Madame Butterfly
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Posts posted by Madame Butterfly
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^never fails to make me laugh
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^needs small words to comprehend
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^is one of the King's groupies
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Some friends and I went to Myrtle Beach after school let out.
We got there at night, checked in at our hotel, put on our suits and ran down to the beach.
We were wave surfing, body surfing. Which was much better than doing it on a Great Lake, let me tell you.
Then these nice marines came up and asked "do you know why the helicopters are flying over?"
We said "manuvers"
No, they were looking for sharks.
Now whether or not this was a lie or the truth, I decided right then and there body surfing would always be done on a rough day at Lake Huron than in the Atlantic. :unsure:
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I love love LOVE soft shell tacos!!
Chicken with the right seasons, the right cheeses, some silantro, a bit of sour cream, red onion......:unsure:
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Remembrance of Things Future: The Mystery of Time
By DENNIS OVERBYE, The New York Times
Current theories of space and time, including Einstein's, aren't perfect, but scientists haven't been able to replace them -- yet.
(June 28) -- There was a conference for time travelers at M.I.T. earlier this spring.
I'm still hoping to attend, and although the odds are slim, they are apparently not zero despite the efforts and hopes of deterministically minded physicists who would like to eliminate the possibility of your creating a paradox by going back in time and killing your grandfather.
"No law of physics that we know of prohibits time travel," said Dr. J. Richard Gott, a Princeton astrophysicist.
Dr. Gott, author of the 2001 book "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time," is one of a small breed of physicists who spend part of their time (and their research grants) thinking about wormholes in space, warp drives and other cosmic constructions, that "absurdly advanced civilizations" might use to travel through time.
It's not that physicists expect to be able to go back and attend Woodstock, drop by the Bern patent office to take Einstein to lunch, see the dinosaurs or investigate John F. Kennedy's assassination.
In fact, they're pretty sure those are absurd dreams and are all bemused by the fact that they can't say why. They hope such extreme theorizing could reveal new features, gaps or perhaps paradoxes or contradictions in the foundations of Physics As We Know It and point the way to new ideas.
"Traversable wormholes are primarily useful as a 'gedanken experiment' to explore the limitations of general relativity," said Dr. Francisco Lobo of the University of Lisbon.
If general relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity and space-time, allows for the ability to go back in time and kill your grandfather, asks Dr. David Z. Albert, a physicist and philosopher at Columbia University, "how can it be a logically consistent theory?"
In his recent book "The Universe in a Nutshell," Dr. Stephen W. Hawking wrote, "Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible."
When it comes to the nature of time, physicists are pretty much at as much of a loss as the rest of us who seem hopelessly swept along in its current. The mystery of time is connected with some of the thorniest questions in physics, as well as in philosophy, like why we remember the past but not the future, how causality works, why you can't stir cream out of your coffee or put perfume back in a bottle.
But some theorists think that has to change.
Just as Einstein needed to come up with a new concept of time in order to invent relativity 100 years ago this year, so physicists say that a new insight into time - or beyond it - may be required to crack profound problems like how the universe began, what happens at the center of black hole or how to marry relativity and quantum theory into a unified theory of nature.
Space and time, some quantum gravity theorists say, are most likely a sort of illusion - or less sensationally, an "approximation" - doomed to be replaced by some more fundamental idea. If only they could think of what that idea is.
"By convention there is space, by convention time," Dr. David J. Gross, director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and a winner of last year's Nobel Prize, said recently, paraphrasing the Greek philosopher Democritus, "in reality there is. ... ?" his voice trailing off.
The issues raised by time travel are connected to these questions, Dr. Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and author of the book "The Physics of Star Trek," said. "The minute you have time travel you have paradoxes," Dr. Krauss said, explaining that if you can go backward in time you confront fundamental issues like cause and effect or the meaning of your own identity if there can be two of you at once. A refined theory of time would have to explain "how a sensible world could result from something so nonsensical."
"That's why time travel is philosophically important and has captivated the public, who care about these paradoxes," he said.
At stake, said Dr. Albert, the philosopher and author of his own time book, "Time and Chance," is "what kind of view science presents us of the world."
"Physics gets time wrong, and time is the most familiar thing there is," Dr. Albert said.
We all feel time passing in our bones, but ever since Galileo and Newton in the 17th century began using time as a coordinate to help chart the motion of cannonballs, time - for physicists - has simply been an "addendum in the address of an event," Dr. Albert said.
"There is a feeling in philosophy," he said, "that this picture leaves no room for locutions about flow and the passage of time we experience."
Then there is what physicists call "the arrow of time" problem. The fundamental laws of physics don't care what direction time goes, he pointed out. Run a movie of billiard balls colliding or planets swirling around in their orbits in reverse and nothing will look weird, but if you run a movie of a baseball game in reverse people will laugh.
Einstein once termed the distinction between past, present and future "a stubborn illusion," but as Dr. Albert said, "It's hard to imagine something more basic than the distinction between the future and the past."
The Birth of an Illusion
Space and time, the philosopher Augustine famously argued 1,700 years ago, are creatures of existence and the universe, born with it, not separately standing features of eternity. That is the same answer that Einstein came up with in 1915 when he finished his general theory of relativity.
