#2
"The embryos are mostly self-regulating, because they arrest naturally at 32 cells, which is quite good from the ethical point of view," Armstrong said. "There is no way these embryos could develop into a fetus."
Famous Last Words. Right up there with '... here hold my beer....'.
Pilot Kenneth Arnold sights a series of unidentified flying objects near Washington's Mt. Rainier. It's the first widely reported UFO sighting in the United States, and, thanks to Arnold's description of what he saw, leads the press to coin the term flying saucer. . . .
As Arnold's story leaked out, other people stepped forward to say they had seen the objects, too. The most-credible report may have come from a United Airlines crew, which reported seeing nine similar disk-like objects over Idaho only 10 days after Arnold's sighting.
Whether Arnold actually saw something or not, the resulting publicity touched off a worldwide spate of UFO sightings. Barely two weeks after Arnold's flight, the Roswell story broke, and UFO hysteria was on.
Was it the power of suggestion that led to all these sightings, or was 1947 a peak travel year for little green men? You decide.
The salt-free diet Scottsdale golf courses have agreed to go on to keep their fairways greener is now being considered for other city water uses, including the household tap.
City officials are talking about encouraging residents and businesses to replace water softeners that use table salt, or sodium chloride, with ones that use potassium chloride, said city spokesman Mike Phillips. No specific plan is in place yet, however.
While more expensive than sodium chloride systems, potassium chloride won't put salt back into the water supply, Phillips said. Already, 23 Scottsdale-based golf courses have agreed to contribute $22.5 million to remove salt from the effluent, or non-drinkable water they receive from the city to replenish their greens and fairways.
If residents and businesses stop using sodium chloride-based water-softening systems, less salt would be going back into sewers and treatment plants that prepare water for use on the links, Phillips said.
In addition to this program, the city has independently been researching other methods to compel residents and business owners to switch from sodium-based water softeners to potassium-based ones. Phillips did acknowledge that part of the difficulty in persuading people to make the switch is cost.
#3
Actually, the problem with Scottsdale isn't Moonbattery. It's money.
For example, Scottsdale has almost no anti-smoking laws, because the entertainment industry doesn't want them. And in this case, they don't want salt in the water because it is hurting their golf courses.
Scottsdale is a weird town to begin with. It is mostly linear, with a single, long, thin park running through most of it.
Its city center is full of incredibly overpriced art galleries, and what used to look like a National Socialist realism civic center (created when they had a city councilman who had been a young SS officer in WWII.)
Much of the city is upper middle class and decadent wealthy. There are few minorities and homeless. A lot of the kids there behave like Paris Hilton with guns, and reenact scenes from Naked Lunch at parties.
Parts of northern Scottsdale are zoned for horses, typically ultra-expensive Arabians, and they also make big money from specialty hospitals.
Scottsdale has "gentleman's clubs", and a "pasty tax". That is, the strippers have to pay a hefty tax on the pasties they wear while performing.
So yeah, the evil UFO alien invaders would fit right in. Maybe they could get out alive.
#5
At a guess, because in the desert the salt builds up quickly in the soil, making it hard to grow vegetation of any kind. Getting it out of the soil is very difficult and expensive, I would imagine, at least more so than keeping it out in the first place.
#6
Colorado River water is full of minerals including salt. That's why they call it "hard" water. It doesn't taste all that great either and a lot of people won't even drink it so they pay for bottled water. Some sensitive people don't like the way their clothes feel if they've been washed in it. Some plants don't like all that salt and get a little brown at the tips of their leaves. If you iron your own shirts you might notice that all those minerals will collect in your iron and stain your shirts. One advantage is that soap rinses off a lot easier with hard water. I always notice that when I travel back East.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/24/2008 18:02 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Salty soil stops producing. That's one of the key reasons ancient civilizations collapsed with such regularity.
Thousands of people in the Netherlands say they expect the world to end in 2012, and many say they are taking precautions to prepare for the apocalypse.
