From The Times of London
The end of the Internet is near — and in less than three years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The reason? More than 85% of the available addresses have already been allocated and the OECD predicts we will have run out completely by early 2011.
Associated Press
From: http://www.FoxNews.com
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.
The court’s 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.
Friday, June 06, 2008
So last week, a true American hero passed away and the press barely said a word.
I am talking about Fredric J. Baur, the man who created the potato crisp packaging system for Pringles — otherwise known as “a can with a lid.”
This is the greatest single invention in the snacking world, but our mainstream media cared more about the death of famed French designer Yves St. Laurent.
Baur patented the can in 1966 and it quickly changed the way fat people like me became fatter, elevating itself beyond snacking also-rans like Funyuns, Bugles and the repulsive Munchos.
Continue reading “Honoring the Man Who Designed the Pringles Can”
HONOLULU (AP–From FoxNews) — The U.S. military intercepted a ballistic missile Thursday in the first such sea-based test since a Navy cruiser shot down an errant satellite earlier this year.
The military fired the target, a Scud-like missile with a range of a few hundred miles, from a decommissioned amphibious assault ship near Hawaii’s island of Kauai.
The USS Lake Erie, based at Pearl Harbor, fired two interceptor missiles that shot down the target in its final seconds of flight about 12 miles above the Pacific Ocean.
Steve Williams-Opinion Page Editor,
Victorville Daily Press
The U.S. Commerce Department predicted that the Gross National Product for the first quarter of the year would grow by .6 percent, but it didn’t; it grew by .9 percent.
Why is that noteworthy? Because the department underestimated the strength of the American economic system, and because it also belies the assumption by a whole raft of economists that we’re either on the verge of a recession, or more commonly, that we’re already in one. Recessions are defined as beginning when, for two straight quarters, the economy shows negative growth.
One of the birthstones for June is the Moonstone.
Moonstone almost seems magical with a ghostly shimmering glow floating in a crystalline material. The Romans thought that moonstone was formed out of moonlight. Moonstone is a variety of feldspar, and the shimmer which is called “schiller” or “adularescence”, is caused by the inter-growth of two different types of feldspar, with different refractive indexes.
In Europe, Moonstone is considered the birthstone for June, although in the United States it shares that distinction with alexandrite and Pearl.
Moonstones come in a variety of colors. The body color can range from colorless to gray, brown, yellow, green, or pink. The clarity ranges from transparent to translucent. The best moonstone has a blue sheen, perfect clarity, and a colorless body color.
Sometimes moonstone will have an eye as well as a sheen. Another related feldspar variety is known as rainbow moonstone. In this variety of labradorite feldspar, the sheen is a variety of rainbow hues.
Fine moonstone is quite rare and becoming rarer. It is mined in Sri Lanka and Southern India. The rainbow variety can also be found in Madagascar.
Talk about putting your most valuable where your mouth is! Apparently this was not ‘newsworthy’enough for the media to comment about. Can either of the other presidential candidates truthfully come close to this? …. Just a question for each of us to seek an answer,and not a statement.
You see…character is what’s shown when the public is not looking. There were no cameras or press invited to what you are about to read about, and the story comes from one person in New Hampshire.
One evening last July, Senator John McCain of Arizona arrived at the New Hampshire home of Erin Flanagan for sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies and a heartfelt talk about Iraq. They had met at a presidential debate, when she asked the candidates what they would do to bring home American soldiers – – soldiers like her brother, who had been killed in action a few months earlier.
Mr. McCain did not bring cameras or press. Instead, he brought his youngest son, James McCain, 19, then a private first class in the Marine Corps about to leave for Iraq. Father and son sat down to hear more about Ms. Flanagan’s brother Michael Cleary, a 24-year-old Army First Lieutenant killed by an ambush … a roadside bomb.
No one mentioned the obvious: In just days, Jimmy McCain could face similar perils. ‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them as they were coming to meet with a family that ……’ Ms. Flanagan recalled, choking up. ‘We lost a dear one,’ she finished.
Mr. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq. What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father’s New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud.
Two of Jimmy’s three older brothers went into the military. Doug McCain, 48, was a Navy pilot. Jack McCain, 21, is to graduate from the Naval Academy next year, raising the chances that his father, if elected, could become the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower with a son at war.
Story by Fred W. Baker III
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON – Award-winning actor and part-time rocker Gary Sinise and the “Lt. Dan Band” jammed for a standing-room-only crowd in the courtyard of the Pentagon this month.
“Rocking at the Pentagon,” Sinise exclaimed mid-set for a much-appreciative audience.
The band played for the 4th Annual America Supports You Military Tribute Concert as part of Military Appreciation Month celebrations. The event was televised live to troops overseas via American Forces Network.
“The opportunity to reach out and make a difference, just for a few minutes if for nothing else, in the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen deployed all around the world is something that is very special and a great opportunity,” said Marine Gen. General James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The crowd was packed with soldiers, family members, civilians and veterans. Overcast skies eventually gave way to the sun, and the audience warmed up to the mix of rock, pop, and country music by clapping, waving their arms and tapping their feet on the ground muddied by an overnight rain.
Sinise and his band have toured military bases in Europe, and he has performed in Iraq three times. He heads back for his fourth trip this summer. Stateside, the band tours bases and plays on weekends when Sinise is not filming his hit TV drama, “CSI NY.” Sinise has played at about 75 installations worldwide.