That theory explains how matter and energy warp the geometry of space and time to produce the effect we call gravity. It also predicted, somewhat to Einstein's dismay, the expansion of the universe, which forms the basis of modern cosmology.
But Einstein's theory is incompatible, mathematically and philosophically, with the quirky rules known as quantum mechanics that describe the microscopic randomness that fills this elegantly curved expanding space-time. According to relativity, nature is continuous, smooth and orderly, in quantum theory the world is jumpy and discontinuous. The sacred laws of physics are correct only on average.
Until the pair are married in a theory of so-called quantum gravity, physics has no way to investigate what happens in the Big Bang, when the entire universe is so small that quantum rules apply.
Looked at closely enough, with an imaginary microscope that could see lengths down to 10-33 centimeters, quantum gravity theorists say, even ordinary space and time dissolve into a boiling mess that Dr. John Wheeler, the Princeton physicist and phrasemaker, called "space-time foam." At that level of reality, which exists underneath all our fingernails, clocks and rulers as we know them cease to exist.
"Everything we know about stops at the Big Bang, the Big Crunch," said Dr. Raphael Bousso, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley.
What happens to time at this level of reality is anybody's guess. Dr. Lee Smolin, of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, said, "There are several different, very different, ideas about time in quantum gravity."
One view, he explained, is that space and time "emerge" from this foamy substrate when it is viewed at larger scales. Another is that space emerges but that time or some deeper relations of cause and effect are fundamental.
Dr. Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara of the Perimeter Institute described time as, if not an illusion, an approximation, "a bit like the way you can see the river flow in a smooth way even though the individual water molecules follow much more complicated patterns."
She added in an e-mail message: "I have always thought that there has to be some basic fundamental notion of causality, even if it doesn't look at all like the one of the space-time we live in. I can't see how to get causality from something that has none; neither have I ever seen anyone succeed in doing so."
Physicists say they have a sense of how space can emerge, because of recent advances in string theory, the putative theory of everything, which posits that nature is composed of wriggling little strings.
Calculations by Dr. Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and by others have shown how an extra dimension of space can pop mathematically into being almost like magic, the way the illusion of three dimensions can appear in the holograms on bank cards. But string theorists admit they don't know how to do the same thing for time yet.
"Time is really difficult," said Dr. Cumrun Vafa, a Harvard string theorist. "We have not made much progress on the emergence of time. Once we make progress we will make progress on the early universe, on high energy physics and black holes.
"We are out on a limb trying to understand what's going on here."
Dr. Bousso, an expert on holographic theories of space-time, said that in general relativity time gets no special treatment.
He said he expected both time and space to break down, adding, "We really just don't know what's going to go."
"There is a lot of mysticism about time," Dr. Bousso said. "Time is what a clock measures. What a clock measures is more interesting than you thought."
A Brief History of Time Travel
"If we could go faster than light, we could telegraph into the past," Einstein once said. According to the theory of special relativity - which he proposed in 1905 and which ushered E=mc² into the world and set the speed of light as the cosmic speed limit - such telegraphy is not possible, and there is no way of getting back to the past.
But, somewhat to Einstein's surprise, in general relativity it is possible to beat a light beam across space. That theory, which Einstein finished in 1916, said that gravity resulted from the warping of space-time geometry by matter and energy, the way a bowling ball sags a trampoline. And all this warping and sagging can create shortcuts through space-time.
In 1949, Kurt Gödel, the Austrian logician and mathematician then at the Institute for Advanced Study, showed that in a rotating universe, according to general relativity, there were paths, technically called "closed timelike curves," you could follow to get back to the past. But it has turned out that the universe does not rotate very much, if at all.
Most scientists, including Einstein, resisted the idea of time travel until 1988 when Dr. Kip Thorne, a gravitational theorist at the California Institute of Technology, and two of his graduate students, Dr. Mike Morris and Dr. Ulvi Yurtsever, published a pair of papers concluding that the laws of physics may allow you to use wormholes, which are like tunnels through space connecting distant points, to travel in time.
These holes, technically called Einstein-Rosen bridges, have long been predicted as a solution of Einstein's equations. But physicists dismissed them because calculations predicted that gravity would slam them shut.
Dr. Thorne was inspired by his friend, the late Cornell scientist and author Carl Sagan, who was writing the science fiction novel "Contact," later made into a Jodie Foster movie, and was looking for a way to send his heroine, Eleanor Arroway, across the galaxy. Dr. Thorne and his colleagues imagined that such holes could be kept from collapsing and thus maintained to be used as a galactic subway, at least in principle, by threading them with something called Casimir energy, (after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir) which is a sort of quantum suction produced when two parallel metal plates are placed very close together. According to Einstein's equations, this suction, or negative pressure, would have an antigravitational effect, keeping the walls of the wormhole apart.
If one mouth of a wormhole was then grabbed by a spaceship and taken on a high-speed trip, according to relativity, its clock would run slow compared with the other end of the wormhole. So the wormhole would become a portal between two different times as well as places.
Dr. Thorne later said he had been afraid that the words "time travel" in the second paper's title would create a sensation and tarnish his students' careers, and he had forbidden Caltech to publicize it.
In fact, their paper made time travel safe for serious scientists, and other theorists, including Dr. Frank Tipler of Tulane University and Dr. Hawking, jumped in. In 1991, for example, Dr. Gott of Princeton showed how another shortcut through space-time could be manufactured using pairs cosmic strings - dense tubes of primordial energy not to be confused with the strings of string theory, left over by the Big Bang in some theories of cosmic evolution - rushing past each other and warping space around them.