Lemme get this straight: What's gonna happen in 2012?
'The world's gonna end!'
And what're you doing?'
'Making preparations!'
Preparations for what?
'To survive it!'
The Dutch-language de Volkskrant newspaper said it spoke to thousands of believers in the impending end of civilization, and while theories on the supposed catastrophe varied, most tied the 2012 date to the end of the Mayan calendar, Radio Netherlands reported Monday.
'Villem! Look at the calendar! It's April 1st, 2012!'
'But that means...!'
'Yes. There is no April 2nd. We've run out of days.'
De Volkskrant said many of those interviewed are stocking up on emergency supplies, including life rafts and other equipment.
Very handy for when the sun goes nova.
Some who spoke to the newspaper were optimistic about the end of civilization. 'You know, maybe it's really not that bad that the Netherlands will be destroyed,' Petra Faile said. 'I don't like it here anymore. Take immigration, for example. They keep letting people in. And then we have to build more houses, which makes the Netherlands even heavier. The country will sink even lower, which will make the flooding worse.'
'On the other hand, as soon as all the Moroccans have moved here, I'm moving to Casablanca.'
#1
Interesting that they are still building to accomidate newcomers. Perhaps they should consider reclaiming some more land and resettle the immigrants there. Let them build all the new fancy mosques in the new reclaimed lands.
#4
Probably true. If Obama getes elected then Iran gets nukes and the day after it will be providing them to terrorists.
(That was a message to people planning to vote for freaks or stay home because they find MacCain is not conservative enough or beacuse "Republic will not crumble if Obama gets elected but people will get a taste of socialism". What is at stake in 2008 is our lives
#5
JFM, we show up at the polls, not just because of who is running for President. The votes for the House and Senate are just as important, if not more so.
#8
So, the more people believe it, the more people go out and get a loan and go on a spending spree. Then comes the day the first payment is due, and thus the end of the world as we know it.
So, I suggest we forgive all debt and start a new world.
I'm king, I called it.
#11
If the Mayan calender predicted the end of the world I have to wonder what it said about the year the Aztec's crushed them, or the year the Spanish arrived . Silly Mayans were like the Global warming folks. Freaking out about things too far in the future and ignoring those trying to kill them here and now.
When Le Monde's sumptuous headquarters in Paris opened in 2004 - with its glass facade inscribed with the words of Victor Hugo and a dove symbolising press freedom - it was to house a media empire.
Just four years on and the national newspaper group is struggling to pay for the architectural masterpiece - which it rents for 1m a month - amid mounting losses and falling sales. Instead of hosting a multimedia empire to keep France's prestigious paper of record independent, the building has been the scene of the group's first strikes over company policy and the worst crisis in its 64-year history.
Le Monde's 340 staff have been given an ultimatum: unless enough apply for redundancy by next Monday, the paper will lose the independence that has marked it out from its privately owned competitors. Unions have estimated that between 90 and 130 people - one fifth of the editorial staff - will have to leave to help make savings of 9.4m demanded by the company.
As Admiral Potemkin so famously observed, "That which ceases to grow begins to rot."
#3
A few notes about "Le Monde"'s founder Hubert Beuve Méry: durig the War he told France's eleites hould preserve themselves in order to be available for reconstruction. Translation: The serfs will do the dying and at the end of war they elite will emerge for the sharing of the spoils.
Also before D-DAY with Geman boots still soiling French soil his obesssion was how to presve France from contamination of American ideas.
(Note for a5089: Both quotes are from the "Histoire du Vercors résistant"
The third note about Le Monde is that in 2002 they made a secret blank vote betweeen journalists and about fifty percent of them voted for the trotskist (ie left of communists) candidate. Let's remember that trotskists ever thought of inforamlation as weapon and not as a way to enlighten people's decisions.
