EAT UP: Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions on today’s menu

I can’t stand seafood. When I see stuff like this (and people eating it) I gotta shake my head and ask if it’s worth it?

        Good Day Humboldt County!

 It’s a sad way for a proud country to end. Poisoned by greed, pollution, and politics. We can’t seem to stop killing ourselves.

It’s like a mass suicide. The evidence of our destruction on this planet is everywhere. This Sunday (4/22), As It Stands talks about how we’ve been shitting in our own back yard for too long! We’re paying a price today.

“Americans worry less about pollution in down economy” is a glance at how desperate Americans have become with a flawed food chain and the other consequences of pollution. Stories of pollution have to be epic – like the Deepwater Horizon spill – to keep the mainstream media’s interest.

Now and then, we get updates like the story below (and video above)…reminders really…that we’re in trouble:  

“Fishermen are pulling more deformed seafood, like eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions, out of the Gulf of Mexico, and suggest that BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill is to blame. Scientists, however, say they are more concerned about the long-term effects on populations of fish, like red snapper and grouper, than on the potential for making human consumers ill.

The Food and Drug Administration has also insisted that seafood from the Gulf is safe. Still, it's hard to feel assured when you see a black-gilled lobster - and realize the black is from contamination and not a Cajun-style preparation.” (Source) 

Related: Long-gone lead factories leave dangerous poisons

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Pot-infused wine is all the rage in dope-friendly California

How could you make a substance like wine, with chemical properties that make you pleasantly woozy and a bit euphoric, any better? Infuse it with another substance whose chemicals make you pleasantly woozy and a bit euphoric, of course! Enter marijuana-laced wine. A bit like the pot brownie's more refined big sister, the aromatic red spirit is on the rise in California where increasingly lax pot laws have brought the decades-old fad back into fashion. The recipe calls for dropping a pound of pot into a fermenting cask of wine, which yields about 1.5 grams of weed per bottle. Plenty enough, I think, to get a group of sophisticated vintners chanting "duuuude" and eating Funyuns. (source)

Scientists say we’re using all – not part of - our brain, which surprises the hell out of me!

                      Good Day Humboldt County!

  For the longest time I really believed that humans only used a portion of the brains, and that a genius was somehow able to tap into the other unused areas. They accessed places that average guys like me would never see.

  I think I was comfortable with that. It’s an old well-traveled belief that there has to be a reason why some people are so exceptionally intelligent.

  I admit I’ve been blissfully operating under the assumption there might even be a day when humans could use more of their brains and a worldwide Utopia would result. Everyone would be too smart to fight and be deceived by stupid, power-mongering individuals if they could use all their brain power right? That’s the way I had it figured. I should have known better.

The fact is, if we are already using all of our brain power (like the experts say below), then we are indeed in trouble. Just look at the world around us. For decades an urban myth – “we only use 10 percent of our brains” - traveled across the country and was accepted as gospel.

Turns out this urban myth wasn’t true:

“If we did use only 10 percent of our brains we’d be close to dead, according to Eric Chudler, director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington.

With the rise of the human potential movement in the 1960s, some preached that all sorts of powers, including bending spoons and psychic abilities, were laying dormant in our heads and that all we had to do was get off our duffs and activate them.” (source)

I remember hearing in high school that if we only used 20 percent percent of our brainpower we’d be flying, reading people’s minds, and doing all kinds of cool things. I don’t recall that 10 percent figure being used…but I suppose it doesn’t matter one way or the other. The big surprise is that we’re using all of our brains (well, not all of us) and we’re not superhuman.

“The brain, Chudler said, isn’t like a disc drive with some set amount of capacity. It’s a dynamic maze of wiring where new connections can be created in response to new stimuli, or lost with disuse. And much of it is constantly occupied not with intellectual thinking, but running our systems. When recordings are made from brain EEGs, or PET scans, or any type of brain scan, there’s no part of the brain just sitting there unused.” (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

AS IT STANDS Features Pugs Gone Wild Part II : This Pug is for You!

  

  

(left) My 8-year old pug Millie contemplates her world from her special viewing spot.

 

 

 

 

 

I love Pugs. They are great companions and clowns that will always entertain you. If you ever get a chance to rescue one please do…you’ll never regret it!