Harnessing the Dark Side
These speculations have been bolstered (not that time machine architects lack imagination) with the unsettling discovery that the universe may be full of exactly the kind of antigravity stuff needed to grow and prop open a wormhole. Some mysterious "dark energy," astronomers say, is pushing space apart and accelerating the expansion of the universe. The race is on to measure this energy precisely and find out what it is.
Among the weirder and more disturbing explanations for this cosmic riddle is something called phantom energy, which is so virulently antigravitational that it would eventually rip planets, people and even atoms apart, ending everything. As it happens this bizarre stuff would also be perfect for propping open a wormhole, Dr. Lobo of Lisbon recently pointed out. "This certainly is an interesting prospect for an absurdly advanced civilization, as phantom energy probably comprises of 70 percent of the universe," Dr. Lobo wrote in an e-mail message. Dr. Sergey Sushkov of Kazan State Pedagogical University in Russia has made the same suggestion.
In a paper posted on the physics Web site arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0502099, Dr. Lobo suggested that as the universe was stretched and stretched under phantom energy, microscopic holes in the quantum "space-time foam" might grow to macroscopic usable size. "One could also imagine an advanced civilization mining the cosmic fluid for phantom energy necessary to construct and sustain a traversable wormhole," he wrote.
Such a wormhole he even speculated, could be used to escape the "big rip" in which a phantom energy universe will eventually end.
But nobody knows if phantom, or exotic, energy is really allowed in nature and most physicists would be happy if it is not. Its existence would lead to paradoxes, like negative kinetic energy, where something could lose energy by speeding up, violating what is left of common sense in modern physics.
Dr. Krauss said, "From the point of view of realistic theories, phantom energy just doesn't exist."
But such exotic stuff is not required for all time machines, Dr. Gott's cosmic strings for example. In another recent paper, Dr. Amos Ori of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa describes a time machine that he claims can be built by moving around colossal masses to warp the space inside a doughnut of regular empty space into a particular configuration, something an advanced civilization may be able to do in 100 or 200 years.
The space inside the doughnut, he said, will then naturally evolve according to Einstein's laws into a time machine.
Dr. Ori admits that he doesn't know if his machine would be stable. Time machines could blow up as soon as you turned them on, say some physicists, including Dr. Hawking, who has proposed what he calls the "chronology protection" conjecture to keep the past safe for historians. Random microscopic fluctuations in matter and energy and space itself, they argue, would be amplified by going around and around boundaries of the machine or the wormhole, and finally blow it up.
Dr. Gott and his colleague Dr. Li-Xin Li have shown that there are at least some cases where the time machine does not blow up. But until gravity marries quantum theory, they admit, nobody knows how to predict exactly what the fluctuations would be.
"That's why we really need to know about quantum gravity," Dr. Gott said. "That's one reason people are interested in time travel."
Saving Grandpa
But what about killing your grandfather? In a well-ordered universe, that would be a paradox and shouldn't be able to happen, everybody agrees.
That was the challenge that Dr. Joe Polchinski, now at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., issued to Dr. Thorne and his colleagues after their paper was published.
Being a good physicist, Dr. Polchinski phrased the problem in terms of billiard balls. A billiard ball, he suggested, could roll into one end of a time machine, come back out the other end a little earlier and collide with its earlier self, thereby preventing itself from entering the time machine to begin with.
Dr. Thorne and two students, Fernando Echeverria and Gunnar Klinkhammer, concluded after months of mathematical struggle that there was a logically consistent solution to the billiard matricide that Dr. Polchinski had set up. The ball would come back out of the time machine and deliver only a glancing blow to itself, altering its path just enough so that it would still hit the time machine. When it came back out, it would be aimed just so as to deflect itself rather than hitting full on. And so it would go like a movie with a circular plot.
In other words, it's not a paradox if you go back in time and save your grandfather. And, added Dr. Polchinski, "It's not a paradox if you try to shoot your grandfather and miss."
"The conclusion is somewhat satisfying," Dr. Thorne wrote in his book "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy." "It suggests that the laws of physics might accommodate themselves to time machines fairly nicely."
Dr. Polchinski agreed. "I was making the point that the grandfather paradox had nothing to do with free will, and they found a nifty resolution," he said in an e-mail message, adding, nevertheless, that his intuition still tells him time machines would lead to paradoxes.
Dr. Bousso said, "Most of us would consider it quite satisfactory if the laws of quantum gravity forbid time travel."
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When's it going to get fixed?They are supposed to come today. Its one of those deals where they tell you that the repairman will come anytime between noon and the end of time........
:P The heat wave will have ended by the time they get to your place!! :unsure:
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^ :unsure: When's it going to get fixed?
Towel around my wet hair
Bathrobe.
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You Set Me Free
Michelle Branch
Can't you see?
