Stranded Alien For President
That’s right. The Stranded Alien has announced his candidacy for the office of President of the United States in 2012. Throw your support behind him at the SA For Prez tab at the top of the screen.
Countdown to Doomsday
IF the world ends on December 21st 2012, we now have less than a year to go.
Click The Code Below to see how many shopping days are left until doomsday.
Titanoboa – The Largest Snake Ever Found
While we’re on the subject of snakes – native and non-native, here is a subject that should feed your nightmares. A complete, fossilised skeleton of a gigantic snake was found in an open-pit coal mine in Colombia South America. It lived 58 to 60 million years ago. It would have weighed 2,500 pounds, was 43 feet long and, at its largest diameter, would have come up to an adult man’s hips. Snakes are generally able to swallow prey that weighs about the same as they do, so Titanoboa Cerrejonensis (as it was named) could have eaten a large cow or bison, if any had been around.
Because Titanoboa was cold-blooded, the tropical climate had to be warmer than it is today for a snake that large to survive, The farther from the equator that a reptile lives, the smaller it has to be. Extrapolating from the energy requirements of modern snakes, it was estimated that Titanoboa required an average temperature of 86 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit, 3 to 10 degrees higher than the modern average in coastal Colombia. Big animals went extinct because it simply got too hot. This helps us to understand that the effects of global warming go beyond just rising sea levels. Researchers now believe that the climate got even hotter near the end of Titanoboa’s reign, perhaps hastening the snake’s demise.
In summary, the warmer the climate, the larger a snake (or other reptile) can grow (to a point). Earth’s average temperature is once again increasing due to global warming. If we warm-blooded animals survive, we can expect to see larger reptiles farther away from the equator. At 35 to 40-degree latitudes, we could soon see 20-foot rattlesnakes, 15-foot Copperheads, and 8-foot frogs. And, at the equator, we might see the reincarnation of the 43-foot Titanoboa. Sweet dreams, everybody.
The Mirky Future Of Commercial Spaceflight
The hardest half of the first commercial spaceflight mission was completed yesterday when the SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully docked with the International Space Station 250 miles above Australia. The cargo will be unloaded and the capsule will return to Earth next week, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
Low-Earth orbital missions have become fairly routine over the last 50 years, but this is the first time a private company has designed, built and launched a space vehicle into orbit, marking the beginning of a new era in spaceflight. SpaceX is slated for 12 more cargo deliveries to the ISS beginning in September and they hope to be ferrying astronauts by 2015.
As I gaze into my crystal ball, I see the time when NASA is no longer involved, private space travel becomes routine, and multiple companies compete for the business. I also see a scenario like this: The space station is low on provisions and desperately needs a new oxygen generator. NASA pays SpaceX the premium price for overnight delivery of these items. When the cargo ship arrives at the space station, the residents find that the oxygen generator was damaged in shipment and half of the provisions are missing. Getting dangerously low on oxygen, a crewmember places a call to SpaceX to complain. A computerized voice guides them through a menu of options. They press “4″ to get the complaint department and are put on hold for an hour waiting for the next available operator who tells them it will be a week before another delivery can be made. The crewmember says, “Never mind. We’ll all be dead by then.” The operator thanks him for using SpaceX and hangs up.
While I applaud SpaceX for their recent success, modern history tells us that, anytime private enterprise monopolized an industry, safety and customer service have gone out the window and profit became the primary concern. Only time will tell if capitalism taints all the progress made by federally-controlled NASA.
Giant Snake Doesn’t Belong In Columbia S.C.
Columbia, S.C. resident Andrew Philson came across this gigantic snake in his yard on Tuesday. He called animal control who refused to do anything. They said it sounded like an unusually large Black Rat Snake – a beneficial species. A Black Rat Snake is a solid black critter that never exceeds 7 feet in length and they’re very common in S.C. I think the guys at animal control were either too lazy or too afraid to get involved with such a monster.
Mr. Philson took this photo of the snake. He thinks it is some kind of Python, and I agree. I took a good, long look at the photo and thought it important to point out that a good portion of the snake’s length is hidden behind the tree (shown in red). I can’t tell how far his tail hangs down the backside of the tree. It has to be at least 18 feet long and doesn’t belong in the United States.
You’ve probably heard about the population explosion of Burmese Pythons in the Florida Everglades that are eating all the native animal species to the point of extinction. They don’t belong in the U.S. either. The theory is that they escaped from pet stores when Hurricane Andrew ripped through southern Florida in 1992. This brings up a couple of possibilities as to how this giant appeared in South Carolina. It is either someone’s pet that got loose, or the Florida Pythons are migrating northward. Pythons are non-venemous, but are constrictors who can swallow animals as large as deer whole. Only an idiot would have such a thing for a pet.
