Catnlion's Open Salon Blog

I wish I was that creative

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:03:10 -0400

I read things here that are really good. Most of them are facts, human interest, or opinion pieces. I have to say that I really enjoy what I read and I often find myself wishing that I had the ability to write and tell stories like the people I follow.

Then there are the people who think so far out of the box that you have to love to read them. I alway make sure I check in on the weekends to read the cartoons. If I need an emotional pick me up, I'll read a Far Side book. Those who know me will tell you that I am emotionally off tilt with what I think is creative and funny. Today I heard about something that I had to check out. I'm just glad I did it in private. I think I tinkled in my pants I laughed so hard.

I'm sure by now everyone has heard about the cobra that escaped from the Bronx zoo. They say they are sure she, yes it's a she, is somewhere inside the reptile house. They also say that if they wait long enough she will come out. If not they will find an intern to send in after her.

Some overly creative person has created a Twitter account (bronxzooscobra) for the snake. For a wild girl out on the town she has to make sure everybody know what she is doing and where she is going. She has tweeted jem comments such as, "Does anyone know if the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle sells organic mice?".

For the rest of her updates, which are worth reading by the way, I will leave it to you to log into your Twitter account and follow her. The last time I looked she was over 100K people following her.

So, as a girl loose on the town, where should the bronxzooscobra go now?

Neena: Just checking in with pictures

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 22:03:06 -0400

Hi everyone. Sorry I haven't had a chance to check in for awhile. Things have changed since I've gotten older. Dad says that's a good thing. He is stuck on the thing about labs, saying that we chew until we are two and shed until we are dead.

Okay, so maybe I did chew up his seat a little bit, but I was teething. What did he think I was going to cut my teeth on?

And why is he complaining about me shedding? He goes and gets a hair cut when he gets in off the road.

Well things have changed since I last checked in. I don't ride with dad anymore. I got to where I liked being on the farm. I have my friends that I play with. Who would Number 9 play hide and seek with if I went back on the road?

This is George. His is fun too. He likes to play hide and seek with Number 9 and me. He's easy to find. He hasn't figure out he can't hide behind the tree anymore.

Then there are my other friends on the farm. Everyday I have to check on Sirloin and T-bone. This spring when everybody was having their babies they shot a couple of coyotes sneaking down. I kept them away. That's how I made friends with them. I watched their babies.

That's another thing. Dad is pissed because I think the afterbirth and cow pies make a great snack. I don't know what he is up set about. I always bring the extras home to him and leave them on the porch. He would bring me leftovers from the truck stops. What's the difference?

Then there is Norm. He fell off the wagon. Well, he tripped over the wagon tongue. Bud said he can come back to work as soon as he feels better. He is okay. Reminds me of dad. Fun to play with, just big.

Well I had better go. I just wanted to check in before I take a beauty nap. Come on ladies, you know we have to work hard to be this cute.

Love,

Neena

PS, if you want to read my other posts, with cute pictures I might add, just follow the links.

I abuse my dog

Neena gets home time

Neena aka chick magnet

Her life on the street is now over

American Combat Troops Back in Bagdad

Sun, 5 Sep 2010 14:09:10 -0400

During the 12 o'clock EDT hours today Voice to America reported, and it was confirmed by their citizen reporters and some European media, that American ground combat troops, supported by American air power, have been called in by the Iraq government because of an attack on an army base in the Bagdad area.

Reports are that waves of suicide bombers, attacking in pairs, have been breaching the base for the last few days and blowing themselves up. These attacks are supported by standard arms fire. Early reports are several wounded and 7 KIA.

So what does this do to the announcement by President Obama 5 days ago that combat operations have ended and that our combat troops were pulled out 2 weeks ahead of schedule?

Does this add anything to those who were against announcing a pullout date saying that now the enemy knows when we are leaving they will just hold back until we are gone then resume their attacks?

Obama's green energy pipe dream

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 04:08:47 -0400

President Obama was pushing green technology again a short while ago. That got me thinking. How much energy do Americans use, and if we replaced it what would we need. It's great to talk about “going green”, it's another thing when you try to figure out what it really means. To anyone here who has seen what I have written, it's no surprise that I take all the green with a grain of salt.

While trying to find the answers I ran across Professor David Mackay. Dr. Mackay is a professor in the department of physics at the University of Cambridge. Studied natural sciences at Cambridge. He then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neutral Systems at the California Institute of Technology.

One of the common PSAs that you hear on the radio features a little girl telling another that she should unplug her cell phone charger. The little girl denies that she even has a cell phone until it rings. At that time she admits it's hers and says she will unplug it.

Dr. Mackay looked at these “soft” energy savings that are being thrown around on Capital Hill to determine how much energy these item would save. Dr. Mackay wrote, “Take, for example, the idea that one of the top 10 things you should do to make a difference to your energy consumption is to unplug your cell-phone charger when you are not using it. The truth is that leaving a phone charger plugged in uses about 0.01 kWh per day, 1/100th of the power consumed by a light bulb.” To put it another way, it's about the amount of energy that it takes to drive the average car, for 1 second.