There's a feeling that's come over me
Close my eyes
You're the only one that leaves me completely breathless
No need to wonder why
Sometimes a gift like this you can't deny
'Cause I wanted to fly,
so you gave me your wings
And time held its breath so I could see, yeah
And you set me free
There's a will
There's a way
Sometimes words just can't explain
This is real
I'm afraid
I guess this time there's just no hiding, fighting
You make me restless
You're in my heart
The only light that shines
there in the dark
'Cause I wanted to fly,
so you gave me your wings
And time held its breath so I could see, yeah
And you set me free
When I was alone
You came around
When I was down
You pulled me through
And there's nothing that
I wouldn't do for you
'Cause I wanted to fly,
so you gave me your wings
And time held its breath so I could see, yeah
And you set me free
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Process in John Paul Sainthood Begins
By NICOLE WINFIELD, AP
VATICAN CITY (June 28) - The process to beatify Pope John Paul II officially opens Tuesday with a solemn ceremony in which all the clerics involved take an oath of secrecy and promise not to accept any gifts that might sway their decisions.
But even before that opening ritual, it seemed that virtually all the key players were in favor of sainthood for the late pope, including the official whose job it is to play ''devil's advocate,'' the one who investigates any doubts about John Paul's saintliness.
In an interview Monday, the Rev. Giuseppe D'Alonzo, promoter of justice for the Diocese of Rome, said he was neither for nor against beatification for John Paul, who was viewed as a saint by many even before his April 2 death.
But when asked his personal opinion about John Paul's merits, he conceded: ''It's the opinion that ordinary people have, simple people who we all saw in St. Peter's Square when there was the funeral Mass.''
D'Alonzo was apparently referring to the chants of ''Santo Subito!'' or ''Sainthood Immediately!'' that erupted during John Paul's April 8 funeral. The calls prompted the new pope, Benedict XVI, to waive the traditional five-year waiting period and allow John Paul's saint-making process to begin immediately.
On Tuesday, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, a close adviser of the late pope and his vicar for Rome, presides over the Latin-filled rite in St. John Lateran basilica to open the cause. D'Alonzo and the other clerics involved will swear to ''faithfully and diligently'' do their work, keep their proceedings secret and not accept ''any type of gift'' that might corrupt the process.
The postulator, or main advocate for the cause, Polish Monsignor Slawomir Oder, will hand over the list of witnesses who will testify - a number he said last week was ''more than a few dozen.'' D'Alonzo will also present the list of questions to be put to the witnesses.
Also attending the ceremony is an official church delegation from John Paul's native Poland, including the outgoing Archbishop of Krakow Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, and his replacement, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the late pope's personal secretary.
In an interview Monday with the Polish Press Agency, Dziwisz said he hoped Pope Benedict XVI would announce John Paul had been made a saint when he travels to World Youth Day this August in Cologne, Germany.
''The chances of that happening are close to zero,'' he acknowledged, but he added: ''The world already canonized John Paul II, we are now only waiting for the final confirmation of this fact.''
Indeed, by Monday, the Diocese of Rome reported that more than 20,000 people had visited the official Web site for the cause, and that 100 e-mails a day were arriving at the postulator's address testifying to John Paul's virtues. Most of the messages had arrived from Latin America, followed by Europe, led by Italy and Poland.
Aside from Oder, D'Alonzo has one of the key tasks in the process - a job that used to be known as the ''devil's advocate.''
John Paul dispensed with the title ''devil's advocate'' in 1983 reforms to streamline the saint-making process - a move that drew criticism from some that it removed the only checks and balances in the system.
''Put another way, everyone involved in a canonization process now has a stake in its positive outcome,'' Kenneth L. Woodward wrote in his 1990 book ''Making Saints: how the Catholic Church determines who becomes a saint, who doesn't and why.''
D'Alonzo insisted the promoter of justice fulfills the same task as the devil's advocate, which is to raise objections, investigate doubts and seek clarification about a candidate's virtues.
''I ask questions about weak points that I have to try to clarify for the cause so it can proceed,'' he said.
Once the cause officially opens, theological experts will review John Paul's published works to determine if they are theologically sound, a historical commission will gather information to document his life and D'Alonzo and Bella will start interviewing witnesses.
Once all the material is gathered, the Diocese of Rome turns the case over to the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which appoints commissions to review the case and make a final report to the pope, who must decide if John Paul has lived in a ''heroic'' way.
If the Vatican then confirms a miracle has occurred after John Paul's death thanks to his intercession, he can be beatified. A second miracle is needed for him to be made a saint.
Oder said last week he had already received ''interesting'' reports of a possible miracle that warranted further investigation.
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Tourists Flock to Superman's Adopted Home
By JIM SUHR, AP
METROPOLIS, Ill. (June 27) - In this sleepy Ohio River town that claims Superman as its favorite son, 50-year-old Jim Hambrick has landed somewhere between reality and fantasy. All things Superman rule here, from the 15-foot bronze statue of the buff comic-book hero on Superman Square to the ''S''-emblazoned T-shirts that can be found just about everywhere.
Images of Superman grace the water tower and billboards, pointing the way to downtown. A phone booth in the business district is just for show - it doesn't have a phone.
In the midst of it all is Hambrick, owner of a storefront souvenir shop and Super Museum - with a sign out front that bills the one-time furniture store as ''the Largest Superman Collection on the Planet.''
''It's a borderline obsession for me; I had to channel it somewhere,'' the married father of four said, decked out in a Superman T-shirt that hardly stands out in this town he moved to 13 years ago from Hollywood.
''We all need a hero, and Superman is the grandest of them all,'' he said.