This beast could eat your dog, your cat, or even your child. Maybe it can’t swallow an adult human, but it could wrap around you and squeeze the life out of you. This snake and every one like it should be found and killed before it has a chance to multiply. It was found about 70 miles from where I live, so I’m considering buying a shotgun and taking it with me every time I go outside. If I saw something like this in my yard, I’d have nightmares for the rest of my life.
Gay Marriage And Marijuana
People think that I’m a liberal, but this is one issue that may show otherwise. My state had a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage a few years ago and North Carolina will vote on their amendment tomorrow. I’ve hesitated to weigh in on the issue in my blog because I didn’t want to offend any gay readers that I might have. I still don’t, but maybe it’s time to put my two cents out there.
I voted for the ban, but I should explain why. While I find sex between two women kind of a turn-on, sex between two men totally disgusts me. I don’t care what people do in the privacy of their homes but I don’t want it flaunted in my presence. It’s only been a few years since gay people were denigrated as queers and fags and were beaten and robbed for the fun of it or dragged to their death by bigoted assholes. Then, all of a sudden as if a switch were flipped, all the gays came out of the closet and states began allowing them to marry. Now, six states plus the District of Columbia have legalized it.
My problem with it is two-fold. First of all, it’s a matter of semantics. Marriage has always been about a man and a woman, a husband and a wife, a bride and a groom. If a same-sex couple marries, which one is the husband? Which one is the bride? Who decides? It makes things uncomfortable for us heterosexuals who don’t know what words to use.
Secondly, I can’t believe that this issue has come to the forefront and gained acceptance so quickly while smoking marijuana is still illegal and largely unacceptable. Where is the equity here? Is it fair to legitimize one group’s behavior and not others’? I don’t want to sound like a Bible-thumper, but the Bible does explicitly poo-poo homosexuality but doesn’t say anything against catching a buzz.
I think that, instead of going immediately from the closet to the altar, there should be an in-between step that would be satisfactory to most Americans. Gay people should be allowed to engage in a “same-sex civil union” that affords them all the rights and privileges of marriage without calling it that. Leave “marriage” for a man and a woman, and come up with descriptives for the participants in this new form of legalized coupling. We already have terms like “partner” and “significant other”, but maybe some new words could be coined that would work even better. I don’t have a problem with civil unions for gay people who want to partner for life, but I do have a problem with calling it “marriage”. So let’s do that and get on with the business of ending the failed war on drugs.
Get To Know The Snakes In Your Area
I killed a snake yesterday and now I feel really bad about it. I had never seen one like it before so I didn’t know if it was venomous or not. I decided to kill it with the shovel before it got away and came back later to bite me or my dog. Pickles always has her nose to the ground and has developed a fascination for anything that moves, especially other reptiles and amphibians like frogs and turtles. I don’t want her to get snakebit so I killed it and then looked it up in my reptiles book.
It turned out that it was an Eastern King Snake, a beautiful, non-poisonous constrictor that eats other snakes (including the venomous ones) as well as rodents. He would have been a good snake to have around.
Because we share this planet with all kinds of creatures, good and bad, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves as to which is which. Years ago, my motto was “the only good snake is a dead snake”. After blowing a Black Snake to bits with a shotgun and getting chewed out by the neighbor kids for killing a “good” snake, I began trying to learn. There are so many varieties that I found it easier to just learn which ones are poisonous and leave the rest alone.
I looked up the subject on Wikipedia today. According to them, there are only seven venomous snakes in South Carolina where I live. They are: Copperhead, Cottonmouth, Eastern Diamondback, Timber Rattlesnake, Eastern Coral Snake, Dusky Pigmy Rattlesnake, and the Carolina Pigmy Rattlesnake. The only one of those I have encountered is the Copperhead. I ran over one with the lawnmower once, and I found a nursery of Copperhead babies under a pile of gravel that I was shovelling.
I’ve come across several garter snakes this spring and left them alone. I still don’t like Black Snakes but I don’t kill them. They aren’t poisonous but they can bite and hang on, and the bacteria in their mouths can give you an infection. If I can’t chase them away, I usually snag them with a rake and fling them into the woods. As I was disposing of the unfortunate King Snake this morning, he was covered in flies and one of my mortal enemies – the yellow jacket. That’s the first YJ I’ve seen this year so, from now on I have to be on alert for them. Every year I get attacked by yellow jackets while mowing. Oh, well. That’s summer in the south.