Coalition calls for a Day of Action on 4/20 to Pressure President Obama to Stop Assault on Medical Marijuana Patients, Providers and Educators

On a traditional day of celebration for the cannabis community, this April 20 there will be a CALL TO ACTION to contact the Obama administration by phone, email and fax as well as visits to re-election headquarters in protest of misguided marijuana policies.

Submit Your Comments and Questions Online – The White House

Here’s Obama’s re-election site Headquarters

Got a beef with the Obama Administration’s stepped up efforts to criminalize medical marijuana patients and the dispensaries that serve them? Let the First Flip-Flopper (who did not keep his campaign promise to stop harassing states that allow for medical marijuana) know about it. Go ahead… Submit Your Questions or Comments Here

The medical cannabis community is demanding that we utilize our resources for safer communities by keeping cannabis away from our children by controlling and regulating it.  Contact the president to call a stop to failed and outdated policy of marijuana prohibition, which further drives control of the marijuana trade into the hands of violent drug cartels and other illegal operators, endangering both patients in medical marijuana states and citizens everywhere.  A few ideas:

1. Cannabis should be de-scheduled to allow for research and education.

2. An immediate cessation of all federal intervention in the legal medical cannabis system in California.

3. An immediate halt to any action that threatens the community, homeowners and jobs in California.

4. A response from the White House on the reasoning behind this latest assault and how it squares with Obama’s plan to expand the economy and a decent respect for democracy.  “We the patients” are “We the People”.

To find out about what you can do, visit - www.OaksterdamUniversity.com.”

Oaksterdam’s employees are members of UFCW Local 5, an affiliate of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the largest retail workers organization in the country.  Dan Rush, Director of UFCW’s Medical Cannabis and Hemp Division said, “We are very disappointed in this misguided enforcement action by the federal government.   Almost 100 of our members, my sisters and brothers, lost their jobs and benefits as a consequence of this raid.”  

Medical cannabis pioneer and founder of Oaksterdam University, Richard Lee, is officially retiring to pursue drug policy reform full-time.  Dale Sky Jones, Oaksterdam’s executive chancellor, is licensing the Oaksterdam University curriculum to continue its stated mission of quality training for the cannabis industry.  Richard Lee promises he will still teach at OU, but he feels that continuing as president could draw further harassment to the school from the federal government.   He is formally stepping away to allow the school to fully separate itself from Lee and his other previously affiliated cannabis businesses, considered illegal under federal law.

The Chair of the Mendocino County (CA) Board of Supervisors, John McCowen, stated after US attorneys shut down his successful zip-tie program stated, “It's almost as if there was a conscious effort to drive [medical marijuana cultivation and distribution] back underground. My opinion is that's going to further endanger public safety and the environment – the federal government doesn't seem to care about that.”

Are you sick of Obama’s lack of concern for medical marijuana patients and the dispensaries that serve them?

I suggest you let Obama know he’s not getting your vote this November…for starters.

                                                                   Contacts: 

Dale Sky Jones, Executive Chancellor Oaksterdam University, www.oaksterdamuniversity.com phone: (949) 680-5452 or (510) 251-1544 - e-mail: daleskyjones@gmail.com twitter: daleskyones

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Angell, Media Relations Director
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
http://www.CopsSayLegalizeDrugs.com -phone: (202) 557-4979 - e-mail: tom@leap.cc

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dale Geiringer, Director, CA NORML - www.canorml.org (415) 563-5858 dale@canorml.org

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Vasconcellos, California State Senator (retired) (408) 298-1993 senjohnv@aol.com

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Goodbye Greenbacks – Hello Smart-Device Swiping someday soon

                Good Day Humboldt County!

No one can foretell the future. Our road ahead is a mystery. You can forecast something (make an educated guess), but cannot say for sure. In an interesting study, 1,021 nerds came to the conclusion we’ll be using our cell phones to purchase things because our $1, $5,$10,$20,$100 bills will no longer be accepted as payment for anything in some moneyless future.

Those sometimes crisp, often wrinkled, always bacteria laden greenbacks are doomed the tech experts say. No more pulling out your wallet or purse and fumbling around for the folding stuff. Of course, if you ever lose you cell phone you might as well commit hari kara!

I have my reservations about this forecast and hope it isn’t true. Actually, I wish everything would be free someday… but then there’s this pesky little thing called reality.

“Take a look at the green stuff in your wallet  (if you have any) and prepare to say goodbye to it in the future: By 2020, most Americans will be using their cellphones, not cash or credit cards, to make payments.

