Enjoy the walking trail and generate some electricity

Oakmont has several nice walking trails chief among them a ribbon of black top that runs along the railroad track right down the middle of town. Here is a way you can walk and generate some power in the process. Interesting.

Backpack generates power from walking
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A backpack that converts a plodding gait into electricity could soon be charging up mobile phones, navigation devices and even portable disc players, U.S.-based researchers said on Thursday.
Their backpack design converts mechanical energy from up-and-down movement of the backpack's cargo to electricity during normal walking.
Fueled by a snack, hikers can put the spring in their steps to good use, the researchers write in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Follow this link for the complete story

Cool site of the day...........

I am on a number of mailing lists that keep me informed on subjects related to my work and hobbies. This particular one covers some of both worlds. Kim Komando is a syndicated talk show host with a lot of computer savvy. I thought would pass toady's “cool site of the day” along to the readers of the blog.


Today's Cool Site...

Digital image archive
There's nothing like the library. I could spend hours just flipping through the books. Of course, books with pictures are the best kind.

But if you want to browse pictures, you don't have to go to the library. The New York Public Library has digitized an astounding number of images. There are over 350,000 and you can view them all online!

You can browse photographs, prints and historical maps. Or perhaps you'd like something more unusual. How about floor plans for New York City apartments? Or cyanotypes of British algae?

You could spend hours perusing the collection. If you're like me, you probably will. Keep in mind the photographs are free for browsing. If you want to reproduce them, you will need to pay a fee.
Waiting in line at the grocery store can be a drag. But now, some grocery stores let you do your shopping online. That’s what I’m talking about on today’s national radio Kim Komando Computer Minute. To find the radio station nearest you that broadcasts my Minute, use the map on my site.

TO VISIT TODAY'S COOL SITE, GO HERE: DIGITAL GALLERY


Thanks for subscribing to our newsletters. We all work hard to bring you just the best that the Internet has to offer! Kim :)

GET MORE FREE COMPUTER KNOW-HOW FROM ME : REQUEST TIPS


Notice: We give Web sites a "heads-up" before mentioning them in our Cool Sites of the Day. Still, my newsletters generate so much traffic that Web sites sometimes become unavailable. If you are unable to access today's Cool Site now, please try later. It is a working site

Amateur "Ham" Radio operators play important roll in Katrina relief

Amateur Radio Earning Praise, Respect in Hurricane Katrina Relief (Sep 16, 2005) -- UPDATE! Amateur Radio is continuing to earn praise and respect as the Hurricane Katrina relief effort moves forward. Amateur Radio equipment and supplies arriving at the American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina relief staging area in Montgomery, Alabama, have been turned around as quickly as possible to accompany volunteers into the field. A team headed by Alabama ARRL Section Manager Greg Sarratt, W4OZK, now has been on duty for some three weeks, overseeing Amateur Radio volunteer intake and registration and trying to satisfy the ever-changing requirements of the Red Cross and other served agencies. Equipment started showing up last weekend.

Follow this link for the complete story.

We are really better off says John Stossel

Visit John Stossel's web site
for more common sense opinions.

We really are better off
John Stossel

September 14, 2005


It's easy to miss the good old days.

Watching TV news makes people long for them. We are always ranting about the latest horror. When I asked a class of grade-school students whether what they saw on TV made them feel safe, they said, "No, no, no."

Many worried about being kidnapped.

"They keep on saying stuff like 'a kid got kidnapped' or something, and they start telling you everything bad."

"Anyone could just grab me at any time."

"A lot more kids are being kidnapped."

They believe that because they watch the news. But the crime rate is the lowest it's been in more than 15 years, and the Justice Department says there's been no increase in kidnapping. As economist Stephen Moore, author of "It's Getting Better All the Time," puts it, "These are the safest times ever to have lived on the earth."

Not that you'd know that from watching TV.

"Stress kills" is a frequent feature on the morning shows. TV news tells us that Americans work themselves to death and that we're working "harder than ever." But in the old days, most Americans worked on farms. People romanticize farms but forget that the old-fashioned family farm meant backbreaking labor under a broiling sun.

As Moore noted, "One of the reasons people left the farms was because their lives were so tough." Mines were worse, and life in factories wasn't much better. Modern jobs are "much more interesting."