#4
who cares? It's all just a scramble for the lifeboats now. It's all agenda driven crap, written by people whom everyone believes to be drunks, misfits, dropouts and lowlifes (as written in that other rantburg article today) and few take seriously anymore.
#5
Le Monde is dhimmi central in Euromedia. Their journalists aren't trusted; Le Figaro delivers news with a commitment to reporting the truth. Victor Hugo would hardly like modern France, although he would support the Sarkozy regime. Good riddance.
#7
Shareholders could then move in to take control away from the journalists. Le Monde's unusual structure means that staff control 52% of the holding company and elect their directors and editors.
I think I may have identified part of the problem.
One would scarcely be likely to find a USED grenade, at least not if it had functioned properly.
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canadian military and police are investigating after a package containing a brand new hand grenade, belonging to the army, was found in a suburban backyard, police said on Monday. Gee, all I ever find in my backyard are beer cans, candy wrappers, and those ubiquitous plastic grocery bags (known locally as 'Wal-Mart tumbleweeds')
A woman in the Western Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta, discovered the suspicious package on Sunday and took it to her local police station, where officers told her to carefully place it on the lawn. There probably is someone, somewhere who has to be told to handle this sort of merchandise carefully.
Police called in the bomb squad, which determined the item was a grenade, still in its packaging and belonging to the Canadian military. Mistakenly shipped as a new puck for the Oilers.
The technicians made sure the package was secure and called military personnel in to dispose of the ordnance. 'It is quite unusual for someone to find a grenade in their backyard, especially one that hasn't been spent,' Edmonton police spokeswoman Patrycia Chalupczynska said. How common are grenades in front yards? Is there something we don't know about the Great White North? Maybe grenades are legal there, but only in BC during the salmon run.
'We want to advise people that if they ever do find something suspicious-looking, they shouldn't touch it -- just leave it alone and call police.' ....who will tell you to pick it up and take it to the FRONT yard, apparently the proper place for grenade finds.
#4
How do they know it was really and truly a BRAND NEW Grenade?
did it have a 'Best before..." date on it?
did it have the "tag not to be removed under penalty of law" tag on it ( call in the mattress police, grenade division)
i wanna know?
it could have been worse, could have been another foot.
#5
Semi-seriously, I hope somebody took the lot number down. Follow that up, and it will be interesting where it leads.
Posted by: N guard ||
06/24/2008 14:31 Comments ||
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#6
"Police called in the bomb squad, which determined the item was a grenade, still in its packaging and belonging to the Canadian military."
"called military personnel in to dispose of the ordnance"
Something I don't understand here. It was a brand new grenade still in its packaging. Why would it need to be "disposed of"? Why not just put it back into inventory?
If it was in its original packaging, it would have the serial number, manufacturer, date of manufacture, and manufacturing lot number on it. At the very least the manufacturer would know where that grenade was shipped originally.
#7
Probably a knee-jerk reaction. But not entirely unreasonable (assuming the EOD folks got a robot look at it before detonating) since it's possible with some effort to unseal the packaging, add nasties to it and reseal.
#8
Yeah, given the loss of control over it, you'd have to assume it may have been tampered with and it's safer to destroy it than to pop it back into inventory.
Consider if they cut the fuse down to almost nothing and you issued it for recruits to do live training with. It blows up 5 feet after being thrown, you'll wind up with wounded recruits and cadre.
Yes, indeed. Keeping us cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and and hiding our receding hairline. ;-)
If the grenade was in the back yard, it probably didn't just fall off a delivery truck, right? Seriously, how the heck did the thing get into a back yard?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Pilot Kenneth Arnold sights a series of unidentified flying objects near Washington's Mt. Rainier. It's the first widely reported UFO sighting in the United States, and, thanks to Arnold's description of what he saw, leads the press to coin the term flying saucer. . . .
Thousands of people in the Netherlands say they expect the world to end in 2012, and many say they are taking precautions to prepare for the apocalypse.