The 166-year-old town of 6,500 residents has no real connection to the fictional crimefighter, beyond the fact that Superman's co-creator, Jerry Siegel, happened to name his setting ''Metropolis'' when he first wrote the strip in the 1930s.
"We all need a hero, and Superman is the grandest of them all."-Jim Hambrick
But it's a place that's more Mayberry than Metropolis - where few visitors can resist being photographed next to the Superman statue, their chests puffed out and hands on hips in classic Superman style.
Locals have called this Superman's official home since the early 1970s, when the Illinois Legislature declared it to be. The local newspaper was The Metropolis News until 1972, when it became The Metropolis Planet to get it more in line with the fictional Daily Planet that had Clark Kent - Superman's alter ego - and Lois Lane on the payroll.
Crime is as visible as vapor, as one might expect in the digs of a caped crimefighter, aside from those who years ago found the square's previous Superman statue so hideous they blasted it with gunshots, proving it couldn't outrun a speeding bullet.
''We're the only Metropolis in the whole United States,'' boasts Karla Ogle, chairwoman of the recent Superman Celebration, staged each spring for the past 27 years.
Tens of thousands of people stop in Metropolis each year, and residents expect to see that already muscular tourism trade flex even more with two new Superman-related flicks due out in 2006.
One's about a fictionalized detective (played by Academy Award winner Adrien Brody) investigating the death of George Reeves, television's Superman in the 1950s; it co-stars Ben Affleck as Reeves and Diane Lane. The other is the much ballyhooed ''Superman Returns'' starring Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey.
With those movies, ''we've got some coattails to ride on,'' Hambrick said.
Inside Hambrick's store, the Superman theme blares across a wide collection of comic books and the typical tourist fare of T-shirts, shot glasses and action figures.
Need some Kryptonite? The $5 price for a rock painted a glowing green apparently hasn't made shoppers' knees buckle - Hambrick says he sells a wheelbarrow a week of the stuff.
Hambrick grew up without a father and found a role model in TV's Superman. His collection, which he values at $4 million, started at age 5 with a Superman lunchbox.
''That's what started the madness,'' he jokes.
The 75,000 items on display are just one-fifth of his total collection. His most prized item: a glass-encased Superman costume Reeves wore in 1957 TV episodes. Hambrick values the get-up - the last of 11 he says he's owned over the years - at $250,000.
The museum also has props and wardrobe items from TV episodes and movies, as well as collectibles including Superman peanut butter.
During Metropolis' recent Superman festival, aspiring actor Christopher Dennis - with dyed black hair that gave him a striking resemblance to the late movie Superman Christopher Reeve - walked the streets in the Man of Steel's regalia.
''It's a blast,'' Dennis, 37, says as a young boy calls out: ''Hi, Superman.''
He shakes the boy's hand, then hoists him into his arms for a picture.
''The biggest pleasure is putting smiles on children's faces,'' he says.
Jeremiah Osteen, 6, and his brother Jonathan, 3, also got their picture taken while Dennis was in Hambrick's shop. The boys from Cincinnati wandered about wide-eyed as their parents scrambled to keep up.
''We always wanted to come here,'' said Jack Osteen, their father and a lifelong Superman fan.
Great Caesar's Ghost! Superman's hold on the imagination spans generations.
''I like that he's super,'' Jeremiah says, staring at a Superman suspended from the museum's ceiling. ''I always wished I could fly, too.''
06-27-05 1801EDT
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Updated: 08:39 AM EDT
Teenage Boy Bitten by Shark in Florida
Second Attack Comes Three Days After Girl Was Killed
By BILL KACZOR, AP
AP
The twin attacks prompted authorities to hand out safety literature about sharks.
CAPE SAN BLAS, Fla. (June 28) -- A 16-year-old boy who lost a leg following the second shark attack in three days along the Florida Panhandle was in critical condition Tuesday and doctors were hoping he hadn't suffered any brain damage from the blood loss.
Craig Adam Hutto, of Lebanon, Tenn., survived the attack Monday but his leg was amputated.
Dr. Reed Finne, a cardiovascular surgeon at Bay Medical Center in Panama City, said Tuesday Craig's leg suffered irreparable damage to blood vessels and nerves between the hip and knee, as well as to most of the surrounding muscle.
Finne said it was too soon to tell if Craig suffered any brain damage from blood loss. In 2001, a 9-year-old Mississippi boy, Jesse Arbogast, suffered severe brain damage from blood loss when a shark tore off his arm as he swam near Pensacola.
''We're hopeful. He's young, he's healthy. He should be OK, but he's still sick,'' Finne said of Hutto.
Hutto was fishing in waist-deep water about 60 feet from shore with his brother and a friend on Monday when the shark grabbed him in the right thigh, nearly severing the leg, said Capt. Bobby Plair of the Gulf County Sheriff's Office.
Three days before the attack on Hutto and about 80 miles away near Destin, 14-year-old Jamie Marie Daigle died from her injuries after her leg was mutilated by a bull shark.
The attack on Hutto was witnessed by Karen Eaker, 42, of Horn Lake, Miss.
''Within five seconds it was obvious there was something wrong,'' Eaker said. ''We had heard the word 'shark' and then we saw the red water and the tug-of-war going on between the brother and the shark.''
