Monday, December 31, 2007

Treadmill

1.46 miles.


Sunday, December 30, 2007





Lunch

Left over Pot Roast, Green Tea and vitamins.


Vista Crash

Windows Explorer crashed.


Treadmill

Walked 1.1 miles on the treadmill.


Breakfast

Eggs con guiso, came out good. Dee liked it to.


Vista Defender

I just finished a full system scan using Windows Defender, it found nothing. The scan took over 12 hours.


Diabetes

My blood sugar was at 115 this morning. Not to bad considering how much I ate yesterday, and that I woke up so late.


Saturday, December 29, 2007

Energizer

I just used up the last two of my Energizer coupons, I got two flashlights at Target. I tried to get something at Costco but they do not accept manufacturers coupons.


Tired

I just walked 3.85 miles on the treadmill.


Thursday, December 27, 2007

The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007

1. George W. Bush
Charges: Is it a civil rights milestone to have a retarded president? Maybe it would be, if he were ever legitimately elected. You can practically hear the whole nation holding its breath, hoping this guy will just fucking leave come January '09 and not declare martial law. Only supporters left are the ones who would worship a fucking turnip if it promised to kill foreigners. Is so clearly not in charge of his own White House that his feeble attempts to define himself as "decider" or "commander guy" are the equivalent of a five-year-old kid sitting on his dad's Harley and saying "vroom vroom!" Has lost so many disgusted staffers that all he's left with are the kids from Jesus Camp. The first president who is so visibly stupid he can say "I didn't know what was in the National Intelligence Estimate until last week" and sound plausible. Inarguably a major criminal and a much greater threat to the future of America than any Muslim terrorist.

Exhibit A: "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."

Sentence: Dismembered, limbs donated to injured veterans.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Vista Crash

Well this one is a little different, I did not have Windows Explorer open, all I did was empty the recycle bin and I got a message that Windows Explorer had crashed. Could it be it crashed just because I was thinking of opening it up?


Monday, December 24, 2007

Vista Crash

Windows Explorer crashed.


Sunday, December 23, 2007

Vista Crash

Windows Explorer crashed.


Friday, December 21, 2007

New Lithium Battery

Nanowire battery holds 10 times the charge of existing ones

Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices.

The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.

Another Response to TEA's Forced Resignation of Christien Comer

Letter from Texas University Biology Professors
Defending Biological Evolution as a Central Pillar of Modern Science Education

Vista is Slow

Back to this system after working on an XP system, it just emphasizes how slow Vista is. That system is years older than this one and should be much slower, but it's not; perceptually it's as fast or faster than this one. Certainly it's much more responsive to mouse inputs. Here I click then wait for something to happen there I click and it happens right then.


Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Bamboo road bridge can support 16-tonne trucks

A novel type of bridge with horizontal beams made from a bamboo composite proved strong enough to support even heavy trucks in tests.
The bamboo beams are cheaper and more environmentally friendly to make than steel or concrete, yet offer comparable structural strength. Xiao says the strips are cut from large stalks of bamboo, arranged in multiple layers, and bonded together with glue.
Pound-for-pound, bamboo is stronger than steel when stretched and more robust than concrete when compressed. It is an environmentally friendly building option because stalks several meters tall mature in just a few years, rather than a few decades.

Also since it is a grass, rather than a tree, it can be harvested like mowing a lawn – leaving the root system intact so that the plant can regrow.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Monday, December 17, 2007

Vista Weirdness

Vista reported that Miro had stopped working, and wanted to close it. Miro is working just fine. So what gives with Vista?


Thursday, December 13, 2007

Vista Crash

Yes it crashed again. This time it crashed within 20 seconds of opening.


Vista Crash

Vista crashes yet again. Windows explorer went down.


Solar Slow Cooker




Wednesday, December 12, 2007

full spectrum solar cell

The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight -- from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet -- to electrical current."It's as if nature designed this material on purpose to match the solar spectrum," says MSD's Wladek Walukiewicz, who led the collaborators in making the discovery.

A newly established low band gap for indium nitride means that the indium gallium nitride system of alloys (In1-xGaxN) covers the full solar spectrum.

I will never buy another Western Digital hard drive.


Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Monday, December 10, 2007

Vista Crash

Windows Explorer crashed again.


Vista File Corruption

I have run into yet another problem with Vista. I've noticed a problem on a number of files now, at first the files are OK, I can open them and view them, but later when I try to open them I get an error message that just says can't open file. This is happening often. This happens to the file even if I make no changes to it. At first they are OK, then later they are not.
Although I get the same error message sometimes the file size stays the same, this time it changed to zero bytes.


Sunday, December 09, 2007

John F. Kennedy Speech

Compare this speech by Kennedy to any speech of any current politician; this is a speech that makes you feel good, an intelligent straight forward speech free of the infuriating political double talk of most current politicians.

John F. Kennedy


Greater Houston Ministerial Association Q & A


delivered 12 September 1960


Vista Crash

Windows Explorer stopped working again, this time it seemed to take longer to recover.


Friday, December 07, 2007

Kelso at Statesman.com on Comer

Speaking of evolution, the TEA should stop monkeying around

John Kelso
Comer, who taught science for 27 years, recently was given the boot by the agency for forwarding an e-mail that her bosses thought dumped on the theory of "intelligent design," which as best as I can figure is creationism with a fancier name. Creationism is the theory that God created the world in six days and then took Sunday off.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Reaction to TEA Firing of Chris Comer

Why science needs history

By RICK CASEY

Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

A recent flap at the Texas Education Agency demonstrates why we need to teach history better so we can teach science better.


