The Controversy Over Horses And The Drug Premerin

Modern medicine can be a great thing. The treatments that the Pharmaceutical industry comes up with no doubt help millions of people to feel better and cope with their ailments. If they can afford to buy the drugs at least anyway. The way some drugs are made can be called peculiar to say the least and is in fact cruel to animal life. Take a drug called Premerin for example. Premerin is a hormone therapy drug that is used to treat post menopausal women to reduce the severity of hot flashes. It is estimated that there are about 55 million women in the U.S. who suffer with this condition. It is also prescribed to prevent or lessen the effects of osteoporosis which is the weakening or thinning of a woman's bones as she ages. The drug is made out of horse urine. That is in fact where the name of the drug comes from. Premerin is short for Pregnant Mares Urine. There are even Premerin farms in which the horses that are located there are used specifically for the purpose of making this drug. The company that manufactures the drug is called Wyeth and it rakes in billions a year marketing it. The problems with the drug are that Premerin can increase the likelihood of heart attacks, stroke, blood clots, and breast cancer. That's what it can do to humans. What it does to horses is after the period of collecting the urine ends (it usually lasts until 6 months after a mare gives birth) the horses are sent to the slaughter house because they cannot be easily or quickly re-impregnated. The foals that they give birth to are quickly fattened up and then sent to slaughter. There are some now who question the need for the continuing existence of Premerin farms and the use of horses in any way to make the drug in light of the fact that there exist many F.D.A. approved synthetic alternatives to Premerin that do not involve the use of any animals in order to manufacture such as Estradiol and Cenestin.

First Solar Powered Plane Takes Off

There might be some hope yet for this planet if we can figure out a way to fly around without burning tons of jet fuel and there is a man in Switzerland working on the problem. Bertrand Piccard and his solar powered plane called the "Solar Impulse" took off for its first flight on December 3rd, 2009. Almost 106 years to the day of The Wright Brothers initial flight at Kitty Hawk Piccard Started up the four battery powered engines on his plane and sped down the runway and actually managed to achieve flight. It lasted for less than 30 seconds and did not rise higher off the ground than one meter but before you start laughing and dismiss it just remember that the Wright Brothers first flight lasted about half as long as that and didn't even travel the wingspan of a modern 747 jet plane. There are plans for more ambitious flights in the future. Piccard is setting his sights on making a 36 hour day night flight for next summer.

How Phone Companies Rake In Profits With Texting

Be careful how much talking you do in this free country because you might talk yourself out of house and home if you prefer to do most of your talking on a cell instead of face to face. If you have a cell phone and can use it to send text messages and you are on a per-text plan with your phone company you may already have some idea of this, especially if you have got teens in the house. The profits that the phone companies make are huge. On some plans they can charge about 20 cents per text to either send or receive a message. The actual cost to them to send a text is less than half a penny. The reason its so cheap to the phone company is because the amount of information that is being transmitted is very small. To give you an example to compare it to a 1 minute phone call on a cell phone uses up the same amount of a network as 600 text messages. All the major carriers all do the same thing at the same time it seems including raising prices. When one company raises its prices the rest usually follow suit within weeks or months of each other. This has been referred to as lock step price increasing. Phone companies now charge about 4 times what they did less than 4 years ago. Unlimited plans are without a doubt the best way to go but you are going to take a beating on those as well considering how little it costs the phone company to provide you with the service.

Training The Afghan Army Will Be All Up Hill For U.S.

If you are one of those people who believes President Obama when he says that the U.S. is going to get out of Afghanistan in a year and a half you must have to do some serious wishful thinking in order to get yourself there. Consider the fact that the whole plan for an early withdrawal depends on how quickly the U.S. can raise and train the new Afghan Army. The latest plan is to increase the number from the current level of about 95,000 to about 400,000 in little more than a year. Consider some of the problems however. The U.S. is attempting to attract new recruits by raising the pay of the average Afghan soldier to about $250 a month. Even with the increase that is about $50 less a month than the average Taliban fighter gets. Out of the current Afghan force only 1 out of every 9 members is capable of reading or writing. They are basically a force of illiterate soldiers and the new recruits that are being attracted are no better. A little less than 20% test positive for drugs. The training that these new recruits are getting now is being cut from 10 weeks to 8 weeks in order to accommodate the time line for leaving in 18 months by trying to train as many soldiers as possible as quickly as possible. There are also problems with retention. Usually these newly trained soldiers return to their villages after one year and never return back to the force. The drop out rate is about 20%. There is also a big problem with corruption in Afghanistan. Many Afghan soldiers and police are often accused of demanding bribes from villagers. It is also estimated that of the current 95,000 that make up the Afghan force that about 25% of those don't really exist. Local Afghan commanders often make up names of soldiers and place them on paper to be counted in order to meet recruitment goals for which they collect additional fees and salaries. President Hamid Karzai has said himself that it is going to cost about 10 Billion dollars a year to keep and maintain this Afghan force at this size for about 20 years. Due to the fact that the Afghan government has no money the bill is going to have to be footed by the United States. With all this it seems pretty hopeful to believe that the U.S. can extricate itself from Afghanistan in a mere 18 months.

Why The Yankees Won't Repeat As World Champions in 2010

If you are a Yankee fan like I am you should savor the victory of a championship season as long as possible because it will likely not happen again next year. If you know anything about baseball you know that championships are won in the General managers office. The moves that a teams GM makes in the off season are the moves that count above all in determining who the champion will be the following season. I offer as the latest example of this the three great acquisitions that the Yankees made last off season when they spent the better part of a half billion dollars to acquire First baseman Mark Texiera, and pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett who all proved to be pivotal to their championship season. This off season the Yankees are getting out maneuvered in every direction. The first big blow that I heard about to the Yankees chances of a repeat was when the Boston Red Sox acquired pitcher John Lacky from the L.A. Angels. If there is one thing that is true about Lacky it is that he owns the Yankees. He has almost never had any kind of trouble shutting them down when he pitches against them. If you team him up with another Yankees killer named Josh Beckett, who is currently the ace of the Red Sox staff, what you got in my opinion is a One -Two pitching punch that the Yankees are not going to know how to deal with either in the regular season or the post season next year.
That isn't even the worst of it either. The Philadelphia Phillies have acquired probably the biggest Yankee killer out there right now in Pitcher Roy "Doc" Halladay. Not only does Halladay own the Yankees now but he has owned them his entire career. If by some miracle the Yankees could get past the pitching combo of Beckett and Lacky from the red Sox and move into a World Series where they end up having to face the Phillies I can't really see what they would be able to do in a situation where they would have to face Halladay probably three times in a seven game series. All I can say is as a Yankee fan that I am going to enjoy the moment as long as I can because I really can't see how they repeat next year if they have to deal with either of these teams in their new configurations. All the Yankees have to counter with is Sabathia, who is a quality ace, A.J. Burnett, who is good but shaky especially in big situations, Pettitte who is still good but at the end of his career, and then Joba Chamberlain who has proved nothing as a starting pitcher. Both The Red Sox And the Phillies effectively dealt with and corrected the weaknesses that they had in dealing with the Yankees last year. Now both teams look like they are ready to knock the Yanks out of the box.

