Nothing doing

After being swept up in the tide of finals and business- I've recovered, but without the desire to blog... perhaps in the next few days one will pop up about the cruelty of zoos (King Kong was paticularly saddening) or the politically correctness of Christmas pins and greetings or the drought in Kenya... Until then, enjoy Hermie's story

Posted on Thu, Dec. 15, 2005
Christmas miracle: Turtle gets braces
Associated Press

WATERTOWN, N.Y. - Hermie the Turtle's little defective beak made meal time a struggle. Unable to close his mouth completely, the tiny 20-gram reptile's very existence was at stake.
But today, this map turtle has a new lease on life thanks to the work of two doctors who outfitted young Hermie with braces. Now, some are calling the orthodontic work a Christmas miracle.

"I've worked on animals before but nothing this small," said Dr. Peter M. Virga, a Watertown dentist who along with veterinarian Jeffrey G. Baier performed the unique procedure.
After receiving Hermie in May, zookeepers at the New York State Zoo in Watertown's Thompson Park noticed the turtle was having difficulty eating. Medical exams then showed Hermie's lower jaw growing downward.

"He may have adapted to eat like this, or he may have not made it," Baier said.
Turtles, who are toothless, use their beaks to break food down before grinding it with the plates in their mouths.

After Baier injected Hermie with two anesthetics Wednesday morning, Virga inserted four pins into the turtle's jaws, according to the Watertown Daily Times which published an account of Hermie's ordeal Thursday.

During a meeting with reporters, the doctors placed the immobile turtle, believed to be between 2 and 3 years old, on a table. As Baier held Hermie's head, Virga placed two rubber orthodontic elastics - the same kind used by children with braces - on the pins across the turtle's mouth.
While Hermie recuperates, zookeepers will remove the rubber bands once a day to allow the turtle to eat. In keeping with the spirit of Christmas, the doctors chose red and green rubber bands for Hermie's beak.

"It's very exciting and I was glad to help," said Virga, who's performed root canal surgery on dogs. Baier's wife, Angela, the zoo's executive director, said she was thrilled such a small zoo could take part in such a rare procedure.

"Miracles happen this time of the year," she said. "Hopefully his beak will be fixed."

Sing a new song

I thought Psalm 19:1-4 applied well to this article! And though the sky is silent, God gave voices to other parts of his creation! (How little we know…)

1 How clearly the sky reveals God's glory! How plainly it shows what he has done!
2 Each day announces it to the following day; each night repeats it to the next.
3 No speech or words are used, no sound is heard; 4 yet their message goes out to all the world and is heard to the ends of the earth.

Scientists Discover Singing Iceberg in Antarctica

GERMANY: November 25, 2005

BERLIN - Scientists monitoring earth movements in Antarctica believe they have found a singing iceberg.

Sound waves from the iceberg had a frequency of around 0.5 hertz, too low to be heard by humans, but by playing them at higher speed the iceberg sounded like a swarm of bees or an orchestra warming up, the scientists said.The German Alfred Wegener institute for polar and marine research publish the results of its study, done in 2002, in Science magazine on Friday.Between July and November 2002 researchers picked up acoustic signals of unprecedented clarity when recording seismic signals to measure earthquakes and tectonic movements on the Ekstroem ice shelf on Antarctica's South Atlantic coast.Tracking the signal, the scientists found a 50 by 20 kilometre iceberg that had collided with an underwater peninsula and was slowly scraping around it."Once the iceberg stuck fast on the seabed it was like a rock in a river," said scientist Vera Schlindwein. "The water pushes through its crevasses and tunnels at high pressure and the iceberg starts singing.""The tune even goes up and down, just like a real song."

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=33647&newsdate=25-Nov-2005

Houston: What you did not hear

Admittedly I have always been inclined to agree with certain cultural “conspiracies.” One of them being the moon landing. I tried for a minute to think of a deep and solid justification for this, but it was bull, so I won’t make excuses. Anyway. I just found this article after exploring on the neat site: godandscience.org, and thought to share it. 

---------------------------------------------

Communion on the Moon- Buzz Aldrin
By Bill Carrell

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon in the Apollo 11 space mission. Michael Collins third member of the group, was in charge of the command module, essential for their return to earth, which circled the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin landed. The moon lander touched down at 3:17 Eastern Standard Time, Sunday, July 20, 1969.

Aldrin had brought with him a tiny communion kit, given him by his church, that had a silver chalice and wine vial about the size of the tip of his finger. During the morning he radioed, "Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, whoever or wherever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the last few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way."


"In the radio blackout," he wrote later, "I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.' I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute Deke Slayton had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly..." "Eagle's metal body creaked. I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements."

More inspiration: building and roasting sustainably

Sometimes I get so excited about all of the environmental projects that are going
on in the world! From Virginia to Kenya, it's awesome. The lovely Grist.org email
update linked me to the official treehugger.com website, which I had never heard of!
(not very hardcore, but I've always  known that- AND I continue to believe
that there are issues and lifestyle choices that absolutely take precedence
over treehugging.)

The Treehugger update for today included this amazing solar powered coffee
roasting article- a sustainable coffee lover's dream come true!
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/11/solar_powered_c.php

So from there, I headed over to Peace Coffee to find out their email and
let them know. I mean, wow! I see a big solar panel on top of the
Green Institute, soaking it up and roasting away!