After nine years as the Texas Education Agency's science director, Chris Comer resigned after being suspended for appearing to oppose the "intelligent design" theory of the origins of the universe.
TEA officials say other factors were involved in her firing, but e-mails obtained by the Austin American-Statesman make clear that Comer's scientific orthodoxy and apparent political heresy were a major factor.
Her mortal sin was that in October she sent an e-mail to an Austin online community announcing an upcoming lecture by Barbara Forrest, a Southeast Louisiana University philosophy professor and co-author of Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse.

A Christian nation

Reynolds e-mailed Comer's bosses, saying Comer's apparent recommendation of the lecture "is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities."
So a science educator should be fired for promoting a lecture by a supporter of science? What kinds of "statewide initiatives" does this senior adviser promote? One possibility: The State Board of Education soon will review our schools' science curriculum.
Promoters of creationism and intelligent design sometimes suggest that the biblical account deserves a special place in our schools (as opposed to, say, Hindu or Hopi creation stories) because the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.
Here are some historical incidents that prove that we were, indeed, founded as a Christian nation:
•In the early 17th century, Sam Maverick, an English immigrant to Boston and an ancestor of the famous Texas Mavericks, was jailed for repeatedly missing church.
•About the same time, Baptist preacher Roger Williams came to
Massachusetts to escape religious persecution in England. After being quoted as saying local Puritan authorities "cannot without a spiritual rape force the consciences of all to one worship," he was secretly warned by Gov. John Winthrop that he was in peril.
He fled to live with a group of Native Americans, then purchased what is now Rhode Island from them, setting it up as a colony that honored religious freedom.
•In 1844, a Jesuit priest in Maine advised Catholic families to go to court to block a school board order that required their children to read the Protestant King James version of the Bible in school. The priest was grabbed by a mob while hearing confessions on a Saturday evening, stripped of his clothes, tarred and feathered.
•In 1859, 11-year-old Tom Wall refused to recite the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in his Boston public school. After consulting with his principal, Tom's teacher hit the boy across the knuckles with a 3-foot rattan stick.
The boy again refused. The punishment was repeated. The boy still refused. After half an hour of the painful punishment, he relented despite fearing that he was betraying his God. His father filed assault charges and went to court to challenge the reading requirement. He lost.
In 1869, the Cincinnati school board voted 22-15 to honor the
request of Catholic parents to end the reading of the Bible in school.
Protestant parents filed suit.
A three-judge panel ruled 2-1 for the Protestants, saying the reading of the Bible was necessary for good government.


The doctrine of separation of church and state is not found in the Constitution. It evolved through the courts and through public consensus based on painful experience.
It was not a sop to Jews or Muslims or ACLU atheists. It was
developed to keep some Christians from ruling the consciences of other Christians, just as for centuries they had attempted to do in Europe.
Its logic was most forcefully stated by the Christian judges of the Ohio Supreme Court, who overturned the above ruling with these words:
"When Christianity asks the aid of government beyond mere impartial protection, it denies itself. Its laws are divine and not human. Its essential interests lie beyond the reach and range of human governments. United with government, religion never rises above the merest superstition; united with religion, government never rises above the merest despotism; and all history shows us that the more widely and
completely they are separated, the better it is for both."

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Bike Trails

Six Great Long-Distance Bike Trails Without Cars
Roads without cars

Sunday, December 02, 2007

educational injustice

By James K. Willmot
Special to The Courier-Journal

The obstruction of scientific information is nothing new in the history of fundamentalist theology. What is new is the way this organization is using the power of radio (AIG is broadcast over 850 radio stations), the Internet and, now, a pseudo-natural history museum to convince well-meaning, hard-working people that science is not to be trusted, that the theory of evolution is evil and that belief in scientific theories of our creation leads to barbaric behaviors. As Mark Twain once said, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

Last month in England, I toured the Natural History Museum in London. (It's free by the way.) They too have animatronic dinosaurs. However, that's where the similarity between this "real" museum and the AIG's creation museum ends. The NHM of London has 55 million preserved animal specimens, nine million fossils, six million plant specimens and more than 500,000 rocks and minerals.

They have a staff of over 300 scientists working on various projects to gain a better understanding of the Earth and the creatures that inhabit (or did inhabit) our planet. Is there not something wrong when thousands of people are flocking to Northern Kentucky and paying $20 a pop to see a Flintstones-like interpretation of pre-history, and yet anyone who lives in or visits London can see one of the world's greatest real science centers for free?

TEA Director of Science Forced to Resign

A Report of Texas Citizens for Science
by Steven Schafersman

November 29, 2007


True Reason for the Forced Resignation
Thus, it is easy to conclude that Chris was forced to resign because someone wanted her out of the TEA--not because she violated a formal written policy, but because she DID violate the preposterous and unethical verbal policy of neutrality to Creationism. I doubt that this policy is written anywhere, but I hope another FOIA request will reveal its official existence. Reporters should interview Associate Commissioner Susan Barnes about her September address to TEA staff. She may still have her notes available (unless she has shredded them, which has been the official TEA policy since...September). A reporter should read back to her what Monica Martinez wrote, and ask Associate Commissioner Barnes to explain why violating a policy that the TEA "must remain neutral" on--not publicizing or seeming to "endorse" a group that "opposes teaching creationism"--is the same as "you are not to communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency in any way that might compromise the transparency and/or integrity of the upcoming TEKS development and revision process." I, for one, can't see that these are the same thing, but apparently Monica Martinez and Susan Barnes think they are.

Edward A. Villarreal. Powered by Blogger.

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