Predator Drones Hacked By Insurgents In Iraq and Afghanistan

If you have ever wondered why The U.S. despite the fact that it has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prosecute both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still has not really got that much to show for it in terms of progress in either "theater" this next story might help shed some light on it. The insurgents in both countries have figured out a way to hack into the Predator Drones computer systems in order to evade their attacks and also monitor some U.S. military operations. The Predator is basically an unmanned slow flying attack plane. It is computer driven and it searches for and bombs selected locations using G.P.S. satellite systems to fix in on its targets. They usually cost about 4.5 million a copy and the newest generation will cost over 10 million each. The insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan have figured out that they can tap into the predators on board computer systems by using an inexpensive software program called Skygrabber which anyone can buy off the shelf for about $25. It takes advantage of an unprotected communications link that sends out video feeds that were not encrypted. It can keep the insurgents one step ahead of the "surprise attacks" and help them evade them or minimize their effects. The predator is considered the future of Air warfare but it has had problems and this latest one is not even the least of it. The biggest problem it has as a system is that it keeps crashing. It has been reported that over 1/3 of the predator drones that have been deployed have been lost due to system malfunctions which have led to crashes.

The Real Unemployment Rate

So exactly how many people are unemployed these days in the United states? Well if you go by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (B.L.S.) they are currently putting the number officially at 10.2%. There is a little catch about this though. The catch has to do with the way they count people as "officially unemployed." For example if you are not currently looking for a job because you are totally discouraged by the current state of the job market then you are not counted as "officially unemployed" because you are technically not looking. The B.L.S. calls this not being "officially in the labor market." Another kind of accounting trick that it uses is to count under employed individuals as employed. For example, if you lost your full time job due to an industry down sizing and the only thing you could find in the meantime is part time work say working in a Home Depot a few hours a week the B.L.S. counts you as "Officially Employed" even though you would not be making enough money to live on. They only count people that they consider are "actively looking." If you do not currently have a job and you looked in a classified section this week for a job then you are considered "officially unemployed" because you have looked for a job but have not found one. If you take away all the accounting tricks so to speak and count all the people in the country who are really unemployed then the unemployment rate would not look like the 10.2% that the B.L.S. puts it at currently but more like 17.5% which is almost 1 in 5 people in the whole country. Oh by the way, 1 in 5 people was about the same rate of unemployment during the Great Depression. It was roughly about 75-80% employed and 20-25% unemployed at that time give or take.

Holiday Suicide Rate Increases Are Largely A Myth

It has been believed by a large portion of the population for a long time. That the onset of the holiday season also brings with it an increase in the number of suicides that occur in the general population. That people's feelings of loneliness and despair are exacerbated by the holiday cheer and this leads to greater levels of depression. This was actually studied as a phenomenon decades ago and it was found to be largely untrue. That if anything the holiday season actually served to dampen down the number of suicides and serves to lower the numbers from their more normal levels. The study was undertaken by The National Center for Health in the 1970's and what it discovered was that on a typical day there were 34 suicides reported for every 1 million people in the U.S. population. For the holiday of Thanksgiving that number dropped to 26 suicides per 1 million. For Christmas it was at 30 per 1 million. It did however record an increase for New Year's Day. For that holiday the number would rise to 41 per 1 million. Researchers attributed this to the fact that New Year's day signified the end of the holiday season and that would bring on depressed feelings among some in the general population and lead to that kind of a spike. New Year's day aside however the rest of the holiday season actually does serve to bring on feelings of hope and optimism and good cheer and does help a good many people to perk up and chase away the blues at least for as long as the holiday season goes on.

First Decade Of The Century The Warmest Ever Recorded

Is it getting warmer in here or is it just me? Well according to the United Nation's weather Agency the first decade of this century is going to go down as the warmest ever since records began being kept starting in 1850. They also state that by the end of the century we are likely at this pace to increase the temperature on this planet by 2 degrees. There have been temperature spikes all over the world. This year Alaska experienced it's 2nd warmest July on record, New York City just experienced it's 5th warmest Month of November on record and Australia it's 3rd warmest year ever. Scientists also warn that the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are reaching new highs as well. In 2010 they expect to record a new CO2 high of 390 Parts per million. Fifty years ago the level was recorded at 315 ppm. This year on it's own is the 5th warmest year ever recorded so far. According to NASA the 5 warmest years ever recorded are in order: 2005, 1998, 2007, 2006, 2009.

"Lucy In The Sky" Girl Died This Year

If you are a Beatles fan or even if you are not you may be familiar with it. "Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds" is a song that appears on the Beatles most renowned album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band." It came out in 1967 at the height of the Psychedelic rock craze of the late 1960's. The inspiration for the song came from a 3 year old girl named Lucy Vodden who was a friend of John's young son Julian at school. If you don't know the story it goes like this: Julian came home from school one day with a painting he had done and was eager to show it to his father. John looked at it and said "It's beautiful Julian, what do you call it?" Then Julian said "It's a picture of my friend Lucy from school flying through the sky with diamonds on." John immediately got sparked with an idea and went off and wrote the song. The inspiration for the song has been quite happy over the decades to remain out of the spotlight about it and has kept a low profile and never really sought any attention. Her name was Lucy O'Donnell until 1996 when she married her childhood sweetheart and became Lucy Vodden. She only admitted to being the inspiration for the song in a BBC interview in 2007 for the first time. She also expressed a little bit of an embarrassment about the song and the drug references that are always attached to it. The song was banned on British radio when it came out because the BBC claimed it was about LSD. The Beatles denied this at first but Paul McCartney in 2004 basically admitted that the drug reference was "...Pretty obvious." Lucy Vodden for the last several years of her life had been living with the disease known as Lupus. It is a tissue disease that attacks the body's cells and causes inflammation and can often be debilitating and painful during particularly severe flare ups. In late September while on vacation with her husband she developed a complicating infection and was rushed to the hospital. She died on September 22, 2009 at the age of 46. Julian Lennon has announced that he will release a song in December with all the proceeds going to support the work of the Lupus Foundation.

