Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Saudi Arabia discovers 9000 year old civilization

Jeddah- Saudi Arabia is excavating a new archaeological site that shows horses were domesticated 9,000 years ago in the Arabian peninsula.  The discovery of the civilization, named Al-Maqar, will challenge the theory that the domestication of animals took place 5,500 years ago in Central Asia.

Mayan city of El Mirador

Guatemala- A new Mayan archaeological discovery of a 2,200 year old carving was found at El Mrador, Guatemala.  The archaeological site El Mirador continues to astound the world.  A team of archaeologists, mostly Guatemalans, under the coordination of Richard Hansen made the discvoery of a carving of the Mayan Pre-Classic Period which dates to 200 BC.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Do I know more now than I did yesterday?


TV is not bad for you.  The commercials, the advertisements.  That is where the trouble lies.  Sure, no one is going to do much progressing from watching six straight hours of Burn Notice but it isn’t going to steal your plans for a time travel machine from your neurons.  Maybe I should start sitting closer to the TV then too.  Maybe everything I was taught takes place on opposite day.  Eerie Indiana style.
Bars are for sluts and whores.  This one is pretty accurate in which case, I try to spend as much time there as possible.  Oh dear, someone is using their naughty parts to feel some pleasure.  Such a horrible thing.  Maybe we should stop that.  Put some laws intruding on our personal freedoms and not let 15 year olds buy titties magazines in the gas station but ensure there are a dozen video game shops around that sells blood and guts in a neatly wrapped package with a little letter on the front.  Buyer beware.  There is a ratings letter on the front to tell you what is the what’s in the game.   Everyone reads those labels like they read directions for putting together a desk.
Spelling is essential.  Now this one, I can still climb on board with at least in the sense that spelling is a plus to have but if you don’t have it, then how about use every program that you type in now that has a spell check of its own.  Even better, abbreviate as many words as possible so there is no real spelling.  Phone companies invent tiny keyboards my fingers will not fit on well then, what else am I suppose to do?  I’m lucky if any of my text messages make sense.

Afghanistan's former spy chief: 'Never trust the Taliban

Afghanistan- He may no longer be Afghanistan's spymaster general, but in the new career he has moved into, Amrullah Saleh must retain many of the trappings from his former job.  Visitors to the Kabul home of the intelligence boss turned politician encounter checkpoints from at least a block away, while outside his villa, lean, purposeful guards from his native Panjshir Valley eye approaching strangers warily...

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Maybe he wasn't DB

Olympia- DNA testing has failed to link a new suspect in the D.B. Cooper hijacking to a necktie that he left behind on the plane in 1971, the FBI said Monday.  Special Agent Fred Gutt cautioned that the test does not necessarily rule out the deceased man because investigators do not know whether DNA on the tie is that of the hijacker. Gutt said there are three different DNA samples on the necktie and it's not clear where the hijacker got it.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Please don't go out of your way to remember me on your birthday, but try still to remember me


Maybe it is peculiar that I do not have my birthday listed on my facebook page.  Maybe my ideas of people I don’t speak to sending me a message on the magical day of my birth are out of the ordinary.  But even Kaczynski liked to have love thrown his way once in a while.  It doesn’t haven’t to be a designated day.  It could be a Tuesday in March or a Friday in September.  I don’t need a card (unless it is one of those super snarky ones in which case, please send them too.  I want to steal that idea but I need some more ideas) just “a hey cracker, how you doing?  I know you’ve had some changes in your life this last calendar year as well as I but you know what, this one out of 365 I want you to know that for a brief few moments, you were on my mind and I hope that your direction is going well.”  It is, to answer the question.  My life has a great direction and it is forward.  I will not think about this tomorrow or the next day after that.  It is as anything, another blip on the radar.  Just a sliver of a moment in life.  But I will have to catalogue the proceedings in my ever increasing jar of knowledge that leads me to find that I know nothing at all.  And remember that when you treat me like an alien, then you’ll know why all I ever want to do is go home.  Home is safe.  Home is comfortable.  Home is where family is built and re-built.  Where people know that your quirks make you your own.  Not an outcast.  Not a weirdo.  Just a human, flesh and blood, with feelings.  I am not immune.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

new home shopping

“We can’t live here.”
“Sure, it’s a fixer upper certainly,” I say as I step aside.  Dodge a piece of ceiling lodged loose by the recent destruction befell on the entire structure.  “There is a reason that people sell things on the cheap.”
“Right, but there is cheap,” Natalie slides her finger along the wall leading to the finger quickly going straight through.  “And there is condemnable.”
She is right.  Natalie, when she says this place is near being a slight gust away from laying down.  But there is so much promise here.  Just with this little piece of assembled wood.  The house of so many memories.  Even the least of which should be enough to give me a little inspiration to but in a little effort on my part.  Try to resuscitate.  Either with my wife.  Or alone.  Sleeping on the floor of this place.  In a red sleeping bag on the floor.  Praying the roof would not come down on me in the middle of my slumber.  Knew a guy who went that way.  Just trying to bring down a simple little ole storage building that had been outgrown by the growing families need.  Tie a rope to the center beam and pull.  Easy does it.  But the first two yanks were unsuccessful.  Maybe the rope is loose.  Famous last words before Jack walked inside, yanked, and brought the whole thing crashing down.  Crushing him together like an accordion.  Playing tunes in heaven now. 
“Well, what do you want to do then?  We sure can’t afford anything new and you swore against buying a mobile home even if it is solid as a rock mounted in the ground.”
“Only way a house stays where it is suppose to is if it is built with beams in the ground.”
A fair point and probably half of which would be why even if Natalie caved on getting a mobile home, I would put in a veto.  Growing up in the general landscape of the panhandle of Texas, there were just too many mobile homes broken in two laying on their sides after a storm for me to ever forget the unsafe nature of a house that can be thrown on a truck and driven cross country.  And that movie Twister too. 
“So, then we are back here.”  The third of our party, Linda Street, an independent real estate agent (says her business card) seems to have disappeared.  Maybe the seemingly emanate collapse of the kitchen was a little much for her to tempt her fate this morning.  She already had pulled aces once this morning.  A pregnancy strip being the bathroom trash’s only contents and I know it is fresh.  I mistook it for something else and tried to pull it out before dropping it right back down inside after feeling the moisture and seeing the – sign.  

Create your virtual self

The world wide- Updating your facebook and twitter is such a hassle.  How about create an alternative you that can fake your interaction with your "friends".  You too can have a replicant.

Water on Mars

Outer Space- We have known for quite a while that there are frozen water deposits beneath the surface of Mars but now it seems that seasonal streams of liquid water flow across the planet.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Plants create new DNA after animal attacks

University of Illinois- Half-eaten plants grow back bigger and faster than they would have if they'd never been attacked — it's all about doubling down on DNA.
Not only can plants grow back stronger than they would have if they'd just been left alone, they also gain a reproductive advantage. That's despite the fact that a substantial part of the organism has just been eaten, which is about as traumatic an experience as one could ever hope to have. The trick to their triumphant survival is known as endoreduplication, in which the plants start replicating their chromosomes over and over without making any new cells.