Former VP Dick Cheney Loses His Heartbeat

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been struggling with heart problems for many years. His latest treatment for his recurring condition has left him now in fact without a pulse. Recently he has been rushed to the hospital complaining of chest pains, which is something that has happened in the past many times. The way the doctors decided to treat his condition this time is with the use of a Ventricular Assist Device (VAD). What a VAD does is that it keeps blood flowing throughout the body without the need for a pumping action, which thereby eliminates a pulse. In the past VAD's were used as a temporary fix while heart patients waited for transplants but the technology has progressed to such a point that doctors are looking at the device as more of a permanent fix now. VAD's work so well in fact that they are eliminating the need for transplants all together in some patients.

Thomas Jefferson's Little Big Mistake

There are some people who hold the image of Thomas Jefferson to be, if not perfect, than near perfect. Then there are the rest of us who believe that he was a great and important man who sometimes made mistakes. One of his smaller mistakes has recently come to light with the help of modern technology. It seems that in the original rough draft of the Declaration Of Independence he more than once made the mistake of referring to the American People as "subjects." Instead of "Citizens." Now if you know anything about the difference between a Democracy and a monarchy then you know that this is a serious no no. "Subjects" are always subject to the rule of a monarch. In a Democracy there are no subjects only citizens who have rights, and can vote, and have a say in how their government is run and are not subject to the desires of a king. It was a Freudian slip that Jefferson made and he sought to fix it. With the use of high resolution digital cameras the document was photographed and it was discovered that Jefferson himself probably was the one who erased the word "subject" in several places and wrote the word "citizens" over it in its place.

Forclosure Rates In U.S. Set To Reach Record HIgh

Since the beginning of the worldwide economic downturn which began in September of 2008 the number of Americans who have been losing their homes has been increasing. 2010 may be the worst year yet. So far this year the U.S. is on pace to have over 1 million homes foreclosed upon by banks and other lending institutions which would be a new record. 2009 was the worst year so far. There were over 900,000 homes which went into foreclosure in that year. To give you an idea about where the foreclosure rate used to stand in more normal economic times in a typical year in the U.S. before the economic meltdown the number of American homes that would usually be foreclosed upon was about 100,000 a year, give or take.

The Trouble With Wind Power

For many people the idea of a future where energy is generated from the wind through the use of wind turbines is a promising hope and maybe a saving grace for the environment and mankind. It would be great if it could work but consider some of the drawbacks: Some residents in the Midwest who currently live near wind farms that have been established to generate power have been complaining about the loud noise that emanates from the motors on the wind turbines. In order for a turbine to maximize it's potential for generating electrical power it has to have its propellers facing the wind. They have motors built into them to turn the entire head of the turbine into the wind to do this every time there is a change in the wind direction. When the motors kick in to turn the propellers they generate a piercing noise that can be heard from long distances and nearby residents often complain. Another complaint is the so called "Flashing" effect that occurs when a turbines propellers are turning and they are in the sunlight. They tend to block out the sun for a brief moment with their blades as they rotate and this repeated effect causes the sunset to flash in the windows of homeowners living nearby. It's kind of a flickering effect instead of a steady sunlight hitting your window in the late afternoon and evening hours. Many people simply do not like the aesthetics of having dozens of wind turbines spinning in a wind farm. Home owners close by feel that it can be a blight and reduce the values of their properties and are therefore opposed to them. Wind turbines only begin to generate electrical power when the wind is spinning the propellers of the turbines in excess of 10 m.p.h. Any less wind speed and no power is generated. Obviously they do not even spin when the wind is not blowing at all which poses a problem in terms of having a consistent, reliable source of power. When a wind turbine is installed in the ground it has to be supported by a base of cement in order to hold it's entire weight securely. You can't just stick it into the dirt because it would likely tip over due to the fact that the ground underneath it would shift. These slabs of concrete that must be built as a base for a wind turbine require earth movers in order to establish a hole in the ground deep enough before the concrete is poured in and allowed to dry. The large amounts of cement that have to be mixed and manufactured to put in wind turbines is also damaging to the environment due to the many steps involved in the process and the amount of energy required to produce concrete. It is a heavy industrial process which requires a lot of energy and generates a lot of heat and adds to the general global warming problem worldwide.