Nearby, Bill Pascoe, 37, of Jacksonville, was scooping up shells with his 5-year-old son when they heard a commotion. As he got closer, he saw blood in the water.
''One man jumped in and kind of looked like he had it in a head lock and was punching it on the head to get him to let loose,'' Pascoe said.
A doctor who happened to be nearby began treatment once the teen was ashore. He was then taken to Panama City's Bay Medical Center, where the leg was amputated. Craig's family members, including the brother who was with him in the surf, declined comment at the hospital.
Gulf County's Board of County Commissioners issued a mandatory closure for beaches in the county until midday Tuesday. Destin-area beaches reopened Sunday.
The number of shark attacks rise in the summer because the animals come closer to shore to search for food, said John Tyminski, a senior biologist with the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.
''I don't think there is any reason to come to a conclusion that this is strange,'' Tyminski said of the two recent attacks.
Daigle, of Gonzales, La., had been had been swimming with a friend about 100 yards from shore in neighboring Walton County when a shark bit her in the leg. Paramedics and an air ambulance crew were unable to revive her.
Florida averaged more than 30 attacks a year from 2000 to 2003, but had only 12 last year, said George Burgess, curator of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He attributed the drop to the four hurricanes that hit Florida last year, keeping residents and visitors away from beaches.
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Heaven
The Psychodelic Furs
heaven is the whole of the heart
and heaven won't tear you apart
yeah heaven is the whole of the heart
and heaven don't tear you apart
there's too many kings wanna hold you down
and a world at the window gone underground
there's a hole in the sky where the sun don't shine
and a clock on the wall and it counts my time
and heaven is the whole of the heart
and heaven won't tear you apart
yeah heaven is the whole of the heart
and heaven don't tear you apart
there's a song on the air with a love-you line
and a face in a glass and it looks like mine
and i'm standing on ice when i say that i don't hear planes
and i scream at the fools, wanna jump my train
and heaven is the whole of the heart
and heaven won't tear you apart
yeah heaven is the whole of the heart
and heaven don't tear you apart
yeah heaven
ah heaven
yeah heaven
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it's a catchy tune.
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Strange Alaskan lakes linked to heat waves
Computer model finds explanation for uniform shape
NASA
By Robert Roy Britt
Updated: 8:29 p.m. ET June 27, 2005
In Alaska, thousands of mysterious lakes are all the same shape and have grown steadily for thousands of years, the geological record shows. They are the fastest growing lakes known in the world.
Scientists have tried various ideas to explain the steady growth -- the lakes expand up to 15 feet every year -- and the lakes' consistent shape and orientation, but no theory has held up.
Now a scientist who has worked previously on puzzles as wide-ranging as the spiral shape of Mars ice caps says he's solved the terrestrial mystery.
The solution might also help explain a series of oddly similar lakes near the U.S. East Coast.
The lakes range from puddle-sized to more than 15 miles long. They are shaped like stretched-out eggs, with their skinny ends always pointing northwest. They're grouped in a vast field twice the size of Massachusetts.
"Lakes come in all sizes and shapes, but they're rarely oriented in the same direction," said Jon Pelletier, an assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The odd characteristics result from seasonal slumping of the banks when the permafrost thaws abruptly, Pelletier said today. Permafrost typically includes a top layer, called the active layer, that melts each summer and refreezes in winter.
A lake grows when rapid warming from a sudden heat wave melts its frozen banks and the soggy soil loses strength and slides into the water.
How it works
Previous theories had suggested, among other things, that prevailing winds were behind the shapes.
Pelletier's computer model shows, instead, that heat waves get the credit.
If the temperature warms gradually, the ice portion of the permafrost melts slowly, allowing the water to drain out of the soil and leave relatively firm sand or sediment behind. However, if an early heat wave melts the permafrost's ice rapidly, the result is a soggy, unstable soil.
But why the uniform orientation and shape?
The lakes are all on a gently sloping landscape, and the downhill end of a lake always has a shorter bank.
The computer model revealed that shorter banks melt more and have bigger slumps. So when a lake experiences thaw slumping, the lake grows more in the downhill direction than it does uphill, generating the lakes' characteristic elongated-egg shape.
"We knew about the thaw slumping, but we didn't know it had to do with the shape of the lakes," Pelletier said.
To confirm the model reflects reality, Pelletier plans to check whether the lakes have indeed grown more in the downhill direction, as the computer predicts.
"It can be done by comparing aerial photos over time but no one's done it," he said. "There are a lot of photos from past decades."
A computer model describing the process will be published June 30 in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The Carolina Bays
A variation of the computer model might eventually explain a series of lakes from Maryland to Georgia that also share a similar orientation.
The Carolina Bays, as they are known, all point back at a single faraway spot, and they're all oriented toward the coast. Scientists have suggested they might have been created all at once when an ancient meteor hit Earth at an oblique angle. Large fragments sprayed out and dug the lakes into existence, the thinking goes.
Pelletier suspects there might be a better explanation.
"These Carolina Bays look awfully similar" to the Alaskan lakes, he told LiveScience in a telephone interview.
So he tweaked his model to account for the differing conditions. Instead of permafrost, the Carolina Bays sit atop limestone. The lake water was made to virtually dissolve the limestone in a manner that generated lakes with uniform orientations that match the real versions.
Pelletier cautioned that this possible explanation for the Carolina Bays is for now "very speculative."
