Last in a lifetime event: Venus transit: A last-minute guide

Thousands of scientists and skywatchers around the world have made detailed plans to monitor today's transit of Venus across the sun, but chances are that word of the last-in-a-lifetime event is just now sinking in for millions of just plain folks.

Venus' disk begins to pass over the left edge of the sun's disk a little after 6 p.m. ET, and makes a stately crossing that lasts until about 12:50 a.m. ET. (Of course, the sun will have set on the East Coast by then.)

Some part of the transit will be visible from most locations on Earth — though you're out of luck if you're in eastern South America, western Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Antarctica or the middle of the Atlantic.

The precise time when different edges of the planet's disk cross the sun's edge is actually a big deal. Those times vary by location on Earth, and the variations can be used to calculate dimensions and distances in the solar system.

Today, so much is known about those dimensions that astronomers can predict the key times of the transit based on your location. To find out what you can see when, use the U.S. Naval Observatory's transit computer.

You should never gaze at the sun without proper eye protection. Sunglasses are not adequate. Neither are black plastic garbage bags, or film negatives. Unsafe viewing can damage your retinas.

(Read the whole story here.)

Homegrown Terrorists: American gangs wage war against each other and the public

          Good Day Humboldt County!

Gangs are nothing new in America’s history. They’ve been around since the Declaration of Independence. I remember growing up in Southern California in the 50s and 60s in the Mexican barrios (La Puente, El Monte, Baldwin Park and Azusa) where I was a minority.

I grew up fighting in those neighborhoods. I didn’t have a choice. The first time I was attacked by a gang (five kids) I was in the third grade. I was walking home from school when they came after me like animals. I picked up a couple of rocks and threw them before being overwhelmed in the front yard of a house. They beat me senseless. An old woman came out of the house – at some point – and put a wet cloth on my head. I was bleeding from the nose and from several cuts, including one over my left eye that is still visible today.

Somehow, I survived that and countless other encounters, and graduated from Azusa High School in 1968. My reason for mentioning my experience with gangs, is that I understand the gang culture. In time, I earned the respect of different gang members and was even accepted by them because I was ready to fight despite the odds.

I didn’t hang with them, but could pass them on the street – have a conversation – and go on without having to fight them. Back then I realized gang members were “born” into gangs. I fought with the sons of the fathers who ran tough street gangs or were lifetime gang members.

Today, gangs are so powerful that we can’t seem to stop them, or even contain them. They come in every nationality and race, but all have one thing in common; they’re waging bloody wars against each other and law abiding Americans. They’re homegrown terrorists. What can be done to stop them?      

“The recent surge in violence that left 10 dead in Chicago during the Memorial Day weekend underscores a continuing national struggle to control criminal gangs whose numbers continue to grow even as violent crime has declined throughout much of the nation.

Of the 200 murders in Chicago so far this year — up from 139 at the same time last year — local police said that about 80% were gang-related in a city whose gang membership is estimated at more than 100,000.

"We're trying to get our arms around it," said Robert Tracy, Chicago's chief of crime control strategies. "We're trying everything."

Tracy attributes much of the violence to a rapidly-changing gang structure in which young members of the city's established 59 gangs have splintered into more than 600 subgroups, all seeking to assert their authority

Chicago's gang presence largely tracks a troubling national trend in which criminal gangs have been expanding in number and reach throughout the country, according to the National Gang Center, an arm of the Justice Department.

"At a time when most cities are experiencing their lowest levels of violent crime in a quarter of century, gang activity remains a potent problem," concluded an April report released by the National Gang Center.

James "Buddy" Howell, a senior research associate at the gang center, said gangs have become so "entrenched" in some of the nation's largest cities that gang-related crime is largely immune from forces that have been driving down overall crime.” (Read the whole story here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Fantastic New Invention: Sleep anywhere in public and people won’t know!

 Designer Jamie O’Shea must have really wanted a nap when he created his vertical bed design. The vertical allows the user to sleeping standing up right in the middle of the street. Not satisfied without testing his own creation, O’Shea slept for 40 minutes in downtown New York. The bed design can be collapsed into a small suitcase and is attached to a subway vent when in use. The user gets a peaceful rest, as the bed comes with noise canceling headphones, opaque sunglasses and a free-standing umbrella for napping in the rain. Next time you walking down the street and feeling tired, simply set up the vertical bed and take a nap.
http://www.substitutematerials.com

I can see politicians of all stripes wanting one of these vertical beds. It has to beat bumping their heads on desks and podiums while trying to stay awake during long meetings.

