Great Grandfather

From my mom: ""I was thinking about my dad's dad yesterday & I remembered that both of his parents were dead by the time he was 6 yrs old, & he had to go & live with a neighbor who made him be a shepherd, at that young age, but he did get some schooling in the winter months, & he read the Bible in his own language & his Norweigen news paper, which he always got once a week, from Norway. I imagine it was old info, but he enjoyed it +++ & he smoked a pipe. He died at age 82 from starving really, but I think he had an ulcer & probably didn't feel much like eating. He was a kind old man a lot like R's dad. He was in the Norweigen Army, he is the one I gave you the picture of last year when you were here. He was in there for 6 yrs."

Blogger Reflection Award

I've been tagged by Neocommandcenter, here's the rules:

1. Copy this post (meaning the rules).

2. Reflect on five bloggers and write a least a paragraph about each one.

3. Make sure you link this post so others can read it and the rules.

4. Go leave your chosen bloggers a comment and let them know they’ve been given the award.

5. Put the award icon on your site.

"This award should make you reflect on five bloggers who have been an encouragement, a source of love, impacted you in some way, and have been a Godly example to you. Five Bloggers who when you reflect on them you get a sense of pride and joy . . . of knowing them and being blessed by them.”

1. The Merry Widow: For her insight into the emergent church and her caring for people in our little circle who've encountered some of the turbulence of this world. She also posts an occasional recipe that sound really, really delicious.

2. Nanc: For her wit and razor sharp humor. She also knows a heck of alot about flowers and bugs in the 'south', such as the clipping of bachelor buttons... ooops, I just remembered they're not called that.

3. Brooke: For her hysterical video's and cartoons of current events, and for giving hope for the next generation. How she manages her family AND her blog, I'll never know.

4. Russet Shadows: For his great writing. I unfortunately installed the new explorer the other day and lost all my blogger links...

5. Farmer John: For his mysterious comments and various Avatars. I would like to know more about the real FJ... I have a suspicion he's a Renaissance Man.

The Four Suns of HD 98800

Illustration Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)
Explanation: How would it look to have four suns in the sky? Planets of the HD 98800 system, if they exist, would experience such a view. HD 98800 is a multiple star system about 150 light years from Earth -- right in our section of the Milky Way Galaxy. For years it has been known that HD 98800 consists of two pairs of double stars, with one pair surrounded by a disk of dust. The star pairs are located about 50 AU from each other -- in comparison just outside the orbit of Pluto. Recent data from the Earth-trailing Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, however, indicate that the dust disk has gaps that appear consistent with being cleared by planets orbiting in the disk. If so, one planet appears to be orbiting at a distance similar to Mars of our own Solar System. Pictured above is an artist's drawing of how the HD 98800 system might appear to a nearby observer.

Tesla

This is a cool car! Tesla

Goya's Ghosts

This sounds like a good movie! And, explains why I'm a conservative... SMALL GOVERNMENT:>D


The parents who raised Oscar-winning director Milos Forman were Protestants, but both perished in Nazi concentration camps. The director's adoptive father distributed "forbidden" books to his students during the Nazi occupation and was sent to a concentration camp. Amazingly, he was returned to Prague to stand trial and was even acquitted, but nevertheless he was shipped to Buchenwald where he perished in 1944.

A year earlier, Forman's mother, Anna, suffered the same fate: After being arrested, she was sent to Auschwitz and died there.

"Nobody knows why," Forman told JTA, speaking from his Connecticut home. "It was like the Inquisition. They grabbed people and nobody knew why."

The analogy is deliberate, an intentional link to his latest film, Goya's Ghosts. It's a multi-layered story, a beautifully photographed art tour and a history lesson with multiple helpings of an impressive Natalie Portman.

The year is 1792, and while most of Europe has thrown off the shackles of the Roman Catholic Church's Holy Inquisition, it still wields its power in Spain.

Caught in its toils is Ines, played by Portman, the daughter of a wealthy Christian businessman whose lovely face has made her a favorite model of the great court painter Francisco Goya.

Ines runs afoul of zealous Church spies, who finger her as a "Judaizer," a forced convert to Christianity who "relapses" into observing Jewish rituals when she declines a plate of pork at a public inn. Her nemesis, torturer and eventual seducer is chief inquisitor Brother Lorenzo, impressively portrayed by Spanish actor Javier Bardem. Ultimately the inquisitor is disgraced, but not before fathering Ines' daughter.

When Napoleon conquers Spain in 1808, the Inquisition is abolished, the prison doors are thrown open and Ines emerges as a half-deranged hag. She undertakes a desperate search for her illegitimate daughter, who has become the beautiful prostitute Alicia, also portrayed by Portman in a remarkable double, or rather triple, performance.

The recently released film is the latest for Forman, a Czech native whose biological father was Jewish, in a directing career that also includes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, Ragtime and, most recently, The People vs. Larry Flynt in 1996.