The media's reporting about poverty is misleading too. It's true that the official poverty rate has risen lately. Some people do line up at food banks. But what Americans call poverty is totally different from what it's meant through most of history. A "poor" man at a food bank told me he had "the normal things": cable TV, a microwave -- the "normal things" that not even rich people used to have.

We complain about pollution and car exhaust, but think about what it was like when the pollution came from horses and cities were clogged with the smelly beasts. Manure was everywhere.

Today, the media are so hysterical about environmental "destruction," you'd never know that over the past half century, the air and water have steadily gotten cleaner. As Moore said, "Fifty years ago, many American cities had permanent black fogs over them."

The rivers surrounding Manhattan were once disgusting. Millions of people live in my city, and just 25 years ago, pipes simply carried the waste from their bathrooms, untreated, right into the Hudson and East rivers. Now, treatment plants clean the sewage, and the rivers around Manhattan are so clean you can legally swim in the Hudson. I swim there -- within sight of the Empire State Building.

The media rant about new dangers such as West Nile virus, avian flu and SARS. You'd think life was more dangerous than ever. But how many Americans died during last year's SARS crisis? None. Worldwide, SARS killed fewer than 1,000 people. Yet for weeks, it was the terrifying headline du jour. By contrast, the health crisis of 1918 was the flu.

It killed 20 million.

Perspective, please. Americans are healthier than ever. I asked the elementary-school students about polio, diphtheria and rheumatic fever. They hadn't heard of them. "We have conquered the killer diseases that wiped out as many as a third to a quarter of population in previous times," said Moore. And we take that for granted.

In general, that's what people do: We conquer the challenges that face us. We make our world better. Innovations in nearly every field make us healthier and safer than we used to be, and let us do things that used to be impossible. Eventually, we take even the most brilliant inventions -- such as the light bulb -- for granted. The average American not only lives 30 years longer than his counterpart of a century ago, he lives much better.

We should complain less and celebrate the good.

©2005 John Stossel

And to that I will add "A men!"

Picking up speed

Here is an interesting article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette of September 14th 2005. This is just one example of technology that is being implemented here in Pittsburgh.

Our late mayor, Don Eaton, was a proponent of commuter rail service into Pittsburgh and was trying to get the community interested at the time of his death. It is a shame that people sit in choked traffic arteries in cars and buses while a direct rail line sits mostly unused.


Picking Up Speed
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
By Jim McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Union Switch & Signal Chief Executive Officer Ken Burk is making a big bet that the Pittsburgh railroad products company can boost the average speed of the nation's largest freight railroad by 2 to 4 mph.
If that doesn't sound so fast, consider that a 1 mph increase in average train speed can save large railroads such as Union Pacific Corp. an estimated $200 million a year. By moving product just a little quicker over long distances with the same number of trains and crews, the effective number of workers and locomotives per mile falls, generating huge efficiencies.

Union Switch recently signed a contract to design and maintain a rail dispatching system for Union Pacific that aims to help do just that. The technology, initially developed some 10 years ago with a Carnegie Mellon University research team and refined since then, is designed to give railroads "real time" information on train movements and help automatically route traffic around problem areas such as impassable tracks.
It's a complicated problem that involves multiple agents -- or autonomous pieces of software -- that incorporate decision-making programs, memory and the ability for trains, crews and rail traffic controllers to communicate with each other. "It's basically a more difficult and complex problem than air traffic control" because planes "can fly around a problem," Burk said. "On rail, you are fixed onto the track."

Follow this link for complete story.

A few thoughts from my friend Henry

My friend Henry has a way with words at times. While he and I don't always agree on matters of the world I have to say that he has hit the nail squarely on the head with his most recent email. I thought I would share it with the readers of the blog.

* * * *
This what happens when you kill or chase off the real farmers for supposedly good reasons to be replaced by Bozos who know as much about farming as I do. Next year, they will be starving in Zimbabwe and looking for Americans to pay them with our money, which in effect would make us a co-conspirator in the killings and/or displacement of Rhodesians who owned the farms for hundreds of years! There are those Beverly Hills types who have not actually been there, that think giving the land to selected political cronies who happen to be black, is Ok; while I do not see them giving their mansions to the American Natives ( The Chemehuevi tribe in that area!):


(President Robert Mugabe's government claims to have settled 300,000 black families on former white-owned farms, but U.N. agencies report many are derelict, with irrigation and housing vandalized, and livestock stolen or slaughtered.)

