Question of the Day

This question applies to my fellow American readers.

Why is it that all those that really do hate America and what America is and stands for are forever accusing the people who love America and what it is and what it stands for of being America Haters, oh, and throwing in that 'Leftist' label as well?

Only The Lonely

A rare look at Roy Orbison without his sunglasses from an early appearance on live TV.

Yes, Kiddies there used to be something called 'live TV' and the performers really were performing what you were seeing as you saw it. Not everything was on 'video' in those days.

Continuing insurance can exceed amout of unemployment benefit for some families

Newly unemployed Americans will have to spend about 30 percent of their jobless benefits on average to pay for health insurance through their former employer, according to a new report.

And if they want coverage for their families, the report by Families USA says it will take more than 80 percent of their unemployment check.

Unemployment hit a 16-year high last month as another 524,000 jobs were cut. For all of 2008, government says the economy lost a net total of 2.6 million jobs.

Read the rest in the Star Tribune.

Health News

Buttery Christmas cookies, eggnog, juicy beef roast, rich gravy and creamy New York-style cheesecake. Happy holiday food unfortunately can send blood cholesterol levels sky high.

Northwestern University scientists now offer a promising new weapon -- synthetic high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the "good" cholesterol -- that could help fight chronically high cholesterol levels and the deadly heart disease that often results.

The researchers successfully designed synthetic HDL and show that their nanoparticle version is capable of irreversibly binding cholesterol. The synthetic HDL, based on gold nanoparticles, is similar in size to HDL and mimics HDL's general surface composition.

The study is published online by the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).

Read the rest here.

The very existence of Senator Al Franken is making wingnut heads explode

It's not hard to tell that the looming elevation of Al Franken to the U.S. Senate is making Republicans crazy. Last week Bill O'Reilly -- whose feud with Franken is now the stuff of legend -- had to resort to running one of Franken's old comedy videos (his hilarious parody of Mick Jagger) so he could call him a "pinhead."

Read the rest at Crooks and Liars.

Comparisions

The comparisons between here and now and the Great Depression are seeming less and less hyperbolic.

Check out the rest at Reuters News Agency.

Fifty Most Loathsome People in America

The Buffalo Beast has published their annual 50 Most Loathsome People in America for 2008 and guess who is the most loathsome of the most loathsome?

That's Right! You guessed it.

1. Sarah Palin

Charges: If you want to know why the rest of the world is scared of Americans, consider the fact that after two terms of disastrous rule by a small-minded ignoramus, 46% of us apparently thought the problem was that he wasn’t quite stupid enough. Palin’s unending emissions of baffling, evasive incoherence should have disqualified her for any position that involved a desk, let alone placing her one erratic heartbeat from the presidency. The press strained mightily to feign respect for her, praising a debate performance that involved no debate, calling her a “great speaker” when her only speech was primarily a litany of insults to city-dwellers, echoing bogus sexism charges when a male Palin would have been boiled alive for the Couric interview alone, and lionizing her as she used her baby as a Pro-life stage prop before crowds who cooed when they should have been hurling polonium-tipped javelins. In the end, Palin had the beneficial effect of splitting her party between her admirers and people who can read.

Exhibit A: Waving her embryo-loving credentials, in the form of her Down syndrome baby, at "But ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy."

Sentence: Hand-to-hand combat with Vladimir Putin and a pack of wolves.

Funny video challenging Barack Obama's citizenship

The wing-nuts are getting funnier and funnier ... What is sad is they think they are being serious.

Charles Platt says:

I'm fascinated by the conspiracy theorists challenging Barack Obama's citizenship. After front-page stories in The Globe this week and last week, there's now this ad which was refused by the major TV networks.

I'm reassured that the Web is facilitating a freedom of the press that didn't quite exist before. The more nutty theories, the better!

I love how they end the farce with - "'OUR' constitution stills means something" when they are the slack-jaws that have been shredding the Constitution of the United States for the last eight years. I have always known they had a different 'constitution' than the rest of us ... nice of them to admit it though.

Top 11 compounds in US drinking water

Researchers at the Southern Nevada Water Authority analyzed tap water from 19 US water utilities. New Scientist shares the list of the top 11 detected compounds, fortunately all of which were "found at extremely low concentrations." According the Environmental Protection Agency, there's no cause for alarm but there could be risk "especially for the fetus and those with severely compromised health."