“It’s very, very important that you know you are appreciated and that we’re grateful and that we’re not going to forget the sacrifices that you and your families make for our nation,” he said. “We want everybody who is watching this around the world to know that we’re here supporting you. We believe in you. We are depending on you. You are our volunteer defenders, and we never take that for granted.”
Toward the end of the concert, Sinise broke from the stage and went into the crowd, dancing and playing with members of the audience. He sat next to wounded warrior Marine Lance Cpl. Jeremy Stengel sitting in the front row and, while playing, asked how Stengel was recovering. The Marine said the concert was a good break from his recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here. Stengel was injured in Iraq in Feb. 2007 by a roadside bomb,
“I thought it was awesome. I thought it was amazing,” Stengel said. “It’s a break for us to get away from the hospital scene. We’re at the hospital going through therapy day in and day out. We kind of need a break.”
Sinise also sidled next to Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Rene Rubiella, of the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla. Rubiella joined in with a little “air” guitar of his own.
Rubiella was at the Pentagon following a ceremony in which he received the President’s Volunteer Service Award. “It’s extraordinary. We commit our lives to freedom and supporting the Constitution,” he said. “It’s people like Gary that turn around and make us feel that we are appreciated and that we are loved and that there is a commitment from our nation that we are not forgotten,” Rubiella said.
This was Rubiella’s first time at the Pentagon. He has volunteered for multiple tours to Iraq. “I am so grateful that people take the time to commit, to volunteer their time and put on these events for our entertainment. I had a ball,” he said. “It just means the world to you. It reaches your heart.”
One of the most vocal members of the crowd, delivering several loud, appreciative “whoops” of support at the end of the show as the band played the finale “Proud to be an American,” was Army Lt. Col. Scott Turner.
“I just think it’s great what Gary does. I think he’s a true patriot,” Turner said. “I’m very hopeful that he’s reflective of all the men and women of the nation. And it’s just great that he would take his time to come out and support the troops.”
May we never forget our veterans and what they have done for all of us…
Why Veterans Reunite
“I now know why men who have been to war yearn to reunite. Not to tell stories or look at old pictures. Not to laugh or weep. Comrades gather because they long to be with the men who once acted at their best; men who suffered and sacrificed, who were stripped of their humanity. I did not pick these men. They were delivered by fate and the military. But I know them in a way I know no other men. I have never given anyone such trust. They were willing to guard something more precious than my life. They would have carried my reputation, the memory of me. It was part of the bargain we all made, the reason we were so willing to die for one another. As long as I have memory, I will think of them all, every day. I am sure that when I leave this world, my last thought will be of my family and my comrades….Such good men.”
Author Unknown
The American Legion Magazine – May, 2008
ROME, Italy (AP) — The U.S. military in Naples is testing tap water and soil because of health worries from that city’s pileup of sometimes smoldering rubbish.
Samples were taken earlier this month from sinks and yards of residences used by Navy and civilian military employees, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Wendy Snyder said Sunday.
The samples were sent to Germany for laboratory analyses, and the results are expected later this month or in early June, Snyder said.
“We just want to take a look at what the potential risks are,” Snyder said in a telephone interview.
She said Navy personnel had been anxious about possible health effects, although no link has been found so far to such complaints as rash or itchy eyes, Snyder said.
A U.S. Navy Web site advised: “We do not know the short- or long-term health risks associated with living in Naples, Italy.”
Collectors stopped picking up Naples’ trash in December because dumps are full.
Tons of garbage is blocking many sidewalks and streets in the center of Naples and its suburbs, forcing residents to sometimes wade through knee-high trash. Angry residents have taken to burning rubbish, knocking over refuse bins and dumping bags of refuse in the countryside.
Hoteliers are complaining that tourists are canceling reservations or checking out early after smelling the stench as the weather warms.
Naples daily Il Mattino reported Sunday that five cargo trains loaded with garbage left on Saturday for Germany. Railway officials declined to comment on the report.
The U.S. Naval Support Activity Web site notes that Navy authorities already in June 2007 asked the Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center to help evaluate “potential health risks associated with illegal dumping and inadequate garbage collection” in Naples.
The samples are being analyzed for any presence of pollutants, including pesticides, PCBs, dioxins and metals.
“The evaluation will assess epidemiological factors such as asthma, birth defects and cancer studies,” the Navy said.
Air quality will also be studied, Snyder said.
More than 1,800 personnel and family members live off base and work at U.S. Navy facilities, including a hospital, or at the NATO headquarters in a Naples suburb, she said.
The Naples Doctors Association on Sunday expressed alarm over the potential for disease from mice, cockroaches and other insects thriving in the mountains of garbage.
The group’s president, Giuseppe Scalera, was quoted Sunday by the Italian news agency ANSA as saying that the worst health damage could come from dioxins released from burning trash, which can contaminate farm products.
Earlier this year, mozzarella from the region around Naples were found to contain higher-than-permitted levels of dioxins.
Protests by Neapolitans who don’t want incinerators or dumps opened in their area have hampered efforts to solve the problem. Authorities also blame infiltration by organized crime into the garbage collection service.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced he will hold one of his new government’s first Cabinet meetings this week in Naples to signal he intends to get moving on the problem.
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Propaganda versus fact in the disappearance of America’s First Lady of Flight
