Morning Walk

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On our walk out in the desert this morning we saw what appears to be the severed leg of a deer or a pronghorn antelope.

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One can't help but wonder, what is this doing out in the desert near El Paso?

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Pagan Winter Solstice Celebrations

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The longest night of winter has been celebrated by many peoples around the world. A couple of years ago I celebrated it in England at Stonehenge with the Druids.
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LINK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice
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This evening we had an excellent pagan celebration with family and friends in El Paso, Texas USA.
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We wore our Celtic attire, ate Shepard's Pie and shortbread cookies, listened to bagpipe music, howled at the moon, and enjoyed an excellent little bonfire.


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Cold Front Coming

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UNICEF Photography Contest

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This is a picture of an 11 year old bride.

Good grief!

The Likeability Issue

After President Bush II surely we should have learned that political dynasties like Bush I & II or Clinton I & II are not necessarily useful. And after watching George Junior many Americans have re-learned the importance of integrity in our leaders. If too many citizens do not trust the president, the results can be very harmful to the country.

On the issue of integrity and trust I would need to go for McCain or Richardson. If one only looks at the issue of experience, then Richardson is the clear winner over all of the other candidates of both political parties.

Several of the candidates do well on the likeability meter including Obama. Clinton is far down near the bottom.

Being a good leader involves many attributes, but trust and charm are up near the top. It is important that the next president have the ability to make us once again begin believing in the American Dream.

I read a good article in the Washington Post this morning that sums up how I feel about Senator Clinton:

They just don't like her, some say.

They don't know what she stands for. They believe her word is no good, that she doesn't believe that she can be held accountable. They see her as intellectual snob who lets you know she's smarter.

They say she sounds like everybody's ex-wife. They can't tell if she's the loyal, traditional wife who stayed with her husband for love after his humiliating extramarital affair -- or a canny politician who stayed because it was politically expedient.

Even: Is she a Yankees or a Cubs fan?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/19/AR2007121902520.html?nav=rss_email/components
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Blackwater

In Iraq the American government uses the private militia called Blackwater to do things which would probably be illegal for members of the American military to perform.

The U.S. embassy in Iraq employs 1,000 armed Blackwater staff to do various duties which they either do not have sufficient confidence that the American military will perform adequately, or those functions which would be so deep into the legal grey area that it would be inappropriate for the embassy to ask the U.S. military to do them.

The latest incident may end up being one of the more serious ones involved in the ongoing downfall of Blackwater.

In Bagdad the so called security guards of Blackwater (which are increasingly referred to as the American Gestapo) have shot and killed the dog of the New York Times. The New York Times has been a frequent critic of the heavy-handed and sometimes illegal tactics employed by Blackwater.

When Blackwater staff kill innocent rag heads, even completely innocent women and children bystanders, there is a certain amount of short-lived outrage among voters in America. But killing the New York Times dog?
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What brutality! They’ve gone way too far this time.
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LINK: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1819755220071218
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Folding Bicycle

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My new aluminum frame folding bicycle arrived today by FedX ground.

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It has a 33 cc, 2 cycle engine installed on it. The bike with engine and a full tank of gas weighs in at less than 55 lbs. My guess is that it will get between 150 and 200 miles per gallon.

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It starts right up. Going up the street it will certainly go faster than any reasonable or sensible human being would want to go on a little folding bicycle.

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And it sounds like a weed eater or model airplane gone wildly out of control.

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Senators McCain and Lieberman

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These are really interesting times. Lieberman crossing party lines and formally endorsing Senator John McCain is really unique.

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El Paso Mineral & Gem Society

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There is a certain about of discussion on the Yahoo fluorescent minerals group right now about the various fluorescent minerals that have come out of the Kipawa complex in Quebec, Canada.

I didn't think I had any rocks in my collection from this location, but in looking around I found some agrellite from there.

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High Resolution Link: http://tinyurl.com/2lhcaf

It is interesting because the agrellite which fluoresces the standard nice pink color, also has some green fluorescing material on the end.

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While I was enjoying the beauty of the various rocks in the collection, I happened to notice that the El Paso Mineral and Gem Society cloth jacket or hat patch fluoresces rather nicely.

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Then I put the window decal in front of some vaseline glass, and it came out nicely green. This may be an illusion, it might just be the green shining through, but it is pretty anyway.

