Half-Sister

Conception to birth -- visualized | Alexander Tsiaras

Image-maker Alexander Tsiaras shares a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond. (Some graphic images.)

Kids Reenact: The First Thanksgiving

3 Ingredient Pasta Sauce

• Empty a can of San Marzano tomatoes into a saucepan.
• Skin an onion and chop it in half. Toss it in.
• Add five tablespoons of butter (a little more than half a stick).
• Sautée for 45 minutes while you watch some Hulu. Every now and then, stir and smush all the tomatoes.
• Meanwhile boil some water, cook some pasta, drain the pasta. Try a non-default spaghetti, like a long fusilli.
• Pull out the onion.
• Throw the pasta into the saucepan with the sauce. Stir.

Via https://lifehacker.com/the-best-pasta-sauce-has-three-ingredients-1820519444

Mystery Booms

Residents in Alabama were left baffled last week when a loud boom resounded across much of the state.
The boom, nicknamed 'Bama Boom', has left experts stumped, with suggested causes ranging from supersonic aircrafts to meteors exploding in the atmosphere.
This isn't the first time that the mysterious sound has been heard, and incidents are becoming more frequent according to some reports.
This year alone, similar noises have been reported 64 times this year, in locations including Michigan, Lapland, St Ives, Swansea and Yorkshire.
Read more: What is causing the mysterious 'booms' heard in 64 locations around the world this year?

Possible answers? From my Facebook posts comments:
" Often bigger meteorites entering the atmosphere and burning out. They crash through the sound barrier. I experienced it twice."
And this:
The SR-91 Aurora aircraft

 Aurora also known as SR-91 Aurora is the popular name for a hypothesized American reconnaissance aircraft, believed by some to be capable of hypersonic flight at speeds of Mach 5+. According to the hypothesis, Aurora was developed in the 1980s or 1990s as a replacement for the aging and expensive SR-71 Blackbird.

A British Ministry of Defence report released in May 2006 refers to USAF priority plans to produce a Mach 4-6 highly supersonic vehicle, but no conclusive evidence had emerged to confirm the existence of such a project. It was believed by some that the Aurora project was canceled due to a shift from spy-planes to high-tech unmanned aerial vehicles and reconnaissance satellites which can do the same job as a spyplane, but with less risk of casualties.

The main question here is, Does the US Air Force or America’s intelligence agencies have a secret hypersonic aircraft capable of a Mach 6 performance?. The continually growing evidence suggests that the answer to this question is YES. Perhaps the most well-known instance which provides evidence of such an aircraft’s existence is the sighting of a triangular plane over the North Sea in August 1989 by oil-exploration engineer Chris Gibson. As well as the famous “skyquakes” heard over Los Angeles since the early 1990s, found to be heading for the secret Groom Lake (Area 51) installation in the Nevada desert, numerous other facts provide an understanding of how the aircraft’s technology works. Rumored to exist but routinely denied by U.S. officials, the name of this aircraft is Aurora.

The outside world uses the name Aurora because a censor’s slip let it appear below the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 in the 1985 Pentagon budget request. Even if this was the actual name of the project, it would have by now been changed after being compromised in such a manner.

 The plane’s real name has been kept a secret along with its existence. This is not unfamiliar though, the F-117a stealth fighter was kept a secret for over ten years after its first pre-production test flight. The project is what is technically known as a Special Access Program (SAP). More often, such projects are referred to as “black programs.”

 So what was the first sign of the existence of SR-91 Aurora ? On 6 March 1990, one of the United States Air Force’s Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spyplanes shattered the official air speed record from Los Angeles to Washington’s Dulles Airport. There, a brief ceremony marked the end of the SR-71’s operational career. Officially, the SR-71 was being retired to save the $200-$300 million a year it cost to operate the fleet. Some reporters were told the plane had been made redundant by sophisticated spy satellites.

Sub-Human Pizza?

The Dream Mask

A mask with embedded lights to help you become more aware of your dreams? One doc doubts it:

“Lucid dreams are an overlapping state between sleep and wakefulness,” Dr. Erichsen said, “Dream sleep which you see here is very similar to wakefulness.”

He’s not convinced that light patterns will affect the lucid dreaming state.

“There’s no harm in it, but there’s no evidence that it works,” he said.- New Mask Could Make Users Masters Of Their Dreams

Why I Removed Jesus

Jesus was briefly a contributor at my main blog, Skeptical Eye, but I removed him. He was just too much to deal with. I mean, I can't compete against that! The Son of God writing original posts? I have enough trouble with Bret.

Should you decide to revive this blog...

