Naked ladies. How do they do it?

These have been blooming all over Santa Cruz county over the last few weeks.  All at once.  How do they know?  How do they know when to bloom?  Some clock?  Some hormone?

Fwd: solutions

From my friend Vicky. 

Sent from my iPod

this is a cool letter from my friend Myles.

 

Our ancestors made it through the age of the dinosaur - I think we can make it thorough this.

We are not out of bullets - what we are lacking is a historical perspective.  When the world reacted with fear and pulling back in 1929 it exacerbated the problems and exacerbated, if not led to, a massive world wide depression.  Many of the wise heads have been saying, and I have been agreeing, that the turn around will happen if the government steps in and starts stimulating the economy with public works/repairs.  It is not sexy and it increases our debt but our debt can not be paid off if we are not paying taxes and unemployed people do not pay taxes.

Look at California where a minor increase in jobs has caused our debt to go way down.  What we have needed - all along and long before this crisis - is jobs.  That is a major reason why the Arab world is rebelling - jobs - they want jobs.  There is plenty to do.  Even I could come up with enough ideas ideas to keep millions employed.  If we put our heads together we could turn this mess into a bright future.

But we continue to recoil in fear and as we cower the walls fall around us - when we should be bracing the walls we are just staring in shock as they fall.  The so called conservatives among us need to be sidelined before they can get us all the way back to the middle ages where a tiny percent owned everything and nearly everyone else lived short hard lives in perpetual poverty.

I am looking at the bright side also - there seems to be a faint noise in the land of people realizing that we do not need this monster military.  In my opinion we could turn a large portion of that enterprise towards fixing our infrastructure - at least then we the people would have something when the dust cleared - instead of mountains of spent shell casings we could have fixed bridges and built new schools.  And the builders would actually learn something useful - as opposed to the latest method of killing each other they could learn how to work with concrete (I know... I know...)

As the some of the wise founders saw it, and I agree, we can fight when we need to fight.  We don't need to be constantly fully prepared for every war like contingency.  When the Canadians attack just give me 6 weeks of training and I will be able to pull whatever trigger they tell me to pull.  After all - our species has excelled at fighting for countless millennia.

Myles

August 2011 Young Eagles

It ended up being too foggy to fly kids on Saturday but I got the neighbor kids up in the air on Sunday.  The forecast was the same for both days, but all of the sudden Sunday after opened up big time.  A beautiful day to fly.  The two boys below got to fly.  I am sure these girls will come back, they and their mother are local to the airport and really wanted to fly.

 

Pissed off again.

The FAA is down to air traffic control only.  Congress, on a much smaller scale is stuck because of the same thing, desire to regain power in the Senate and Presidency.  Tens of thousands of jobs are put out because the Rethuglicans won't compromise at all.  The key sticking point is a Republican rider that makes it harder for air and rail workers to unionize.  They are shutting down thousands of jobs because they want to make it harder for workers to unionize.  How un-surprizing.  Obama has screwed up over the last few weeks working on the deficit.  It isn't a deficit problem... it is a recession and economy problem.  He has let the Republicans define the debate to be about the deficit when what he was handed was a recession and the need to recover.  The Republicans failed since Reagan to do anything about the debt when times were good and now are screaming about it now that we have to invest and pull ourselves to get out of this recession.  They know this.  They don't want the American people to realize we were driven here by their actions and inaction.  They want to regain the Senate and White House in 2012 at all costs.  Jobs and the American economy is a small cost to them.

More Chevron

View Your Message

___________________________________ Subject: Chevron and Texaco Credit Card Billing Inquiries Sent: July 31, 2011 03:12 PM EDT You Wrote: Hey, thanks for the nice note in my bill saying my minimum payment has increased because of my past late payments. I didn't bother going through the calculations to see if my current minimum payment was right. Strangely it fails to mention late fees that were refunded due to your inability to get GE money to correct their billing emails which caused the problems to begin with. I've always paid my bill in full whenever I could discern I had a bill.  I wish I could avoid in the future any more use of Chevron products and this credit card. But you are the only aviation fuel supplier at my airport so we are stuck with each other.

Pretty funny.

Jenai stops me on my way into the building and apologizes for falling asleep in a big design review meeting last week. 

1.       I didn’t notice

2.       I fall asleep in meetings all the time

3.      ;  I’ve had about 4 hours of sleep, the likelihood is high I will again today

 

 

 

This is why I will happily vote for Al Franken : Pharyngula

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/07/this_is_why_i_will_happily_vot.php
Al Franken makes me laugh in so many ways.

Directly.
http://youtu.be/318DYr_K8J4

Teach the controversy!

It cracks me up every time I hear "students should make their own decisions" about evolution vs ID vs creationism taught in schools. Especially when in the same breadth only abstinence sex education is acceptable in many places. No condoms or birth control. No choice on abortion. No questioning the bible...