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Sunday Morning Walk Out In The Desert

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On our walk this morning for a while we were bushwhacking across the desert rather than following a trail or a dirt road. In total we went 1.2 miles (1,93 km). We began down where the water used to run, gained about 50 feet in elevation (15 meters), wandered around, and came back to our original location and elevation.
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We came across another site where we found pottery shards from the ancient native peoples. This morning we found three little shards, all within about 2 meters of each other. This virgin desert is about one mile from my house.

They were located at N31.74776 W106.25512 in the mesa area which overlooks what must have either been a lake or running water hundreds of years ago. The map image is the tracks and waypoints from the Garmin Forerunner imported into Google Earth, and then cleaned up slightly with Photoshop.
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I took the picture of the shards after we got home with my Nikon digtial SLR.

This place we found them is 4,035 ft (1.230 meters) above mean sea level.

Fluorescent Felines

This was on the Yahoo fluorescent minerals group today:
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There was a report to-day from Associated Press about two cloned Turkish Angora cats that were modified with a gene that produces a fluorescent protein, that gives off a red fluorescent glow, as opposed to a normally cloned cat that glows green! Wave length used was not specified. This was done by some scientists in South Korea. They hope that this achievement offers hope in treating genetic ills in humans, by inserting other genes. This was done by scientists from Gyeongsang National University and Sunchon National University. I am being serious and it is not April Fool's day! Check you cats? A perfect gift for the fluorescent collector that has everything. This could lead to all sorts of jokes, most probably not suitable for this group.
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The ultimate gift for any of us fanatics who are into UV glow rocks!
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Tonsils

As a child I had strep throat so many times it eventually gave me a bit of a heart problem.
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In college I finally had my tonsils removed surgically. Now I am in my late 50's and have CLL, a form of leukemia where the functioning of the body's immune system is reduced substantially. In looking up tonsils on Wiki I fnd the following:
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Tonsils tend to reach their largest size near puberty, and they gradually undergo atrophy thereafter. However, they are largest relative to the diameter of the throat in young children, and tonsillectomy (surgical removal of tonsils) may be indicated if they are obstructing the airway or interfering with swallowing. Also, when tonsils become overly enlarged or inflamed they may need to be surgically removed. In older patients, asymmetric tonsils (also known as asymmetric tonsil hypertrophy) may be an indicator of virally infected tonsils, or tumors such as lymphangioma or malignant tonsillar tumours.
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Some doctors who are not ENT specialists recommend to be conservative in the recommendation to have tonsils removed because they can not be put back and their removal would decrease the power of the immune system. ENT specialists generally recommend removal so they can be studied if there is inflammation, asymmetry or other health indicators.


I wonder if there is any correlation between having your tonsils removed and later in life developing CLL?
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Wilipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonsils


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The Bourne Ultimatum

The Bourne series by Robert Ludlum is the best.

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Each of the three movies is very well done too.

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If you are a civilized, educated person living in the 21st century you need to see the final movie, which is entitled The Bourne Ultimatum.

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I wish I had the skills of a Ludlum or Joan Rowling so that I could articulate how special this movie is. But alas I don't, I'm just an asshole from El Paso.

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But take my word for it, there is a something vital about our government that you will learn from this movie. Actually you don't have to take my word for it...just go rent this movie! From the trailer you may think this is just a movie filled with gratuitous violence. I do not see it that way at all. Think about the CIA intentionally destroying those tapes, even when lots of important people told them not to. And now the Attorney General is asking Congress to stop their investigation. We are living in a time of the government gone out of control. This movie is a fictional portrayal of this concept.

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Link to the trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/thebourneultimatum/

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Oxygen Concentrator

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Due to pulmonary dysfunction several years ago my elderly mother used one of these rather than a cylinder of oxygen. Now my sister is having to use one. So I decided to look into the technology and figure out how it is possible to achieve a significant concentration of the amout of oxygen available.

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The process involves using a zeolite to adsorb nitrogen. Normal air has about 21% oxygen in it, with the majority of the rest of the gasses being nitrogen. These machines bump the oxygen content up to around 90%. Here is what Wiki has to say about these machines:

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An oxygen concentrator, also called an oxygen generator, is a device used to provide oxygen therapy to a patient at substantially higher concentrations than those of ambient air, used as an alternative to tanks of compressed oxygen. Oxygen concentrators are also used to provide an economical source of oxygen in industrial processes.

