

They are all stuff that the State of Wisconsin has designated as "official" State Symbols. More specifically:

• Coat of Arms:
• Motto: "Forward"
• Flag:
• Song: "On Wisconsin!"
• Flower: Wood Violet
• Bird: Robin (Turdus migratorius)
• Tree: Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
• Fish: Muskellunge (Esox masquinongy Mitchell)
• State Animal: Badger (Taxidea taxus)
• Wildlife Animal: White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
• Domesticated Animal: Dairy Cow (Bos taurus)
• Mineral: Galena (Lead sulphide)
• Rock: Red Granite
• Symbol of Peace: Mourning Dove (Zenaidura macroura corolinensis linnaus)
• State Insect: Honeybee (Apis mellifera)
• Soil: Antigo Silt Loam (Typic glossoboralf)
• State Fossil: Trilobite (Calymene celebra)
• Dog: American Water Spaniel
• Beverage: Milk (Cookius Dippitus)
• Grain: Corn (Zea mays)
• Dance: Polka
• Microbe: Bacterium (Lactococcus Lactis)
  

Wait a minute! Bacterium? Who would want to honor something that makes people sick? Actually, we do honor things that make us sick, but we shouldn't go there right now.

It seems that Wisconsin is famous for its cheese. Lactococcus Lactis is the beasty that turns milk into cheese. Ergo ....

No, I'm not making this up.

Hm-m-m-. (shakes head). Sorry, I can't recall.

In my case, this dark humor is like whistling through the graveyard. I own a 2010 Prius, one of the vehicles about to be recalled because of possible brake problems.

I live in a community that is politically conservative - very conservative. Think: Attila The Hun conservative.

Like all people everywhere there are intelligent conservatives (yes, really), dimwit conservatives, thoughtful conservatives, knee-jerk conservatives.

There is one for whom I have the misfortune of having to endure almost daily. He is a hybrid of dimwit and knee-jerk. He has never had a thought which is either original or even derivative. Every "thought" in his head is comparable to the "thought" of a parrot or mynah. His idea of talking is to repeat what he hears from such intellectual giants as Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Medved, and some sports guy on ESPN..

Actually, I'm exaggerating. His speech goes beyond those, um, reprobates.

• He spices up their words with an unimaginable number of F-bombs. Think:
  
  F%^&*k noun F$%^k verb f$%^& f#$%k f#$%^k.
  
  
• Also, those radio-based talking anatomical orifices are far less racist than he. He could make a neo-Nazi vomit in disgust.

Needless to say (but I'll say these anyway):

• He is a climate-change denier.
• He has no sense of irony.
• On the rare occasions when he says something that he thinks is funny, he breaks out in a huge grin. It's obvious to anyone nearby that he believes that his last utterance was funny - maybe even hilarious.

All of that said, on Groundhog Day he stated, completely deadpan, "if global warming were real, why didn't it affect the Groundhog?"

I know him well enough to say unequivocally He Was NOT Joking. His fellow conservatives in the room reacted with stunned silence. Finally, one started to explain it, and gave up.

Some of you may have noticed that there is an economic recession. Times are tough — unless you work for the Feds.

The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries increased sharply during the recession. The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises and new salary rules.

USA TODAY analyzed the Office of Personnel Management's database that tracks salaries of more than 2 million federal workers. Excluded from OPM's data:

• the White House
• Congress
• US Postal Service
• intelligence agencies
• uniformed military personnel.
  

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

• The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009.
  
  
• When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.
  
  
• The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.
  

Key reasons for the boom in six-figure salaries:

• Pay hikes.
  
  
  • Then-president Bush recommended — and Congress approved — across-the-board raises of 3% in January 2008 and 3.9% in January 2009.
    
  • President Obama has recommended the smallest pay raises since 1975: 2% pay raises in January 2010.
    
    
• Longevity pay hikes. Most federal workers also get "steps" that average 1.5% per year.


• New pay system. Congress created a new National Security Pay Scale for the Defense Department to reward merit, in addition to the across-the-board increases. The merit raises, which started in January 2008, were larger than expected and rewarded high-ranking employees. In October, Congress voted to end the new pay scale by 2012.
  
  
• Paycaps eased. Many top civil servants are prohibited from making more than an agency's leader. If Congress lifts the boss' salary, others get raises, too. When the Federal Aviation Administration chief's salary rose, nearly 1,700 employees' had their salaries lifted above $170,000, too."
  

Recession? What recession?

A central purpose of the California Milk Board is to convince consumers to buy local dairy products to keep the spending in-state, but the board acknowledged in November its advertising contract had gone to an agency in New Zealand.

Said a board official: "We have a . . . responsibility to spend (taxpayers') hard-earned dollars as efficiently as we can."

Do as we say, not as we do.

And people wonder how I was so prescient about the Iraq Attaq.

• I told everyone there were no WMDs.
  