Here are the top 5:

• Atenolol, a beta-blocker used to treat cardiovascular disease

• Atrazine, an organic herbicide banned in the European Union, but still used in the US, which has been implicated in the decline of fish stocks and in changes in animal behaviour

• Carbamazepine, a mood-stabilising drug used to treat bipolar disorder, amongst other things

• Estrone, an oestrogen hormone secreted by the ovaries and blamed for causing gender-bending changes in fish

• Gemfibrozil, an anti-cholesterol drug

Top 11 compounds in US drinking water

Frogfish

Pictured are Antennarius maculatus, warty frogfish.

They scurry around on the ocean floor, "walking" on their pelvic fins.

Weird "Walking" Frogfish , Zubi's Frogfish Pages

Teen convicted of killing mother over video game

This is but one reason I do not like video games ...

A judge has convicted an Elyria, Ohio teenager who shot and killed his mother and wounded his clergyman father over a video game dispute.
Defense attorneys for 17-year-old Daniel Petric didn't contest that Petric shot his parents in October 2007.
They insisted that the boy's youth and video game addiction made him less responsible.

But Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge said Monday that is not a defense and there was evidence of prior calculation and planning.
Petric faces maximum penalty of life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors said Petric planned to kill his parents because he was angry that his father would not allow him to play the video game "Halo 3," in which players shoot alien monsters that have taken over the Earth.

Motorcrash

The Sugarcubes

Has it been 21 years already ... seems like this was released just yesterday?!

Yet, another London photographer arrested for "terrorism"

In other words "taking a picture of a public building".

A photographer who spent his whole life photographing and painting around his home neighborhood of Elephant and Castle in London was arrested under anti-terror laws and jailed, his DNA and fingerprints taken. He was released after five hours, once his Member of Parliament intervened. Under current policies, his DNA will remain on file forever -- though the EU has ordered Britain to cease this practice.

With a studio near the 1960s shopping center at the heart of this area in south London, he is a familiar figure and is regularly seen snapping and sketching the people and buildings around his home – currently the site of Europe's largest regeneration project. But to the police officers who arrested him last week his photographing of the old HMSO print works close to the local police station posed an unacceptable security risk.

"The car skidded to a halt like something out of Starsky & Hutch and this officer jumped out very dramatically and said 'what are you doing?' I told him I was photographing the building and he said he was going to search me under the Anti-Terrorism Act," he recalled.

Photographers criminalized as police 'abuse' anti-terror laws

China's future executives seek their inner chicken

Amena Schlaijker makes her students cluck like chickens, mimic a toothbrush, jump up and down or pretend to die an agonizing death.
The aim is to make budding business leaders think outside the box.

It may sound extreme, but this is China, where students have grown up on rote learning and the ruling Communist Party has long discouraged creative thinking lest it lead to challenging authority.
"You can tell them to think outside of the box, but some employees don't even have the concept of a box to begin with," said Roy Magee, an Australian whose training company, AchieveGlobal, has operated in China since 1997. "We just have to go in and start from scratch."

This comes as the government works on the economy's next leap forward - to transform the nation's industry from "Made in China" to "Invented in China."
Addressing parliament last year, President Hu Jintao spoke of making China a nation of innovators.

At the same time, China is recognizing that as wages and land prices rise, it is no longer a cheap place to manufacture other countries' products, and needs to invent its own to remain globally competitive.
While the state is spending billions of dollars on technology parks, research grants and art programs, the drive for creativity has spawned a market for classes run by foreign trainers like Schlaijker and Magee.

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not your favorite way to make ends meet, as you well know.

Well, Duh!

On the importance of walking ...

... and other healthful thoughts

Walking can add minutes to your life.
This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $7000 per month.

My grandpa started walking five miles a day when he was 60.
Now he's 97 years old and we don't know where he is.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

The only reason I would take up walking is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

I have to walk early in the morning, before my brain figures out what I'm doing..

I joined a health club last year, spent about 400 bucks.
Haven't lost a pound. Apparently you have to go there.

Every time I hear the dirty word 'exercise', I wash my mouth out with chocolate.

I do have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

The advantage of exercising every day is so when you die, they'll say,
'Well, she looks good doesn't she.'

If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

I know I got a lot of exercise the last few years, ... just getting over the hill.

We all get heavier as we get older, because there's a lot more information in our heads.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

AND

Every time I start thinking too much about how I look, I just find a Happy Hour and by the time I leave, I look just fine.