Mr. Jakson, this is your mission, and should you decide to accept it, you will be confronted with several obstacles and extreme dangers, including Bret "Ginx" Alan wanting to know why he wasn't invited to blog here also, asking "Why are you a fucking censor Nazi?" and telling you to "fuck off" (and strangely thinking he's gotten away with such insolence), Radio Bloger (one G? WTF?) asking that all his videos that he didn't produce, but just embedded, be removed, even though he hasn't posted here yet, and then, in an act of bizarre self-destruction, removing his own image files and blogs from view, and starts madly deleting himself from existence.

Yes, Mr. Jakson, the challenge is great, the question is, do you have what it takes?

Bicycle Rocket Man

I stopped by Jack-in-the-Box for a quick lunch (Jumbo Jack and onion rings) the other day. I always feel guilty when I eat fried food, but I love onion rings, and most fast food places simply don't sell them, so you gotta love Jack for keeping them on the menu. I normally take my food to go and eat in the car, but I decided to eat in the restaurant this time. I got myself a table and sat down.

An older gentleman brought his food over and sat on one of the metal stools that face the street (it's like sitting at the counter in a diner, but with a window in front of you). He was all dressed in his bike riding gear. A woman asked him how much longer he'd be able to keep riding. "Another sixty years" he replied. He did look very fit and healthy. He was then asked how old he was and he said he was 64. He said he was going to see his 89 year old father and put him on a bike. The woman said something about being worried about getting run over by a car when you ride a bicycle. "No, I'll run them over," he didn't exactly smile as he said it, but he didn't exactly not smile either. "I'll put rockets on my bike and zoom right over those cars," he declared. He opened the wrapper on what looked like a burrito and started to eat. The woman took another bite of her hamburger. "But," she said, "it's such a slow way to get any where."

"No," the burrito eating older bicyclist stated firmly, "the rockets will take care of that problem too!" He put his food down. "And it's sure a lot better than paying those high prices to put gas in a car. I put water in me. That's h2o from hydrogen and oxygen and those are gases and I'll use those to get me where I need to go".

He seemed satisfied with his answers to the woman conversationalist. He turned to face the window while he continued to eat. He finally spoke again. "I'm going to get me a fold-up bike. Weighs about 23 pounds, probably less. I can carry it on my back and when I ride to the store I can just fold it up and take it in with me while I shop".

The woman gathered her things and got up. "Sounds interesting," she said.

"Yes, it is. The one I want to buy costs about three thousand dollars, though."

The woman was about to go out the door. "Is that with or without the rockets?" she asked.

Colonel Sanders and Just for Men

So I happened to be watching Friday Night Fights on Espn this past week and I noticed something incongruous. They had two main sponsors, KFC and the Just For Men brand of hair coloring. The logos for both companies were right there in the ring with the boxers. Colonel Sanders' white-haired visage is the symbol of KFC, but he is obviously satisfied with his "old-man" hair color. This does not show much sympathy for the other sponsor. I have therefore taken it upon myself to correct the matter as seen in the before and after picture above. Harlan Sanders is now a fried chicken king and a babe magnet. Thank you Just for Men!

My New Year's Day

Since we are not yet but less than one week into 2008, I think it is still safe for me to write about my New Year's Day. I have not been feeling good this week, but I have escaped being sick for quite a while, and in fact I don't recall being sick at all during 2007. So maybe starting the new year feeling miserable should not be unexpected. Anyway, it's my excuse for not writing as much as I want or would like to.I got up early on New Year's and watched the Rose Parade, as I do every year. If you check out the link you'll find out the Parade started in 1890, and is never held on a Sunday (if January 1st falls on a Sunday, they have the parade the next day on the 2nd). I don't watch college football, so I didn't have that diversion to look forward to, but I did watch part of the Twilight Zone marathon. I have a friend who watches every year (she's a big Twilight Zone fan) and when I called her she was not interested in talking much, her attention focused on Rod Sterling's TV legacy.