Poker And The Presidents

There are some who have noticed a similarity between the game of poker and the presidency. That both of these "games" involve high stakes in some cases, a little bit of luck, the ability to successfully bluff your opponent, having the confidence to double down when you feel you have the advantage, knowing when to hold em and knowing when to fold em, and finally when you have done all that you can to just let the chips fall where they may. Some of our nations Commander's in Chief have been known to be better at the game than others. President Obama is known to engage in a hand of poker from time to time and did so often it is reported when he was in the Senate with many of his fellow Senators. He has sometimes used it as a way of breaking the ice with new colleagues and people he meets. Those who have engaged in the game with him state that he loves to play but just for fun. He is averse to playing for high stakes or making very large wagers and just likes to use the game as a way to relax with some friends and extend his political contacts and play for small pots so that there is no real pressure. Some other former presidents who fall into this category are Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., and Harry Truman. There are some former presidents who have had more of an interest in the high stakes nature of the game and were willing to take some chances to make some real money. President Eisenhower got interested in the game early in life and was already a high stakes poker player by the time he got to West Point as a young cadet. He was successful enough at it that he won himself enough money to buy his girlfriend Mamie Dowd an engagement ring when they were courting and paid for all of his uniforms at the academy. The best presidential poker player by far however was Richard Nixon. While in the Navy during World War 2 Nixon actually won a total of over $8000. It was enough money for him to finance his first run for Congress after he left the service, which he won.

Smart Bullets Coming Soon To An Army Near You

There is nothing like having an advantage over an enemy in war and smart bullets may be the ultimate advantage. The military is working on gaining such an edge with new technologies that will give future armies the ability to fight with smart bullets. Also known as EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance) They are bullets that when fired will be able to sense air currents and zero in on moving targets by adjusting their positions in mid flight to stay on course to hit a target. Some types will be laser guided. What this will mean is that soldiers will be able to fire their weapons without having to visually sight their targets before firing. They will be able to stay physically out of harms way and shoot from around corners and from behind hills and buildings and the smart bullets will still be able to hit their targets. The technology is not unlike the current Predator drones that the military is utilizing now in Afghanistan which are completely computer driven and unmanned and are assigned a target and then use GPS technology to fly to and zero in on a target and strike it. Some of these technologies have small computers inside which are able to send and receive data to constantly update their information especially if they are fired at moving targets and need to adjust in order to hit them. Some of the research is being conducted at the University of Florida in Gainesville and is being funded by Military contractor Lockheed Martin.

Search For Original Darwin Notebook Goes On

November 24th, 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the release of Charles Robert Darwin's controversial book about evolution "On The Origin Of Species." It first appeared on this date in 1859 and has been at the center of a controversy about creationism and evolution ever since. When Darwin first set out as a young man of 22 on his trip to the Galapagos Islands on board the H.M.S. Beagle in 1831 he took with him and ended up filling up a total of 15 notebooks worth of information and observations that he made while there about the wildlife forms in nature that he observed. What he wrote in these books changed the way human beings viewed the world. All 15 books were maintained at Darwin' s home named Down House in a section of southern England known as Kent. In the 1960's the books which were all on display there were microfilmed. By the early 1980's someone had noticed that one of the books about The Galapagos Islands was missing. It is suspected that someone stole it. The maintainers of Down House would not mind having it back and have been asking the public for some help in finding it. They say the book is notebook sized, square, bound in a red leather cover, and has a gold clasp. On the cover in Darwin's own handwriting are the words Galapagos and Lima.

Senator Robert Byrd Nears 57th Year In Congress

We all know that nothing lasts forever but West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd is sure making a real run at trying to dis-prove it. On November 18th, 2009 he served his 20,744th day in Congress which broke the record for longest service. He has now attended over 18,500 Senate roll calls. Has been elected to the Senate 9 times since 1958 and that was after he had served 6 years in the House Of Representatives beginning in 1953. He has now served under 11 presidents. There have been only 44 to date. Born on November 20, 1917 with the original name of Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr. His mother died one year later a victim of the Flu Pandemic of 1918. He was handed over as a child to an aunt and uncle who renamed him Robert Carlyle Byrd and raised him. He has been a democrat all his life but that is not to say that he has been liberal all that time, far from it. He especially seemed conflicted about the issue of race at times in his life. He joined the KKK in 1942 at the age of 24 and held two titles. One was Klegle, which is a recruiter, and the other was as an Exalted Cyclops which was a title he was elected to by the other members. A fierce southern racist by this time he wrote in 1944 "...I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side..." during World War Two. He quit the KKK in 1952 citing a dis-interest in the cause just before his election to the House for the first time. In 1965 he voted against the Voting Rights Act (which banned discriminatory practices against blacks with regard to voting) but voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (which banned discriminatory practices with regard to housing among other things based on race, religion, etc.) He supported The War In Vietnam in the 1960's but opposed the War In Iraq in 2003. Needless to say his health in recent years has been a bit concerning. Frequent trips to the hospital (the latest in May 2009 for what was described as "An Infection") have caused many to wonder about his fitness for service. He has at times appeared sluggish and confused on the floor of the Senate and has often been brought to the Senate floor in a wheelchair so that he could attend votes. On November 20, 2009 he will turn 92. On January 3, 2010 he is set to complete his 57th consecutive year of service.

Postscript -- Robert Byrd Died on June 28th, 2010 at age 92.

The Rise And Fall Of The Berlin Wall

On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall the event is being marked everywhere it seems. It was a watershed moment which was overdue. The first signs of the wall were seen on August 15th, 1961. It was at first a simple barbed wire fence that was erected on the orders of Soviet General Secretary Nikita Kruschev as a response to the increasing number of East Germans who were fleeing to West Germany and causing embarrassment to the Soviets internationally. During the construction anything that was in the path of the wall was removed including houses, A church, and a cemetery. Over the years the wall grew to become a double wall actually. It was two parallel walls that ran side by side with a "no mans land" or "Death Zone" in between them. The final length of the wall was 155 kilometers which is about 100 miles. The space in between the two walls was fitted with all kinds of traps designed to prevent anyone from successfully making it across. The ground was fitted with spike strips that would pierce a persons feet or shoes if he walked or ran on them. This area was nicknamed "Stalin's Lawn." The dirt in the "Death Zone" was constantly raked and kept soft in order that a person's footprints would be left behind if anyone had been there. The Wall itself had alarm systems that would quickly alert the armed guards in their watchtowers of anyone trying to get across. There were 186 total watchtowers that had 6 guards each posted. The guards had orders to shoot to kill. There were even barriers to prevent motor vehicles from getting through. At certain points the zone was guarded by dogs and minefields that were triggered by trip wires that would also in certain sections set off auto-fire devices or "spring guns" that would shoot out shrapnel in all directions. The wall itself had doors every so many feet that the guards used to inspect the wall both from the inside and outside for maintenance purposes. These doors each had two separate locks that required two separate keys from two different guards in order to open them. It is estimated that several hundred individuals lost their lives between 1961 and 1989 trying to breech the wall. Over 10,000 were caught and prosecuted by the East Germans for attempting to flee. The wall was finally taken down by a protest that grew out of control on November 9th, 1989. Protesters began hacking at the wall with sledge hammers and picks and knocking pieces of the wall off. Almost immediately President Ronald Reagan was given the bulk of the credit for causing this to happen. He gave a somewhat famous speech in 1987 in which he urged then Soviet General Secretary Mikail Gorbachev to "...Tear Down This Wall." While he is rightly deserving of some of the credit he is not however deserving of all of it. More credit in fact belongs to Gorbachev who deliberately did nothing to squelch the rising protest which led to the collapse of the wall. He could have easily stopped it but chose not to. The end of the Berlin Wall opened up the possibility for East Germany and West Germany to be united again as one country. That is exactly what happened almost one year later on October 3rd, 1990.

