Artificial Veins

Scientists can grow blood vessels in a lab for use in coronary bypass or dialysis. The process involves taking smooth muscle cells from a human cadaver and grafting them onto tubes made of the material used in making dissolvable stitches.

Within eight to 10 weeks, the tubes degrade and a "fully formed vascular graft" remains. The veins have been successfully tested in animals and are soon to be tested in humans. They can last for a year in controlled conditions and have decreased potential for infection, obstruction, or clotting.

Our Globe

Forests cover 30% of earth's land surface, land covers 29.22% of earth surface, water covers 70.78% of earth surface (98% of that is in the oceans) (326 million trillion gallons of water) 1.6% in ice caps, .3.6% under land wells aquifers, .036 lakes and rivers,

80% of atmosphere is nitrogen most of the rest is oxygen
People occupy less than 2% of land mass - It mathematically does not seem possible we create pollution that changes the whole earth and the atmosphere above the earth.

Cashing in on a Name

James Cash Penney got his start as clerk working for a small Colorado chain called the Golden Rule. In 1902, his bosses offered him an ownership stake in the company if Penney would move to tiny Kemmerer, Wyoming, and start a Golden Rule store there. Penney took the offer and his store was so successful that by 1907, he was able to buy out the other two stores in the Golden Rule chain. By 1912, Penney had over 30 stores in the region, and he incorporated them all under a new name—the J.C. Penney Company.

Of Mice and Men

The ubiquitous computer mouse is 43 years old. It took six years to develop and was unveiled in December, 1968, although it did not become commercially available until the 1980s, with the advent of the personal computer. Douglas C. Engelbart and a group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute came up with the revolutionary way to communicate with computers.

In the fast changing computer world, it is almost unheard of to have one technology last this long. Its demise has been predicted for almost twenty years, but all the great minds have yet to find a way to replace it. Even the trackball, joy stick, and touch pad have not been able to replace the mouse. Touch screen is coming, as is voice control, but it will be a few more years until they find the right technology to unseat the mighty mouse. BTW - Mighty Mouse came along in 1942 and Mickey Mouse has been around a bit longer, since his debut in 1928 and he is still going strong.

Happy Friday

It’s not what you do some of the time that counts, it’s what you do all of the time that counts. Jack LaLanne

I always run toward counting on a Happy Friday!

Bottled Water Causes Cavities

That's a headline I recently read. The reason shown was that those who drink only bottled and filtered water do not get the fluoride that is in tap water. Governments began adding fluoride in water in the 1940s and incidents of cavities dropped almost by half. Lately, some researchers have concluded that their might be too much fluoride in water and are discussing the appropriate amounts to be added. Seems like another unintended consequence of the green movement.

Happy Birthday Robots

The word is 90 years old. In 1921, a play about robots premiered at the National Theater in Prague, then capital of Czechoslovakia. The word stems from the Czech word robota meaning forced labor, drudgery, and servitude. The robots in Capek’s play were molded out of a chemical batter, and they looked exactly like humans.

Even before the word was invented, Leonardo da Vinci's 1495 sketch of a mechanical knight, which could sit up and move its arms and legs, is considered to be the first plan for a humanoid robot.

Robots do many things these days, such as clean floors, build and paint cars, harvest crops, play chess, act as prosthetics, and perform operations.

Isaac Asimov developed what have become the three universal rules for robots.

# A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
# A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
# A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Danger, danger Will Robinson, this is beginning to ramble.

Killed by a Robot

In 1979, A 25-year-old Ford Motor assembly line worker is killed on the job in a Flat Rock, Michigan, casting plant. It’s the first recorded human death by robot. Williams died instantly in 1979 when the robot’s arm slammed him as he was gathering parts in a storage facility, where the robot also retrieved parts. His family was awarded a generous sum in compensation.

Cheesburgers in a Can

The world’s first cheeseburger in a can is sold by Katadyn’s Trekking-Mahlzeiten, a subsidiary company that develops specialist ready-meals for the outdoor, expedition and extreme athlete markets.

Instructions say to simply throw the can into a water container over a fire, give it a minute or two, fish it out, open the lid, and eat. It has a shelf life of twelve months without refrigeration and is billed as the ideal fast food treat for the wilderness. This is probably the fifth best thing since canned bacon.

Photo Tagging

Google and Facebook have options called photo tagging. When someone posts a picture, then names you as being in the picture, you have been tagged. Behind this is new cutting-edge facial-recognition software to enhance their photo editing and sharing services.

Both firms encourage users to assign names to people in photos. Facial-recognition software then goes to work indexing facial features like a fingerprint expert indexes swirls in a thumbprint. Once you are tagged in a photo, the software looks for similar facial features in untagged photos. This allows users to quickly group photos in which you appear. Google and Facebook say privacy is protected because photo tagging is designed strictly for use by individual consumers within their personal accounts. May be fun, but also scary. Caveat Emptor.

Speaking of Tagging

Did you know smartphones equipped with GPS location finders "geotag" photos and videos. It embeds images with the longitude and latitude of the location shown in the image. If you take a picture in your house and post it on the web, you are actually giving away your address to the world. If someone takes your picture with a non-descript background, the information in the photo still shows where you were when the picture was taken. Another reason for not getting your picture taken if you are someplace where you should not be. GPS for driving instructions Good. GPS for anything else Bad.

Bacon on Steroids

That's the only way to describe these videos. My niece Kalyn sent me this LINK from a site that is the baconiest, manliest, greasiest bunch of goodness this side of heaven. Their meals make turducken seem like tofu. OK, I know only 1% of you will go look, but I had to share.

Jack LaLane

He passed away at age 96 a few weeks ago and he probably never had a cheeseburger, much less than a burger in a can. I used to watch his TV show while growing up. His only prop was a chair and he used it to do numerous exercises. His thoughts about warming up before exercise, "Warming up is the biggest bunch of horseshit I've ever heard in my life. Fifteen minutes to warm up! Does a lion warm up when he's hungry? 'Uh-oh, here comes an antelope. Better warm up.' No! He just goes out and eats the sucker."

He was the first to have a nationally syndicated exercise show on television and the  to have athletes (men and women) working out with weights. He was also the first to sell vitamins and exercise equipment on TV.


Here are a few of his feats.
He could do 1,033 push-ups. In 23 minutes. At the age of 42.
Age 40: Swam the length of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge underwater with 140 pounds of equipment, including two air tanks.
Age 44: Maneuvered a paddleboard 30 miles, 9-½ hours non-stop from Farallon Islands to the San Francisco shore.
Age 45: Completed 1,000 pushups and 1,000 chin-ups in 1 hours and 22 minutes.
At 60, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman's Wharf while handcuffed and pulling a 1,000-pound boat.
On his 70th birthday, he swam a mile and a half through the Long Beach Harbor while towing a flotilla of 70 boats. His hands and feet were shackled.

Money Fact

If we spent a dollar a second, it would take more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars. A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. In 2010, the U.S. government issued almost as much new debt as the rest of the governments of the world combined. The latest budget anticipates $5.08 trillion in deficits over the next 5 years.