That's what 65 percent of the 1,021 tech experts surveyed by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University said is likely to be the case, with consumers not only adopting, but embracing, the use of "smart-device swiping" for purchases.

"So many people are already accustomed to buying a cup of coffee with a credit card that smart-device swiping is only a very small next step," John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, told Pew in its report, "The Future of Money in a Mobile Age."
Mobile payment technologies are in the early stages in the U.S. among manufacturers: Google is among those leading the way with its Google Wallet partnership with Citibank and MasterCard, using near-field communication. The technology allows for very short-range communication between devices, such as a phone and a payment terminal. Google Wallet has only been available in the U.S. on the Nexus S phone, which has a built-NFC chip.
Wireless carriers Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have joined with credit card companies American Express, MasterCard and Discover, to develop a similar NFC program called "ISIS" that will be tested in pilot cities around the country mid-year.” (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

The Piúva (Tabebuia impetiginosa) tree in bloom in Brazil

Source     My night’s final act…drinking in the beauty and serenity of this tree

 

Cheap Secret Service agents cause flap in Columbia while Obama is busy bullying Latin heads of state to continue failed drug war

Obama boys …what are you going to do when the public is through with you?

I love it.

I got a great insight into how cheap Secret Service members are. Really?Ripping off a prostitute over $50.00! You gotta be kidding me. With what those Secret Service guys get paid you’d think they’d be a little more fair-minded in their business transactions.

It’s downright embarrassing for President Obama, who was busy bullying Latin American heads of state (during the Summit of Americas meeting in Colombia) into sticking with his failed drug policy. He promised them more taxpayer money (more than $130 million in aid) as long as they were good puppets and followed his lead.

Obama was pressed to open up a debate on legalizing and regulating drugs by sitting Latin American presidents like Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala, but he brushed them off with distain. 

You know what? I hope Obama is more than just embarrassed by the antics of his watchdogs. I hope those Latin American countries finally wise up and tell him to back off. If they have to form a coalition of countries to stand up for real drug reform through legalization – that would be a good thing.

Meanwhile, the theme song above is in honor of those cheap horny agents….

So what do you do when your 4 year-old is smarter than you?

                      Good Day Humboldt County!

In this merry game of life we all start out as babies, and presumably are on an equal playing field, unless a physical or mental disability is involved.

So what happens when your four-year-old takes a standardized intelligence test and scores a mere point less than Albert Einstein and famed physicist Stephen Hawkins! How do you handle that?

Did you know that there’s 3-year olds that are members of Mensa (a worldwide organization of exceptionally smart people)? Membership is open to people who score in the top 2 percent of any standardized test of intelligence (the group offers its own test and accepts scores from the 200 or so intelligence tests out there).

I’ve only known one card-carrying member of Mensa. I met him in college and he was a Russian exchange student named Gregory Bratoff. We worked on the school newspaper together and when the staff got our first computer in 1977 (An Edit Writer 2000 – strictly for setting headlines mind you) it was Greg who figured everything out within hours and became  our official headline setter. The machine was so big you had a seat and worked on this monstrous display monitor nestled in a metal shell four feet high).

We spent many hours together and I was amazed at what little common sense Greg had. I have numerous examples and perhaps on another occasion I’ll bring them all up. But for now, let’s take a look at little Heidi Hankins of Winchester, England, who recently took an IQ test that nearly put her score on level with Einstein and Hawkins.

In a recent article she was mentioned along with other child prodigies:

“Victoria Liguez, the marketing coordinator for American Mensa, would not disclose numbers for how many children are members in the United States. But the youngest U.S. Mensa member, she said, is age 3.

"She joined when she was 2," Liguez told LiveScience. The youngest member worldwide, Oscar Wrigley, reportedly joined at age 2.5 with an IQ of 160. (Overall, about 110,000 individuals across 100 countries are Mensa members, including about 50,000 in the United States.)

Both Liguez and Lawlis said that despite the stereotypes of awkward geniuses, the Mensa children they'd interacted with had all been very normal. It's often not until testing that the depth of the children's knowledge becomes clear, Lawlis said. "A kid's intelligence is [often] invisible," Lawlis said. "You don't usually know what a kid knows unless you ask them. … It's more of a discovery of what a kid's brain is capable of responding to." (Source/resources for parents)  Here’s a link to the American Mensa chapter.

I guess I’m glad none of my three boys were Mensa members in diapers. It would have been tough dealing with a little smarty pants like that! And can you imagine when they hit their teens? At that age all teens think they know everything – except that yours would!