• I told everyone that Saddam Hussein had no collaboration with Al Queda.
  
• I told everyone that invading Iraq meant breaking Iraq, and that a broken Iraq would be a nightmare.
  
• I told everyone that Rumsfeld's prediction of "5days, maybe 5 weeks, certainly not 5 months" was off by a power of ten - or more.
  
• I told everyone that Wolfowitz's claim of "less than 3 billion dollars" was wrong by a factor of at least a hundred. OK, I was wrong on that: I should have predicted a factor of a thousand.
• I cringed (out loud) when Mighty Warrior George Bush proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" and followed it up with "I say bring 'em (Iraqi insurgents)."
  

What makes me so brilliant? Well, I'm not (he says, humbly). What set me (and many others like me) apart from the crowd was that I (we)

1. Ignored every claim from anyone who had a vested interest in going to war.
2. Listened for the propaganda behind the public statements and proclamations.
3. Found sources of information that had no vested interest in going to war.
4. Applied critical analysis to each concept that sounded correct.
5. Checked, and re-checked everything that seemed to be correct as I went through steps 1 - 4.

The best sources for information, then and now (and always):

• "Between the lines" of articles in publications (and websites and blogs) that are often thorough and often correct; the actual articles, on the whole, tend to be wrong, but the truth is sometimes in there.
• Left-wing fishwrap/birdcage liners such as Mother Jones (Smart, fearless Journalism) and The Nation(unconventional wisdom since 1865).
• Listening to the sheep(major news media) - and their listeners - bleating while marching in lockstep with those who have a vested interest in doing the wrong thing ... then using the opposite of what they say as a starting point in my research.
  

And ... I (we) tend to be on the right side of history, e.g,

• I thought way back then that Viet Nam was a mistake. In fact, I yelled it.
• I told people that there was torture going on at Guantanamo and in our prisons in Iraq.
  
• I predicted that if it ever got started that the "9-11 Commission's" recommendations would be largely ignored.

There's a much longer list inside my head, but those voices in there drown out the items on my list. Stay tuned. Some of those will sneak out. Truth For Dummies!

In my post on 1-26-2010, The Power of Twisted Thinking, I blathered about a good example of bad science. Specifically I discussed flawed research that made its way into a prestigious medical journal.

From today's (February 2, 2010) news @ CNN.com:

Medical journal Lancet fully retracts 1998 study linking MMR vaccine to autism, citing "incorrect" elements of research. (emphasis mine)

See: I told you so. You want truth - get it here, where smart dummies shop for wisdom.

Ronald Reagan: the greatest president ever - assuming that you are

1. a Republican
2. in denial (of everything real)

Barack Obama: the worst president ever - assuming that

1. you have a blind hatred of Democrats in general
2. you have a blind hatred of the fact that Obama is so uppity - and is in charge (again)
   

Today's pundits and republicans are thrilled that Obama's favorability rating is down. His approval rating is 57% at the end of his first year.

His presidency is toast. It's in the toilet. The republicans will get back control of Congress in 2010. Any republican will beat Obama in 2012. After all, his approval rating is down to 57%.

Unlike Reagan, whose favorability rating after his first year was, um ..... 57%.

After the good old fashioned ass-wuppin' that Obama handed out last week, I suspect his approval rating will be heading back into the stratosphere ... and the republicans will have to come up with a new strategy. Just saying NO! and lying to the public is not going to work as well as it did last year.

It's Groundhog Day.

BFD?

Not so fast.

• It's the biggest non-event that won't go away; it comes back every year. Grown men wearing top hats hang out in the woods waiting for a rodent to climb out of his hole. Based on how that works out, they (and the news media) can predict the weather for the next month-and-a-half.
  
• It's one of the best movies ever. I say that because my life often seems like Groundhog Day (the movie, not the rat-fest)
  
• It's Ayn Rand's birthday.
  
  • Google her name and you get 2.5 million hits - most of them fawning.
  • Or try this reality check. I've been on both sides of the discussion. From one who knows: Rothbard nailed it.
    

You're right: BFD.

I got an interesting e-mail. It was from "Bank of America." It looked authentic. However, my scamdar sounded an warning.



Yes,I have credit card accounts at Bank of America (but only because B of A swallowed up my previous banks). However, the warning in the email was about a check card. I don't have a cash account at BofA, and therefore have no "check card."

I looked at the links embedded in the email. The idea was to get me to click on a link. Clicking on that link would open up a browser (for example, IE or FireFox) and then open up a website.

Would the web site be legitimate? Not likely.

By hovering my mouse over a link, the real destination for the link displayed in the lower-left-hand corner of the e-mail window. By the way, that feature is in the e-mail program Thunderbird. If you're not using Thunderbird, it might not work the same.



