1 Terrabyte

Costco is advertising a computer with an Intel Q8200 processor running at 2.33 GHz, 4gig of memory and a 1TB hard drive, all for $499.99.

I don't know about you, but I can't seem to gey my head around the idea of a machine with 1 Terrabyte of mass storage on my desktop.

Seems like yesterday I was getting my first hard drive - a Seagate ST-225 with 25Megs of storage. It cost almost $800.00 just for the drive. I also had 640K ram at a cost of around $700.00.

I remember Bill Gates telling averybody the reason he maxed out his software for ram at 640K... Nobody will ever need more than 640K ram.

They were saying the same thing about a 25Meg hard drive... Who would ever need it?

Incredible Photos

A volcano on an uninhabited Russian island popped its cork recently, just as the space station zoomed overhead and took some amazing photos of the event.

A sample below:

left click to enlarge

You can easily see two pyroclastic flows, one on the upper right of the cone, the other on the lower right... lighter in color.

Previous flows can be seen settling on and under the water.

The Sun also Rises...

... And with it comes the light of day. But some folks still can't see the forest for the trees.

The below photo is of a self-proclaimed homosexual after he mouthed off and got his lights punched out. He calls himself Perez Hilton, but his real name is Mario Lavandeira. Perhaps hiding behind a pseudonym makes him feel somehow safe from physical retaliation when he gets in somebody's face. Well guess what? Not always.


Looks like it will take another few lumps from other fed-up citizens who also won't tolerate personal verbal insults in public for this mouthy and childish individual to see the light of day, since he apparently wants to continue to be obnoxious and disgusting.

I recall that the fine for public fisticuffs in my once hometown of Santa Fe was $150.00. The satisfaction gained by shutting up this public nuisance would be well worth the money.

Perhaps he should become a United States Senator like Barney Franks. Then the Secret Service would have to protect him, and like fellow openly homosexual Franks, he could then "mouth" off endlessly... at taxpayer expense.

Ribbit

Wyoming is receiving $100,000 in taxpayer money for their "Toad Recovery Program".

No, I'm not kidding. Wyoming actually has a toad recovery program, so obviously it's not only the lunatics in Washington that are out of control, Wyoming has a few of it's own to get a rope around.

So whats the deal here? Must be that folks in Wyoming have fewer warts than their neighbors, and have no intention of being labeled as Verruca Vulgaris* Disadvantaged.

*The virus that causes warts.

Blocked!

Holy cow...

I have another blog called "The Iron Horse", consisting of photographs(my own, drawings(my own), and hundred-year-old railroad postcards from a personal collection I purchased some years back.

It's about as non-political as a blog can get, and it's been blocked by Google!

Turns out it was identified as "Spam". I have followed Google's prompts to request that they do not delete the blog in twenty days as they intend.

Bummer.

What's In A Name

Suspected unconstitutional president Obama, all the news channels - even FOX - refer to the Iranian Ayatollah as the "Supreme Leader".

This Ayatollah, this old man who hates all things modern and western, claims that everything he does and says is divinely directed.

Well. If he's being divinely directed, then he's not the supreme leader. He's just what he appear so be... a religious hardliner with way too much unchallengeable authority.

What we should be calling him is what he really is... a religious dictator.

So why aren't we?

Because Obama calls him "The Supreme Leader", and our fellating national press says whatever he says. The president of the United States - legal or not - constantly refers to the dictator of an enemy state as "The Supreme Leader".

Does that bother you? That our president, who claims to be a Christian... but having known Muslim roots, having been taught in Muslim schools as a child, a man who bows to Muslim authorities, does it bother you that he refers to an Ayatollah as "The Supreme Leader"?

It ought to.

No one in our government should ever refer to this guy as a "Supreme" anything.

Why?

A billion and a half Muslims listen every day to the president of the United States referring to their Ayatollah as "The Supreme Leader". Every time Obama does this, he further empowers them, he re-enforces their attitudes of them being right and us wrong. It strengthens their view that Obama is nothing more than another subordinate and the we - as his subjects - need "correcting".

Obama is just being polite, you say. He's being civil to the head of another nation. Chamberlain treated Hitler with respect... You know how that worked out.

Words do have meaning in the rest of the world and carry consequences.. even if they don't appear to in the United states.

Surface Water On Mars...

... A very long time ago.