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Ready pop?
Yep.
Ready son?
Uh-huh.
Let's go!
Let's go!
One! two!
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here.
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, got some adverbs here.
Come on down to Lolly's, get the adverbs here!
You're going to need
If you write or read,
Or even think about it.
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Got a lot of lolly, jolly adverbs here.
Anything you need and we can make it absolutely clear...
An adverb is a word
(That's all it is! and there's a lot of them)
That modifies a verb,
(Sometimes a verb and sometimes)
It modifies an adjective, or else another adverb
And so you see that it's positively, very, very, necessary.
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here.
Father, son, and Lolly selling adverbs here.
Got a lot of adverbs, and we make it clear,
So come to Lolly! (Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)
Hello, folks, this is Lolly, Sr., saying we have every adverb in the book, so come on down and look.
Hello folks, Lolly, Jr. here. Suppose your house needs painting -- how are you going to paint it? That's where the adverb comes in. We can also give you a special intensifier so you can paint it very neatly or rather sloppily.
Hi! Suppose you're going nut-gathering; your buddy wants to know where and when. Use an adverb and tell him!
Get your adverbs!
Use it with an adjective, it says much more,
Anything described can be described some more.
Anything you'd ever need is in the store,
And so you choose very carefully every word you use.
Use it with a verb, it tells us how you did,
Where it happened, where you're going, where you've been.
Use it with another adverb -- that's the end.
And even more...
How, where, or when,
Condition or reason,
These questions are answered
When you use an adverb.
Come and get it!
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here.
Quickly, quickly, quickly, get those adverbs here.
Slowly, surely, really learn your adverbs here.
You're going need 'em if you read 'em,
If you write or talk or think about 'em ... Lolly! (Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)
Announcer: If it's an adverb, we have it at Lolly's! Bring along your old adjectives, too - like slow, soft, and sure. We'll fit 'em out with our L-Y attachment and make perfectly good adverbs out of them!
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(Lolly, Lolly, Lolly!)
Adverbs deal with manner, place, time,
(Lolly, Lolly, Lolly!)
Condition, reason,
(Father, son, and Lolly)
Comparison, contrast
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Enrich your language with adverbs!
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Besides, they're absolutely free!
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Indubitably!
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Just being honest.
Anyway, does anyone remember School House Rock, those catchy little tunes you'd carry in your head and never get out?
Well, here's one!!
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.
Conjunction Junction, how's that function?
I got three favorite cars
That get most of my job done.
Conjunction Junction, what's their function?
I got "and", "but", and "or",
They'll get you pretty far.
"And":
That's an additive, like "this and that".
"But":
That's sort of the opposite,
"Not this but that".
And then there's "or":
O-R, when you have a choice like
"This or that".
"And", "but", and "or",
Get you pretty far.
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up two boxcars and making 'em run right.
Milk and honey, bread and butter, peas and rice.
Hey that's nice!
Dirty but happy, digging and scratching,
Losing your shoe and a button or two.
He's poor but honest, sad but true,
Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up two cars to one
When you say something like this choice:
"Either now or later"
Or no choice:
"Neither now nor ever"
Hey that's clever!
Eat this or that, grow thin or fat,
Never mind, I wouldn't do that,
I'm fat enough now!
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up phrases and clauses that balance, like:
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He cut loose the sandbags,
But the balloon wouldn't go any higher.
Let's go up to the mountains,
Or down to the sea.
You should always say "thank you",
Or at least say "please".
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up words and phrases and clauses
In complex sentences like:
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up cars and making 'em function.
Conjunction Junction, how's that function?
I like tying up words and phrases and clauses.
Conjunction Junction, watch that function.
I'm going to get you there if you're very careful.
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
I'm going to get you there if you're very careful.
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
I'm going to get you there if you're very careful.
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I had assumed you were.
Does anyone else remember seeing KC & The Sunshine Band on the Mike Douglas Show?
Radio has this one and made me remember those flashy costumes they wore.
Artist: KC & the Sunshine Band
Song: Please Don't Go
Babe, I love you so
I want you to know
that I'm going to miss your love
the minute you walk out that door
so please don't go
don't go, don't go away
please don't go
don't go, I'm begging you to stay
If you live, at least in my life time
I had one dream come true
I was blessed to be loved
by someone as wonderful as you
Hey hey hey
I need your love
I'm down on my knees
beggin' please please
please don't go
don't you hear me baby
don't leave me now
oh no no no don't go
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This song never fails to bring a smile to my face, and to sing along with it.
I often transfer it over to friends on msn when they need a lift.
Johnny Are You Queer?
Josie Cotton
Johny what's the deal boy
Is your love for real boy
when the lights are low
You never hold me close Now I saw you today boy
Walking with them gay boys
Now you hurt me so, now I gotta know Johny are you queer?
'Cause when I see you dancing with your friends
I can't help wondering where I stand
I'm so afraid I'll lose you
If I can't seduce you
Is there something wrong?
Johny come on strong.
Why are you so weird, boy?
Johny are you queer boy?
When I make a play
You're pushing me away
'Cause when I see you dancing with your friends
I can't help wondering where I stand
Johny you've forsaken
A love you could be takin'
I want to give it to you,
But you never come through
Oh, why are you so weird, boy? Johny are you queer boy? When you asked for a date
I thought that you were straight.
