Wet Wednesday – fire crews watch man die and other stuff

Good Morning Humboldt County!

I’m sipping some hot java and enjoying the morning. Pull up a chair, or whatever, and join me. As usual, the news has it’s share of tragedy and triumphs. Let’s see:  

'Handcuffed by policy': Fire crews watch man die

Fire crews and police could only watch after a man waded into San Francisco Bay, stood up to his neck and waited. They wanted to do something, but a policy strictly forbade them from trying to save the 50-year-old, officials said.

Oil spill survivors: Nesting turtles make comeback

Donna Shaver, has been working for more than two decades to save the endangered reptiles. Each spring, she counts their nests and collects the eggs for safe incubation before releasing the turtles' tiny offspring into the sea. Shaver knows this year that each nest she spots has added significance: the turtle that created it survived the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

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I wrote about this same subject two years ago. It’s back in the news again.

Cellphones 'possibly carcinogenic,' report suggests

An international panel of experts says cellphones are possibly carcinogenic to humans after reviewing details from dozens of published studies.

The statement was issued in Lyon, France, on Tuesday by the International Agency for Research on Cancer after a weeklong meeting of experts. They reviewed possible links between cancer and the type of electromagnetic radiation found in cellphones, microwaves and radar. I wrote this column two years ago.

122 million miles later, Endeavour makes last touchdown

The space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday, closing out the next-to-last mission in NASA's 30-year program with a safe middle-of-the-night landing.

Endeavour touched down on the runway a final time under the cover of darkness, just as Atlantis, the last shuttle bound for space, arrived at the launch pad for the grand finale in five weeks.

That’s all for now. Time for me to walk on down the road…

Guess whose coming to dinner? Palin to dine with Trump tonight

Just in case you thought that Sarah Palin's press-goosechase bus tour of the I-95 corridor couldn't get any more surreal...

Just think about all the good campaign advise “the Donald” can give to Mama Grizzly as they devour a buck she killed the day before!

Trump can also give her some of his insights into attracting the media’s attention. His formula is very similar to most circus barkers – speak real loud and get the crowd’s attention by whatever means necessary. If it means embracing extremist conspiracies like the “Birther” bullshit then Trump is up to the task. It’s no secret Palin admires him and applauded his efforts to discredit Obama’s place of birth before he dropped out of the race.     

Of course, we all know this bus tour is nothing more than getting the mainstream press’ attention – one way or the other. She’s motoring around with her entourage in a colorfully painted luxury bus testing the waters to see if she should run for president. Which brings us back to the dinner in NYC. When it comes to making money Palin shines. Maybe the real reason for this dinner is she’s hoping to be on his stupid show. That way she could make some money AND announce her plans for running for president!

Meanwhile, I’m sure she’ll convince Trump she can see Russia from his back porch too. 

10:23 a.m.Tuesday - deer happily munches away outside our house

This is one of our three regulars that visit us nearly every morning. My wife, Shirley, decided to take some photos with her new camera this morning. God, I love this place!

Tuesday thoughts about sugar and other stuff…

Good Morning Humboldt County!

Good to see you here this morning. Pull up a chair, grab a cup of your favorite hot beverage, and let’s see what’s happening today:

Sugar may be sapping your memory

Do you ever forget people's names? Enter a room and forget why you went there? Forget a word mid-sentence? As we get older, these types of "senior moments" happen more often. Many of the people I evaluate worry that these slips mean they are getting Alzheimer's disease. In most cases, they aren't. They're just part of normal, age-related memory decline. Starting at about age 30, our ability to process and remember information declines with age.

New app allows your unborn child to choose his/her name

Nathan Parks created the 99 cent "Kick to Pick" iPhone app for parents undergoing that conundrum of being responsible for that ultimate act of choosing a name for their child, placing the choice in the hands — and kicking feet — of the unborn child.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food prices set to double
by 2030, aid group says

Food prices could double in the next 20 years and demand in 2050 will be 70 percent higher than now, U.K. charity Oxfam said on Tuesday, warning of worsening hunger as the global food economy stumbles close to breakdown.

"The food system is pretty well bust in the world," Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking told reporters, announcing the launch of the Grow campaign as 925 million people go hungry every day.

General admits protesters in Egypt subjected to 'virginity tests'

Things have gone from bad to worse since President Mubarak was ousted. I can tell you one thing, I wouldn’t want to be a woman in that part of the world! They’re treated like cattle with less rights.