A University of Colorado at Boulder research team has discovered the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars, an indication of a deep, ancient lake there and a finding with implications for the discovery of past life on the Red Planet.

If Mars had liquid water on its surface in the past, then it had to have an atmosphere at the same time.

Planetary scientists think the oldest surfaces on Mars formed during the wet and warm Noachan epoch from about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years ago that featured a bombardment of large meteors and extensive flooding. The newly discovered lake is believed to have formed during the Hesperian epoch and postdates the end of the warm and wet period on Mars by 300 million years.

Does that mean there could have been an atmosphere and liquid water on Mars for those 300 million years? That's enough time to get a lot of life forms up and running.

Speaking of large meteors, look at the below rendition of Mars produced by the Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter, MOLA. The lower the elevation, the darker the color.

left click to enlarge

That big, deep blue area is a spot where a very large body impacted Mars. It is called Hellas impact basin. It is nearly six miles deep and 1,300 miles across.

It most likely blew away all of the atmosphere that allowed liquid water to remain on the surface. Once the atmosphere was gone, the surface water just evaporated away into space.

That impact would have been incredible to witness. Unfortunately, any life form that did witness this impact did not survive very long, perhaps only seconds.

Better hope nothing that size has us in it's sights.

All New Scam

Just got a check for $27.68 in the mail supposedly as my part of a settlement in a case involving the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) against Kenneth and Teresa Taves, and Dennis Rappaport and their businesses J. K.Publications, Inc. KJD Service Corp., Herbal Care, Inc., and "Discreet Bill, Inc".

Hmmm... that "Discreet Bill, Inc." sounds a lot like a porno collection agency. Had I ever used a credit card on a porno website sometime in my past? Not only no, but hell no.

I was supposedly charged on my credit card by "Netfill", or "N-Bill", or "Mid Services corp.", or "Webtel".

The attached letter explains:

The unauthorized charges were incurred by you many years ago, and you may no longer have the credit card that was charged.

Oh well of course! No description of the charge, no date of the charge, no identifying the credit card involved. Further I am directed to:

Please cash this check no later than August 10, 2009. After that date , your check could bounce and you could be charged a bank fee.

You betcha.

There is a website to go to for more info: http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/9823616.shtm

So I went, and it contains a bunch of scanned records of a case in 2000 against the above mentioned folks and companies, finding them guilty, fining them millions, and ordering them to not engage in this sort of stuff for ten years.

Guess what? It's been ten years. I had a Colorado address ten years ago, but this "check" came to me, correct name, correct address, correct Zip, here in Texas.

My conclusion... They are up to something again, and are willing to pay anybody $27.00 - apparently with a real check - to get your bank, your bank account number, your bank routing number, and your signature.

Along with a correct name and current address, what could a few professional scammers do with that sort of information?

Biden Admits Guesswork

Biden tells "Meet the Press" that "everyone guessed wrong" on the impact of the stimulus, economy was worse off than anyone thought.

"everyone guessed wrong". Trillions of dollars thrown away on guesses.

When you are up to your neck in a cesspool, saying "I told you so" has little value... When you realize you're about to be in over your head.

The Long Slide Downward...

... is accelerating.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Some Michigan counties have turned a few once-paved rural roads back to gravel to save money.

More than 20 of the state's 83 counties have reverted deteriorating paved roads to gravel in the last few years, according to the County Road Association of Michigan. The counties are struggling with their budgets because tax revenues have declined in the lingering recession.

Another one of those "unanticipated consequences" the government is so famous for not seeing. See where this is happening? Michigan.

Once a powerhouse of industry, Michigan is now the poster child for the federal governments disastrous trade policies, the wholesale giving away of our industries to foreign competitors, and the bribe-taking habits of our esteemed Congress and its temple monkeys who fellate business tycoons on a daily basis.

Jobs, businesses and industries go away... tax base collapses.

One more result: Gravel roads.

It always amazes me to repeatedly see how those those bribe-grasping temple monkeys in Washington could not see how giving away millions and millions of jobs and how allowing thousands and thousands of American factories and industries to collapse would result in anything other than the economic upheaval we are witnessing.

Obama and Congress just sold Crysler to Fiat and the Union bosses. Who will they sell Chevy to? What does it take to wake Americans up?

This recent "recovery" of the stock market? Don't let that fool you. Our collapsing eeconomy will ultimately take its legs out completely.