But Johny are you queer?
Johny are you queer boy?
Johny are you queer boy?
Johny are you queer boy?
Hey Johny.. Johny are you.. you know...
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Son of Wal-Mart founder killed in plane crash
58-year-old John Walton, one of world's richest, was piloting ultralight craft
Spencer Tirey / AP file
Wal-Mart heir John Walton was killed Monday in a Wyoming plane crash, the company said.
BREAKING NEWS
Updated: 9:29 p.m. ET June 27, 2005
BENTONVILLE, Ark. - John Walton, the son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and a member of the company’s board, died Monday in a plane crash in Wyoming.
Walton, 58, was piloting the ultralight that crashed shortly after takeoff from the Jackson Hole Airport in Grand Teton National Park, the company said.
In March, Forbes Magazine listed Walton as No. 11 on its list of the world’s richest people, with a net worth of $18.2 billion, tied with his brother Jim Walton.
Walton had been a member of the board of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. since 1992. Company spokeswoman Mona Williams said the company notified its employees worldwide late Monday of his death.
Walton was an Army veteran who served with the Green Berets as a medic during the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Silver Star for saving the lives of several members of his unit while under enemy fire, according to the company. He attended the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.
Walton is survived by his wife, Christy, and son, Luke; his mother, Helen; two brothers, Rob and Jim; and a sister, Alice.
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Shuttle panel gives NASA an incomplete
Three toughest safety recommendations still unmet, task force says
Updated: 7:08 p.m. ET June 27, 2005
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A panel overseeing NASA’s resumption of shuttle flights concluded Monday that the space agency has failed to meet the toughest safety recommendations put in place after the Columbia disaster.
Despite exhaustive work and considerable progress over the past 2 1/2 years, NASA has been unable to eliminate the possibility of dangerous pieces of foam and ice from breaking off the external fuel tank and striking the shuttle at liftoff, the return-to-flight task force said.
In addition, NASA still does not have a clear idea of all the potential threats from ice, and still lacks a practical way to fix holes and other damage caused by flyaway launch debris, the group said.
It was not immediately clear if NASA would further delay the shuttle launch in light of the task force’s recommendations. In a statement following Monday’s meeting, agency Administrator Michael Griffin said he welcomed different points of view and that he expected “a healthy debate” in this week’s flight review by NASA.
Monday’s findings came after a deliberate and prolonged discussion by the 26-member task force marked by some dissent. It was the group’s last public meeting, and the chairman said he would present a summary report to NASA before its leaders gather later this week to discuss shuttle readiness and set a formal launch date for Discovery.
NASA has been aiming for a liftoff of Discovery as early as July 13 on the first mission since Columbia’s destruction during re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003.
Task force chairman Richard Covey, a former astronaut, stressed that the three recommendations debated Monday represented the most technically challenging of the 15 put forth by Columbia accident investigators as being essential for the resumption of shuttle flights.
The task force found in previous sessions that NASA has complied with those 12 other recommendations considered essential for the resumption of shuttle flights.
While NASA has come up with good techniques for inspecting the shuttle in orbit, it does not meet the intent of the Columbia investigators’ recommendation for having the capability to make emergency repairs in space, the task force said. The space agency has also put off long-term improvements to the shuttle’s thermal shielding because of the fleet’s planned retirement in 2010, making full compliance with the recommendations impossible in some cases, members noted.
Task force member Joseph Cuzzupoli, a Kistler Aerospace Corp. vice president, said NASA got a fast and early start in understanding the foam-loss problem, and minimized and reduced the amount that can come off. Unfortunately, he noted, the problem of ice building up on the tank once filled with super-chilled fuel was tackled late — just a few months ago.
“Foam is characterized pretty good,” Cuzzupoli said at a news conference later in the day. “The ice story is still coming together.”
Concern over ice prompted NASA, in the spring, to delay Discovery’s flight to the international space station from May to July.
Griffin has insisted for weeks that he and his top managers will have the final say on when and whether it’s safe to resume shuttle launches, regardless of what advisory groups like the task force have to say.
Covey said Griffin will take the task force’s independent advice and use it to determine whether it’s safe for shuttles to fly.
“Quite honestly, we were trying to stay away from being someone who gave a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down on whether it’s OK to fly. We weren’t going to do that,” Covey said.
He added, “Is it a miss if you’re at 95 percent? ... We haven’t seen anything that says the progress they’ve made is of concern, relative to the safety of the vehicle.”
Covey was pressed by reporters whether he personally thought it was safe for NASA to launch Discovery in July. He declined to answer specifically but said that if he were younger and on flight status, he would have no concern about flying aboard Discovery.
Task force member James Adamson, another former astronaut, said it is NASA’s job — not the task force’s — to determine whether the risks are acceptable and whether it’s safe for Discovery to fly.
He noted, however, that he did not believe that the risks could be reduced significantly even if NASA were to postpone the launch from July to September, the next available launch window.
A suitcase-size chunk of insulating foam came off Columbia’s external fuel tank during liftoff in January 2003 and carved a hole in the left wing that let in deadly atmospheric gases during re-entry two weeks later. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Listening to Love Stinks radio, a counter program to all those "love song" stations that appear after dark.
Browsing the net.
What is your Astrological Sign?
in The Voting Booth
Posted
Aquarius