Time for me to walk on down the road…

‘Enclothed cognition’ - Is a writer who wears a fedora more creative?

         Good Day Humboldt County!

 I imagine we’ve all heard the phrase, “Clothes don’t make the man” in the course of our life experiences. In a slight twist to that old adage, researchers claim that people wearing white coats pay more attention to detail.

 The idea being that if you think you look like a scientist or doctor, you’ll act like them. No really. I’m not kidding. I can remember wearing a white sport jacket once and thinking I looked like Don Johnson in Miami Vice, but no one asked me for an autograph!

               Oh well, I’ll try to take this study seriously. You try your best too:  

“It's surprising how much simple movements of the body can affect the way we think. Using expansive gestures with open limbs makes us feel more powerful, crossing your arms makes you more persistent and lying down can bring more insights (read more here: 10 Simple Postures That Boost Performance).

So if moving the body can have these effects, what about the clothes we wear? We're all well aware of how dressing up in different ways can make us feel more attractive, sporty or professional, depending on the outfit, but can the clothes you wear actually change cognitive performance or is it just a feeling?

Adam and Galinsky (2012) tested the effect of simply wearing a white lab coat on people's powers of attention. The idea is that white coats are associated with scientists, who are in turn thought to have close attention to detail. What they found was that people wearing white coats outperformed those who weren't. Indeed they made only half as many errors as those wearing their own clothes on the Stroop Test (one way of measuring attention).

The authors dub the effect 'enclothed cognition', suggesting that all manner of different clothes probably affect our cognition in many different ways. This opens the way for all sorts of clothes-based experiments. Is the writer who wears a fedora more creative? Is the psychologist wearing little round glasses and smoking a cigar more insightful. Does a chef's hat make the resultant food taste better?”   (Source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

AS IT STANDS: Our violent society is a breeding ground for bullies

                                                                                             By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
   Back in the 1950s, when I was a kid, we had our share of bullies. They didn’t go unchallenged and sometimes found themselves on the receiving end of a good thumping. Normally, after the fight both parties went their way and that was the end of it.
   The crude education bullies got back then involved running into someone tougher than they were. When they met that person their attitude was adjusted and they took up other pursuits.
    That was the end of it. They didn’t come back with rifles and pistols and shoot their peers and school staff. Growing up, I never heard of a kid committing suicide because of bullies. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen back then, but it certainly wasn’t a common occurrence in the headlines like now.
    Bullying leads to death nowadays. Tragic stories of students committing suicide are too common. Two weeks ago, a Corpus Christa, Texas high school freshman, Teddy Molina, took his own life after he couldn’t stand being bullied any longer. Molina was mercilessly taunted because he was part Korean and part Hispanic.
    Authorities at Flour Bluff High School don’t think they have a bullying problem. A lot of parents with students there do. As controversy swirls about the school district, which says it has bullying information and programs for all ages, Molina’s parent’s and sister mourn his loss.

   At some point, and I honestly can’t say when it was, bullying became a major problem in American schools. Statistics show that bullying continues to increase with each decade. The current statistics on bullying in the classrooms of America are scary and sobering.  
                According to the National Education Association:
- It’s estimated that 160,000 children miss school every day due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students.
- Sixty-one percent of students said students shoot others because they have been victims of physical abuse at home.
- A bully is five times more likely to have a serious criminal record when he/she grows up.
- Two-thirds of students who are targets become bullies.
- Twenty percent of all children say they have been bullied.

- Twenty percent of high school students say they have seriously considered suicide within the last year.
- Twenty-five percent of students say teachers intervened in bullying incidents while seventy-one percent of the students say they intervened.
- The average child has watched 8,000 televised murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school.
  American schools harbor approximately 2.1 million bullies and 2.7 million of their victims, according to Dan Olweus, of the National School Safety Center.

Other statistics from the National School Safety Center:
- Fifty-six percent of students have personally witnessed some type of bullying at school.
- Fifteen percent of all school absenteeism is directly related to fears of being bullied at school.
- Seventy-one percent of students report incidents of bullying as a problem at their school.
- One out of twenty students has seen a student with a gun at school.
- 282,000 students are physically attacked in secondary schools each month.
 Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among people between the ages of 10 and 24, with males making up 84 percent of the approximate 4,400 victims reported a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hispanic and Native American teens and young adults have the highest rates of suicide-related fatalities.