STUPID LAWS: Today we’re featuring 12 laws in the great state of Alabama

          Good Day Humboldt County!

If you just happen to be traveling through Alabama in the near future here’s some laws you might want to be aware of:

  Bear wrestling matches are prohibited.

             Why does this law exist?
                 Full text of the law.

Incestuous marriages are legal. Full text of the law.

It is illegal to impersonate a person of the clergy. Full text of the law.

It is illegal to maim oneself to escape duty. Full text of the law.

It is considered an offense to open an umbrella on a street, for fear of spooking horses. Full text of the law.

It is illegal to wear a fake moustache that causes laughter in church. Full text of the law.

It is illegal for a driver to be blindfolded while operating a vehicle. Full text of the law.

It is illegal to sell peanuts in Lee County after sundown on Wednesday. Full text of the law.

It is illegal to howl at ladies within the city limits. Full text of the law.

It is unlawful to wear women’s pumps with sharp, high heels. Why does this law exist?

No person within the city may possess confetti. Full text of the law.

Bathing in city fountains is prohibited. Full text of the law.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

AS IT STANDS: Controversial conversations about politics

 

             By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
First Partisan pol: “My Super PAC is raising more money than your Super PAC.”
Second Partisan pol: “Oh yeah. My National Party has raised more than yours this year.”
Observation: Lots of money targeted for mud slinging by both sides.
First Tea Party member: “I hear Obama has come out and admitted he’s gay.”
Second Tea Party member: “Fact is, I hear Obama can’t produce a real marriage license proving he and Michelle are legally married.”
Observation: Some conservatives are over the edge.
First Hispanic: “What do you think about voting for Romney? I hear he has some family in Mexico.”
Second Hispanic: “No way would I vote for that ‘etch-a-sketch’ hombre. It’s true though, he has family in Mexico. I hear they’re in hiding.”

Observation. Romney will not do well with Hispanic voters.
First CEO: “Now that we have legally achieved transforming corporations into people, we’re ready for the next step.”
Second CEO: “Taking over the White House?”
First CEO: “No…becoming gods.”
Observation: The way Americans worship money why can’t divinity be bought?

First 99% : “I’m getting clobbered because I don’t qualify for any tax breaks this year. I may have to live in my car after paying my taxes.”
Second 99% : “I hear you. I paid a higher tax percentage than Mitt Romney did.”
First 99%: “What do you expect from a guy who has overseas accounts to dodge taxes here in the U.S?”
Observation: Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s bad form for a future U.S. president to have financial accounts overseas. A bit hypocritical, don’t you think?

First 1%: “The rabble simply doesn’t understand business. What is it about the “trickle down theory” that they don’t get?”
Second 1%: “The part where they’re downing.”
First 1%: “We’ll have to work on that. Give Mitt a call for me will you?”
Observation: It’s going to be a tough sell for Romney to act like he cares about the 99% ers when he’s a 1% er with a vision of more tax breaks for the wealthy.

First Gambler: “I bet Obama and Romney will pour equal amounts of cash into buying the presidency.”
Second Gambler: “That’s pretty much a given. How about betting they’ll set a new record for money raised (wasted?) in a presidential election campaign?”
Observation: This will be an historic presidential election for some pretty sad reasons.
Religious Right Voter #1: “That’s it for Barack Hussein Obama! Siding with the homosexuals and granting them equal rights is going to get him struck down by lightning from God almighty! Pass it on!”
Religious Right Voter #2: “There’s just one little problem with that thought brother…Romney is a Mormon. You know, a cult member.”
Religious Right Voter #1: “You had to bring that up, didn’t you?”
Observation: I don’t believe religion will play a major part in the upcoming debates for several reasons. The majority of Americans are much more concerned about the economy and spending for wars than they are about conflicting religious beliefs.

First Homeless Man: “If I could vote, I’d vote for Romney.”
Second Homeless Man: “You got to be kidding! He’s a Republican. They hate us!
First Homeless Man: “Yeah, but the Republicans don’t pretend to care about us, unlike the Democrats. At least I’d know for sure what I’d get for my vote.”
Observation: The number of homeless people in America is a national shame. The statistics show the ranks of the homeless are swelling even as social help programs are cut from state, city, and county budgets.