I had been to Walmart and bought some Maruchan Instant Lunches. I haven't really eaten those for a long time, but when I saw them on sale for .25 each I decided to try some of the chicken flavored ones. My first introduction to the food was actually rival brand Cup Noodles (I remember the name as Cup O Noodles at one time) and I've always liked them as a quick meal, maybe with some toast. I had a friend I worked with years ago who kept a large supply of Cup Noodles in his office, and he would eat one whenever he got hungry, which was often. He would fill one of the packages with water and microwave it.
Well, I decided I would have one. I read the package directions on the Instant Lunch and it instructed to heat the water on the stove and pour it into the cup or to heat water in the microwave and then pour into the cup. It did not say to microwave the Styrofoam cup in the microwave with the water already in it. Well, that's how I always saw people in offices and workplaces do it, but I followed directions and since I did not want to go to the trouble of waiting for water to boil on the stove, I just grabbed my glass mug and filled it with water. I drink a lot of tea and most of the time just fill my glass and heat in the microwave. I find the "beverage" setting gets the water hot enough for me, but not that hot. Thinking it would need to be hotter for the Instant Lunch, I set the microwave for 3 minutes on high.The mug was very hot when I pulled it out and I poured the water into the noodles and waited with anticipation. Then I thought I'd have some tea as well and got my cup and without thinking about it filled it with room temperature water. I instantly heard a noise, a little crackle and pop. I noticed immediately that my cup had two cracks on either side all the way to the brim, splitting it in two. The glass held though. But only for a few moments. The front half fell away and I didn't have a chance to catch it as it dropped to the floor, water spilling everywhere. I thought, oh no, I'll have to sweep up little bits of broken glass. But the part that hit the tiled floor didn't shatter. It just bounced and stayed intact. The glass (which I also got from Walmart) is very thick and appears quite strong. But it had been too hot when I'd put the cooler water in it, so while it could survive a fall to the floor without breaking, water did it in. If the timing and circumstances are right, anything is possible and even the strong are vulnerable

Happy New Year

Yes, I know its not January 1. I missed it. But it seems to be traditional to say Happy New Year for at least a week or more after the start of the new year. So, this is my new year greeting. May 2008 be a great year for you and all those you care about. Life is short, so live it to the fullest and never be afraid to take a chance.

"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt" -William Shakespeare

Stolen Cookies and a Guilty Conscience

The Day the Cookie Crumbled

Little Italy

Going out to eat was always an adventure. Some of the best memories I have from childhood are of restaurants. But I still can experience the delight in dining away from home (or a fast food outlet) when I go to a real sit down establishment.Well, not too long ago, I had to go help my Mom and while doing that we decided to go with my aunt to an Italian place downtown, for dinner. We drove in my aunt's car and it was dark out so I enjoyed seeing the lights and buildings of the city. Our Little Italy is full of places to eat and the restaurant we went to that night has been there since the 1950s. It gets very busy, even during the week, but when we arrived it didn't look too crowded. You can tell because when it gets busy there is a line out the door. The parking lot is small and narrow and you sometimes have to wait to find someone else pulling out before you can park. So after we finally did get a spot and parked and walked back to the entrance, the queue was already to the front door!

The entrance door opens to a wall and then turns the corner down a narrow space filled with items to purchase, things like olive oil and tomato sauce and then on the right side is a deli counter. It gets very crowded as the line of people waiting to be seated gets longer and longer, with everyone jostling for position, and groups of people that are together tend to spread out, instead of staying single file (so they can chat while waiting) and it becomes nearly impossible to get by into the dining area itself. If you are right at the door itself, you cannot see around the corner. I stayed there because my aunt disappeared, announcing she was going to "see what she could do" about getting us a table. She didn't want to wait, you see. Time passed and then my Mom decided to check and also then disappeared around the corner. More and more people began to arrive. I wondered if I should hold a spot in line, but no sooner had I that thought when I suddenly heard my name being called. It was Mom and I pushed my way through the crowd and saw her waving her arms, motioning for me to come along. I did so, as best I could.

When I made it to where she stood a waitress was all of a sudden there and my aunt appeared and we were lead to a table. It faced the street window and I could look out at people passing on the sidewalk. It was a pleasant evening, but I felt like we had cut ahead in line, as many of the people that were still waiting in line had arrived there before we had. It reminded me of the scene from Goodfellas when Henry and Karen go into the restaurant through the kitchen and get seated right away. I asked my aunt how she had pulled it off (I knew it wasn't money, she is too careful with a dollar, so she hadn't greased anyone's palm) but she wouldn't reveal her secret. Maybe she was just bolder than everyone else, so she got what she wanted. There is a lesson there, I think.

Welcome to Wonderland

Do you think a wonderland is a place reserved only for the imagination? A place described in fantasy novels and movies and cartoons, but not somewhere you can ever really visit? Well, I have news for you. You are living in a wonderland right now. For the world we occupy is as full of wonder and the fantastic as any world of make-believe. Welcome to Wonderland! Here we will explore the fascinating (thank you Mr. Spock), the curious, the strange, and the weird. We will reminisce and engage in nostalgia, and we will peer into the future to glimpse the even more amazing world that is coming soon. For reality, the place you live now, is a wonderland too.