NTSB: Four dead in Watsonville plane crash including two children - Santa Cruz Sentinel

NTSB: Four dead in Watsonville plane crash including two children - Santa Cruz Sentinel

WATSONVILLE — Four members of a Santa Cruz family headed to a weekend getaway with relatives near Yosemite National Park were killed when their four-seater plane plummeted into the grounds of Watsonville Community Hospital, authorities said Friday.
David Houghton, 44, wife Dede, 44, and sons Luke, 12, and Ryan, 10, all perished in Thursday's crash, which witnesses say occurred after the plane turned sharply offline after taking off from Watsonville Municipal Airport.

It is hard when people who contributed good to the community are lost suddenly, especially when there was so much more lost with with them and their sons. All it takes is a mistake or two and the laws of nature will deal swift consequences if any are broken. We know and try to understand those laws, we don't always succeed in satisfying them all in our endeavors. Endeavors are what makes life worth living.

The Ledge - A movie to see.

Madman or Something Worse?

Does Jesus deserve our love or respect?  I don't think so.

Yum!

So after dinner Liz says she has some special desert and she'll bring it to me.  I pause the Dexter.  After some noises and bottle openings she brings me a coffee mug of ice cream and IBC root beer.  Mmmm... root beer float!  :-)  She goes back into the kitchen to make her's.  More mug rattling and bottle opening and...  "Hey!  Does yours taste all right?"  "Yeah, mine tastes fine!" I say.  "This tastes like soap!"  She pours it out and gets a clean mug, scoops more ice cream and more root beer into the mug and comes in to sit next to me so we can continue to watch Dexter.  "This still tastes like soap!  What is wrong with this?"  That is when Liz notices that she had opened a bottle of Fat Tire.  We laughed and laughed.  :-)

LM News... more layoffs.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems to Eliminate Approximately 1,200 Positions Lockheed Martin

"Space Systems, which currently employs approximately 16,000 employees in 12 states, will implement a broad-based workforce reduction of roughly 1,200 employees by year-end. It is anticipated that middle management will be reduced by 25 percent, with significantly smaller percentage impacts in other levels and disciplines."

Oh hell. Here we go again. I wonder if I should start looking for a new job just to head off the pain and agony of WARN notices and wondering if I'll get replaced. Probably.

Recollections of a Vagabonde: Riding on the TGV Train No. 9321 to Brussels, Belgium

Recollections of a Vagabonde: Riding on the TGV Train No. 9321 to Brussels, Belgium:
"fly44d said...

Despite being a pilot, I've always enjoyed riding trains! :-) Thanks for opening the memories."

I do like riding trains. Too bad there are so few good ones in this country. I'd like to see the California high speed line get built, but I bet it gets scrapped. Too little too late probably, I don't see our politicians having the will to get it done.
Trains... From East Pakistan (Bangladesh) to northern Norway to California. I am going to spew out some memories:

• California Zephyr - riding in the observation dome.
• Dacca to tea country and back - crowded with people hanging on everywhere. Very slow and rickety.
• Oslo to Bodo Norway - seeing the sun not set one summer day, Bodo was as far north as we could get on the train.
• Bonn to West Berlin - East German guards checking ID at the borders in the middle of the night
• Frankfurt to Mainz - Traveling by myself for the first time in a country where I didn't speak the language
• Malmo - Spent the night locked in the train station with some old women for safety

Answers in Genes: Show me the Sausages!

This cracked me up. Very nice.

Show me the Sausages!

"A philosopher designs a marvellous sausage machine. A scientist comes
to marvel at this wonderful creation, and raises an eyebrow.
The philosopher says, 'Ah, behold the wonderful cogs and sprockets and
temperature-controlled mixing chambers in my wonderful machine -
surely you can see how it must produce the most fantastic sausages!'
The scientist says 'Yes, that is all very interesting. Show me the sausages.'
The philosopher says 'How dare you, a mere scientist, question my
wonderful philosophical reasoning?'
Scientist: 'I'm not questioning your reasoning - I want to know if
your machine really produces sausages.'
Philosopher: 'Can you point to any flaw in my argument that it
produces sausages?'
Sci: 'I don't know - I just want to know if it produces sausages. Here
is some meat. Why don't you feed it through and see if you get any
sausages?'
Phil: 'And sully my wonderful machine with mere offal?'
Sci: 'You said it was a sausage machine. I want to see the sausages.'
Phil: 'Are you questioning my ingredients?'
Sci: 'I'm just questioning whether it produces sausages or not. Show
me the sausages.'
Phil: 'Ah, so you cannot attack my premises and you cannot attack my
argument. Therefore I'm right and you lose.'
Sci: 'Don't be such a melodramatic prancing arse. Show me the sausages.'
Phil: 'The sausages inevitably flow from the argument. You see my fine
machine. You can even inspect the meat & onions. The sausages
necessarily flow.'
Sci: 'Show me the sausages or I'm off to Tesco.'
Phil: 'You are a mere scientist with no understanding of philosophical matters.'
Sci: 'Bye.'

- Sent using Google Toolbar"