  I could go on but you see my point. Something has to reverse the trend. If anyone believes that bullying doesn’t take it’s toll on families, schools, and society take another look at the statistics above. 
  There’s a lot of good information out there for parents dealing with bullies. For example check out Nickelodeon- Parents Connect at http://www.parentsconnect.com/parenting-your-kids/parenting-kids/bullying/
  There’s a non-profit group that offers alternative support for bullies and people being bullied called Make Beats Not Beat Downs ( mbnbd@hotmail.com ) that partners with some of the most talented musicians nationwide.
   The resources are out there, and have been for some time, but the problem continues to plague our schools despite anti-bullying programs. Those programs do help some schools  cut bullying down as much as fifty percent. Bullying will never totally go away. How could it in a society that reveres a good smackdown?
   As It Stands, now more than ever parents must provide moral guidance and the confidence to deal with bullies, to help their children face the reality of our violent culture.

WEBSITES CARRYING THIS COLUMN:

1) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

2) Zero Bully

3) Wall Street Journal Headlines

4) Cloud Surfing

5) PAIRSonnalités | EN

'Swastika on the ballot': American Nazi Party gets its first lobbyist

It seems that our prolonged recession has brought out hate groups in droves. Racism is on the rise, and intolerance is the word for the day.

These hate groups are getting bolder every year, and their message of intolerance is spreading like wildfire. When we have hate mongers like the American Nazi Party lobbying on capitol hill, you have to wonder where it will all end?

“The American Nazi Party has its first lobbyist in Washington, according to reports.

The Hill newspaper, which covers Congress when it is in session, said John Bowles had registered with House and Senate offices as a representative of the “ANP,” according to disclosure records.

The records said that he planned to lobby on “political rights and ballot access laws,” and other issues such as civil rights, healthcare and immigration.

“You know, congressmen and congresswomen have always been telling the American public that they were open to other viewpoints,” Bowles told The Hill. “I’m going to see if they were sincere about that, or I’m going to call their bluff.”

Bowles was a presidential candidate in 2008 for the National Socialist Movement, according to US News and World Report. Nazi comes from the German words for National Socialist.

He told The Hill that people in America did not understand the term socialism, but knew what Nazism was.

“So [we] decided: Why don’t we just say what we are?” he added. “In the future, when we get people on the ballot, when people see the swastika on the ballot, they’ll know what they’re getting."

There’s Two America’s…the wealthy live in one, and the rest of us in the other

Good Day Humboldt County!

Today we’re looking at two roads traveled by Americans.

One is paved with privileges, while the other is riddled with pot holes.

When you’re rich in America you can steal millions and get less time in jail than a homeless man for stealing $100 for food.

The wealthy have the resources to live lives of luxury most Americans can only dream about. With those charmed lives comes a sense of entitlement.

It’s sad to say, but the wealthy rule by default. Everyone else is too busy trying to stay alive in a depressed economy.

With their wealth, these leaders of industry and government, are immune to other’s real life plights.

The rich spew ideology in order to further control the masses. They talk about the Constitution a lot, while violating most of it’s real tenets and reducing it to a partisan interpretation. The majority of Americans live somewhere between poverty and an uneasy middle class. Yet, we call our system a democracy and accuse other nations of having caste systems and limited forms of government ruled by strongmen, and dictators. Kinda makes you wonder doesn’t it?

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Do you like simple illusions? Here’s one that’s fun…

 

Can You Pick Out the Tallest Soldier?

Be careful…

Did You Find Him? Hmmmm...

if you did there’s something you should know…

They are all the same height

Source

It’s Friday the 13th…are you ready to do a bit of exploring?

     Good Day Humboldt County!

I’ve got six paths for you to travel on today. Some are strange, some are violent, some are sad, some are silly. Each a road to somewhere you haven’t been to before. Time to explore:

Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky – have you ever wondered why this day got such a bad rap?

Three Friday the 13ths, 13 weeks apart, a rarity - It's a bad year for people who suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia — the fear of Friday the 13th.