Another way to see the real link:

1. highlight the link (carefully drag mouse across the link)
2. copy it (Menu --> Edit --> Copy),
3. paste it into the address bar of the web browser (IE, FireFox,etc)

Just to be sure,

1. I used FireFox to go to the real BofA website
2. logged in as myself
3. clicked on the "Alerts" link.

Guess what ... Bank of America sent no such e-mail.

I missed a real adventure. Had I blindly followed the email's instructions, many wonderful things could have happened.

• the website could place a Trojan Horse on my computer
• the Trojan could capture all of my keystrokes, thereby making available to the scammers all of my accounts and passwords
• the site could have planted a virus on my computer, wreaking all sorts of havoc
• and a lot more .....
  

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

How do you know that the "silence was deafening" if you're not deaf, and how would a deaf person know the difference?

In 1998 the distinguished medical journal Lancet reported that a team of scientists found a positive correlation between childhood vaccinations and autism.

The alleged culprit in the disaster was thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in bottles of vaccine that might be opened, used partially, and then stored.

Because of Lancet's rock-solid reputation, this finding set off a wave of terror among parents of young children. Parents began refusing to have their children protected against what used to be common - and potentially deadly - diseases. The panic began in 1998 and persists today.

Fast-forward to 2004. Of the 13 scientists involved in the original study:

• 10 retracted the parts of the study about the positive correlation between childhood vaccinations and autism
• 2 Two did not voice an opinion
• 1 scientist, the leader of the research team, defended the study and the conclusions drawn from the data gathered.
  

The lead author didn't bother to tell his co-researchers AND Lancet that he was on the take: lawyers representing the parents of autistic children paid him $800,000 to determine whether there were grounds for pursuing legal action. He delivered the results to the lawyers before publishing it in that major medical journal.

When the ten scientists (and Lancet) learned that part of the story, they were not amused. The term "conflict of interest" kept coming up. The $800,000 richer 'scientist' insists that

• His participation and leadership was not influenced by the money
• He was objective and dispassionate in his work
• He was off the hook, anyway: "... we emphasise that this was not a scientific paper but a clinical report."
  

He also did not look for the converse: was there data that showed the lack of a positive correlation (between vaccines and autism)? His fellow scientists and Lancet apparently missed, in 1998, those nuances.

Also, no one noticed that vaccines are administered when the children are the same age as when autism is typically diagnosed¹.

Follow up:

• There have been five major studies that found no causal relationship between autism and thimerosal
• The use of thimerosal in vaccines was discontinued in 2001. If thimerosal were truly a problem, there would have been a drop in the rate of autism among vaccinated children. There was no such decrease.
  

And yet, the anti-vaccination hysteria continues. There was a lot of noise about this year's flu vaccines being

• loaded with brain-damaging mercury
  
• likely to cause autism
• a government plot (read: Obama's plot) to get people's medical records.
  

¹ I am reminded of a physician who had written a somewhat popular book. In that book he linked ice cream and polio. After all, people 'caught' polio in the summer, and people ate ice cream in the summer.

In a similar vein, I knew a fellow who (as a child) in a short time frame: ate peanut butter, got sick, and was diagnosed with, um... polio. He died in his adult years from a brain tumor. That damned peanut butter - it's a plot by Skippy to get our medical records. To this day Skippy refuses to list polio-causing agents and carcinogens as ingredients in their product - creamy or smooth.

Actually this is beyond being addicted to information. It's for seriously disturbed Info-junkies.

When growing up, every Info-Junkie spent time devouring encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauri. I had some of my parents' textbooks. Talk about COOL! Imagine learning about world geography from the early 20th century? A few things have changed.

Any of today's Info-Junkies care who want to learn everything there was to know in 1911. Now they can read the

1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica

As I said: it's for seriously disturbed Info-junkies. It's also fun.

... "of calamine lotion."

Anacardiaceae: a family of flowering plants bearing fruits. Some of those plants produce urushiol, an irritant.

Notable plants in this family include

• cashew
• mango
• poison ivy, oak, sumac
  

That means that poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, mangoes, and cashews are closely related.

Most people are aware of the itch (contact dermatitis) so generously given when one touches the leaves or vines of poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. The itch is so remarkable that it has been celebrated in song. My favorite is by The Coasters.

Mango peel contains the irritant urushiol. Presumably, the urushiol is removed before the mangoes get to my local produce stand. I say this because for every festive dinner I make mango salsa, but I never 'break out' in rash. I also eat the peels, but don't get an itchy tongue.

To me, however, the real surprise is that cashew shells exude urushiol. The meat is fine, but touching the shells can make you miserable. In stores you'll see raw & in-the-shell walnuts, almonds, pecans, and such. But you won't see cashews raw & in-the-shell. There are tales, perhaps apochraphyl, about people getting a surprise along with the bag o'nuts they bought from the local Boy Scouts' fund-raiser.

One last thing: cashew isn't a nut; it's a seed. The cashew tree also produces 'cashew apples.'

Read all about it.