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A Happy new year to you and Yours!

A new year brings new Beginnings

“You are growing when you get to the point where you can do your best, seen or unseen.”

“If you have failed thus far to plan out how you are going to spend your time, you are making a mistake and you will find that kind of a mistake largely contributing to your failure in life. Do not go out into the world to hit or miss on some chance, but plan now.”

“No man shall drag me down by making me hate him.”

-- Booker T. Washington

Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

We are the protagonists and authors of our own drama.

It is up to us; there is no one left to blame.

Neither the "system," not our leaders, nor our parents.

We can't go out and hang the first amoeba."

- Rebecca McClen Novick

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

- Ecclesiates 9:10.

Wind Power in the Backyard

A compact and affordable backyard wind turbine is now available that could cut utility bills in addition to generating clean energy.

Homeowners will soon be able to generate clean power in their backyards while reducing electricity bills, thanks to a small, quiet, and affordable wind turbine developed by Arizona-based Southwest Windpower. The company designed the turbine in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has 120 orders already, and expects to sell 1500 units next year.

The turbine can be designed with a tower as short as 35 feet. It delivers 1.8 kilowatts of power and gives best results when installed on a property of greater than 0.5 acre with wind speeds above 10 miles per hour, the manufacturer says. The costs of the turbine plus installation fees add up to $9,000–12,000, about half the price of other similar-sized wind generators.
Trial runs show that it trims $500–800 off of an average home’s yearly electricity bills, depending on the wind speed in the area and the local price of electricity.

Company officials say the system will pay for itself in 5–12 years. States such as California and New Jersey are helping to promote backyard wind power with consumer rebates that cover half the installation cost, says Miriam Robbins, the company’s marketing manager. Plus, where possible, customers could sell any extra power they don’t use to utilities.

The key to encouraging homeowners to invest in wind energy is “getting the cost down even more through more mass-produced pieces,” Robbins says. The company is pushing for more state-sponsored rebates. But interested buyers might face additional challenges—local zoning rules that prohibit wind turbines in a backyard and municipalities that restrict the tower’s height, not to mention neighbors and bird enthusiasts who object to the sight of a turbine in their neighborhood.

Guess who...

First James Brown now Gerald Ford. Anyone Wanna Start a Dead Pool Bet for # 3

Gerald Ford was not elected President but was elected Vice President so he is included in this photo because he did win an election.

Brown’s Hynie Gets Booted

ATLANTA — James Brown's lawyer said Tuesday that the late singer and his partner were not legally married and that she was locked out of his South Carolina home for estate legal reasons.
Brown's partner, backup dancer Tomi Rae Hynie, was already married to a Texas man in 2001 when she married Brown, thus making her marriage to Brown null, Dallas said. He said Hynie later annulled the previous marriage, but she and Brown never remarried.
"I suppose it would mean she was, from time to time, a guest in Mr. Brown's home," Dallas said.
On Monday, after the 73-year-old "Godfather of Soul" died at an Atlanta hospital, Hynie, 36, found the gates to Brown's Beech Island, S.C., home padlocked and said she was denied access.
"This is my home," Hynie told a reporter outside the house. "I don't have any money. I don't have anywhere to go."The couple had had a sometimes tumultuous relationship. Brown pleaded guilty in 2004 to a domestic violence charge stemming from an argument with Hynie and was let off with a $1,087 fine. He was accused of pushing Hynie to the floor at the home and threatening to kill her.

Was it necessary to use the atomic bomb?

Using the atomic bomb on Japan at the end of World War II shortened the war and saved thousands of American lives. Or, so the argument goes.

But were the bombings and the destruction and mutilation of hundreds and thousands of men, women and children even necessary?

· According to J. Samuel Walker, chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
“It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it.”
· According to Curtis E. Lemay, the U.S. Air Force general who led the B-29 bombings of Japanese cities
“The war would have been over without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
· For Harry Truman’s good friend, Fleet Admiral Leahy
“In being the first to use the atomic bomb, we adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”
· And for Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander –in- chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
“There was no military justification for the dropping of the bomb.”
· Dwight Eisenhower clearly voiced his grave misgivings and twice recommended to Truman against the use of the bomb. According to Eisenhower
“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing… to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians… was a double crime.”
· Other U.S. military leaders including General Douglas MacArthur, said that it would be unnecessary and immoral.
· Albert Einstein attacked the use of the bomb, as did Norman Cousins and many other prominent Americans. But, most Americans were strongly in support.
· For Admiral Leahy, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “barbarous weapons” “I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
· For the Chief of the U.S. Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, the use of the atomic bomb was both “unnecessary and immoral.”

Can it be?

Chocolate can do good things for your heart, skin and brain.

Scientists at the Harvard University School of Public Health recently examined 136 studies on coco -- the foundation for chocolate -- and found it does seem to boost heart health, according to an article in the European journal Nutrition and Metabolism.

Studies have shown heart benefits from increased blood flow, less platelet stickiness and clotting, and improved bad cholesterol. These benefits are the result of cocoa's antioxidant chemicals known as flavonoids, which seem to prevent both cell damage and inflammation.

If your blood pressure is high, chocolate may help. It was recently found that hypertensive people who ate 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate per day for two weeks saw their blood pressure drop significantly, according to an article in the journal Hypertension. Their bad cholesterol dropped, too.

It sounds almost too good to be true, but preliminary research at West Virginia's Wheeling Jesuit University suggests chocolate may boost your memory, attention span, reaction time, and problem-solving skills by increasing blood flow to the brain. Chocolate companies found comparable gains in similar research on healthy young women and on elderly people.

The Honeybee Crisis

The honey bee is in severe decline. Honeybees are dying off. Without honeybees plants would be in a terrible predicament. So would humans. These creatures are the world's pollinators, quietly nuzzling and probing flowers for nectar and in the process, transferring DNA-bearing pollen from stamen to stigma. Without their work we wouldn't have healthy fruit and vegetables or viable seeds. We depend on this free service for 90% of our staple crops.

During the honeybee heyday after World War II, the U.S. had nearly 6 million hives. Now there are less than half that many, and mites continue to plague the remaining colonies. "We are working desperately to produce resistant bee stocks," says Tom Linderer, who directs a honeybee breeding and genetics lab in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for the Agriculture Department. "But we have only glimmers of success."

In Europe and North America, the number of honeybee colonies has plummeted and most wild bee colonies have been lost. Poor pollination leads to poor fruit development. According to the USDA we are facing an “impending pollination crisis.” No pollination. No harvest. “We’re losing between 40 and 60 percent of our bee population annually in this country,” says Gordon Wardell, an entomologist based in Tucson. “The bee industry is right on the edge.”

Bees pollinate alfalfa, fruit trees and gardens. California alone depends upon bees to pollinate billions of dollars worth of crops. Crops that require bees for pollination include apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, oranges, grapefruit, sunflowers, tangerines and watermelon. In addition, the production of most beef and dairy products depends on alfalfa, clover and other plants that require pollination.

Two types of mites are killing honeybees. The more deadly, known as the Varroa mite, attacks when bees are most vulnerable: in their pupal stage. As the pearly white pupae develop within the wax-capped confines of a comb's hexagonal cell, the mites feed. "They just suck so much blood that the bee comes out not very well developed, or even deformed," Stanghellini said.

Another common parasite, the tracheal mite -- which is native to European honeybees -- lodges itself inside the honeybee's air passages, debilitating it with congestion and eventually piercing its insides.

It is humbling to realize that entire civilizations have been put to the sword, not by force of arms, but by microbes.