Sitting with my lovely wife, we were surprise when this is what we saw on our deck!
I took the picture through a window. No way was I going out on the deck! The bear was actually standing on the deck rail, and I took the picture as he was climbing down. It seems he knows what is in a humming bird feeder.
Now I am worried about leaving my blind Jack Russel on the deck. She loves to snooze in the warm sun, but she would be no match for a black bear.
I know people who play the stock market, and get really excited when it goes up a hundred points. Its like they just hit the lottery. But what’s the real story? Its not what you think.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is the total value of the prices of the 30 individual stocks which were selected for inclusion in the Dow, and then adjusted for stock splits and dividends so that it remains consistent. It is supposed to be an indicator of the value of the 30 companies which make it up.
Lets go back in time to January 7, of 2000. At that time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11,522. At the same time, gold closed at $282 per ounce.
Today, the DJIA is about 12,200; gold is trading at close to $1500
Let’s see how the DJIA performed in relation to gold.
Gold is not worth more today than it was in the year 2000, it just costs more because of the inflation of the US dollar. Gold is the true historical money, and its price is a gauge against which other currencies are measured. Its price is not controlled by any one government, is freely traded, and cannot be inflated like paper currencies can. Also gold responds faster to economic conditions than the prices of other commodities.
Back to the DJIA: If we divide the price of the DJIA in the year 2000 by the price of gold at the same time, we find out that it cost over 40 ounces of gold to equal the Dow. Do the same math for today, and we find the DJIA is only worth 8 ounces of gold. IE: The Dow is only worth 20% of what it was in the year 2000. An analysis using any other commodity will show that the DJIA is worth less today than 10 years ago, whether it is the price of food, refrigerators, autos, dental work, etc.
It can be concluded then that the stock market has been an absolutely sure way to lose wealth in the current economic climate. Notice I said wealth, as money and wealth are not the same thing. Wealth is what you can buy with money, so if your money will buy less wealth today, you will be less wealthy even though you have more money. The government relies on the fact that the average American does not know the difference between money and wealth.
Suppose you had $1 a year ago, and could buy 1 can of soup for the $1. Today, you have $2, but a can of soup costs $3. You have more money, but less wealth. This is the fraud that the US government and the Federal Reserve perpetrates on the citizenry by continually engaging in deficit spending* , so that people do not realize the true direction the country is taking.
The stock market is a reflection of the economic health of this country.
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* Deficit Spending, or continually borrowing to maintain our socialistic lifestyle increases the money supply but does not increase wealth production, thereby decreasing the value of the currency. In the end, we all lose.
Our local newspaper is called the Pocono Record, and at one time I was a subscriber. I stopped getting the paper because there wasn’t sufficient content to hold my interest, and because of the hassle of recycling the paper. At the time, there was no online edition, which I may have opted for.
Now, the paper does have an online edition, so I checked out the subscription costs. What I found leads me to believe that the paper really doesn’t want online subscribers. It seems that their real purpose in life must be to cut down trees and stuff landfills.
Their pricing for hard copy delivery is $3.75 per week. For hard copy plus web access, they charge $4.13 per week. Ok, that’s fair. However, for a web access subscription only; the cost is $4.52 per week! Does that make any kind of sense? I think not, and I will continue to be a non- subscriber at that rate. If the web access was reasonably priced, $1 per week or less, I would probably sign up.
It’s their loss, not mine.
http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/worldclock/
For 26 years, we have owned and used a Kirby vacuum cleaner. It has been with us in 5 houses, and never had a problem. But, old age is creeping up on us (not on the Kirby), and the Kirby is heavy! So we decided to get a Dyson ball vacuum (Model DC24) thinking it would be easy to handle, and with all the new technology, it must work better than the Kirby. Right?
Well, Mr Dyson advertises his vacuum as ‘not losing suction’ because it has no bag. That may be true, but the Dyson Ball doesn’t have very much suction to lose compared to the old Kirby. It is pitifully lacking in the suction department.
On the plus side though, it does a decent job of picking up pet hair on short pile carpet and hardwood flooring. That’s all it does well. Get it on thick carpeting and the beater bar motor stalls out and trips its circuit breaker. Then it requires some amount of ‘fiddling’ to reset it and start over.
The worst thing about the Dyson Ball is that it simply won’t pick up anything bigger than dust. It won’t pick up dog kibble, or cheerios on the floor. It won’t pick up gravel brought in on the soles of shoes. It won’t pick up the glass shards from the jar I just dropped. It won’t pick up anything with any thickness to it; it just pushes it around. I think it is not well suited to pet owners or families with little children. Apparently, its not suited to me either.
The wand attachment is another piece of poor design work. It is clumsy to attach, and using it requires carrying the vacuum around which is fairly heavy when not rolling around on its ball.
One more problem I have encountered is that the latch which holds on the dirt receptacle is the same latch that opens the bottom of the dirt receptacle if you push it too far. I pushed it too far and dumped all the dirt on the floor when I tried to remove the receptacle to empty it. Empty it I did, just not where I wanted to.
Its a good thing we kept the Kirby ’84.
Whether it will be a happy one or not remains to be seen, but the question is: Is it really New Year? If you remember your numeric prefixes from school, you will remember that sept refers to seven, oct refers to eight, nov refers to nine, and dec refers to 10. During the time of the Roman Empire, December was the 10th month and March was the first. That would make February the last month.
Knowing February was the true last month explains why it is the shortest month: We ran out of days! It also explains why leap day occurs at the end of February.
Still, I would recommend dating your checks 2011 starting January 1st.
Happy New Year!