Zimbabwe Facing Bad Agricultural Season
Wednesday, September 7, 2005 9:14 AM EDT
The Associated Press
By MICHAEL HARTNACK

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, is facing its worst agricultural season since independence in 1980, with shortages of seed, fertilizer and equipment threatening next year's harvest before it even has been planted, farmers and other experts said.
Some of those warnings were issued Tuesday in testimony before Parliament's agriculture committee, the state-run Herald newspaper and ruling party-allied Daily Mirror reported.
Fertilizer companies told the committee their warehouses were empty. The Zimbabwe Seed Traders Association said there was only 28,660 tons of maize seed in the country, slightly more than half of what is needed.
The Agricultural Dealers and Manufacturers' Association has run out of plow disks for the first time in its history. There also are key shortages of irrigation piping, pumps, pesticides and other chemicals, suppliers said.
"The information you have given us simply shows that there is no season," committee chairman Walter Mzembi was quoted as saying.
The seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans, combined with years of drought, have crippled Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy. About 4 million people will need food aid before the next harvest in what was once a regional breadbasket, according to U.N. estimates.
"This coming season's production prospects are the worst since 1980 independence due to inputs shortages and the lack of a strong message to allow all farmers to produce with confidence," Doug Taylor-Freeme, president of the mostly white Commercial Farmers Union, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
President Robert Mugabe's government claims to have settled 300,000 black families on former white-owned farms, but U.N. agencies report many are derelict, with irrigation and housing vandalized, and livestock stolen or slaughtered.
Mugabe has promised $287 million in assistance to black farmers.
But Edward Raradza, vice president of the black Zimbabwe Farmers' Union, said 60 percent of the funds advanced by the government for cropping had not reached their intended beneficiaries. His organization represents 800,000 families in communal farming areas.
"There have been too many middlemen," testified Wilfanos Mashingaidze, chairman of the Tobacco Growers' Trust. "The resources from government are going down the drain. They are disappearing like mist."


--
Regards,

Henry Hill

Where does the responsibility really lie???

This is an email that was sent to me by a friend and fellow amateur radio operator. I already knew most of the facts that are presented here but I think the information is worth repeating. It is rather lengthily but I hope you read it and consider the content when deciding where the blame lies for the monumental tragedy in suffering and loss of human life in New Orleans as a result of hurricane Katrina.


In case you aren't familiar with how our government is SUPPOSED to work:

The chain of responsibility for the protection of the citizens in New
Orleans is:

1. The Mayor
2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security (a political appointee of the Governor who reports to the Governor)
3. The Governor
4. The Head of Homeland Security
5. The President

What did each do?

1. The mayor, with 5 days advance, waited until 2 days before he announced a mandatory evacuation (at the behest of the President). Then he failed to provide transportation for those without transport even though he had hundreds of buses at his disposal.

2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security failed to have any plan for a contingency that has been talked about for 50 years. Then he blames the Feds for not doing what he should have done. (So much for political appointees)

3. The Governor, despite a declaration of disaster by the President 2 DAYS BEFORE the storm hit, failed to take advantage of the offer of Federal troops and aid. Until 2 DAYS AFTER the storm hit.

4. The Director of Homeland Security positioned assets in the area to be ready when the Governor called for them.

5. The President urged a mandatory evacuation, and even declared a disaster State of Emergency, freeing up millions of dollars of federal assistance, should the Governor decide to use it.

Oh and by the way, the levees that broke were the responsibility of the local landowners and the local levee board to maintain, NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

The disaster in New Orleans is what you get after decades of corrupt government going all the way back to Huey Long.

Funds for disaster protection and relief have been flowing into this city for decades, and where has it gone, but into the pockets of the politicos and their friends.

Decades of socialist government in New Orleans has sapped all self reliance from the community, and made them dependent upon government for every little thing.

Political correctness and a lack of will to fight crime have created the single most corrupt police force in the country, and has permitted gang violence to flourish.

The sad thing is that there are many poor folks who have suffered and died needlessly because those that they voted into office failed them. For those who missed item 5 (where the President's level of accountability is discussed), it is made more clear in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article dated August 28:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.

Acknowledging that large numbers of people, many of them stranded tourists, would be unable to leave, the city set up 10 places of last resort for people to go, including the Superdome.

The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.