A senior Egyptian general told CNN Tuesday that officials performed "virginity checks" on women arrested during the uprising that led to former President Hosni Mubarak's ouster, the first time the authorities have admitted they performed such tests during the revolution.
The tests were first reported by the human rights group Amnesty International, weeks after a March 9 protest in Cairo's Tahrir Square in which female demonstrators were allegedly beaten, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to procedures that supposedly determined whether they were virgins.

'Weinergate': The 'strange' scandal of a congressman and a lewd Twitter photo

Finally this morning, I’ve saved the best for last. This weekend, Rep. Anthony Weiner's Twitter account sent out a photo of a man in underwear from the waist down. Weiner says his account was hacked. What's going on here?

A "lewd" photograph of a man in underwear, shot from the waist down, was sent from the Twitter account of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) on Friday night, then quickly deleted — but not before Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website posted the photo. Weiner says his Twitter account was hacked, and has hired a lawyer to explore criminal or civil action against the perpetrators of the "prank." Conservative bloggers claim Weiner sent the photo to a Washington State college student, dubbing the "strange" saga "Weinergate."

PHOTO - Rep. Anthony Weiner leaves his apartment amid controversy surrounding a lewd Twitter photo

That’s it for this morning. Time for me to walk on down the road…

Life is like a rainbow… You need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear

photo VIA Stumble

Watch out for those mosquitoes during your Memorial Day barbeque

Some folks seem to be magnets for mosquitoes, while others rarely get bitten. What makes the little buggers single you out and not the guy or gal you're standing next to at the Memorial Day backyard barbecue?

The two most important reasons a mosquito is attracted to you have to do with sight and smell, says Jonathan Day, a professor of medical entomology at the University of Florida in Vero Beach. Lab studies suggest that 20 percent of people are high attractor types, he says.

Mosquitoes are highly visual, especially later in the afternoon, and their first mode of search for humans is through vision, explains Day. People dressed in dark colors -- black, navy blue, red -- stand out and movement is another cue.

Once the mosquito keys in on a promising visual target, she (and it's always "she" -- only the ladies bite) then picks up on smell. The main attractor is your rate of carbon dioxide production with every exhale you take.

Those with higher metabolic rates produce more carbon dioxide, as do larger people and pregnant women. Although carbon dioxide is the primary attractant, other secondary smells coming from your skin or breath mark you as a good landing spot.

Lactic acid (given off while exercising), acetone (a chemical released in your breath), and estradiol (a breakdown product of estrogen) can all be released at varying concentrations and lure in mosquitoes, says Day. Your body temperature, or warmth, can also make a difference. Mosquitoes may flock to pregnant women because of their extra body heat.

But with more than 350 compounds isolated from odors produced by human skin, researchers have barely scratched the surface behind a mosquito's preference for certain people, says Joseph Conlon, a medical entomologist and the technical advisor to the American Mosquito Control Association.

Although it may all boil down to human odor and genetics -- studies of twins have revealed they tend to be attractive or repellant to mosquitoes in the same measure -- it's more complicated than that, suggests Conlon.

He says the latest thinking is that it might not be about what makes people more attractive to mosquitoes, but what makes them not as repellant. It could be that individuals who get less bites produce chemicals on their skin that make them more repellant and cover up smells that mosquitoes find attractive.

Mosquitoes don't bite you for food, since they feed off plant nectar, Conlon explains. Females suck your blood to get a protein needed to develop their eggs, which can then send more pesky insects into the world to annoy you.

But keep this in mind when you're outdoors this summer: Mosquitoes are more attracted to people after they drink a 12-ounce beer. It could be that people breathe a little harder after a cold one or their skin is a little warmer, suggests Conlon. But that won't stop him from having a brewski, even though he considers himself a mosquito magnet.

Here are more fun facts about mosquitoes and bites:

• Eating bananas will not attract mosquitoes and taking vitamin B-12 will not repel them; these are old wives' tales.
• Some mosquito species are leg and ankle biters; they cue into the stinky smell of bacteria on your feet.
• Other species prefer the head, neck and arms perhaps because of the warmth, smells emitted by your skin, and closeness to carbon dioxide released by your mouth. 
• The size of a mosquito bite welt has nothing to do with the amount of blood taken and everything to do with how your immune system responds to the saliva introduced by the mosquito into your skin.
• The more times you get bitten by a particular species of mosquito, the less most people react to that species over time. The bad news? There's more than 3,000 species worldwide.
• article source

What happened to the real meaning of Memorial Day?

By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard

Posted: 05/29/2011 02:30:30 AM PDT

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Today, I'd like to talk about how it has been transformed into something else, and what it means to most Americans.