President Obama: “When you’re President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.” (Source - http://economy.money.cnn.com/2012/05/22/election-2012-bain-is-here-to-stay/ )

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney: “This president is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He’s asking us to accept that Washington knows best - and can provide all.” (Source - http://www.mittromney.com/news/press/2012/04/mitt-romney-delivers-remarks-manchester-nh)
Observation: This is the kind of smack talk we can expect from Obama and Romney in the coming months. It’s not enough. Americans want to hear solid proposals on how to solve the many challenges this country faces.
As It Stands, did you hear the one about the partisan politician who always told the truth? Neither did I.

Website that picked this column up:

1) News Now – USA Politics (Pg 12)

 

Why did the CDC feel the need to tell the public zombies don’t really exist?

Why did the Center for Disease Control and Prevention decide to issue a release assuring the public zombies don’t exist? They could have also added, the Boogey Man, Vampires, and Werewolves, but chose not to. 

I can only speculate, but lately cannibalism stories seem to prove to some people that there are zombies. The #2 trending spot on Google is “zombie apocalypse.” Zombies have already invaded popular horror movies. Now they’re lurching around in our society seeking a spot alongside Vampires and other trending monsters. 

“A spate of bizarre acts of cannibalism in the last week have many people wondering whether to be afraid for their own flesh. The populous' collective curiosity has even driven "zombie apocalypse" up to the No. 2 spot on Google's list of trending search terms. But don't worry: according to government scientists, the zombies are not coming for you.

The flesh-eating living dead don't actually exist, said a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)," agency spokesman David Daigle told The Huffington Post.”

(Read the whole story here.)

Scientific and Technological Visionaries Who Experimented With Drugs

                           Good Day Humboldt County!

I like to explore. Living through the 60s, I joined millions of others in experimenting with everything from marijuana to LSD. Expanding my horizons has always interested me. And I’m not alone.

Taking drugs has always been a controversial subject. Drugs have been used since the dawn of time for many purposes. From medicinal to recreational, drugs have played a part in nearly all societies.

Today I thought it would be fun to look at the influence drugs have had on history’s most influential scientific and technological visionaries:

“Is intelligence related to an increased likelihood of recreational drug use? It's an interesting hypothesis, and one that's been gaining momentum in recent years.

If a definitive link between intellectual capacity and drug use does exist, it will likely be sometime before anyone establishes one. Having said that, this much is for certain: history has more than its fair share of experimenting experimentalists. Let's meet 10 of history's most influential scientific and technological visionaries, along with their drugs of choice.”

                             Sigmund Freud — Cocaine

To Freud, cocaine was more than a personal indulgence; he regarded it as a veritable wonder drug, and for many years was a huge proponent of its use in a wide array of applications. In a letter written to his fianceé, Martha, Freud wrote: "If all goes well, I will write an essay [on cocaine] and I expect it will win its place in therapeutics by the side of morphine and superior to it... I take very small doses of it regularly against depression and against indigestion and with the most brilliant of success."

Freud published such a review, titled "Uber Coca" in 1884. Interestingly, Freud's paper was one of the first to propose drug substitution as a therapeutic treatment for addiction. While replacing morphine with cocaine is something we now know to be counterproductive to recovery, the concept of substitution therapies persists to this day. (For a great overview of Freud's relationship with cocaine, check out this post by Scicurious.)

                         Francis Crick — LSD

Francis Crick — of the DNA-structure discovering Watson, Crick, and Franklin — reportedly told numerous friends and colleagues about his LSD experimentation during the time he spent working to determine the molecular structure that houses all life's information.

In fact, in a 2004 interview, Gerrod Harker recalls talking with Dick Kemp — a close friend of Crick's — about LSD use among Cambridge academics, and tells the Daily Mail that the University's researchers often used LSD in small amounts as "a thinking tool." Evidently, Crick at one point told Kemp that he had actually "perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD." [Image via NYT]

                                                               Go here for more examples

Time for me to walk on down the road… 

This is a beautiful scene - But there is something more to it…

If you look look enough you’ll see a woman and child praying. Do you see them now?                              (Source)

Jesse’s Story: How a Nervous Chicken-Plucker Made the Big Time

Let me tell you, Jesse hated this job. And you would too, I imagine, if you had to do it. Jesse was a chicken plucker. That's right. He stood on a line in a chicken factory and spent his days pulling the feathers off dead chickens so the rest of us wouldn't have to. It wasn't much of a job. But at the time, Jesse didn't think he was much of a person.

