Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Things your father never told you about the war...
Subject: WWII trivia, interesting You have to dig deep for facts like these: 1. The first German serviceman killed in WW II was killed by the Japanese ( China, 1937), the first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians (Finland 1940); highest ranking American killed was Lt Gen Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps. 2. The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded and given a Dishonorable Discharge for lying about his age. His benefits were later restored by act of Congress. 3. At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced "sink us" the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th Infantry division was the Swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika." All three were soon changed for PR purposes.! 4. More US servicemen died in the Air Corps than the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30 missions, your chance of being killed was 71%. 5. Generally speaking, there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance, Japanese Ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a cargo plane. 6. It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in aiming. This was a mistake. Tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. This was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down. 7. When allied armies reached the Rhine, the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton, who had himself photographed in the act. 8. German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City, but they decided it wasn't worth the effort. 9. German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet. 10. Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians, and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans, and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army. SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST.... 11. Following a massive naval bombardment, 35,000 United States and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands. 21 troops were killed in the assault. It would have been worse if there had been any Japanese on the island. now take a moment and visit the Jimbozone.com |
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Socialism?
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that. now take a moment and visit the Jimbozone.com |
Friday, April 24, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE
'Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.' ~ Thomas Jefferson FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE 1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject. 2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone. 3. Colt: The original point and click interface. 4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control. 5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords? 6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words. 7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms. 8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any. 9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither. 10. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved. 11. What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you not understand? 12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others. 13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday. 14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians. 15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety. 16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive. 17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer. 18. Assault is a behavior, not a device. 19. Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer. 20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson. 21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them. 22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for. 23. Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don't make more. 24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves. 25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control. IF YOU AGREE, PASS THIS 'REFRESHER' ON TO TEN FREE CITIZENS. now take a moment and visit the Jimbozone.com |
Saturday, April 04, 2009
two republicans on an escalator---the party of let's wait and see what happens...
I suppose this is Michael Steele and Anneorexia Coulter
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
can anyone pinpoint
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Odd, bouncing fish with lollipop face dubbed new species
March 3, 2009
Courtesy University of Washington
and World Science staff
Psychedelica seems the perfect name for a fish that is a wild swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes and acts in ways contrary to its brethren. So says the University of Washington’s Ted Pietsch, who is the first to describe the new species in the scientific literature and thus the one to pick the name. With its flattened face, scientists say the fish's eyes appear to be directed forward. These may provide it with binocular vision, a special attribute well developed in humans that provides the ability to accurately judge distance. Only very few fishes have eyes whose field of vision overlaps in front, providing such vision. (©David Hall Psychedelica is perhaps even more apt given the cockamamie way the fish swim, some with so little apparent control they look drunk. Members of Histiophryne psychedelica don’t so much swim as hop. Each time they strike the seafloor they use their fins to push off and they expel water from tiny gill openings on their sides to jettison themselves forward. With tails curled tightly to one side – which limits their ability to steer – they look like inflated rubber balls bouncing hither and thither. The leg-like pectoral fins used for walking are commonly found in anglerfish which prefer crawling to swimming. More than a dozen individual fish have been seen in Ambon Harbor, Indonesia, since divers with Maluku Divers first spotted one of the fish in January 2008. The fish have been found in 15 to 25 feet of water near a commercial jetty in the busy harbor. (Credit: ©David Hall The species has a flattened face with eyes directed forward. It’s something Pietsch, with 40 years of experience studying and classifying fishes, has never seen before in frogfish. It causes him to speculate that the species may have binocular vision, that is, vision that overlaps in front, like it does in humans. Most fish, with eyes on either side of their head, don’t have this; they see different things with each eye.
While other frogfish and similar species are known to jettison themselves up off the bottom before they begin swimming, none have been seen hopping, according to Pietsch. It’s just one of the behaviors of H. psychedelica unseen in any other fish, added the researcher, lead author of a paper on the new species in Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.
It was little more than a year ago that the fish with rare, forward-facing eyes like humans and a secretive nature drew worldwide attention after having been observed in the busy harbor of Ambon Island, Indonesia. An adult fish was observed in January 2008 by Toby Fadirsyair, a guide, and Buck and Fitrie Randolph, co-owners of Maluku Divers, based in Ambon. They and other co-owners Andy and Kerry Shorten eventually found Pietsch to help them identify the fish. Since the first sighting divers have observed a number of adults and juveniles, now that they know what to look for.
Adults of H. psychedelica are fist-sized with gelatinous bodies covered with thick folds of skin that protect them from sharp-edged corals as they haunt tiny nooks and crannies of the harbor reef. Fins on either side of their bodies have, as with other frogfish, evolved to be leg-like, and members of H. psychedelica actually prefer crawling to swimming. (See a QuickTime video of the animal here.)