"I believe that the most important conflict in the history of mankind is between the individual and institutions," Forman said. "Man creates institutions, which then assume total power and believe that they own man. That's the theme of Goya's Ghosts."

Forman doubts this struggle will ever end.

"After each war, after each mass killing, we all scream 'Never again,'" he said. "Then we do it again because we never learn from history." (JTA)

Just another cool picture from Accuweather.com

Andromeda

Infrared Andromeda
Credit: Pauline Barmby (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA
Explanation: This wide, detailed Spitzer Space Telescope view features infrared light from dust (red) and old stars (blue) in Andromeda, a massive spiral galaxy a mere 2.5 million light-years away. In fact, with over twice the diameter of our own Milky Way, Andromeda is the largest nearby galaxy. Andromeda's population of bright young stars define its sweeping spiral arms in visible light images, but here the infrared view clearly follows the lumpy dust lanes heated by the young stars as they wind even closer to the galaxy's core. Constructed to explore Andromeda's infrared brightness and stellar populations, the full mosaic image is composed of about 3,000 individual frames. Two smaller companion galaxies, NGC 205 (below) and M32 (above) are also included in the combined fields. The data confirm that Andromeda (aka M31) houses around 1 trillion stars, compared to 4 hundred billion for the Milky Way.

Hat tip: Mom

Home Made Dog Biscuits

I saw this in a magazine today, and thought I'd pass it on:>)

4 cups whole-wheat flour
2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
1 1/4 cups water with boullion
1/4 cup minced apple
3 Tbsp ground cinnamon
2 Tbsp veg oil
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp ground cloves

Heat oven to 325 deg F. Place all ingredients in a large bowl, and mix thoroughly until combined to form dough.

Roll out dough on floured surface to about 1/4 inch thick. Using a cookie cutter, cut into bone shapes. Combine dough scraps and continue to roll out and cut into shapes until all duogh has been used. Place cookies on ungreased foil-lined baking sheets. Bake 30 to 35 minutes. Makes 5 to 6 dozen. Easy huh?

I'm thinking garlic would be good to add too, maybe instead of the apple, cinnamon and cloves.

Shuttle Ferry

Credit: Carla Thomas, NASA
Explanation: How does a space shuttle that landed in California get back to Florida for its next launch? The answer is by ferry. NASA operates two commercial Boeing 747 airplanes modified to carry a space shuttle on their backs. Designated officially as Shuttle Carrier Aircraft or SCA, the 747s were made for commercial flights but bolstered by NASA with several struts, stabilizers, and electronic monitors. Spanning about 70 meters in length, the two aircraft's combined mass is nearly 150,000 kilograms. Pictured above, the space shuttle Atlantis is shown being ferried back to NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida in September 1998.

Infrared Trifid

Credit: J. Rho (SSC/Caltech), JPL-Caltech, NASA
Explanation: The Trifid Nebula, aka Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope, a well known stop in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. But where visible light pictures show the nebula divided into three parts by dark, obscuring dust lanes, this penetrating infrared image reveals filaments of glowing dust clouds and newborn stars. The spectacular false-color view is courtesy of the Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers have used the Spitzer infrared image data to count newborn and embryonic stars which otherwise can lie hidden in the natal dust and gas clouds of this intriguing stellar nursery. As seen here, the Trifid is about 30 light-years across and lies only 5,500 light-years away.

Africa From Above

July 5th 2007

We celebrate July 4th because of people like this young man. Hat tip: http://dudratreview.blogspot.com/

Happy July 4th!!

Red, White, and Blue Sky
Credit & Copyright: Chris Schur
Explanation: Contrasting colors in this beautiful sunset sky were captured on June 30 from Clear Creek Canyon Observatory in central Arizona, USA. The twilight scene includes brilliant Venus as the evening star, with a bright Saturn just above it, shining through thin clouds. The two wandering planets were a mere 1 degree apart or so, about twice the width of the full Moon rising above the eastern horizon on the other side of the sky. In fact, such serene skyviews were possible from all over planet Earth as Venus and Saturn approached a conjunction. Regulus, alpha star of the constellation Leo, is above and to the left of the close planetary pairing. At dusk, lights in tonight's sky will also feature Venus and Saturn low in the west and separated by about 2 degrees.

Hanging Baskets

Subject: ROSES & HANGING BASKETS
A teenage granddaughter
Comes downstairs for her date with this see-through blouse on and no bra.
Her grandmother just pitched a fit, telling her not to dare go out like that!
The teenager tells her "Loosen up Grams. These are modern times. You gotta let your rose buds show!"

And out she goes.

The next day the teenager comes down stairs, and the grandmother is sitting there with no top on. The teenager wants to die. She explains to her grandmother that she has friends coming over and that it is just not appropriate.....
The grandmother says, "Loosen up, Sweetie. If you can show off your rose buds,then I can display my hanging baskets."

Happy Gardening.(This is too funny not to share!)