The article asserts that the picture taken by the lunar orbiter will put paid once and for all to claims that the Apollo lunar landings were all hoaxes. Want to make a bet? Those who believe it was all a hoax will just claim that the lunar orbiter that took those pictures doesn't exist, or is just a prop in the hoax.
Apollo 11 and September 11: The Power of Symbols -- Politics Daily
We actually went to the Moon. By now we could have planted a base there, then a permanent colony, and gone on to do the same on Mars and, perhaps, planets farther out. Instead, everybody just sort of gave up. Why? Then there are the 9/11 "Truthers," who will read conspiracies that don't exist into that event no matter what evidence they're presented with. Why? Because Western civilization has a death-wish. Because people have ceased to give a damn about the sort of world -- the universe -- their children will inhabit. Because it's easier to lie back on the couch and change channels than to do anything worth a damn.
11:38 pm - PhD Thesis Topic I think, if I were to go back to school to get a PhD in anything, it would be the biology of monitor lizards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_lizard), and in particular, that of Komodo dragons. They go back to the Late Cretaceous, 90 million years ago; they probably gave rise to the mososaurs; and their relatives include the venomous reptiles and snakes -- they themselves are venomous, though mildly so, at least in terms of the effect on us of their bites. They are old and wise, and dream dragon dreams. I would love to get to know them better.
05:32 pm I just spent the entire ride home from the movie theatre trying to convince my friend that, yes, the popcorn we just ate came from the vegetable corn. Yes, dear, the one on the cob.
"After the most famous voyage of modern times, it was time to go home. After proving that humanity has the ability to go beyond the confines of planet Earth, the first humans to walk on another world -- Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin -- flew the ascent stage of their Lunar Module back to meet Michael Collins in the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. Pictured above on 1969 July 21, the ascending spaceship was captured by Collins making its approach, with the Moon below, and Earth far in the distance. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the first human moon landing. Recently, NASA's moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter sent back the first pictures of most of the Apollo landing sites -- including Apollo 11 -- with enough resolution to see the Lunar Module descent stages left behind. . . ." More: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090719.html
Check out the links on the original page linked above for much, much more.
09:35 pm - How to shoot a handgun Here's a pretty good "basics" article on how to accurately fire a handgun and the things to concentrate on in order to do so by preeminent firearms instructor Massad Ayoob!
09:58 pm - New Release! The City Of Sarkomand, A Guide for the Traveler, Chapter 32, will be released in this month's edition of Ethereal Tales.
It's a "4 the Luv" market which means I do not get paid as a writer, but I find Ethereal Tales is a very professional and promising enterprise. Please support an independent press by purchasing the issue and help it to grow.
you will be aware that Barack Obama has appointed a certain Cass Sunstein as head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. This sounds innocuous enough, until you discover that Cass Sunstein has already proposed nothing more or less than the criminalization of criticizing US public officials on the Internet. . . ." More: http://jordan179.livejournal.com/134080.html
With the passing of such men history takes new turns. Let us hope there are more like him in the years to come, all over the world, good men and women who never let us forget the cost of both war and our liberty -- and the costs of losing either.
A friend of mine says: "I have a sneaking suspicion that this has something to do with Sarah Palin's abrupt resignation ... she KNOWS it's the spoor of the Ancient Ones, which floated up to the surface when the seals of their submerged cities were broken! heh ..." -- Brendan Tripp (http://btripp.livejournal.com/)
04:40 pm - And now it's time to say something about libertarians as a class Before I get into it, let me preface this with two statements: 1) What I'm about to discuss does not include all libertarians, though it does include quite a few of them. And 2) I'm at least as damaged as a lot of those I'm about to describe, though I'm aware of it and do what I can about it. For example, I live alone, and will do so for the rest of my life, because in the past, all my face-to-face interactions and relationships with other human beings have gone and ended badly, my impact on them and their lives ranging from irritating to deadly. This has gone on literally since I was born, and while my intentions have been otherwise, the fact remains that I'm not good for other human beings, nor they for me, when it comes to real, live, face-to-face encounters. Even my written (snail-mail) correspondence with others has ultimately ended badly. And in at least one case, the results were deadly for someone I cared very much about. That was my fiance, who died in a car wreck three weeks before we were to have been married (I was 18 at the time) as he was coming back from his work on a construction project that he'd taken to finance our honeymoon to the motel he stayed at during the week. This was typical of the way my life has gone, and its impact on others. And my social skills are decidedly lacking or damaged when I'm in the physical presence of others. So I fit the picture I'm about to paint here, and can't claim I'm not talking about myself.