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The simplest oxygen concentrator is capable of continuous delivery of oxygen and has internal functions based around two cylinders, filled with a zeolite material, which selectively adsorbs the nitrogen in the air. In each cycle, air is flowed through one cylinder at a pressure of around 20 lbf/in² (138 kPa, or 1.36 atmospheres) where the nitrogen molecules are captured by the zeolite, while the other cylinder is vented off to ambient atmospheric pressure allowing the captured nitrogen to dissipate. Typical units have cycles of around 20 seconds, and allow for a continuous supply of oxygen at a flow rate of up to approximately five liters per minute (LPM) at concentrations anywhere from 50 to 95 %. This process is called Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA).

This is a link to the complete article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_concentrator

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You can rent one of these machines, or you can buy one, from among others Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Perfecto2-IRC5P-5-Liter-Oxygen-Concentrator/dp/B000Q9Q8ME/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=hpc&qid=1197664234&sr=8-1

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This is the one that my sister is using: http://www.specialtymedicalsupply.com/medical-supply-products/New-EndurO2-Oxygen-Concentrator-w02-alarm.html

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3 Kinds of People

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I am a member of the Yahoo group for Honda Reflex scooters/motorcycles.
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Saw a great quote on this site today:
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"There are three kinds of people in the world – those who can count - and those who can't."
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Confluence.org

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There are a group of locos who have GPSs, and their goal is to go to as many places as possible on the face of the earth where latitude and longitude integer lines cross.
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Latitude lines are constant, but after Wellington kicked Napoleon's tight little ass at Waterloo, Belgium just south of Brussels in 1815, as a form of revenge the prime meridian was taken away from Paris and was moved to London (the suburb of Greenwich).
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Well maybe I've used a little bit of license in telling that story, but the prime meriadian did indeed run through Paris in the past. In 1884 there was an international conference on the prime meridian and Greenwich England was chosen...the French abstained, and some French cartographers still cling today to the line which ran through Paris. Check out the Arago line in Paris. I have been there several times. There also was an Antwerp, Belgium meridian.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Meridian
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So with old lat-long positions the latitude will be correct, but not the longitude. It may be off a little more than two degrees.
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A case in the point that I have been to is the position markings on the memorial at the top of the highest hill in Aachen, Germany. This massive memorial predates the date of change.
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I have been to a couple of these confluences (http://www.confluence.org/visitor.php?id=14625 ) the latest in the Jornada del Muerto in Southern New Mexico, USA. If you go to the following link you will see my narrative and pictures from this location including my little doggie and the Garmin Quest.
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Link to Confluence.Org http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=14471
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Mormons

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Over the years I have known many members of the church of latter day saints, LDS, or mormons.
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It is my observation that to an even greater degree than people who are members of the jewish faith, mormons have great family values. Not just the words, but families sticking together and supporting each other. And the church holds the community together, supporting those in need. Vastly superior to most other sub-cultures in America.
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This sounds a little pervey, but like southern baptists, it has been my experience that mormon women experience a great deal of guilt. This guilt makes sex seem much nastier to them and heightens their sexual excitement and pleasure. So its not all bad. On TV once I saw a black commedian. A friend of his was putting down someone who thought sex was nasty or naughty. And the black commedian said, "It sure is if you're doing it right."
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Romney

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One of the founding principles of our nation is the separation of church and state. And you want to eliminate this. Damn right you are going to be attacked.
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Not all religions are created equal. Some discrimiate heavily against women, and all reasonable citizens have a duty to attack this discrimination. Your religion, Mr. Romney, apparently discriminates against people of colour. If this is true, then this tenant of your religion needs to be openly opposed.
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Evan Almighty

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This movie is wonderfully funny, irreverent, and moving.
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Don't miss it.
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Really!!
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Led Zeppelin

I’ve got Led Zeppelin playing on the stereo in the living room, and the 15 inch woofers are shaking the whole house.

Their debut album came out in 1969 and their dominance continued until 1980 when their drummer died.

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After waiting 19 years, and after many weeks of practice they played together again last night in London. With the son of the original drummer on the drums.

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They were the best.
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From early reports they still have the magic and they still are the best!
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LINK: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17601364/led_zeppelin_the_full_report_from_david_fricke
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You Tube Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=hEShoSOl7Mg
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