School children warm hands during recess

Children warm themselves during their school's recess break in Jammu, India.

The World is sinking back into the sea

The World is sinking back into the sea - really.

The World, in this case, is an exclusive island destination off the coast of Dubai as shown in the photos below:



The islands were intended as the ultimate luxury possession, even for Dubai and now they are sinking back into the sea.

The islands were to be developed with tailor-made hotel complexes and luxury villas, and sold to millionaires.

They are off the coast of Dubai and accessible by yacht or motor boat.

Now their sands are eroding and the navigational channels between them are silting up.

What can they expect when the islands were nothing more than piles of sand to begin with.

A Bible verse comes to mind - Matthew 7:26-27.

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Link here and here.

Filipino tree nymph butterfly

A Filipino tree nymph butterfly feeds on a poinsettia at Butterfly World in Coconut Creek, Florida.

Keith Olbermann out at MSNBC - effective immediately!

From a report at the link below:

Keith Olbermann (pictured) and MSNBC are going their separate ways ... effective immediately.

MSNBC issued a statement saying they had ended its contract with Olbermann.

Friday January 21 was the last appearance for the liberal firebrand on his MSNBC program Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Lawrence O'Donnell, who hosts a show on the network at 10:00 PM, will fill Olbermann's 8:00 PM slot beginning Monday.

But can O'Donnell throw papers at the camera? Olbermann was pretty good at it.

Link

Which cities have the worst traffic?

A CNN article at the link below report:

Drivers in the Chicago and Washington, D.C., metro areas spend the most time stuck in traffic, according to an annual analysis of the nation’s traffic trends.

Commuters in those two cities spent an average of 70 hours stuck in traffic in 2009, according to the 2010 Urban Mobility Report, published by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.

The top 10 cities for traffic delays in 2009:

1st - (tie) Chicago, Washington, D.C. – 70 hours
3rd - Southern California – 63 hours
4th - Houston – 58 hours
5th - San Francisco-Oakland – 49 hours
6th - (tie) Dallas-Fort Worth, Boston – 48 hours
8th - Atlanta, Seattle – 44 hours
10th - New York- Newark – 42 hours

Link

Facing $1.6 Billion shortfall San Francisco pays out 170 Million in bonuses

As San Francisco struggles under ballooning pension and health care costs, the city’s retirees will receive unexpected cost-of-living bonuses totaling $170 million!

A political battle has raged over the city’s growing retirement obligations. In November, Proposition B, which would have required city workers to contribute more toward their pensions and benefits, was soundly defeated. The measure’s opponents — every major elected official and energetic public-employee unions — said fears about the pension fund were overblown.

Meanwhile, the fund’s fundamentals deteriorated as it gradually accounted for its huge losses in the stock market crash.

It took in $414 million in contributions in 2010 but paid out $819 million!

The leftist city on the left coast may be in dire need of Economics 101.

Link

About those disputed zodiac signs…

The Birthplace of Inconvenient Truth

(click on picture to enlarge)

This photo shows Al Gore in his office. Looks a bit like my “cave” only much larger with room for a lot more clutter.

I love the cool frog hanging on the wall.

Google CEO Schmidt steps down search giant shake-up

Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page is taking over as CEO in an unexpected shake-up.

Page, 37, is reclaiming the top job from Eric Schmidt (pictured), who had been brought in as CEO a decade ago because Google’s investors believed the company needed a more mature leader.

Schmidt, 55, will remain an adviser to Page and Google’s other co-founder, Sergey Brin, as Google’s executive chairman.

Link

Framed by her racquet

Vania King of the U.S. is framed by her racquet as she makes a forehand return during a first round match at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia

Hundreds of birds poisoned by USDA in South Dakota

It's happened in places like Louisiana, Arkansas and Kentucky. Hundreds of birds mysteriously found dead.

Folks in Yankton, South Dakota, thought they were being added to the list after hundreds of dead birds were found there on Monday.

Turns out the unpleasant feathered discovery has a solid explanation. They were poisoned.

Some had thought 200 starlings found dead in Yankton's Riverside park had frozen to death.

But they were actually poisoned on purpose, by the US Department of Agriculture.

The USDA said a local farmer had been having troubles with about 5,000 starlings soiling his feed meal.

UDSA officials say because of health concerns for the farmer's animals and staff they decided to kill the birds.

They used a bait laced with the poison DRC-1339. The USDA says the birds ate the bait then flew back to Yankton and died.

Link

50 year anniversary of JFK's "Ask Not" inauguration speech

Did JFK use the motto of his high school in his inauguration speech 50 years ago?

Thurston Clarke wrote a book called, “Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America.”

Mr. Clarke wrote later that "important and heretofore overlooked documentary evidence" proves that Kennedy was "the author of the most immortal and poetic passages of his inaugural address," including the famous line that gives the book its title, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."

The photo above shows President John F. Kennedy delivering his inaugural address in 1961, whose memorable phrases are still the subject of conjecture.

John F. Kennedy graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall, a private high school in Wallingford, Connecticut.

From the second paragraph at the first link below:

John F. Kennedy was a 1935 graduate of the Choate school (who, incidentally, graduated 64th in a class of 112), was so inspired by Choate's motto, "Ask not what your school can do for you-- but what you can do for your school." that he paraphrased it in his eloquent inaugural address as: "Ask not what your country can do for you -- but what you can do for your country.”

Did Kennedy write the inauguration speech? Many think he had input into a speech that was prepared by Ted Sorensen.