DNA work indicated H. psychedelica joins two other species in a genus called Histiophryne, though the other two look very drab in comparison. The genus is but one of about a dozen in the frogfish or Antennariidae family, according to Pietsch. The frogfish are, in turn, part of the larger order of Lophiiformes, or anglerfish.
Unlike other anglerfish, members of H. psychedelica have no lures growing out of their foreheads to attract prey. The other anglerfish sit out in the open on the seafloor or coral reefs, often adapting their coloring so their bodies are camouflaged, but the lures are meant to be noticed so the fish wave, wiggle and sometimes blink the lures on and off.
Instead of that showiness, members of H. psychedelica are shy and secretive, probably one reason they weren’t previously spotted, Pietsch said. When a member of H. psychedelica is uncovered by divers it usually seeks a new place to hide within 10 or 15 minutes.
And while other anglerfish change their coloring depending on the environment, the new species appears to maintain its wild striping no matter the surroundings.
The coloring led co-author David Hall, a wildlife photographer and owner of seaphotos.com, to speculate that the fish is mimicking corals. Indeed, Hall produced photos for the new scientific paper showing corals the animals may be mimicking.
The other co-author, Rachel Arnold, a master’s student at the uni-ver-sity, did the DNA work. Arnold, who dove in Ambon Harbor last year, said the striping of each fish is distinctive, “like a fingerprint of patterning on their body so from whatever angle you look, you can tell individuals apart.”
The scientists found, however, that the vivid colors faded in a matter of days once a specimen was preserved in ethanol. The flesh of the preserved specimen looks white, but with a microscope one can still see the striping, Pietsch discovered.
This got him thinking about two specimens sent to him in 1992 that he’d kept. The Dallas Aquarium had sent him two frogfish, found in a shipment of live fishes from Bali that they said had unusual pigment patterns. The staff had nicknamed them “paisley frogfish.” But the photograph Pietsch was sent was of poor quality and the preserved specimens Pietsch received were white, so he didn’t give them much thought.
Pietsch retrieved the old specimens from the collection, put them under a microscope and found the striping distinctive to H. psychedelica. He’d had two specimen of a new species of fish for 17 years, but didn’t know it.
time and again...
Monday, March 09, 2009
Sunday, March 01, 2009
10 things you should know about Obama's plan
The plan:
- Makes a $634 billion down payment on fixing health care that will go a long way toward paying for a more efficient, more affordable health care system that covers every single American.1
- Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won't go up one dime.2
- Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.3
- Brings our troops home from Iraq on a firm timetable, finally bringing the war to a closeand freeing up almost ten billion dollars a month for domestic priorities.4
- Reverses growing income inequality. The plan lets the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire and focuses on strengthening the middle class.5
- Closes multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for big oil companies. 6
- Increases grants to help families pay for collegethe largest increase ever.7
- Halves the deficit by 2013. President Obama inherited a legacy of huge deficits and an economy in shambles, but his plan brings the deficit under control as soon as the economy begins to recover.8
- Dramatically increases funding for the SEC and the CFTCthe agencies that police Wall Street.9
- Tells it straight. For years, budgets have used accounting tricks to hide the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and too many other programs. Obama's budget gets rid of the smokescreens and lays out what America's priorities are, what they cost, and how we're going to pay for them.10
- Stops unnecessary government subsidies to big banks, health insurance companies and big agribusinesses.11,12,13
- Expands access to early childhood education and improves schools by investing in programs that make sure every child has a qualified, strong teacher.14
- Negotiates for better prescription drug prices using Medicaid's tremendous bargaining power.15
- Expands access to family planning for low-income women.16
- Caps the pollution that causes global warming, and makes polluters pay to support clean energy innovation.17
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-health.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiLyabbGqJBo&refer=home
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/energy_sunshine.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/weekinreview/01glanz.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-tax.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/energy_sunshine.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-edu.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/26/budget/
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE51P5RD20090226
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-budget27-2009feb27,0,2535327.story
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-edu.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/02/26/health-insurance-stocks-dive-on-medicare-advantage-cuts/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-agri.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/education_budget.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-health.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-health.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-energy.html
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
After eight years...
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Harry Truman after the presidency:
Historians have written the only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri . On top of that, his wife inherited the house from her Mother.
When he retired from office in 1952, his income was a U.S Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying=2 0for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an ' allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25 ,000 per year.
After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There were no Secret Service following them.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, 'You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale.'
Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, 'I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise.'
He never owned his own home and as president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.
Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale.
Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, 'My choices early in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.'