Separation of Church and State
POINT:
America was founded on Godly principles. Our money says: “In God We Trust”. Our Pledge of allegiance says: “One nation under God…” If we turn against God, we’ll be in big trouble. We should praise God by praying aloud anywhere we want, including public schools. We should make sure that God is included in all facets of American life – public and private. Our children should be taught creation in schools rather than evolution.
COUNTERPOINT:
Whose God? America was founded on the principle of religious freedom. Grounded on that tenet, we have grown into a nation of all religions. Christianity is not the only religion and your god is not the only deity that is worshipped as such.
You have the right to have a spiritual relationship with your god in your personal life and in your place of worship. You do not have the right to force your god and your religious beliefs on other people. The words “under God” didn’t appear in our pledge until the 1950′s when Isenhour overstepped his bounds and stuck them in.
Every religion has a “creation” story. If we teach the Old Testament version of creation in PUBLIC schools, then we should also teach the others. What about the Apache story? They are NATIVE Americans so, if any story is taught, maybe it should be theirs. Science has shown again and again that if there is a god who created the universe, then that god’s method of creation was evolution – not some myth used to explain it. If you don’t believe in evolution, you reject your creator’s method.
By all means, worship your god and live a godly life. Just keep your beliefs within your heart and your particular religious arena. Keep it out of the public square where people of all faiths and ethnicities interact. Have a personal relationship with your god but don’t force it on others who don’t believe as you do. Keeping the Judeo/Christian god out of public schools and government is not “turning against God”, it is respecting everyone’s god. Just like you, everyone believes that their god is the only god.
Processed Mystery Food
I don’t eat breakfast, so about two o’clock today I threw a Banquet “Mexican Style chicken Enchilada Meal” into the microwave. While it was heating, I happened to look closer at the front of the box the meal came in. “What the hell am I about to eat?” I asked myself. And the answer was: “Chicken & Textured Vegetable Protein Product!” What the hell is that, chicken renderings and tofu? Well, I ate it and haven’t keeled over yet. It didn’t taste like chicken, but then the beef tamale didn’t taste like beef either. I’m afraid to read the ingredients in the fine print.
I remember when this $1.25 meal cost 88-cents and came with two beef things and one cheese thing plus refried beans and rice. Now all you get is the beef thing and a simulated chicken thing with a side of rice. What’s this planet coming to?
If it sounds like I’m bitching, well, I am. We keep paying more and more for less and less. It’s getting so that the packaging is worth more than the pittly dollop of unknown food product that comes in it. And don’t get me started on ice cream that used to be a half-gallon, then went to 1.75 quarts and is now 1.5 quarts. It still costs the same or more. So, in this era of glued meat, pink slime, genetically modified vegetables and fish, we all need to ask ourselves: “What the hell am I eating?”
US Military Cuts Open and Breaks the Limbs of LIVE Animals
You don’t have to watch the video below to become outraged by the cruel, sick, heart-breaking and unnecessary treatment of innocent animals in the name of military medical training. Read the following letter from Lt. Com. James Santos, M.D. (Ret) of Santa Fe, NM. Then take action to put an end to this practice by visiting: Peta.org and/or Change.org.
Thousands of live goats and pigs are cut apart, shot, and blown up in U.S. military training drills every year even though humane methods like human-patient simulators that provide more effective and realistic training are available and military regulations require that alternatives to animals be used whenever they exist.
As a physician and retired Navy medical officer, I know what it takes to save the lives of soldiers and civilians. And I can say as someone who has participated in animal laboratories that they did not improve my ability to treat humans and that the skills needed to treat traumatic injuries are best acquired without hurting any animals. So I was shocked and disappointed to see this newly released hidden-camera video footage of live goats who had their limbs chopped off during a recent U.S. military training exercise (warning: graphic footage).
Crudely practicing emergency medical techniques on small, anesthetized animals is nothing like treating moving, screaming soldiers who have been injured in combat. Compared with humans, goats and pigs are much smaller, their skin is thicker, and the anatomy of their organs, blood vessels, skeletons are drastically different.
On the battlefield, military physicians, medics, and corpsmen must make quick life-and-death decisions and do not have the luxury of spending time to make sense of the drastic anatomical differences between humans and goats before treating their wounded comrades.
Unlike animal laboratories, simulators like SimMan and the Cut Suit have the right anatomy and can respond to medications and treatments just like a human would. This is acknowledged by many military facilities in the US, including the Navy Trauma Training Center in California where no animals are used, and by militaries in other countries around the world that use only non-animal methods for training. 95 percent of civilian medical training programs—including at prestigious facilities like Harvard and Yale—have completely replaced the use of animals for training in how to treat traumatic injuries like those covered in these military courses.