Winningest Teams In Sports History

In sports it is as Vince Lombardi once said: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." With the Yankees winning their latest title the other day it got me to wondering just who are the most successful teams in the history of their own sports. As it turns out the list contains the teams that you would figure it would contain. As far as baseball goes The Yankees are by far at the top of the list. With their win against the Phillies they captured their 27th title in the history of the team on November 4th, 2009. They are now officially 27 for 40 in terms of the number of World Series wins relative to the total number of Appearances in the fall classic. They have won the most by far but they have lost the most by far as well with 13 total World Series defeats. An interesting thing to note here is that by the time The Yankees won their first World Series in 1923 The Boston Red Sox had already won 5 including the first one in 1903.
In Hockey for the most part The Montreal Canadiens have been to their sport what the Yankees are to baseball but not so much lately. The Canadiens have won a total of 24 titles in 34 appearances between the years of 1916 to 1993. They have won nothing since.
Basketball has what turns out to be the most competitive rivalry going in sports. It is between the Boston Celtics and the L.A. Lakers respectively. The Celtics have won a total of 17 NBA titles in 20 appearances in the finals over the years. The Lakers, with their win last year raised their total to 15 titles in 28 appearances. With both teams still being very competitive this one is still going strong so stay tuned.
As far as Football goes it's a little complicated. If you go by the total number of Super Bowl wins then it would be The Pittsburgh Steelers with 6 including the one they won this year. If you go by the total number of NFL titles including before the Super Bowl existed then it would be The Green Bay Packers with 12 total titles. They have won 9 NFL titles and 3 Super Bowls. They have however only won once since 1967.

USAF Eyes Pilot less Planes For Future Dogfights

The U. S. Air Force fighter pilot might be going the way of the dinosaur in the near future due to the technological advancements that keep coming along. It has been obvious for a long time now that technology can in fact fly a jet fighter in a superior way to a human and do it without the hindrances and drawbacks that humans bring to any endeavour they embark upon. Probably the biggest and most limiting drawback has been that fighter pilots are not capable of tolerating the massive G - forces (Gravity forces) that are experienced while flying high performance fighter planes and this causes them to lose control of an aircraft and often leads to crashes. Human fighter pilots can usually tolerate about 5 G' s or so depending on the individual provided that they are wearing a G- Suit which is an outfit that is worn over their uniform that is designed to keep them from passing out and losing control of an aircraft in mid flight due to excessive exposure to G - forces. Sometimes G-forces during flight can exceed 9 G's. Without human pilots the jet fighters will be able to fly much faster and maneuver much more sharply in potential future dog fights with any enemy. The Pentagon is therefore looking to get the pilots out of the picture totally and replace them with computers that will not be susceptible to this issue. They are called U.A.V.'s (Unmanned Areal Vehicles) and they are the future of the Air Force. By using technologies like Satellite links and G.P.S. (Global Positioning Systems) unmanned aircraft will be able to fly anywhere in the world without the involvement of humans in the process. They will also be able to identify enemy targets and launch attacks without any people being directly involved as well. It may become total Robo-warfare. Probably the best known of these systems already exists and is in service. It is called Global Hawk. It is a pilot less aircraft, It does not even have windows on the front of the plane, it has a wingspan of about 120 feet, and flies totally on its own. Once all the data is entered into its on board computer systems it is sent off on its way to complete a mission it has been assigned. It is currently serving in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The airline industry in the civilian sector has had this technology available to it for a while now. It is in fact capable of replacing airline pilots with this kind of system. Planes can now be flown without pilots by using their auto pilot features. They could fire all of their human pilots and replace them with this technology. They have not done so because the general public has expressed a fear and a discomfort with the idea of flying in pilot less planes. The ability however is there to do it and safely too.

Most Stressful Cities In The U.S.A.

Everyone knows that modern life involves exposure to tons and tons of stress every day and from every direction it seems. Depending on where you live you may be suffering through more of it than you need to. A list has just appeared of the 10 most stressful cities in the United States to live in. The list was compiled by Forbes magazine and it considered such things as unemployment rates, loss of property values, population density, air quality, and even the price of gas. Here they are from one to ten:

1. Chicago

2. New York

3. Detroit

4. Los Angeles

5. San Francisco

6. San Diego

7. Cleveland

8. Salt Lake City

9. Providence, R.I.

10. Philadelphia

Sudan Woman On Trial For Wearing Pants

If you think the U.S. is getting more and more uptight and individual liberties are under attack more than ever you should get a load of what goes on in places like The Sudan In Africa. A 27 year old woman was arrested last July and charged with public indecency for wearing pants in a club. Her name is Ludna Hussein and when she was arrested she was charged with violating article 152 of the Sudanese criminal code of 1991 which says that no woman is allowed to wear "...clothing causing harassment to public sentiment..." for which the maximum penalty is 40 lashes and the loss of her reputation. The Sudan is a predominantly Muslim country and it is possible there for any man to simply accuse any woman in public of violating public decency standards by doing something like just wearing pants, or having her wrists exposed or her head exposed. Women wearing pants is very frowned upon there evidently and is punishable by law. During her trial her lawyers were not allowed to present any evidence or fight the case and the judge favored with the police in the matter and convicted her. He had the decency however to spare her from the 40 lashes at least. Hussein has filed an appeal in the case. As a reaction to the trial there has begun the first signs of something of a women's movement in Sudan to get this law overturned and declared unconstitutional.

Beatles Set To Become Biggest Selling Band Of Last Ten Years

Well we all knew that The Beatles were huge but who ever expected that they would still be the biggest selling band around even 40 years after they broke up. They are set up to do just that. Since the year 2000 only one act (Eminem) has sold more music than the Fab Four and most music industry people predict that by this Christmas they will over take him. As of early September Eminem has sold about 32 million CD's since the turn of the century and the Beatles are close behind at about 28.2 million. On September 9th the Beatles record label EMI released brand new remastered versions of 14 of the bands best albums which is expected to increase sales and spark new interest in the band. On top of that you had on the same day the release of the "Beatles: Rock Band" interactive video game. With the game you can pick your favorite instrument and rock on with the Fabs to 45 of their best songs spanning the length of their entire career. Most music experts figure that by the end of the year they will be the biggest selling band of the last ten years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

"Tonight Show" Ratings Falling Post Leno

There was a time when "The Tonight Show" and its ratings were number one in late night but not so much anymore. Since Conan O'Brien took over the late night hosting gig on the show at the end of May it has lost almost 2 million viewers. This of course is great news for David letterman who has been out stripping "The Tonight Show" in the ratings for a while now. As of the week ending on September 4th "Late Night" has garnered a larger audience for the 9th week in a row. It averaged 3.42 million viewers that week compared to the 2.89 That "The Tonight Show" got. While Conan O'Brien has managed to increase the number of younger viewers who watch the show (ratings are up about 26% among 18-24 year old's) the overall number of viewers keeps dropping. The biggest winner in all this may be ABC's "Nightline" which manages to acquire a larger audience than both "The Tonight Show" and "Latenight" on a regular basis and has moved into the number one spot. Some viewers have expressed that they find Conan O'Brien a little too high strung and his comedy a little too low brow as compared to Jay Leno.