• Gun Sales Booming: Doomsday, Obama or Zombies? – Buyers in record numbers are flooding into gun stores, retailers say. Ammo, too, is flying off the shelves.
• Gravy-wrestling model hit in the face with monkey wrench after finding friend having sex on her sofa – A model who became a champion gravy wrestler suffered serious eye damage after being hit in the face with a monkey wrench.
• Homelessness Becomes A Crime In Hungary – Hungary's new anti-vagrancy laws — the toughest in Europe — now mean that homeless people sleeping on the street can face police fines or even the possibility of jail time.
• Man builds World’s tallest tree house – THE world's tallest tree house towers into the sky on a heavenly mission that puts most childhood hideaways to shame.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Space Scotch? Distillery sends malt ingredients into space

I’m a Scotch drinker. Whenever I decide to have something stronger than wine or beer, I reach for (at least) a 20 year-old single malt Scotch whiskey. Pure bliss. As smooth as silk. A hint of peat. Nectar of the Gods.

So when I heard about a possible space matured Scotch whiskey, my thoughts went otherworldly. I imagined a drink even smoother (while still keeping it’s smoky taste) than a 40 year-old single malt Scotch. Oh heavens! Just think of the possibility, and if you’re a Scotch drinker like me, dream that someday you’ll sip a “wee drop.” 

“Ardbeg Distillery, headquartered on the Scottish island of Islay, announced this week that it sent up vials containing unmatured malt ingredients as well as particles of charred oak to the space station, on an unmanned cargo flight that blasted off from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan last October. The experiment was facilitated by Houston-based NanoRacks, a company that arranges to send experiments (and the occasional iPhone) to the station for a fee.

Ardbeg's researchers want to find out whether the zero-G environment has an effect on terpenes, chemicals that play a role in giving whisky and other spirits their flavor and aroma. "This is believed to be the first time anyone has ever studied terpenes and other molecules in near zero-gravity," the distillery said in a statement.” (source)

Love is about dealing with your partner’s annoying habits and quirks

                Good Day Humboldt County!

Every now and then, someone asks how my wife and I have managed to live together for 37 years without driving each other nuts. Nuts is such a subjective term. There are ways to make your life journey with your partner go smoother.

I wish I could just write out a laundry list of survival tactics ways to get along, but it isn’t that easily explained. It’s been a gradual process, as you may have surmised. The fact that we’re still friends is key. There are experts who offer tips for making life easier for cohabitants. For instance:

“We all have annoying habits, which, curiously, we don’t find annoying in ourselves. But when they come from someone living with you, such habits can definitely get on your nerves. The trouble begins when you enter a vicious cycle of resentment -- when you're fed up with your partner's irritating habits, or you're tired of getting picked on for your own.

Nagging, disdain and contempt can all end relationships. That annoying habit may appear to be the source, but it’s not the habit that is the problem; it’s how you deal with it.” (source)

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Do you want to know some ways to exist peacefully with your partner? For example, does your partner have some body quirks?

“Body quirks includes non-clandestine nose picking, passing gas, burping, picking teeth and anytime when one releases things from orifices that no one else wants to smell, witness or be around. Of course everyone must do so at times, but how about in the bathroom or other private place? Explain to your partner you are inclined to feel more sexually attracted to them when not subjected to foul odors and the like. If you did this in front of him (it usually is the guy, sorry) he would not really like it or find it sexually alluring. Request he do it in private.” (source)

I can’t vouch for any of this, but some of it touches a cord now and then. Here’s another good example:

“Selective listening: You are trying to talk and he or she is tuned out, staring at the TV, computer or phone. Agree upon a benign code word (like "banana") for when you really would like full attention. It lets your partner know that paying attention now is important to you, which avoids the mystery of when to be fully attentive.” (source)

Here’s a real fight-starter – bad manners. It seems like us guys have a chronic problem that women have to learn to live with – we’re slobs at heart!

“Bad manners: Scratching his back with a fork, leaving the toilet seat up, rearranging private parts in public -- things that never happened early on in the relationship are now a daily affair that makes you feel like you married a Neanderthal. But for him (or her!), being able to relax and not feel like he married Emily Post is important. The solution lies somewhere in the middle, a relaxed state of getting to be yourself, with a dose of courtesy for your partner. Have a conversation about what constitutes reasonable manners to both of you. You may have different standards because you grew up in different homes. The things that are most egregious to the other are things you should step away and do in private. The “note reminder” technique helps for some. So a Post-It on the toilet for two weeks that says "Please put down the seat” can help to change a long-time habit.”

Well, I could go on, but I think you have the idea. People have to learn to compromise. It’s not always easily done, and we often have to break bad habits, but the end result is a serene lifestyle. Who could ask for anything more than that?