At any rate, as a group, whether or not they are members of the Libertarian Party (that's a different issue, and not relevant here), many of those who call themselves "libertarians"display a host of social pathologies, often egregious ones, that may be the reason why libertarians are still a minority in this country.( Read more... )
Perception isn't reality, but it is important. Truth needs clear articulation and, sometimes, a healthy dose of laughter, because lies usually come in attractive packaging. When this advert aired in the early 80s, the outcome of the Cold War was still in doubt, but few regarded the "workers' paradise" as a land of plenty.
Truth always wins sooner or later. Presenting truth in a winsome way always helps.
02:55 pm - Is there a better term for this? The word "sociopath" is generally used to mean what "psychopath" does, and is becoming a substitue for the latter, because it is more accurate. "Psychopath" means "one who exhibits a psychological pathology," and has been used to refer to anything from a standard mental illness to a serial killer. "Sociopath" means "one who exhibits social pathologies," and is used to refer to those who have no conscience and cannot develop one; who cannot love; whose perception of other people is like others' perception of mindless animate objects or computers, i.e., without souls and spirits; who have little or no understanding of why others who do what they do and therefore have trouble predicting what other people will do; and, more recently, who exhibit a hallmark neurological signature from as early as birth on that goes hand in hand with the previously described behavioral signatures. Because such people frequently become career criminals, even violent ones, it is used most often to mean, more or less, "dangerous repeat offender."
But the literal meaning of the term "sociopath," "one who exhibits social pathologies," could actually cover a whole host of syndromes ranging from various forms of autism to what psychologists refer to as neuroses to the common use of it to mean something like "dangerous repeat offender."( Read more... )
02:06 pm - transit Today marks the first day of light rail service here in the Seattle area. The first official scheduled run was like 4 hours ago - I'm going inb as I write this post.
OMG. Sorry, I can't be very coherent right now. I keep going outside to look at it. It resembles no unwieldy African animal that I can name, so maybe my bad car luck curse as been broken! Current Mood: excited
"This is what the debate in Congress is all about: whether we'll keep talking and tinkering and letting this problem fester as more families and businesses go under and more Americans lose their coverage. Or whether we'll seize this opportunity — one we might not have again for generations — and finally pass health insurance reform this year, in 2009."
Let me start by saying I support Obama and health-care reform, preferably single-payer (i.e., "communism", "socialism", etc.) but as close as we can get will do.
But this is the first time Obama has sounded like Bush to me. I think it is clearly false to suggest this opportunity is "one we might not have again for generations". And why this year? He's got a four-year term. Why not do it right? The problem has been a source of national discussion since 1992, when Bill Clinton raised everyone's consciousness regarding the issue (thanks to him, Republicans cannot make the issue go away--those pesky American citizens increasingly view health care as a right, not a privilege, as do Europeans), and the problem has only been increasing. So it seems to me that if changes are not made now, they could or would be made in a month, or a year, or two years, because the problem is not going away and is becoming increasingly urgent all the time. The problem itself provides the political pressure necessary to get it done. So why is Obama adding extra pressure?
Bush started claiming false urgency for his policies from the moment he stole office. Acting like him, even in the relatively "small" way of "approach to Congress" (small versus "stealing office", "going to war on false pretenses", "raping the Treasury for cronies", "creating a secret-police state", etc.) is a bad idea. It adds to the cynicism Americans already feel toward their government, and goes directly against Obama's own reputation as a straightforward guy. I understand (and desire) that he is a reformer, but I think he's a little bit unreasonably impatient here. The question is why. Does he think that if he does not act this way the Congress will fail to act? Hopefully he knows that if that were to happen, he could then fault the "do-nothing" Congress and the public would demand action. No action is not an option. We will get reform. The question is why the August deadline. Is it false? Is it just another Bush negotiating tactic, designed to force action ASAP? That's how it feels to me. And, as much as I support Obama and reform, I don't like it. It smacks less of great moral urgency and more of simple bullying for political advantage to me, to gratify Obama's ego or win praise from the electorate.