Cash For Clunkers A Boom For Foreign Cars

The "Cash for Clunkers" program is now over. The government spent almost all of the 3 billion dollars it had allotted for the program and it seems that the people who benefited the most were foreign car makers. As it turned out the American public ran to the dealerships to trade in their American cars and exchange them for foreign ones. The list of the top five cars that were traded in during the program were: 1. Ford Explorer 4WD, 2. Ford F-150, 3. Jeep Grand Cherokee, 4. Ford Explorer 2WD, 5. Dodge Caravan.
The list of the top 5 cars that were purchased during the campaign are: 1. Toyota Corolla, 2. Honda Civic, 3. Toyota Camry, 4. Ford Focus, 5. Hyundai Elantra. Basically the American public threw out its American "clunkers" and replaced them with brand new foreign cars that were in most cases far more fuel efficient and more reliable overall.

U.S. Traffic Deaths Set To Hit Modern Low This Year

It seems that in The United States fewer and fewer people are dying in auto accidents this year. The country is on pace to have the lowest casualty total since 1961 in fact. In the first three months of 2009 the total number of motorists who had died in auto accidents was 7689. If that rate continues it would put the years total at 30,756. To give you an idea of how low that is in 2007 the total number was 37,621. In 2008 this figure was even lower than that by almost 10%. The decline has been attributed in large part to the recession. There is less economic activity going on and therefore fewer cars on the roads and therefore fewer accidents and fewer casualties. Another factor adding to the reduced volume of traffic has been the rising price of gas which has forced many motorists to due less driving simply as an economic necessity.

Smoking On The Rise Worldwide But Down In The West

There is good news and bad news as far as smoking goes these days. The good news is that smoking in the U.S. is at its lowest rate since records have been kept to track it as a statistic. It's currently at about 24%. The trend is the same in other western countries as well and it is mostly due to the ever rising taxes that western governments are placing on cigarettes in order to make the habit less and less affordable to the masses in an attempt to get people to give it up. The latest example of this came from President Obama who earlier in the year signed a law raising the federal cigarette tax on a pack of smokes from 32 cents to $1. The bad news is that smoking in all other parts of the world is rising sharply. It has been estimated that tobacco companies worldwide produce over 5 trillion cigarettes each year. That is over 800 cigarettes for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Here now is a list of the world's top ten countries for smokers and the percentages of their populations that currently engage in the habit: 1. Russia 48.5%. 2. Britain 35.7%. 3. Turkey 35.5%. 4. China 31.8%. 5. France 31.7%. 6. Germany 31.6%. 7. Japan 29.4%. 8. Malaysia 28.8%. 9. Ireland 26.3% 10. Italy 26.1%. (The U.S. ranked 15th on the list at 23.9%) These rankings come from the World Health Organization.

Michael Jackson Poised To Top Highest Earning Dead Celebrity List

Most people struggle in life to make enough money to live on but if you are a successful celebrity you know nothing of such struggles and if you are a dead celebrity the same holds true. Most observers agree that with Michael Jackson's passing an economic window of opportunity will open for his estate to grow over time exponentially. Michael Jackson was a big spender. Anyone who saw the Special hosted by Martin Bashir (who now is a co-host on Nightline) where in which he went on a shopping spree with the "King of Pop" and watched him drop over 6 million dollars in less than an hour on items like an oversized chess board game and alike can easily understand why he was estimated to be about 500 million dollars in debt. Jackson and his out of control spending habits were the biggest reason for that. Now that he is not around to spend money like crazy his estate will be in a position to just take in money and most observers agree that his estate's debt can likely be wiped out in less than ten years and function in the black every year after that. It is believed that he will someday take over the top spot on the list of highest earning dead celebrities and surpass people like John Lennon and Elvis who have been dead and earning millions for years. The current list of the top ten celebrity money earners goes like this according to the Forbes list: 1. Kurt Cobain - 50 million per year. -- 2. Elvis Presley - 42 million. 3. Charles Schulz (creator of "Peanuts" comic strip) - 35 million. 4. John Lennon - 24 million. 5. Albert Einstein - 20 million. 6. Andy Warhol - 19 million. 7. Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) - 10 million. 8. Ray Charles - 10 million. 9. Marilyn Monroe - 8 million. 10. Johnny Cash - 8 million. Most of this revenue is due to licencing agreements, book and record sales.

Russian Birth Rates In Steep Decline

The Russian government in addition to the many other problems it has been having to deal with over the years has a new one that recently has come to light. The birth rates are falling fast and that kind of a situation just won't do for a superpower wannabe. The current population of Russia is just over 142,000,000 people. Compare that to the 305,000,000 that make up the United States. There are estimates that by the year 2050 at the current rate of decline that the population of Russia may fall below 110,000,000. The biggest reason most experts believe has to do with Russian men and the fact that they just do not take care of themselves very well. Alchoholism in Russia is rampant and in addition to that Russian men have begun to take on the habit of smoking in larger numbers than ever. The result of this is not only lower birth rates but the average life expectancy of a Russian male now is only 58 years. Compare that to the 76 that you can expect if you are an American male or Western European male. The Russian government has been so alarmed by the trend that they have begun offering couples who marry and have more than one child cash rewards for doing so in order to promote large families and higher birth rates. If you start a family and you have more than one child you can receive a cash reward of about $1,150. That is about what the average Russian earns in a month give or take.

The Worlds Nations Spent Record Amount On Arms in 08

You would think that with the worldwide economic downturn it would leave the worlds most powerful nations in a bind in terms of increasing their spending on arms but the opposite is in fact the case. In 2008 the world's nations spent a total of 1.46 trillion dollars on weapons which is an all time high. At the top of the list of course by far is the United States. The U.S. spent a total of 607 billion dollars last year on war related spending. A distant second on the list was China at 85 billion. Third was France at 65.7 billion. Fourth the U.K. at 65.3 billion. Russia was Fifth at 58.6 billion. Germany sixth at 46.8 billion. Japan seventh at 46.3 billion. Eighth was Italy at 40.6 billion. Ninth Saudi Arabia at 38.2 billion. Last on the top ten list was India at 30 billion.