The ball was placed in Mayor Nagin's court to carry out the evacuation order. With a 5-day heads-up, he had the authority to use any and all services to evacuate all residents from the city, as documented in a city emergency preparedness plan. By waiting until the last minute, and failing to make full use of resources available within city limits, Nagin and his administration screwed up.

Mayor Nagin and his emergency sidekick Terry Ebbert have displayed lethal, mind boggling incompetence before, during and after Katrina.

As for Mayor Nagin, he and his profile in pathetic leadership police chief should resign as well. That city's government is incompetent from one end to the other. The people of New Orleans deserve better than this crowd of clowns is capable of giving them.

If you're keeping track, these boobs let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans-in one trip-get ruined in the floods. Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. Or it probably would have been if they'd bothered to follow it.

As for all the race-baiting rhetoric and Bush-bashing coming from prominent blacks on the left, don't expect Ray Nagin to be called out on the carpet for falling short. You want to know why? Here's why:

It's more convenient to blame a white president for what went wrong than to hold a black mayor and his administration accountable for gross negligence and failing to fully carry out an established emergency preparedness plan.

To hold Nagin and his administration accountable for dropping the ball amounts to letting loose the shouts and cries of "Racism!". It's sad, it's wrong, but it's standard operating procedure for the media and left-wing black leadership.

Mark my words: you will not hear a word of criticism from Jesse Jackson Sr., Randall Robinson, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, or Kanye West being directed toward Clarence Ray Nagin Jr. Why? Because he is a black politician. Black politicians who are on their side can do no wrong, but you'll hear them loudly condemn everyone else! Where is equality for all now?

Why Boortz and Linder must be purged!

A good friend sent me this link to a review of a book that I recently purchased but haven't had a chance to get into yet. I may have to move it up in priority on the “to be read” stack that I am accumulating. This is a good review and I urge the readers of my blog to give it some creadance.

A review of The Fair Tax Book by Neal Boortz and John Linder

Aerial views of Katrina's devastation

Here is a link to one of the local television stations in New Orleans that has s slide show of shots from the air over the city. It will give you an idea of the depth of the damage that has been inflicted. Please continue to pray for the victims of this storm.

Link to Aerial Photos

After you have viewed them please return and offer your help.

American Red Cross

Salvation Army

Chief Justice Rehnquist dead at the age of 80

News arrived tonight that William Rehnquist Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has died at the age of 80 after a long battle with cancer. This means that President Bush will now be appointing not one but two jurists to the highest court in the land. I will have further comments at a latter time on the subject but I think you are about to witness one of the larger political battles to hit Washington DC in quite some time. Let us hope that reason will prevail and that President Bush chooses as wisely for his second nomination as he has for his first. Only time will tell.

Labor Day 2005 summer winds down again

I hope all of you out there reading this are having a really great holiday weekend. I can't believe that it is Labor Day already. One of the things that happens when you get older and your kids have all grown and left the nest is you lose your reference on the calendar year. We no longer have to get kids ready for school after Labor Day so the end of the summer is somewhat less pronounced. Now I gage the passing of time by the church year calendar.

I have completed my big project at work and it looks like I'm going to get the entire weekend off. I probably shouldn't say that too loudly! Knock on wood! I plan on spending my weekend reading, maybe taking in a movie and spending time with my new grand daughter. With the wonderful weather they are calling for I might even get a new antenna or two up outside for my amateur radio activities. Heaven knows at $3.19 cents a gallon for gas I won't be making any long Labor Day trips not that I had planned any before the spike in the gas prices. Actually much to Linda's chagrin I am somewhat of a “home body” and would prefer to be here in Oakmont relaxing on the back porch than traveling anyway. I also plan to do a little work on my own computers with some Linux updates. All in all should be a good weekend.

On a more somber note, I will be in church on Sunday where I will offer my payers for those affected by the natural disaster in the Gulf coast. I hope you will do the same. Have a safe and happy holiday weekend. Hug your family and appreciate that you have them with you.

Jerry Keeps His WORD, and Goes Back on the Air This Thursday and Friday!

My favorite talk show host, Jerry Bowyer, is back.

Jerry promised that he would be back on the Pittsburgh airwaves at the end of the summer, and he is true to his word!

Tune in this Thursday, September 1st, at 3:00 PM to 101.5 WORD-FM. Jerry will do his show every weekday from 3 to 6 PM and looks forward to talking to his old friends on his new station.

Call the show and make Jerry feel at home in his new perch, at 412-921-TALK. (thats 412-921-8255)