The “Ask Not” part of the speech would have been added by Kennedy because Sorensen, who was from Lincoln Nebraska, likely would not have been aware of the Choate school motto.

Mr. Clarke insists that Kennedy was the main architect of the speech and the “ask not” words were his even though Ted Sorensen was not only Kennedy’s legal aid but was his chief speechwriter.

Does Mr. Clarke’s book have the definitive answer or, as reported above, are the memorable phrases still the subject of conjecture?

Link here and here.

127 Busted in Largest Mafia Roundup in FBI History

From a report at the link below:

Federal authorities today announced what they called the largest mob roundup in FBI history: the indictment of 127 people, including key Mafia figures from the New York, New Jersey and New England crime families, on charges ranging from murder and racketeering to gambling, extortion and loan-sharking.

About 800 law enforcement members from the FBI, Secret Service, the U.S. Labor Department and state and local law enforcement had arrested more than 110 people by late morning as part of 16 indictments filed in different jurisdictions.

The indictments were aimed at all five New York crime families -- the Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno and Luchese families -- along with the New England Patriarca family and the New Jersey Decavalcante family.

The higher-profile mob figures indicted included Luigi Manocchio, 83, the former boss of New England's Patriarca crime family; Andrew Russo, street boss of the Colombo family; Benjamin Castellazzo, 73, acting underboss of the Colombo family; Richard Fusco, 74, consigliere of the Colombo family; Joseph Corozzo, 69, the consigliere of the Gambino family; and Bartolomeo Vernace, 61, a member of the Gambino family administration.

Link

Two Miami police officers killed serving federal warrant

Two Miami-Dade police officers were shot and killed in a gunfight with suspects as they tried to serve a warrant for a violent fugitive in a Miami home Thursday morning. It was the first time in decades two law enforcement officers had been killed in the line of duty.

The dead male officer was identified as Roger Castillo. The female officer was tentatively identified as Amanda Haworth.

One suspect was killed in the gun battle. Another suspect is in custody, said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez.

Link

Service

Maria Sharapova of Russia serves to Virginie Razzano of France during their second round match at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia

Report: Save the planet: eat bugs

Dutch scientist Arnold van Huis says mealworm quiche, grasshopper springrolls and cuisine made from other creepy crawlies is the answer to the global food crisis.

Mealworm quiche? Really? Does it taste like chicken?

Judging by the reaction in the photo, eating bugs may not be an easy sell.

The professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands said insects have more protein than cattle per bite, cost less to raise, consume less water and don't have much of a carbon footprint.

He even has plans for a cookbook to make bug food a more appetising prospect for mature palates.

Van Huis has organized lectures, food tastings, and cookery classes with a master chef who demonstrates how to prepare a range of recipes using bugs, worms and grasshoppers, all bred - or raised - at a Dutch insect farm for consumption.

Link

Senators Lieberman and Conrad to give GOP big boost in 2012

Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota and Senator Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, have dealt a blow to Democrats’ faint hopes of keeping the majority in the Senate after the 2012 election.

Conrad announced Tuesday he will not run for reelection, and Lieberman, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, is expected to announce the same Wednesday afternoon.

Democrats have to defend 23 Senate seats next year, while the GOP only has 10 up for grabs. Republicans need a net gain of at least three seats to take control of the upper chamber.

More here.

Global warmists: We can't win the game, so let's change the rules.

From a report at the link below:

Willis Eschenbach's recent guest post at Watts Up with That? on the current state of ‘Climate science’ should be made compulsory reading in every classroom, every university science department, every eco-charity, every environmental NGO and in every branch of government.

The theory linking man-made CO2 with dangerous global warming is dead. It has been falsified. It has run smack bang into a “null hypothesis.”

Man-made Global Warming has ceased to exist.

Link.

Hawaii governor can't find Obama birth certificate!

The governor of Hawaii says he can't find Barack Obama's long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate and that it may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.

Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star Advertiser he was searching within the Hawaii Department of Health to find definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii, because the continuing eligibility controversy could hurt the president's chances of re-election in 2012.

So far, the only birth document available on Obama is a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth that first appeared on the Internet during the 2008 presidential campaign.

It was posted by two purportedly independent websites that have displayed a strong partisan bias for Obama.

Obama's grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, could have made an in-person report of a Hawaii birth even if the infant Barack Obama Jr. had been foreign-born.

Similarly, the newspaper announcements of Obama's birth do not prove he was born in Hawaii, since they could have been triggered by the grandparents registering the birth as Hawaiian, even if the baby was born elsewhere.

Link

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Oh, never mind …

Now they say it has been found.

Whew! That's a relief! We'd hate to think Democrat activists would have to fake one.

Now, when will they produce it?

Link

California may have highest electric vehicle charging costs

A new study says Californians may end up paying the highest electricity rates in the country to charge their electric vehicles.

The state's tiered rate system, in which customers are charged higher rates as they use more electricity, could make plug-in hybrid and battery-powered vehicles more costly to own, according to a Purdue University study.

The study was unveiled as the first of the electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are reaching consumers. Two vehicles, the all-electric Nissan Leaf (shown recharging above) and the plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt, started being delivered to their first customers last month.

While the tiered electrical rate system was designed as an incentive to use less electricity, it will not help owners of plug in electric cars.

A plug-in hybrid Volt would increase the average household's electrical usage 60%, the study said. Although the study didn't explicitly examine all-electric vehicles such as the Leaf, "the same principle would apply."

More here.