Switching to simulators that more realistically replicate human war injuries will not only spare thousands of animals’ lives, but it ultimately will improve the training experience for soldiers and better equip them to save human lives. – Lt. Com. James Santos, M.D. (Ret)
Newt Conducts Last Gasp Fundraiser
Bill Clinton Comments On Prostitute Scandal
This photo made me laugh so hard that I just had to post it here for your amusement. The expressions on their faces are priceless.
Ann Romney Doesn’t Know What “Work” Means
I can’t think of a harder job than raising children. My hat is off to any woman who stays at home and actually does that job herself. But you will never convince me that Ann Romney raised five boys all by herself. She was a privileged child who was raised by a nanny and she married a wealthy man who could certainly afford a staff of maids and nannies to do the unpleasant part of raising those kids. Does anyone other than a brainless republican believe that Ann Romney scrubbed her own floors, cleaned her own toilets, washed all the kids’ clothes herself, changed their poopy diapers, cooked all the meals, and washed all the dishes? That is just a small portion of the incredibly hard and thankless work that a not-so-privileged, stay-at-home mom has to deal with on her own every day.
So, when Democratic advisor Hilary Rosen said that “Ann Romney never worked a day in her life”, I believe that is the truth. The uproar over her comment sparked so much vitriol from the right that she apologized several times. She should have held off on her apologies because, eventually, the truth will come out and her words will be verified. One woman, claiming to be Ann Romney’s childhood nanny “Juanita”, has already called into a radio talk show saying several times that it is true that Mrs. Romney has never worked a day in her life. Soon others will come forth and vindicate Hilary Rosen’s comment.
Instead of relying on Ann as his sounding board and advisor on women’s needs, Mitt should find a real woman for that task. There are millions of women in this country who do the hard work of raising their own children, and many who hold down a job at the same time. It would behoove Mitt to come out of his bubble of wealth and privilege and ask some of them what real women think is important. I’m sure he’d get a completely different and more realistic answer from them than from someone who has never worked a day in her life.
Mitt Romney… The Best of the Worst
As far as I’m concerned, the campaign for the GOP nomination couldn’t have turned out better. Long gone (hopefully for good) are the never-rans like Mitch Daniels, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Gary Johnson, Donald Trump, and Haley Barbour. Gone are that whiny Tea-Party bimbo with the titanium spine; that brainless, gun-totin’ Texan who doesn’t believe in evolution or climate change; the party’s token black man with the overblown ego and overactive libido; and, thankfully, that anti-everything, evangelical nutjob from Pennsylvania. It’s too bad that John Huntsman didn’t do better. Maybe he will be Romney’s choice for VP and we’ll see an all-Mormon ticket.
So what are we left with? Yes, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are stubbornly hanging in the race but are going nowhere but down and out. This week, after Santorum bowed out, Mitt Romney was declared the presumptive nominee. This is great news for the Obama re-election campaign.
For all the thinking voters, there is no contest and Obama has their votes sewed up. Romney is an out-of-touch, beady-eyed idiot with nothing to offer everyday Americans. He looks like a deer in the headlights when he’s on the stump. When he tries to orate a conservative ideology or lambast Obama, he sounds like a liar and a fool. Obama is a mental giant who truly cares about regular folks. He will crush Romney in the general campaign.
When it comes down to election day, the question will be this: Can the non-thinking voters, whose only goal is to “make Obama a one-term president”, form a majority? Surely not! Such a theoretical victory would be a sad statement on the mental health of the American electorate. These miscreants went through a dozen candidates trying to find one that could beat Obama and Romney is the best they could come up with? Good luck with that.
Dick Cheney Has a Heart?
After 71 years as a heartless bastard, Dick Cheney finally got a heart last week. He managed to worm his way to the top of the transplant list despite his advanced years. He was born with a heart, but it couldn’t survive inside his wicked shell. One has to wonder who the donor was. Was he another evil republican whose heart won’t compel Cheney to change his ways? I’m hoping that he was a humane, peace-loving Democrat and Cheney will undergo a complete metamorphosis. Imagine if Cheney got Mahatma Gandhi’s heart and suddenly began to live a positive and productive life for a change.
I also wonder if the surviving family members of the donor knew that their loved one’s heart was going to such an undeserving recipient. If not, they should be allowed to recall the organ. If I were the donor, I’d be rolling in my grave with steam coming out of my ears.
Is the heart where the soul resides? Has there ever been a republican with a heart before? Will Dick live to be 100 or will his new heart reject HIM once it realizes who its new owner is? We’ll just have to watch and see what Cheney does or doesn’t become now that he finally has a heart.