A-Rod Tell All Book Not Selling

Anybody who follows baseball can tell you that Alex Rodriguez is the king of controversy. It does not seem to be helping Selena Roberts out very much nor the publishers of her tell all book on the Yankee slugger. The book is called "A-Rod: The Many Lives Of Alex Rodriguez" and was released in early May to coincide with the return of the Yankee Third baseman to his team following an early season injury. 150,000 copies of the book were published in advance in anticipation that there would be a demand for it. The first week it was out the book sold about 11,000 copies which was good enough to place it at number 9 on the New York times best seller list for that week. Since then the book has not sold very well at all. By the end of May it had only sold a total of 16,000 copies.

British Accents Selling More Products On T.V.

There are a bunch of them on the airwaves right now already. People with British accents selling things on television and radio all day and night. There is a woman with a british accent selling a diet pill called Banital, for example. There is another one hocking for the FHM mortgage company. The U.S. window factory has a guy talking in a really bad British accent trying to get you to buy windows and patio doors. There is a commercial for Glad trash bags running with an authoratative British voice over. Probably the best and most well known of them is a guy called Anthony Sullivan who can be seen on the air selling all kinds of things from mops to vacuum cleaners and light bulbs that dont break when you drop them. He is the guy who is always offering to double the offer if you just pay shipping and handling. You might be wondering like i was why it is that half the people on t.v. all of a sudden who are trying to sell you things have British accents. Well as it turns out some advertising company did some research and it discovered that most Americans tended to trust people with British accents more than they trust anyone else. They tended to believe that they were more intelligent and less likely to be deceptive than their fellow Americans. So the advertisers of the world not ever being willing to miss a trick are now employing British accented people to sell their wares on t.v. more and more in order to capitalize on this in order to increase their sales in the midst of the current economic recession.

Air Force One NYC Fly Over Claims Political Victim

That Infamous fly over of Air Force One in late April over the Statue of Liberty ended up claiming the career of the director of the White House Military office. Louis Caldera, 53, resigned on May 8th after taking responsibility for the event.
The "stunt" caused more than a little bit of panic in New York City when Air Force One was doing a low altitude flight over parts of Manhattan which ended up frightening more than a few wealthy manhattanites in their high rise condos. The plane was taking part in a photo op to update some publicity pics and Caldera wanted to get some shots of the plane flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty. The flight was unannounced and the public was unaware of it until they saw the plane flying low in the sky. It caused a little bit of a panic and some believed that it was another 9-11 type attack. The reason the flight was not announced to the public ahead of time was likely due to fears of a terrorist attack on the plane. You cant just come out and say ahead of time that yeah Air force One is going to be flying right over the Statue Of Liberty at say 10:00 a.m. on such and such a date without inviting the possibility that some terrorist or other kind of nut might just show up at the same time and try to take some shots at the plane or something. This was likely the reason it was kept quiet. Caldera took a lot of heat from critics anyway for not letting people know about the flight in advance. Once the reaction from the public was so negative it left little choice that he would have to go despite his legitimate reasons for doing it the way he did.

The Sleepiest Countries In The Whole Wide World

We all know that you have to get enough sleep in order to have a happy and healthy life. Most experts say about 8 hours a night is optimum. In some countries around the world the people who live there sleep more than in other countries. The O.E.C.D. (Organization for Economic Development) has put out a list of the countries in the world that get the most sleep on average. According to their list France is at the top with 8.8 hours a night. Second is The U.S. at 8.6 hours. Third is Mexico at 8.4. Fourth is Germany at 8.2 hours. Fifth is South Korea at 7.8 hours.
The list also included the number of Government mandated paid leave days per year in each country. France again in this department was at the top with 30 paid leave days for each worker every year in their country. The U.K. was next with 20 days per year. Japan was next with 10. The U.S. has zero.

Prince Gives Some Wild Views In New Interview

The world almost never hears him doing any talking, you usually hear from him only when he has a new album to sell, but in a new interview Prince reveals some views that can leave you scratching your head. In an interview that aired on the Tavis Smiley show He revealed for the first time that he had epilepsy as a child. He had the disease all through his youth and he said he got cured of it one day when an angel came to him and told him he was cured. From that moment on he says he had no more trouble with epilepsy.
One of the strangest parts of the interview occurs when he reveals that he believes in a theory about "Chem Trails." This is a theory that he got from the late comic Dick Gregory that states that The Vapor trails that are left in the sky after airplanes fly over a city are really chemical sprays that are designed to disrupt peoples lives and cause unrest, fighting, and violence. Well O.k. then answer this question then. Why were people fighting with each other thousands of years before airplanes were leaving "Chem Trails" in the sky?
Do not get me wrong, he is a good musician, but nobody ever said that musicians were good at figuring out anything other than music.

Horse Drawn Buggies In NYC Must Go!!!!!

They are a fixture in and around Central Park In NYC all year around. They are the little horse drawn carriages that take tourists mostly for a slow ride around the park and the surrounding city streets for a fee. There are about 175 of them registered in the city and about 350 or so horses to pull them in shifts. While it all looks so romantic to people as they ride by the part that most people never see is the toll that it takes on the horses that have to pull these things around the city and the harm it does to these usually shy and easily frightened animals. Horses are skittish even under the most serene circumstances but when they are placed in the middle of all that hectic traffic in Manhattan they can be easily rattled and there have been a number of incidents over the last several years where in horses have been spooked by ambulance sirens and horns and have bolted and caused injuries and even deaths to riders and pedestrians.
For the horse itself it is no easy life. They are forced to live literally in the middle of the street and pull a carriage behind other cars in traffic while breathing in the tail exhaust from the cars in front of them and living mostly a nose to tailpipe life which can cause them respiratory problems that can kill them. In the summertime the heat from the pavement on the city streets can reach in excess of 200 degrees while they are pulling their buggies and some horses have collapsed from heat stroke under these conditions. The hard pavement of the streets is also hard on their feet from the constant pounding and can do damage to their limbs and in some cases horses have had to be "Put Down" after suffering this kind of damage. In the wintertime the horses are forced to pull buggies through the snow and some have slipped and broken limbs which has lead to their deaths. Because real estate space in Manhattan is among the most expensive in the world the stables that the horses are kept in are only a little larger than their own bodies and in many cases the horses are forced to sleep standing up because there is no space for them to lay down to sleep. Their food in the stables is often thrown on the floor for them to eat and this causes it to be contaminated and they as a result sometimes get sick.
I have been a lifelong New York resident and I never have gone on one and i never will. I don't like the thought that i might be adding to the suffering of some poor animal and adding to their pain. There have been calls for years from animal rights groups in the city to ban these horses from the streets and convert the buggies to motorized ones and eliminate the suffering of these animals but so far the City Council and the Mayor have done almost nothing. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has said in the past that we need the horse and buggies in the city for tourism and as a result has been willing to do little to stop it.