Time for me to walk on down the road…

The Rings of Saturn Will Be On Display This Weekend

Time to pull out your telescopes and binoculars folks.

On April 15, Saturn reaches opposition — the point when it is directly opposite the sun in the sky. When it reaches opposition, Saturn will appear in the midnight sky to observers on Earth. The sky maps and illustration of Saturn accompanying this guide shows where to see the planet in the southern sky on April 15 and how it may appear seen through a good telescope.

The most important thing about this for skywatchers is that Saturn moves from being a "morning object" to being visible all night. For all of April, Saturn rises at sunset, and sets at sunrise.

All the outer planets have rings, but with the exception of Saturn, they are only visible in long exposure photographs made from space. Saturn's rings are totally in your face, as bright as the planet itself. They are made up of many thousands of small pieces of rock and ice, with enough space in between for starlight to shine through. [ Photos: Spectacular Views of Saturn's Rings ]

From a distance they look substantial and solid, yet in reality they are gossamer thin: thousands of kilometers wide, yet only a few kilometers thick. Through a good telescope, the rings are seen to have a complex structure.

Here’s a list of the brightest moons and their brightness on April 15, the night of Saturn's opposition:

• Titan: 8.4
• Rhea: 9.7
• Tethys: 10.2
• Dione: 10.4
• Iapetus: 11.1
• Enceladus: 11.7

Astronomers use an upside down magnitude scale: the larger the number, the fainter the object. At magnitude 8.4, Titan is easily visible in binoculars. One of the two largest moons in the solar system, it is the only moon with a substantial atmosphere, mostly methane gas. It was visited by the Huygens lander on Jan. 14, 2005. [ Amazing Photos: Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon ]

With so many moons visible in a telescope, how do you tell which is which? The easiest way is to run a planetarium program on your computer: it will plot accurately the positions of all of Saturn’s moons as they circle the planet, neatly labeled for you.

This article (edited for length) was originally provided to Space.com by Starry Night Education, the leader in space science curriculum solutions.

‘Okay buddy…just put down the ray gun and step back!’

Good Day Humboldt County!

Our lives would be truly boring without science fiction stories. I can’t tell you how many roads I traveled in my imagination after watching an episode of Flash Gordon, or a Jules Verne film like 20000 Leagues Under the Sea.

And ray guns were cool. My brother and I played with cheap plastic ray guns and wore capes (towels) tied around our necks. Hey! It worked for us. We would make up things that our ray guns could do. Even with our fervid imaginations we could never have imagined ray guns would some day become part of our America’s arsenal! It’s not just us however. Our old Cold War foe Russia has the same aspirations as we do when it comes to developing some mind-numbing ray guns. Don’t just take my word for it, check out the following story: 

“The Americans as well as the Russians have been looking into psychotronic weapons for more than 15 years. You can find ample references to the subject on the Internet, including a feature published by U.S. News and World Report in 1997 and a report written for a U.S. Army publication in 1998.

Such weapons purport to take advantage of the effect that pulsed microwaves can have on brain activity. Some researchers have reported an effect known as microwave hearing, in which a directed beam of radiation produces a sensation of buzzing, clicking or hissing in the head. "This technology in its crudest form could be used to distract individuals," according to a declassified Army review of non-lethal weapons.

Theoretically, electromagnetic beams could cause an epileptic-type seizure, or involuntary eye motion leading to dizziness and nausea. Military researchers have also looked into using infrasound or laser beams to confuse or incapacitate a foe — but when you start going down this road, before you know it, you're talking about remote viewing, ESP and all the way-out concepts chronicled in "The Men Who Stare at Goats."

Full story here

Time for me to walk on down the road…

This really happened: an oblivious texter walked into a marauding bear today

Just when I was sure I’d heard every variation of stupid people walking and texting until something bad happens…this pops up!

Imagine leaving your house in the morning, checking something on your phone and then running smack into a black bear strolling down your driveway. This unlikely scenario was captured by Los Angeles CW affiliate KTLA: An unwitting, texting man, looking at his phone, suddenly spots the 500- to 600-pound bear, which, according to state wildlife officials, had been wandering around the La Crescenta neighborhood for the previous month. The bear in question also stands accused of stealing frozen meatballs out of a refrigerator and breaking into a garage. As the video makes clear, the texter escapes without injury (save panic). The bear, meanwhile, was "contained" in a nearby backyard after this incident. (Source)