THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

Tiny bride wows Sierra Leone.
"Thousands of people have thronged the streets of the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, to see one of the country's shortest people get married.....Ms Kamara said they met when her future husband called out to her on the street. "I was not sure of his intentions, since we looked so different," she said."He told me he loved me... A few months later, he proposed to marry me and of course I accepted," she said."






Most of us have accepted the stereotype that fat girls are jovial with good senses of humor. However, the cartoon humor shifts when she is married to a thin man...she becomes dragon lady married to Casper Milquetoast.






Racial opposites also may produce some spectacular offspring, as in Tiger Woods and, more recently to the forefront, Barack Obama. (see below)

DON'T LAUGH, HARRY POTTER

At last engineers and scientists are nearing creating a true invisible cloak. "Getting the best material (not metal) to refract the light properly has been difficult."

"One of the research teams describes its miniature "carpet cloak" in the journal Nature Materials.

This "carpet" design was based on a theory first described by John Pendry, from Imperial College London, in 2008.

Michal Lipson and her team at Cornell University demonstrated a cloak based on the concept.

Xiang Zhang, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, led the other team.

"Essentially, we are transforming a straight line of light into a curved line around the cloak, so you don't perceive any change in its pathway," he explained."

Daniel Sieberg, CBS News, offers this explanation of the future.

Of course, I am left wondering how the future will get around several obstacles I foresee. Pheromones cannot be obscured by light waves, can they? What about the after-breath of a heavily seasoned garlic meal? The flatulent, anxious, tense individual who wants to be hidden? Clearly, the scenario cannot be a one-size-fits-all. One day, when all those alive today are long gone, a visitor from the future might not be so quickly impressed, but the facts will be there to be viewed....won't they?

POLITICAL PROTESTERS TEABAGGING

Republicans and those who joined them made a very unfortunate choice in picking teabagging for their protests as it has another meaning they may find offensive. However, one can speculate (after you have looked it up on Urban Dictionary.

One could take this image far, which amuses me. The Republicans and Independents who are engaging in this protest, and figuratively trying to gain some sort of comfort through this process, can have little spirit of adventure or sense of humor, though offering a hearty laugh to looser minds.

The protesters are either incredibly naive or hopelessly frustrated and behaving like children having a temper tantrum. The term 'comfort food' usually refers to that taken by mouth but, in this instance, one wonders whether it is the object that implies receiver of comfort. I'm clearly the wrong gender to ever understand the answer to that question. Of course the real answer, as those of us who read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, learned is 42.

It occurs to me that protests are a subject that is very complex. They work if someone has the power to resist that which they are protesting. Protests were partly effective about the war in Viet Nam. Hunger strikes work only if it is important to keep the protester alive, as with Ghandi. As with the teabaggers, asking that they wanted things to remain the same and not change hardly moved the majority of the country who had voted for change equaling hope. The only thing proved to anyone by this protest was that a minority of the country are sore losers who cannot tolerate change, even when what they have is not working, or working to the detriment of the majority (which in this context includes the protesters).

Nevertheless, now that the media has decided it does not bring viewers as a matter of interest, we seem to no longer see if they are active. Without lots of profile for them, it seems they will just continue to be sore losers.

FOR EVERY ACTION THERE IS A REACTION

From the New York Times: "That, combined with a more aggressive posture by the regulatory authorities to put a check on bonuses, is likely to hasten what has already been a sharp falloff in corporate and income taxes from the City. Banking was a huge revenue source for London. When the banking industry flopped, 28,000 lost their jobs at Morgan Stanley alone. All told, more than 70,000 jobs in finance are expected to disappear over the next two to three years, a big chunk of the total estimated job losses of about 280,000 in London."

The reaction to Detroit automobile manufacturing problems reflects the reaction. If one uses the metaphor of a family system, one can see that if the parent fails, the whole system will be negatively effected. The leader/breadwinner/strength, decision maker. etc would be deeply affected when one part of the system is completely removed.If Mom is the only cook, lots of family members will probably not eat...or, at least, not eat well. It was predicted by Wagoner that 3 million people would be out of a job if the car makers failed.

When Nature has its actions like tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. few people have difficulty in accepting the concept of reaction to it. However, the sadness, loss, clean up, and starting life over is definitely a reaction to this. Hopefully, tact will be preserved and nieghborly devotion

WHO RAISES SWINE FLU ALERT LEVEL

No, the alarm was not raised by the first baseman in a Lou Costello-Bud Abbott baseball skit. The WHO here is the World Health Organization. We are being warned that there is a significant step closer to a pandemic. In Mexico, a few hours ago, the death toll from the Swine Flu reached 149. There are many reasons to be worried if you are a worrier. However, since nothing can be done to avoid possible contamination, stay out of crowded, public places, wash you hands often when you might be near exposure, lots of people blowing noses, coughing or sneezing into the air.