A lot of the pharmaceutical products that first came out in the last 20 years fall into that category. And we could do without fast food establishments. The value of most other things, however, depend upon who is using them and for what purposes. For example, telephones are very useful, but they also make it possible for idiots to call up 911 and report stupid things, which ties up the dispatchers and makes for real problems when it comes to emergency responses. It's like fire: we've been using it for two million years to do all sorts of great things -- but it also gets used by pyros to do terrible things, and official torturers use it to do awful things to their victims. Fire gave us food we didn't have to have massive jaws to chew and digest and assmiliate, but it also gave us fast food, and you know where that takes us . . .
12:34 am - Transpiration I just came in off the porch. I give my two tomato plants each a gallon and a half of water every day that it's hot, and it pays off in odd ways. At night, the plants transpire like crazy, filling the air above them with water vapor, and night breezes pick up the vapor and carry it along, chilling it and cooling everything off.
Jupiter is up, at about 10 o'clock in the night sky, below the celestial equator, big and bright and very easy to see.
11:03 pm - Pollyanna Well, I finished Pollyanna today. Man, that was a good book. Better than I expected. It was almost too sweet at points, though not quite. The rest of the time, it alternated between really funny and really touching... I guess about what I would expect when a bunch of grumpy adults meet with a mature, innocent child, the kind that I call an angel-child. But for once, the angel-child doesn't die :O And there's a sequel in which she purportedly grows up! So I'm listening to that next.
Anyway, I recommend it. The only problem is that the narrator, who is generally good, is not good at acting grumpy/cross.
Got my cat tested for various things, caught an infection he had, and got him medicine for it, plus, I got him a kitty stroller (it should arrive in a week or two).
Add to that:
1) The 4th of July -- stunning sunset down by the lake
2) July 16-21: 40th anniversary of the Apollo XI moon shot
Halfway down, they have a great link that will most likely have your plant, and tell you how to germinate!! And the first link is also great for problem solving if your having any!! Jame's gonna love me, with all this dirt in the fridge!! XD Right now I've got Pulsatilla vulgaris 'Pasque flower' in there. He hasn't complained yet! :) I think I need a thermometer though! Current Music: "The Dragon's Breath" The Celtic Circle
So, I've recently found out some terrifying things about PayPal and I am now looking for some alternatives. Do any of you do business through other services?
Edit: Woops, I guess it would help if I said why I'm a big nervous about PayPal now. Likeshine's recent and severe problems with the service started getting me worried. When Stoker and I did a little bit of digging, it would seem that poor Likeshine isn't the only person having trouble, nor is hers even as bad as it gets.
This site has a lot of good information on the issues that many people are having with PayPal (though their "alternatives" don't really do it for me).
At present, I'm looking into using my own bank to run payments through my business, though I will have to wait until I can get close to a branch again so I can speak with them directly. Current Mood: curious
12:41 pm - James' bridge thus far Here's James' bridge! There's another part that gives you the option to make it a covered bridge! Hopefully next year we can get this project done! It's not too safe right now. My amigos are tryin' to climb on it, and we're kind of paranoid that they'll lose their footing and ......
12:05 pm - new flowers Firecracker Fringed Loosestrife (Jame kills me! We go for walks sometimes and he's like, is that a weed! And then the one time he's in the garden, he leaves a weed in, thinking it's a plant I put there! XD He did comment on the chameleon plant that I brought home saying that they take over, so I'll plant it by the pond!)
Blue Danube Stokes' Aster!
Red Astilbe
Poppies started from seed. There's such an elegance to poppies! :)
Not a very good picture, but started these guys from seed. Nightscented Stock 'Matthiola bicornis' And they do smell really good! :) You have to be kind of careful sniffing flowers sometimes eh!? I got a little bug the other day! XD
Black hollyhock started last year from seed, and blooming this year!
02:07 pm - It really is Friday! Good friends gather 'round in times both happy and sad Celebrate them both
I am determined to celebrate the good things, and I'm dragging you all with me. I finished the first revisions of Death on the Dance Floor thanks to the edits I got, and I'm tentatively pleased with how the beginning of the novel reads now. I've been working on a short story that I'm very pleased with, and I've blown the dust off Sorcha and Genevieve, and I'm hoping to see what I can do with them next.