The Prettiest And Most Foolish Russian Spy

If you are living in New York City these days you have not been able to escape the news of the F.B.I. sting of that group of Russian spies that have been uncovered operating both in the city and in New Jersey. Easily the most interesting of the group is the 28 year old Anna Chapman (real name Anya Kuschenko) who's cover was to pose as a party girl/real estate agent while she spied for Moscow. Not only is she the most stunning looking of the bunch she may also have been the most dim witted too. According to court documents filed by the justice department in the case, which describe the day to day operations of the F.B.I. sting, Chapman not only did not seem to have the first clue that she was being followed but engaged in some truly ponderous and stunningly foolish behavior for a secret agent. When she was contacted by the F.B.I., who were pretending to be Russian Intelligence, she was not even suspicious that the call to set up a meeting came from someone other than her usual contact. A person in fact that she had never seen or heard of before. Later that day when they met at a coffee shop in Manhattan she began complaining that her laptop was having connection problems and she handed it over to the agent and asked him to have it fixed. The laptop contained all the information the F.B.I. needed about all of her communications back to Moscow. After the meeting was over Chapman left and again failed to notice that she was being tailed by other agents. She went into a Verizon store where she bought a new cell phone and a couple of prepaid phone cards. On her way down the street she quickly discarded the receipt. The agents recovered it from the trash can and found out that she gave a fake Russian name in order to buy the phone (Irine Kutsov) and a fake address (99 Fake Street). Giving a fake Russian name may not be the most clever idea if you are a Russian spy trying to hide the fact that you are a Russian spy. The silliness of the fake address is truly like someone asking to be caught. Her careless behavior is even more surprising when you consider that she holds a Masters Degree in Economics, her former husband has described her as having an I.Q. of 160, and she is believed to be able to fluently speak four languages. President Obama has said that this spy case is not going to effect the "Restart" that the President wants in U.S./Russian relations. The President knows that if we make a big case out of this thing the Russians are going to start rounding up American spies in Moscow and that would make the whole matter so not worth it.

What's Old Is New Again In High Tech

Well the day has finally arrived. The New Apple i-Phone 4 has just been released and the number of individuals that have camped out in front of the Apple i-Store in Midtown Manhattan can finally go in and get one. One of the biggest features of this new version of the I-Phone is that it can allow you to see the person that you are talking to live on a video camera when you call them to chat as long as they too have an i-phone 4. This technology sounds amazing and it has been impressing the heck out of a lot of people who are hearing about it for the first time. Few people seem to realize that this video phone capability goes all the way back to the World's Fair of 1964 when it was first debuted. Back at the fair (in a section of high tech displays known as "Futurama") The Video Phone was a lot bigger and bulkier than the slick I-Phones of today of course. It was basically a telephone with a TV like monitor attached to it. If the person you were calling had the same set up you could dial the number and when the call connected you would be able to see the other person on the other end of your call as long as they were standing in front of their monitor. For some reason the video phone back then did not take off and the idea died for many decades. Now 50 years later it is coming out again and the public seems to think it is state of the art technological advancement and they are jumping all over themselves to own one. It is the same kind of story that happened with the wireless remote control for televisions. The wireless remote debuted in the 1950's but again for some reason the public was not interested in it and it did not sell. Because of this rejection the American public opted to stick with their old style TV sets with the little knob tuners that they had to get up from their couches to turn in order to change the channel. The wireless remote control was again re-introduced in the 1980's and then it took off big. Now we have a generation of young people who don't even know what a TV with knobs on it even looks like. That kind of TV would probably look to them like what a cave man's eating utensils would have looked like to my generation back when I was a kid watching a TV with knob tuners on it.

Presidents And The Generals They Fire

With the firing of General Stanley McChrystal from his position running the war in Afghanistan (and for demonstrating the monumental lapse in judgement of actually saying to a reporter what he actually thinks about the President and the Vice-President and several other members of his cabinet) one has to take note that it is not the first time in history that this kind of thing has occurred. A similar conflict happened between President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 during the Korean War. General MacArthur wanted two things from Truman. The first one was that he wanted the president to give him the green light to fight all the way up the Korean peninsula and actually take the war over the North Korean border and go right into China which would have greatly expanded the war. The second thing was that MacArthur wanted the president to authorize the use of nuclear weapons to settle the conflict. When Truman refused MacArthur took his complaints about the president to the press more than once and then he wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress criticizing Truman. MacArthur even gave Truman the ultimate act of disrespect when he deliberately failed to salute the president when he came off his plane when Truman went to the war front in Korea to discuss matters directly with him. MacArthur got canned. It effectively ended his career as a military man. The same kind of thing occurred between General George McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. McClellan was in charge of the Union Army when a disagreement occurred between him and the President about how to prosecute the war. McClellan was relieved of his command. In the weeks and months that followed McClellan referred to Lincoln both as an idiot and also as a well meaning buffoon. He even ran for president against Lincoln in the 1864 election but his candidacy never got any real traction and Lincoln was re-elected.