His father was a brute of a man. His dad was actually thought to be mentally ill and treated Jesse rough all of his life. Jesse's older brother wasn't much better. He was always picking on Jesse and beating him up.Yes, Jesse grew up in a very rough home in West Virginia. Life was anything but easy. And he thought life didn't hold much hope for him.

That's why he was standing in this chicken line, doing a job that darn few people wanted. In addition to all the rough treatment at home, it seems that Jesse was always sick. Sometimes it was real physical illness, but way too often it was all in his head.

He was a small child, skinny and meek. That sure didn't help the situation any. When he started to school, he was the object of every bully on the playground. He was a hypochondriac of the first order.
For Jesse, tomorrow was not always something to be looked forward to. But, he had dreams. He wanted to be a ventriloquist. He found books on ventriloquism. He practiced with Sock puppets and saved his hard earned dollars until He could get a real ventriloquist dummy.
When he got old enough, he joined the military.

And even though many of his hypochondriac symptoms persisted, the military did recognize his talents and put him in the entertainment corp. That was when his world changed. He gained confidence. He found that he had a talent for making people laugh.

They laughed so hard they often had tears in their eyes. Yes, little Jesse had found himself. You know, folks, the history books are full of people who overcame a handicap to go on and make a success of themselves, but Jesse is one of the few I know of who didn't overcome it. Instead he used his paranoia to make a million dollars, and become one of the best-loved characters of all time in doing it!

Yes, that little paranoid hypochondriac, who transferred his nervousness into a successful career, still holds the record for the most Emmy's given in a single category.The wonderful, gifted, talented, and nervous comedian who brought us Barney Fife was Jesse Don Knotts!

The Mystery of the Burning Rocks: If They’re Coated With Phosphorus How Did It Get There?

                Good Day Humboldt County!

  Life is full of mysteries, and I have one for you today. It’s about some rocks that burst into flames while in the shorts pocket of a Southern California woman, who wore them back from a day at the beach. Lyn Hiner, suffered third-degree burns from the bizarre incident which happened in the kitchen of her San Clemente home. 

  What gives? Chemistry experts have said they do not believe the phosphate was naturally occurring and have speculated that the rocks could have been coated with phosphorus, which can spontaneously ignite when exposed to oxygen.

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Related story:
Burning rocks victim tells of strange horror

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The big question now is, where would those rocks have picked up that nasty phosphorus? The woman and her children were walking on Trestles Beach at San Onofre State Beach. The land is owned by the Marine Corps, but operated by State Park Rangers.

I suspect there’s a heavily polluted area where phosphorus is leaking somewhere off shore. Maybe miles out. The few rocks that were discovered may be a small part of what’s yet to come.  

Results of tests taken by the state lab, released Thursday, confirmed initial testing by the Orange County Public Health Department that found elevated levels of phosphate on the rocks, but provided no explanation of its presence.

The fact of the matter is, no one is really talking much about those rocks. Interesting isn’t it?

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Hope for Humans? Paralyzed rats walk again in Swiss lab study

Lately I’ve been reading about “exo-skeletons” that researchers are using to give paralyzed people the power to move their hands, arms and legs.

There’s more research that may restore paralyzed peoples motion one day coming out of Switzerland.

The following story highlights another way to help paralyzed people. It appears to be a step in the right direction:

“Scientists in Switzerland have restored full movement to rats paralyzed by spinal cord injuries in a study that spurs hope that the techniques may hold promise for someday treating people with similar injuries.

Gregoire Courtine and his team at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne saw rats with severe paralysis walking and running again after a couple of weeks following a combination of electrical and chemical stimulation of the spinal cord together with robotic support.

"Our rats are not only voluntarily initiating a walking gait, but they are soon sprinting, climbing up stairs and avoiding obstacles," said Courtine, whose results from the five-year study will be published in the journal Science on Friday.

Courtine is quick to point out that it remains unclear if a similar technique could help people with spinal cord damage but he adds the technique does hint at new ways of treating paralysis. Other scientists agree.”