Feel free to leave writing prompts in the comments. :D Current Mood: determined
11:59 am - Every Day a Test The day I joined the gym, a trainer showed me a basic work-out and instructed me on using the machines. She was worrying about liability issues (as she must)... so of course, her advice was to "take it slow" and make sure I didn't hurt myself. Accustomed to thinking of myself as a lightweight, I too worried about hurting myself and let her advice influence all my work-outs from then on out.
Six months later in a fit of frustration after a measuring session, I put anywhere from 10 to 60 extra pounds of resistance on all those machines and didn't hurt myself. I did, however, get a useful work out. Finally.
As for the aerobic segment, it should have been a warning that I thought the elliptical felt like power armor because power armor is designed to make things easier. I don't need easy, I need hard. A half hour on an elliptical is like taking a pleasant walk while a friendly robot suspends your weight off suspenders. So I hunted around and tried the arc trainer, and two minutes of that thing has me sweating my shirt wet. Two minutes.
I spend half an hour on it and hate every minute of it, but by God I do it.
So. I no longer enjoy going to the gym... I kind of dread it. But in a good way. It's no longer a for-fun activity, but a test-yourself activity. We live in an age where it's very easy to avoid hard tasks, or to take on only the hard tasks that we want to do. I can tell myself that producing a painting a month on my shortened schedule is a challenge, and it is, but it's the kind of challenge I'm comfortable with and know that I can probably handle.
We need challenges we don't know if we can handle. We need not just the opportunity to fail, but the close-breathing in-your-face about-to-happen possibility of failure. And yes, we need to fail also. What good is success if you can never fail? How can you ever know what you're capable of if you don't push it?
I am not at all comfortable with the kind of challenge that involves pushing my body past its comfort levels. But that's why I go. Because when I leave I am exhausted, but there's a pleasant silence in my head, as if some inner snark has been silenced. "Oh wait," some part of me thinks. "You can do stuff that flabby geek-mom-artists don't do. Whoops, didn't mean to generalize there."
One of the books I just finished reading about boot camp talks about the drill instructors shouting that every day that doesn't involve testing yourself is wasted. I think of the gym as one of my tests.
We'll see how I'm doing in a month.
Stardancer Home. Current Mood: determined Current Music: Suedehead - Morrissey
09:33 am - Impending Sale *looks around at stacks and stacks of art*
Okay, I think it's time for a "Get it Out of My House" fire-sale on art. I'll put that together over the weekend and post it during the week. If you want cheap originals/art, keep an eye out for it!
07:47 am - Friday Friday Word of the Day draconian, adj 1: of, relating to, or characteristic of Draco or the severe code of laws held to have been framed by him 2: cruel, also : severe Because I didn't know it derived from the name of an actual person, a seventh-century B.C. Athenian legislator.
Baby at 22 Months elusivetiger does most of the reading to the baby at night, but I do take her on my lap (when she permits) and read to her when she's sleepy, sometimes. The other day she was just tired enough to want to be read to so we were going through a stack of books together that she was familiar with, but me, not so much. One of them is a book I bought her with photographs of baby faces and the emotions they're displaying written underneath.
I was astonished to discover she knew this book and wanted to read it with me.
"What's this baby?"
"HAHH pee YAY!"
"Um, yes! Happy. Yay! And this baby?"
"sahhhd, OH NOE."
And so on, through the whole book, duplicating not just the words (including bizarre ones, like puzzled: 'puh suhled! hmm!') but some tags that presumably my husband hung on the words to make them more memorable. ("lahf eeng ha ha ha!")
The end of the book features two babies, one yawning and one sleeping. "What's this baby?" "TIE erd." "Tired, that's right. And this one?"
"ah SLEEP, WAEK UP!"
I blinked, then laughed. A lot. :)
Current Plans Not sure. If I get a few hours off this afternoon, I might draw or paint, but I am a tired jaguar. I need a few goofing off days, I think. This weekend, though, more work on Spots and on this card painting. I got a ton of good stuff for Spots worked out while at the gym yesterday, I need to develop it.
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