By the way, the Green Institute is awesome- I’ve included a link here:
Https://www.peacecoffee.com/green_institute.htm

A special note about their “Xeriscape landscaping” which “requires little or no water and maintenance” spread out “over a four-acre site and 100 percent storm water treatment on site through natural percolation.”If we could get this to the University, Sarita Wetland would have no (or fewer) worries. : )

How many lives have you saved? 195,000….

It’s a dirty job, but someone has to accessorize their lab coats with a helmet! (As opposed to clothes and ipod protection when cleaning-cleaning-cleaning lab equipment).

This grin-inducing news article about U professor James J. Ryan's retractable seatbelt invention was worth sharing.. I mean over 195,000 is pretty good for one guy! It's cropped by me from “His crashed helped make ours less dangerous. The legacy of U research pioneer James J. Ryan,” Rick Moore. http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/His_crashes_helped_make_ours_less_dangerous.html

…James J. Ryan's research on car safety began in 1952, and in the ensuing decade he conducted dozens and dozens of groundbreaking--sometimes in the literal sense--experiments on automobiles. Donath showed a number of videotape clips of these experiments at his presentation on November 15. In one, a vehicle was dropped from a crane to the ground to simulate a crash speed of 40 mph. Other experiments had vehicles ramming into barriers outside of the mechanical engineering building on the East Bank of the Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis.

… Ryan acquired the "Crash" nickname for his willingness to avail himself (and occasionally some of his graduate students) as a subject in crash tests on campus. Yes, this was before the days of crash test dummies, and no, there will be no sarcastic statement here as to the relative IQs of the human subjects. (It should also be noted that Ryan did not put his graduate students at undue risk; he subjected himself to the trials ahead of his volunteers.)....

What celebrity affords is an illusion

(msnbc.com)

There is a sinking feeling of disgust in my gut over this! So apparently American celebrities deserve to own-- the moon? What a joke! This speaks to me about the fleeting nature of humanity, how sinful and futile our efforts really are, and how foolish it is that we feel deserving of owning anything. (Acts 17:24-25 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.) Read below..

Music Awards Guests Get Piece of Moon

NEW YORK - Stars appearing at Tuesday's American Music Awards will depart with a piece of the moon.
Lindsay Lohan, Will Smith, Missy Elliot and the dozens of other entertainers that are either presenting or performing at the award show will each be given a gift basket that contains nearly 100 free items - including ownership of an acre of land on the moon.
The gift bags will also include clothes, perfumes, watches, Blackberries and other various electronics - adding up to a total value of approximately $33,000. They were assembled by Hollywood Connections, a gift bag specialist.
The moon "ownership" is done by a company called Lunar Federation that plans to have the first private mission to the moon, thereby allowing it to create a Moon government and secure land rights - or so it claims. Steve Stein of Hollywood Connections, though, acknowledges the gift is more for fun than anything.
The 33rd annual special will air live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Tuesday on ABC (8 p.m. EST). Cedric the Entertainer will host. The American Music Awards honor the past year's elite in contemporary music as voted by record-buy.

Found under the news heading, http://ilead.itrack.it/clients/Nedstat/c4988/popup.asp?campaignid=4988

The 'brilliant link' that couldn't

Apologies for the link that didn't work... I've pasted the LA Times article (abridged by me) below for all of your thirsty minds. (Do you think the gnomes are in favor?)

Using Ocean Waves to Power Desalination
Energetech is pairing with another Australian company to use surf- generated energy in reverse osmosis systems.
By Rory McGuire, Financial Times

Two Australian companies are claiming they can turn ocean waves into drinking water at very little cost, thanks to a combination of their technologies.Energetech Australia's initial aim was to generate cheap electricity using wave power, but it realized that in teaming up with desalination specialist H2AU it could use the same power to produce potable water at a low cost.
(In arid regions salinization of water is a hudge problem. Currently there is a million-dollar desalinization plant in Arizona that is SITTING EMPTY due to cost! Using a renewable resource (such as waves or the sun) is the ideal solution for affording this important technology.. I expect that someday most of our water will have come from desalinization plants, not wells and rivers.)

Ocean waves, so abundant and consistent, are a source of energy — and energy is the main expense of any desalination process. Most desalination installations use electricity to create the pressure needed to drive a reverse osmosis system, but the two Sydney-based, privately owned companies' combined technologies use wave pressure directly to power a reverse osmosis desalination plant. This unusual project avoids the multiple energy losses in converting wave energy to electricity before using the electricity to drive pressure pumps. The entire operation can be run off the coastline, where the residual concentrated brine is released harmlessly back into the ocean and the only land connection is a pipe carrying potable water ashore. The process involves no fossil fuels, greenhouse gases or waste, the companies say....
(It gets more technical after this... but gosh, isn't this awesome?)

This is Brilliant

I should share the final Brilliant article that pushed me over the edge to actually start this thing. Another hope-inspiring idea. I wish I'd thought of it.

Why I should not have a blog

Wow. Tonight’s the night.

I feel a little weird/dirty/silly for jumping on this bandwagon, but I’ve been milling over the idea of a blog in my mind for a long time, and I've been continually struck with the need for a forum to express my disgust or elation about what’s going on in our world, and how I see it.

So, here it goes. I hope this will become better, so please accept a sloppy first try.

; ) christine.

Note: Click on the title and you will find a link. that will be the routine, i suspect.