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I made an interesting observation here in Southern California a few minutes ago. Background: We are on vacation here after seeing my #3 son coming back from an overseas deployment in the Marines. FWIW, it was with the 1/4 on a MEU "booze Cruise" in the Western Pacific. I backed into a support pole in the underground garage at the hotel yesterday and made wuite a dent in the passenger door of the rental. I took it to a body shop here in San Clemente so I could get an idea of how much it's gonna cost me. While waiting...

PARIS,-Sept.- 13.—The spectre of an empire-gobbling, culture-destroying America is arising from beyond the Atlantic horizon to the westward to vex the soul of France and Prance, taken all aback, is filled with alarms and excursions of dismay. All of a sudden, as it were, thinking Frenchmen have awakened to dlscover, in the United States, a vast menace to French institutions. The situation has brought forth an endless amount of talk, and French publicists have spoiled a great deal of excellent paper discussing it. Some of them are calling for the formation of a nsw "United States of Europe," with France...

New Deal Fellow Travellers On the question of Communist support of Franklin D. Roosevelt, let us look at some of their fellow travellers supporting the President officially in Washington. If Mr. Roosevelt doesn't want their support why doesn't he fire them? Here are a few: Rexford Tugwell, Governor of Puerto Rico: "Business will logically be required to disappear." This was in 1932 and Tugwell is still on the payroll. Adolf Berle, Assistant Secretary of State. Berle says: "Over a period of years the government will gradually come to own most of the production plants in the United States." Does that...

President Barack Obama has praised Spain as a global leader in renewable electricity generation and has lauded its success at creating so-called "green jobs." However, a recent Spanish university study concluded that Spain’s mad rush to meet overly aggressive renewable standards has destroyed jobs and driven up the real cost of electricity, without cutting carbon emissions. Dig a Little Deeper While visiting an Ohio company that provides parts for wind turbines in mid-January, President Obama presented his vision of a nation that is more energy efficient and more reliant on renewable energy. "Think of what’s happening in countries like Spain,...

—Dr. Robert Peltier, PE Editor-in-Chief Fueling Around Europeans didn't know that corn existed before Columbus "discovered" America. It had been cultivated by indigenous North Americans for thousands of years before the Italian brought home what was to become a favorite food for many. The more adventuresome even figured out how to distill corn into something more to their liking. Fast-forward five hundred years, and those yellow kernels are embroiled in a political food fight. Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is being served up as a way to slake our thirst for foreign oil. Ethanol is even on the menu of...

The mountains in Europe are growing taller and melting glaciers are partly responsible, scientists say. Heavy glaciers cause the Earth's crust to flex inward slightly. When glaciers disappear, the crust springs back and the overlaying mountains are thrust skyward, albeit slowly. The European Alps have been growing since the end of the last little Ice Age in 1850 when glaciers began shrinking as temperatures warmed, but the rate of uplift has accelerated in recent decades because global warming has sped up the rate of glacier melt, the researchers say.

Low cost orbital launch vehicle. Year: 1977. Family: LCLV. Country: Germany. Status: Hardware. $200 million was spent from 1975-1987 by Lutz Kayer in a serious attempt to develop a low-cost satellite launcher using clusters of mass-produced pressure-fed liquid propellant modules. The project was finally squelched by the German government under pressure from the Soviet and French. In the early 1970's Willy Brandt's Ministry of Science and Technology solicited a contract for demonstration of launch vehicle technology an order of magnitude cheaper and more reliable than existing boosters. Lutz Kayser's research company won the contract and developed a radically new rocket...

A busy beaver's dam work is felt downstream in a major way, a new study suggests. Beavers are well known for creating large pond-like areas upstream from their dams, but scientists have found that the construction projects also spread water downstream with the efficiency of a massive once-every-200-years flood. Researchers spent three years in the Rocky Mountain National Park examining downstream valley ecosystems in the Colorado River.

by Jeffrey F. Bell Honolulu HI (SPX) May 21, 2006 One of my earliest columns for SpaceDaily criticized the frequent use of inappropriate and misleading historical analogies by promoters of outer space. Since then, the problem has only gotten worse. One of the most persistent analogy abusers is X-Prize and Rocket Racing League promoter Peter Diamandis. His whole career as a space activist is based on the idea that rocket prizes and rocket races can be a major driver of an independent non-governmental space industry. In turn, this concept is based on an erroneous view of the Golden Age of...

Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system has already run more than 400 million euros (513 million dollars) over budget in its first phase, the head of the group managing the project said on Monday. The over run was due mainly to miscalculations for the costs of building and launching two test satellites, said Rainer Grohe, director of the Galileo Joint Undertaking. The first satellite was sent into orbit in December while the second is due to head into space by the end of the year. Grohe said improvements to the project's security system also added to the financial burden. The spending...

I've come up with the working solution to the problem of migratory birds flying into wind turbines off the coast of Galveston and being chewed to pieces. Never mind that they'll provide a wonderful spot for saltwater fishermen. All those dead birds dropping out of the sky will attract the fish. Every Cajun in Louisiana will be anchored next to these rigs and setting up a trotline.

BRITS REVOKE USA INDEPENDENCE (A Message from John Cleese To the citizens of the United States of America): "In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not fancy). Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be...

Another space news website has published a leaked NASA study called "LRA-0" which is spreading despair and gloom through the space community. Many people are surprised that the architecture for returning men to the Moon laid out in the famous ESAS report is declared to be totally unworkable in this new document

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060410_happy_face.html

Global Warming: Can Earth EXPLODE ? The real danger for our entire civilization comes not from slow climate changes, but from overheating the planetary interior. Galileo discovered that Earth moves. Copernicus discovered that Earth moves around the Sun. In 2000 Tom Chalko, inspired by Desmarquet's report, discovered that the solid nucleus of our planet is in principle a nuclear reactor, it is eccentric, and that our collective ignorance may cause it to overheat and explode. The discovery has been published in June 2001 by the new scientific journal NUJournal.net. Polar ice caps melt not because the air there is warmer...

Just out of curiousity, how many Freepers have children in the military? I have one at this time, in the Marines.

Protest Planned for Pluto Spacecraft The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space of Brunswick, Maine has called for a demonstration at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Jan. 7 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST (1600-1800 GMT). The protest will highlight opposition to NASA’s planned New Horizons launch on January 17 that will carry a cache of plutonium to power the Pluto-bound probe’s radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). To be launched by an Atlas 5 booster, New Horizons will head out on a long distance journey to shoot past Pluto in 2015. After that flyby,...

Twas the night before Tookie's execution ... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twas the night before Christmas and all through San Quentin, the crips were protesting, and liberals were ventin'. The cyanide hung by the chamber wth care, in hopes that the reaper soon would be there. The inmates were nestled all snug in their bed ; except for Old Tookie, who soon would be dead. And me with my beer mug, dressed warm in my flannell, had curled up to watch it, on the Fox News Channel. I set up my TIVO to record the news station, and thoroughly loved the momentous occasion....

"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes." Mark Twain. "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." General George S. Patton. "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." Marge Simpson "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure" Jacques Chirac, President of France "As far as France is...

Russian squirrel pack 'kills dog' Local people suggest hunger is driving squirrels to extremes Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.