MacKay expresses energy consumption and energy production using simple personal units, namely kilowatt-hours. So, for example, one kilowatt-hour (kWh) is the energy used by leaving a 40-watt bulb on for 24 hours. “The chemical energy in the food we eat to stay alive amounts to about 3 kWh per day. Taking one hot bath uses about 5 kWh of heat. Driving an average European car 100 kilometers (km), which is roughly 62 miles, uses 80 kWh of fuel,” he said. “With a few of these numbers in mind, we can start to evaluate some of the recommendations that people make about energy.”

So how does America stack up against the Europeans in the use of energy? Would you believe about double. Europeans use about 125 kWh per day while we use 250 kWh per day. To put that into numbers we can all easily understand, it's the same all everybody leaving 250 light bulbs on around the clock. So if we went green with wind, solar an nuclear, what would we need?

First as the new Energy Czar, I'm writing I can make myself Czar, I'm going to demand that we use no more energy a day than the standard European. Just like that, I cut our energy usage in half. I don't think it's possible, but I am the Czar, for now.

So we are now going to take our new energy level and split it evenly at 42 kWh for each of the three sources. Remember that is per person, per day, for everybody in the country. All 310 million of us.

• To supply 42 kWh per day per person from solar power requires roughly 95.7 square yards per person of solar panels. This would be a solar panel that would just about cover the entire state of Vermont.

• To deliver 42 kWh per day per person from wind for everyone in the U.S. would require wind farms with a total area roughly equal to the area of California, a 200-fold increase in United States wind power.

• To get 42 kWh per day per person from nuclear power would require 525 one-gigawatt nuclear power stations, a roughly five-fold increase over today’s levels.

So as of now, President Obama still has drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on hold. Anwar is still off limits. I delivered to a nuclear power plant that is trying to come on line. They are hoping to get permission to start it. Construction started in about the mid 1970's I'm told. It was put on hold in 1988, and is just now getting finished. 35 years after construction started. While I don't do it, the company that I'm leased to hauls wind blades to the wind farms. They run these truck after truck, day in and day out, but how long is it going to take to cover an area the size of the state of California with a giant wind farm and where are they going to put them?

To want to end the use of fossil fuels may be a great goal. One day we may even find a way to do it. In the mean time we can't force energy prices so high that people will have trouble playing their light bills, or that our economy comes to a complete stop. President Obama has said in his speeches that the price of energy is going to have to go higher. That coal fired electric plants may be built but they are going to be so expensive to operate that they will go broke.

President Obama's dream of green energy and moving away from fossil fuels is a pipe dream, and it's not oil running through the pipe. It may even be a great dream. The problem is, at the rate it takes to construct wind, solar, and nuclear facilities and the infrastructure such as power lines, we are going to have to leave green energy as a dream to be fully solved and put in place for our grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

Stimulus dollars being spent on?

Thu, 5 Aug 2010 00:08:56 -0400

I seems so long ago that we had to pass the stimulus bill or the country was doomed. We could pass this bill and unemployment would not go sky high. We have all these "shovel ready" projects that all we have to do is have money for and hard working Americans could do things that would help the country while Americans went back to work.

I've never understood why we had to pass this massive bill "right now" when we weren't going to spend the money for years. Why not pass a bill for the money we were going to spend and pass other bills for years down the road if we still needed it? I don't know. I guess it makes to much common sense.

So now more of the stimulus money is going out for those "shovel ready" projects. How about we look at a few of them and let's try to determine how they are stimulating the ecomony and helping Americans while putting Americans back to work.

Explain these please:

$554,763 spent on replacing windows on a visitor's center in Washington State that closed its door three years ago.

$762,372 was given to the University of North Carolina Charlotte for dance draw. Somebody please explain "dance draw".

$62.5 million for a light rail tunnel under the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh to connect sports stadiums to the casinos.

$11.2 million to convert a tiny closed down train station into a museum.

$1.9 million to fund the study of ants.

$90,000 for new sidewalks in Boynton, Oklahoma, to replace five year old sidewalks,that leads to a ditch.

$40 million for upgraded office space and indoor parking for Kansas law makers.

$50 million for WNBA practice facilities in Connecticut.

$762,372 to a Georgia Tech professor so he can study improvised music.

$144,541 to get monkeys high on cocaine to see how they respond.

$497,893 to quit smoking and get a Smart Phone. They were buying Smart Phones for people so when they felt like they might smoke, they could call someone and they could tell them not to smoke.

$199,862 helping Siberian lobby Russian policymakers.

$298,543 to help predict the weather, on other planets.

$456,663 to Cal Berkley to study global circulation in the atmosphere of Neptune.

$712,883 goes to scientists who are trying to create a joke machine.

$500,000 to Dayton, Ohio, for microchips to track citizens' use of recycling bins.

If you supported the stimulas package or not I don't really care. How can we continue to vote for people who want to spend our money on stuff like this? After spending our money like this they have the cojones to tell us that they need more so they are going to raise our taxes. They are trying to put tolls on interstates that have been built for decades. If you need money for roads, how about you quit taking it from the highway trust funds for other things and use it to fix the roads, or just use the stimulus money to fix the roads. Frankly, I don't care what the weather is going to be today on Uranus.