Its always blowing here, perfect place for a windmill if the township allowed me to have one. Last night though was really windy. It was so windy in fact that the wind tore off a piece of the fascia on one end of my house, and the wind blowing through the vents in my garage turned it into a huge tuned cavity that growls. Then there is the 3 foot drifts of snow completely covering my front sidewalk.
I cannot repair the fascia damage, I will have to hire someone with the appropriate tools and materials to do that. It might have to wait a while, as I would not want anyone climbing a ladder in 50 mile an hour wind gusts, not to mention the well below freezing temperature. I will have to clear the front walk as soon as the wind lets up a bit.
I think that had I known how windy it is here, I would have bought land somewhere else. The top of the mountain here (elevation 1853 feet) does have advantages in the summer though. With the nice breeze and cooler temperatures, air conditioning is rarely needed. It doesn’t flood here either 
At my age, I doubt if I will ever move again. If I could pick another place to live, the mountains might not be my first choice, but I would definitely look for a wooded area. I love having the trees and the wildlife surround me, and having the birds and animals visit my backyard every day.
Who wouldn’t want to see this guy?
Who would have thought?
Researchers at the Seoul National University impregnated the resin used to make laminate flooring with colloidal silver. Not only did the silver inhibit bacterial growth on the floor surface, but surprisingly, cockroaches avoided it.
In the test of cockroach avoidance, for the silver iontreated,
laminate wood flooring, the relative avoidance rate
was 88.2% and 86.0%, before and after environmental
treatment, respectively. With colloidal silver treatment
onto the surface of the laminate flooring, using MF resin
for overlay paper impregnation, we have found an
environmentally friendly, interior material. Under this
framework, our data facilitate further study and insight
into the biological effects of colloidal silver. In particular to
obtain an explanation for cockroach avoidance of colloidal
silver impregnated surfaces.
It makes me wonder how cockroaches could sense silver in the laminate in the first place, and why they would avoid it in the second. Are roaches smarter than people?
You can download the report at www.adhesion.org if you feel so inclined to read about roaches
First off, I do not read nor do I speak Hebrew, but I found some things very interesting about the language.
Some years ago, I ran across a presentation that showed that every Hebrew letter could be recreated by the shadow cast by one geometric solid object. The object resembled a flame, and by positioning the light source and the object’s orientation correctly, every letter was produced perfectly. This strongly suggests that every letter was perfectly designed and not accidental or a product of evolution. Imagine trying to find a single shape which would recreate all the characters of the modern alphabet!.
This discovery was made by Stan Tenen, who has spent decades researching the ancient languages from a mathematical perspective. You can find his work at the Meru Foundation website, http://www.meru.org Mr. Tenen also states that the 27 Hebrew letters can be divided into 3 groups of nine which divide the set into Archetypes, Inner or Spiritual, and Outer or Physical attributes. This lends even more credence to the Hebrew language being highly engineered and not just some willy nilly collection of symbols.
Recently, I discovered another group of researchers who call themselves the Chronicle Project. They have discovered that each Hebrew letter represents a concept, and that a Hebrew word is fully defined by the combined concepts of its letters. Therefore, any single word has but one definition, no matter where or how it is used. They call this Self Defining Hebrew. The Chronicle Project is using these concepts to reveal the ancient texts in their original form, without any translational or doctrinal errors. In essence, this makes Hebrew as precise as any computer language.
The Chronicle Project can be found at http://www.thechronicleproject.org and you can watch their teaser video on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xshXjAduNaY
I have long felt that our true history, the history of mankind has been kept secret from us through distorted language and forbidden archaeology. For me, this is one more validation that we are not who or what we have been told we are.
In a previous post, I detailed my experience with cataract surgery, lens implants, and the ruinous results I was left with. I also said that I would provide an update if anything changed, so here it is.
After visits with several other eye doctors, I was referred to a Dr. Tipperman, who is a Will’s Eye Hospital associate, and who specializes in removing and inserting intraocular lens implants. I went to see Dr. Tipperman at one of his branch offices in Philadelpha, and within 10 minutes, he determined why my left implant was causing me so much trouble. It so happens that the implant ( a Technis multifocal) installed by the original surgeon was not centered in my eye correctly, and I was always looking through the line in the bifocal of the lens. He offered to realign the lens, or explant it and install a new lens of my choice.
I chose to have a toric lens implanted. A toric lens is one which corrects for far vision, and astigmatism (it has a spherical and a cylinder correction but no near vision correction). Dr. Tipperman set up a schedule for the surgery on my left eye, and offered to contact the lens manufacturer to ask that the lens be donated to save me the $1800 cost of the lens.
The surgery itself was uneventful. I was awake during the procedure, which only took a few minutes. Dr. Tipperman inserted the new lens underneath the old one, and then cut the old one into pieces with very tiny scissors and removed it. During my checkup the next day, he found that my intraocular pressure had increased quite a bit, and so he drained a little fluid from my eye to relieve it. I had no further trouble with it, and the next day had very good distant vision in my left eye.
At my 3 week checkup, I made an appointment to have my right lens explanted and a new toric lens installed. Again, the surgery was uneventful, and the outcome was even better than with the left eye. It is now 3 weeks since I had the surgery in my right eye, and my far vision is nearly perfect. Of course, I need reading glasses for near work, but I do not have any of the ghosting, starburst, multiple images, and pain which plagued me after my first set of surgeries.
The difference in the quality of care I received is truly amazing. Dr. Tipperman has given me my vision back.
If you want to watch the kind of surgery I had with Dr. Tipperman, you can watch him do a similar surgery with a different patient. WARNING: NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH!