There are those who might see this threat as anxiety-provoking. Consistent with the rest of the way I live my life, I do not worry about anything over which I have no control. Taking precaution as much as is possible to prevent contagion is the best that one can do. Stay away from crowded public places when possible. Keep your fingers away from your eyes, nose and mouth. Wash your hands frequently when being exposed to places recently touched by strangers. Get consistent, adequate sleep and rest, as well as doing everything you can do to keep your immune system healthy.

There will be many instructions televised if people around your area begin to be diagnosed with swine flu. It is important to use your judgment about which suggestions would be helpful to you. Heed warnings and stay as safe and healthy as possible

DOES TORTURE CAUSE PTSD?

What kind of ignorance and denial is required for supposedly intelligent people not to realize that they are killing a brain with anoxia and constant slamming a head into a plywood wall causing concussion, swelling, and brain damage? After a war, how many POWs would the USA want back who are arguably close to being brain dead?

A lot has been written about frequent concussions possibly being a precursor to Alzheimer's Disease. That might take a bit of time to develop but is the torture any less the culprit because the effect happens later? Violent personal assaults are a basic cause of PTSD. That Americans can defend the torture practices used in the GW Bush administration is shameful. Depriving a brain of oxygen 183 times, sometimes twice daily for periods, is certainly one way to kill brain cells. It is laughable that an attempt to justify this treatment as means of getting helpful information from the subject is even attempted by ex VP Cheney and others. They have clearly not spoken to neurologists or neuro-psychologists.

If reasonably informed people stopped to examine some of the arguments that were used, it would be clear that more sadism and cruelty was being used than meaningful interrogation techniques regardless of whether they were referred to as torture or enhanced interrogation techniques. Regardless of what you call killing a person's brain, it should be seen as slowly killing a person. While I commend President Obama's wish to close down Guantanamo, I wonder what will become of these damaged people? Are they not some mother's children? We still talk, justifiably, about the cruelty to humans during the Holocaust. Can we look at ourselves in the world's mirrors and see ourselves differently than Hitler's goons? So we didn't make lampshades from human skin...we have stolen mental and physical health, and likely made some prisoners the equivalent of human vegetables.

How is it that Americans can severely punish cruelty to animals and not be outraged at what was done to our 'terrorist' prisoners who never even had a trial to find them guilty? I am not a bleeding heart liberal and am not under the illusion that most of the detainees were really innocent as altar boys. To his shame, Pat Buchanan recently said on MSNBC that all criminals put to death in Texas while Bush was governor were guilty because they had been adjudicated so. Later evidence found this was not always the case and that some innocents were put to death. The future has yet to reveal the atrocities the USA committed with the torture program, but history will have the full picture because people will put the picture puzzle pieces of it together as a record of the Bush-Cheney dictatorship.

100 DAYS OF HOPE AND CHANGE

It is a matter of great distress to me that the entire world seems to look to the United States to solve its problems when we are struggling to come out of our own for the last eight years under G W Bush and company. I support our President in not being vindictive, trying to promote legal action against the traitorous crew that dragged us down in world regard.

Listening to many remarks, comments and opinions about Obama, it is painful to attempt to fathom the sore losers, the many who believe the only way to handle anxiety is to try to run the country themselves. In my opinion, President Obama has, overall, done an intelligent and superior job. He has been able to keep campaign promises and tackle priorities with a mind to fulfilling as many as he is capable of influencing as quickly as he can get cooperation.

Only the small majority of Republicans who are totally unable to look to the good of the country and accept changes that seem indicated by the needs of the American citizens, appear to lack patriotism, allegiance to the chosen President, and acceptance that the political game is not being played their way for the next four years.

While the current administration is being blocked in any minor way possible by the minority Legislators, Obama has succeeded in making good on many campaign promises. Yet, no matter how quickly he seems to be achieving things, there are those who forget he has been in the White House for such a short time. The Republicans have stonewalled his getting his complete cabinet in place. Media spent more time on the family dog than on what he has achieved for the country in so short a period.

Congress Matters, written by Nathaniel Ament Stone gives an excellent run-down of ten of the first and best achievements. My toast to the country today is: May the whining, sore-losing and divisiveness cease in the VERY near future.