Common Myth About Colon Health Exposed

Maybe you have seen the infomercial that runs usually in the middle of the night. The one with the two guys talking about colon health and about how your intestines are clogged with fecal matter (shit) that piles up inside your large intestines and stays there for years and that they have a pill that you can take to "clean out your system." Its a great little informercial especially if you happen to be having something to eat at the time. The one little problem with it is that its not true. Rest assured that you do not have any fecal matter stuck to the walls of your large intestine today that your digestive process converted from some sandwich that you ate in 1992. Fecal matter does not accumulate inside the walls of your large intestine, it moves through it. It does not get stuck to the walls of your intestines and stay stuck there for years and years and you dont need a pill to clean it out. At the most your body would require about three days from the moment you eat something to pass it through your entire digestive system and either use the food you ate for energy or remove it from your body as waste. Three days give or take.

Abandoned Yachts New Sign Of Economic Times

It is usually not one of the leading economic indicators that most analysts would look to but if you were anywhere near the coast of Florida these days you would not be able to miss it. There are dozens of Yachts literally bobbing in the waves off Florida that have been abandoned by their once wealthy owners. The economic downturn has hit many formerly wealthy people hard and they are shedding all of their toys too. It costs a fortune to keep a yacht and maintain it and many owners are simply putting the boats out to sea in order to get rid of them and the costs that go along with maintaining them. Some have even gone so far as to scrape off the names and serial numbers from the boats to prevent authorities from tracing them back to their owners. There are so many of them now in fact that they are causing a little bit of a maritime problem in that they drift aimlessly out at sea and sometimes can end up in busy shipping lanes and cause a hazard. There is a small fine and some jail time even if the boats can be successfully traced back and the owners found. It has become a last resort for any boat owner who has not been able to sell their once proud sailing vessel to just simply sail it out into the Florida keys and ditch it.

Cash For Gold Type Offers Usually Bad Deal For Customers

If the bad economy has got you in a financial hole then you may have been tempted by one of the many ads that are all over the TV about how you can make quick money fast by sending in your old unwanted gold. Its a good idea but for one little thing. Be prepared to get far less out of the deal than your gold is worth. Usually it is a standard in the industry to pay out somewhere around 30%, that is provided that the company you are dealing with is reputable in the first place. What 30% means is that your going to get about 30 cents for every dollar of gold you send in. For example if you were to send in $100 dollars worth of gold it would be a normal business practice for the company you are dealing with to send you back about $30. For $500 dollars of gold you would get back about $150 and so forth. The company would then melt down the gold and sell it for the full $500 and pocket the difference as profit.
Some of the companies in the industry are a little more reputable than others however and even this small return on your gold might be wishful thinking for customers. There have been incidents where in which some of the companies in the industry have been sent $1000 dollars worth of gold and they have returned less than $200 to their customers. The problem with the whole system is that the customer has to trust the company they are doing business with to be honest and provide them with a fair assessment of the value of their gold and that sometimes may be the biggest wishful thinking of all.

New $2000 Indian Car Set For Launch

It has been talked about for a while now (including an article on this very blog several months back) and it seems like the Indian auto maker Tata Is finally ready for the launch of the Nano. The car will be interesting and attractive for two big reasons. First the price. It is set to go for 100,000 rupees which translates to about $1,983 U.S. dollars by current exchange rates. The second is the miles per gallon it can get. It is said to be able to go 50 miles and more on one gallon of gas. There has been incredible interest in the car. The companies website has gotten over 30 million hits in just the last year. Tata Motors is the largest conglomerate in India. The company is said to be worth about 50 billion dollars and is comprised of almost 100 different companies involved in several sectors of manufacturing. Tata recently acquired the companies that manufacture both the Jaguar and the Land Rover. While the Nano has a 625cc gas powered engine the company is working on an electric version of the car and also a version that can run on compressed air. The best way to think about the car is as a lesser version of The British Mini car in terms of style but more in terms of mileage. The mini will get you about 37 m.p.g. while the Nano can get you over 50 m.p.g. This fact is sure to be appealing to buyers in this economy. The car will be officially launched on March 23rd, 2009.

Hair Weave Stops Bullet - Saves Woman's life

The saying goes if you live long enough you will see everything and this is one of those things you would never expect to see no matter how long you lived. Some people have been calling it a miracle including the young woman involved. On Wednesday February 18th Brianna Bonds was sitting in a car in Kansas City when suddenly an ex-boyfriend came upon her and shot her in the head. She remembers feeling a sharp pain and some intense heat but other than that she remained unhurt. Police were called to the scene after the shooter had fled and upon examining the victim found a bullet lodged in her hair weave. Apparently the weave had stopped the bullet from penetrating her skull and thereby saved her life. The victim has decided to give credit to the lord above for saving her life instead of crediting her hair stylist for making her weave so tight that it became bulletproof. Miss Bonds says that after the incident she suffered from one of the most intense headaches she ever had but other than that she seems fine.

Economy May Already Be Beyond Saving

This week should be the last week of discussing and debating in the house and senate over the economic stimulus bill. The final amount will probably come in at just under 800 billion dollars in total. It will likely be about 790 billion or so if some republicans stop insisting that more of the aid package be cut in order to get them to vote for it to pass. The trouble with this whole idea may be simply that even if the package were 1 trillion dollars it may not be enough. The entire U.S. economy is worth about 15 trillion dollars and some economists have estimated that the damage that has been done to it in the last 5 months totals something more like 2-3 trillion and growing and that 790 billion is just not going to pack enough of a punch to move things in the right direction. Last week Vice President Biden was quoted as saying that the stimulus package has about a 30% chance of failing and ending up accomplishing nothing. Most economists would put that percentage much higher. It would be something like a boxer throwing a punch at an opponent but not having enough power on the punch to effect him and as a result not getting the desired result of laying his opponent incapacitated. Most economists are saying that 790 billion dollars will not be enough of a punch to do any good in an economy the size of that of the U.S.
In the meantime a total of about 3 million Americans have lost their jobs in just the last 6 months which is a pace that has not been experienced before in the nation's history and that rate of loss is increasing with almost 600,000 of those lost just in the month of January of this year.