Barbecues and beer. Getting into vehicles and traveling for fun. A three-day weekend. A time to go to the beach and burn ourselves to a crisp. A day off from school. A break in the work week. All of these activities and more go through the average American's head regarding a holiday originally designed to mourn our military dead.

What a bizarre twist for Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day. Once it was a day of remembrance for those who died in our nation's service. Now it's a time to hope that gas prices don't get too high for travel.

While Waterloo, New York, was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove the origins of the day. Historians think the day had many separate beginnings as towns held spontaneous gatherings to honor the Civil War dead in the 1860s.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868, by Gen. John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on May 30, 1868. Flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

It's not important what was the very first town to honor the war dead. It is important that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.

Were you aware of this history? Are your children aware of this history? Did you know the first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873? By 1890 it was recognized by all the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I when the holiday changed from honoring those who died in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in all of our wars.

Traditional observance of Memorial Day has faded over the years. Many Americans have forgotten its meaning and traditions. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember to fly the flag at half-staff for the day.

While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, not just those fallen in service to our country.

What happened? How did this day turn into a free-for-all, three-day vacation? Many feel when Congress made the day into a three-day weekend with the National Holiday Act of 1971, it made it easier for people to be distracted from the spirit and meaning of the day.

As the VFW stated in its 2002 Memorial Day address: “Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.”

To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was passed in December 2000, which asks that at 3 p.m. local time all Americans: “Voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to taps.”

What we need is a full return to the original day of observance. On Jan. 19, 1999, Sen. Inouye introduced bill S 189 which proposed to restore the traditional day of observance of Memorial Day to May 30th instead of “the last Monday in May.” To date, there have been no further developments on the bill. Go to www.usmemorialday.org/ if you think that we should restore the traditional day of observance.

Meanwhile, if someone wants to start a new three-day holiday at the end of May, I say go for it. Call it “Barbecue Day and Travel Too,” a day of escape from drudgery.

As It Stands, the true meaning of Memorial Day is rapidly becoming a trivia question!

Sea otters holding hands to keep from drifting apart while sleeping

(via Wikipedia, Reddit)

Alice in Medicareland: One Voucher Makes You Larger

Guest Opinion

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

"If I had a world of my own," said Alice, "everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't."

The rabbit hole's got nothing on this place."Let's save Social Security from a 25% cut in 27 years," they told Alice, "by cutting more than that, starting now." Paul Ryan's GOP plan doesn't "end Medicare," they explained. It just, well, ends it. And vouchers aren't really vouchers. Even "fact-checking" site Politifact joined in, chastising Democrats for saying Ryan's proposal would "change the essential nature of Medicare." That was right before they noted that it would "end the aspect of Medicare that directly covers specific services, such as hospital coverage." Read the rest here.

photo source

Saturday Morning Thoughts: melon-sized hail and other stuff

Good Morning Humboldt County!

Got my coffee and I’m ready to go. Take a load off and join me. The national weather continues to be the top story in the news: 

Violent weather swept across the Eastern seaboard, dropping heavy rains that flooded towns from New England to Georgia, knocking out power and killing at least three people in the Atlanta area.

Caroline Floyd, lead meteorologist at The Weather Channel, wrote on its website that Saturday would be "another day of thunderstorms in the Northeast."

Melon-sized hail that fell during a severe thunderstorm in Norman, OK. … Read more »

(Photo: api.newson6.com)

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Palin not invited to this rally by current organizers, but she still plans on attending.

Rolling Thunder: Sarah Palin not invited

One day after Sarah Palin announced her bus tour, a group sponsoring a Memorial Day weekend event she plans to attend said they never invited her.

"She wasn't invited. We heard yesterday she came out with a press release she was coming to Rolling Thunder," Ted Shpak, national legislative director of Rolling Thunder, told "Andrea Mitchell Reports." Shpak is one of three members of Rolling Thunder's current leadership who says he had no idea Palin was coming until it was posted on her website.

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Cops: Slain 'Grandma Bandit' was a man

 

The elderly-looking gun-toting robber nicknamed “Grandma Bandit,” blamed for a string of heists of several Atlanta-area drugstores, was actually a man, police say.

The revelation was made by police Friday evening, hours after the suspect was fatally shot after a police chase, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported.

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Time for me to head on down the road…

After 92 years, millionaire miser’s heirs finally split $100M

In bizarre bequest, it was locked away until 21 years after the last grandchild died

In 1919, he was a greedy multimillionaire who didn’t want to see his family get its hands on the vast fortune he’d amassed as a lumber baron.

 Story Here