Why Switch To Digital TV Will Leave Millions Behind

Last week both the house and senate passed a bill which the president has already signed to extend the date from which anonlog tv makes the switch over to digital from february 17th 2009 to June 12th. Despite this change of date some channels are planning to go right ahead and make the switch over to digital on february 17th as planned anyway. No matter what the date it is likely not going to make much of a difference for millions of tv viewers who still get their signals over the air and watch tv on anolog sets. The F.C.C. estimates that there are about 6 million households nationwide (thats about 10% of the viewing public) for whom anolog over the air viewing is their only means of watching tv and for many of them it is the only viable way. Many rural areas of the country are simply not hooked up to cable and so there is no service and therefore no option to switch over to cable even if they both wanted to or could afford to start paying for tv, which is something that they have not traditionally done before. These people may in effect be left out in the cold.
The virtues of DTV have been tallied for months now. The superior picture quality and sound have been used by proponents of the switch to promote it and get the viewing public to embrace this change. One thing they usually wont tell you about is how fragile the signal sometimes is. DTV does not work like analog. Analog is a stronger signal generally than the signals that are sent out by digital transmissions. On an analog channel even if the signal is weak or less than perfect the likely result is that the picture will be fuzzy or slightly out of focus or even have some snow on it but it will usually be viewable. On digital there are only two possibilities. The picture will either be there or it wont. If the signal is strong enough the picture will be there if it isint your tv will display a box that indicates that there is no signal and the screen will be black, there is usually no in between. The signal can also be effected by weather. If it is very windy for example the signal may disappear on your set and you will have to rescan the entire digital spectrum in order to retrieve it. All these factors will of course depend on how strong the signal is coming from the station broadcasting it. This is still very spotty and varies from region to region in the country. In some areas it is not going to matter what you do. You could even install an antenna on top of your roof to pick up signals and it still may not help because some stations signals are still going to be too weak based on where you live and you are just going to be out of luck.
The other selling point about digital TV is the increased number of channels that will be offered for free. It's called "multicasting" and what it means is that every individual station will be able to broadcast multiple channels at the same time and offer more viewing options to the public. For example, if you watch channel 5 on your tv you will notice that there will be also a channel 5.1 and 5.2 and so on. These additional channels will have different programs running at the same time from the same station and you will no longer be limited to having just one channel and one program running at a time. This is a great idea if only these stations had something to put on these extra channels that was worth watching. Channel 5 in new york, which is the local FOX station is multicasting already as are most of the channels here. On channel 5.1 it runs its usual Fox lineup of shows. On channel 5.2 it runs a channel that it also owns called MY9. If you switch to channel 9.1 you will see all the usual shows that run on MY9. If you switch to channel 9.2 you get the Fox station. The local ABC affiliate channel 7 runs an all day weather channel on its multicast. The local NBC station runs high school swimming meets and tack meets all the time. Simply put you will have more channels if you can pick them up that is but you are going to be more bored than ever. Its a lot like that old Springsteen song, "57 channels and nothing on."
Like it or not the change is gonna come and it will be permanent soon. Lets hope that the people behind it can get their act together and boost up those signals so that everyone can pick them up from a technological standpiont and lets also hope that they can find it in their hearts to put something on worth watching from a programming standpoint. I know im hoping against hope on both of these things but i cant help but keep hoping.

"Messiah" Like Expectations For Obama

The Inauguration went off almost without a hitch today. All the expected pomp and circumstance came off pretty much as planned and the nation celebrated the dawn of a new presidency. As i was watching the coverage on television the reporters on tv kept pulling people from the public aside and asking them the same question over and over. "How do you feel today about the country's first black president?" It was a cliche question and it usually garnered the same cliche answer. First of all 9 times out of 10 they were pulling over a black person and when they answered the question 10 times out of 10 it was something like "Oh I never thought i would live long enough to see this day." Once in a while though you got a different answer. There was this one reporter who went to a black middle school on Long Island that had recently changed its name to the Barak Obama Middle School and she asks one of the students there the same question. She was a teenager and she said that O.K. now that we got Barak Elected he owes us. Us meaning the black community, that's how she put it. You don't usually expect teenagers to say anything intelligent and they don't usually do and it didn't happen in this case either. As soon as she said that it got me thinking. She seemed to have no understanding of the millions of white votes it took to get Obama elected. More white votes than black votes in fact. Despite this She was like Oh No, black America got this done. As soon as she said it i got slightly pissed. I was thinking well o.k. lets see if i got this straight. Barak Obama's black father abandoned his family when Obama was 2 years old and went back to Kenya where he ends up over the years fathering 7 more children from a bunch of other women and ends up visiting his son Barak only one time the rest of his life. Obama ends up being raised by his white mother (who used to push him to study his school lessons for three hours every morning before he even went to school) whom he has said was "the kindest person i have ever had in my life" and his white grandparents in Hawaii and they not only love him and care for him they also raise him and educate him and he ends up going to Harvard and becoming the intelligent, thoughtful, charismatic person we all see before us today. So i was thinking what does a guy like that owe the African American Community in particular. The answer is he owes them nothing more or less than he owes any other community or race or anybody. Maybe that teenager and the rest of black America will get its head around this fact someday but Obama has been elected President of all the people of the United States and not president of Black America. Does he owe black America? Yes, but he owes all of America too. As president he owes everybody the best he can do to those who supported his campaign and even those who didn't. If your an American the President of the United States owes you. He does not owe the blacks first or the whites first or the women first or the Hispanics first. He owes everybody first if you know what i mean.

Obama Overdoing The Lincoln Thing

Let me ask you how have you been spending your weekend before the inauguration? The way Barak Obama has been spending it is tracing the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, which is one of his favorite things to do i am beginning to understand. He took a train from Philadelphia to Washington D. C. where he copied the same route that Lincoln took to his Inaugural. Along the way he stopped by Delaware to pick up his vice - president Joe Biden who resides in that state. This is the latest Lincoln connection that Obama has made. Did I also mention that he is going to take the oath of office on tuesday swearing on the the same Bible that Lincoln used in 1861? Did i also mention that he is studying Lincoln's speeches in order to come up with his own inaugural address for the big day too? How about the concert that he will be attending two days before the inaugural at the Lincoln Memorial with people like Springsteen and Macy Gray set to perform? Look we all Love Lincoln O.K. he was great but its getting to the point where im thinking about refering to Obama as Barak Lincoln. O.K. already you like Lincoln we get it but he is on the verge of overdoing it i think now. He is starting to look and feel like a Lincoln groupie now. President Lincoln was not the only great president we ever had o.k. It's o.k. Mr. Obama Sir if you refer from time to time to some of the other great presidents that we have had in this Union of ours over the centuries. You know George Washington was pretty good. Jefferson too was known to string a few sentences together with a great degree of skill. F.D.R. did that as well. Truman, Kennedy as well as some others. You dont even have to limit yourself to presidents either. You would do fine to refer to people like Ben Franklin or Alexander Hamilton or Winston Churchill or Martin Luthur King once in a while as well. They were pretty smart and accomplished individuals would you not agree? Its just that everytime i see Obama mentioned its also some kind of reference to Lincoln all the time too. What is Obama gonna do when he gets into the White House? Is he gonna sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom only? Is he going to sleep on the same side of the bed that Lincoln slept on too. Is he going to wear elevator shoes to achieve the same height of 6 foot 4 inches that Lincoln was believed to be? I understand about the fascination with Lincoln, I totally understand it but my point is that there are more than a few other presidents and framers in this nation's history that can also be admired as well so why not spread the admiration around a little bit and include some of these other great men once in a while. It's o.k. to broaden your scope a little bit.