x-rays from scotch tape?!?!

this is very very cool….very very interesting….come on, what’s in that scotch tape?

Peeling Scotch Tape Powers X-Ray Machine

Peeling a roll of ordinary sticky tape can generate 100 milliwatt pulses of X-rays, enough to capture a human finger on X-ray film, according to a new study by UCLA scientists. …

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Their kit consisted of a vacuum-enclosed machine, reminiscent of a video casette player, that peeled a roll of Photo Safe 3M Scotch tape at a rate of 3 cm per second. …

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This type of energy release is known as triboluminescence — the same principle behind the fun trick of crunching on Wint-O-Green Life Savers to produce blue sparks.

… the idea of peeling tape to emit X-rays was first suggested by Russian scientists in the 1950s…

crazy, no?

Bottled Water As Bad As Tap Water – well duh!

i already knew this….didn’t you? plus think about the leaching of the plastic from the bottle into the water (there was a bit of a snafu with nalgene bottles not too long ago…), and the price, and the extreme amount of waste from all those plastic bottles. Some people buy all their drinking water in these tiny little bottles, come on! a little ridiculous don’t you think?

i have some 1 gallon glass jars (i don’t like to keep things in plastic…) that i fill with (cheaply purchased) water processed through a whole slew of things but always with reverse osmosis in this mix. and then a lot of the time i send it through a carbon filter again at home…unless i can get my hands on some fresh spring/well water (that i KNOW is good). i have to have the fluoride (and chlorine for that matter) out, which is why reverse osmosis or distillation would be my only water purchasing choices. don’t need any illnesses or brain deterioration from those poisons. (and on a side note, who said that ANY amount of pollutants, poisons, chemicals can be considered safe? what if you (have to) drink more water than the average person? what if you’re an infant or an animal or an invalid or the elderly? why is somebody else deciding what i should be taking into my body….isn’t that my right, my choice? i am not an idiot…i know when something is bad. and poisonous waste chemicals/other people’s pharmaceuticals/etc are not healthy choices in any amount….)

there was a time i got all my water from a little tiny spring that came out of this wall of rocks a few miles from me. sometimes i’d filter that through one of those kanadyne portablbe/camping/survival filtration devices, and sometimes i didn’t. it was good tasting water.

i don’t mind a taste to water as long as it’s a good taste. tap water is gross. bottled water is gross. bleck. don’t offer me any, i’d rather be thirsty.

here’s some snippets from the AP article:

Bottled water has contaminants too, study finds

By JEFF DONN, AP National Writer

Wed Oct 15, 12:17 AM ET

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The study’s lab tests on 10 brands of bottled water detected 38 chemicals including bacteria, caffeine, the pain reliever acetaminophen, fertilizer, solvents, plastic-making chemicals and the radioactive element strontium. Though some probably came from tap water that some companies use for their bottled water, other contaminants probably leached from plastic bottles, the researchers said.

“In some cases, it appears bottled water is no less polluted than tap water and, at 1,900 times the cost, consumers should expect better,” said Jane Houlihan, an environmental engineer who co-authored the study. …

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In the Wal-Mart and Giant Food bottled water, the highest concentration of chlorine byproducts, known as trihalomethanes, was over 35 parts per billion. California’s limit is 10 parts per billion or less, and the industry’s International Bottled Water Association makes 10 its voluntary guideline. The federal limit is 80. …

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The researchers also said the Wal-Mart brand was five times California’s limit for one particular chlorine byproduct, bromodichloromethane. The environmental group wants Wal-Mart to label its bottles in California with a warning because the chlorine-based contaminants have been linked with cancer. It has filed a notice of intent to sue. …

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disappearing aircraft and other flying oddities

a couple years ago i noticed some weird goings on. of course, i’m always noticing weird goings on, but i like to look upwards and check out what the aircraft is doing from time to time. i have a lot of chances to witness their activity. by the way, i’m in a quiet zone and some high altitude commercial flight paths with an occasional military “game”……

the constant goings on include chemtrail spraying. sometimes they let up and allow us a sunny day or two. the best are seeing the unique patterns of the chemtrails (swastikas!?!?! upside-down peace signs!?!?!). and yes these trails are rather different from the normal contrails. i’ve even seen two planes near each other, one with a short, quickly dissapating contrail and the other with a long long long chemtrail that stays in the sky and slowly spreads out (typically to meet other slowly spreading out chemtrails, thus blanketing the sky and blocking sunlight). the other thing i’ve witnessed the chemtrail-spewing planes do is finish their dump, there’s a break, than the contrail starts up with it’s normal short distance behind the plane that quickly dissapates. interesting, no?

but back to this one summer (2005). i just happen to be outside during the afternoon. it’s bright. clear skies (for once). i’m walking up the drive and look up. for no reason really, except maybe habit. i’m surprised to notice two shiny silver planes near each other. i was surprised because i didn’t hear them. you can always hear the planes around here, even through the walls, even when they are at their highest altitude. and oddly, these two planes were much lower than most of the planes i hear & see. then another anomaly catches my attention: there are no chemtrails and no contrails. nothing. i watch them for a bit, never hearing anything, nor seeing any trails. i look away for a second and they disappear on me. which is kind of weird as they had a ways to go before being blocked by trees. there were no visible markings that i could see. i have this odd feeling that what i was seeing wasn’t really what i was seeing.

ok. another day. again (and oddly) a decently sunny afternoon. i’m inside. washing dishes if i remember rightly. i hear this high-pitch whine. it’s really bizarre, so of course i want to investigate. the back door is about 15 feet from where i was standing, so i leap across the floor, swing open the door, and look up. flying so low i could have seen faces in the darkened windows had there been any to see, is a white plane. no markings, flying very slowly. it’s front tip is just passing over the roofline. right next to the door (which is open) i have a table with my camera on it. i look away to grab the camera and look back. couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. but when i look back, the plane is gone. i thought for sure i could have caught an image of the tail end before it passed the roof. oh well, i quickly dash to the front door. about 10 quick leaps across the floor (yes i live in a small place) and i dash out the front door expecting to see the plane passing over the front yard, or at least down the road. it had quite a ways to go before it should be out of view at the speed it was going. but it was no where. this incredibly low plane was no where to be seen. oddly i still heard the high-pitch whining. i just could never see anything. so how does a plane vanish from sight within seconds, but still can be heard? and for that matter, since when did a plane ever make a high-pitch whine like what i heard? i’ve never heard a plane make that sound before and i’ve never heard it again. so what the hell was that?

military jets have flown so low before i thought i could hit them with a rock. they are very very noisy (thunderous roars you hear a while before they come and after they leave) and they fly extremely fast over you. the plane i saw was crawling at a snail’s pace in comparison.

and then there was that night in january of 2004 when that odd light flashed on me while i was walking towards my home, flashed at my home (witnessed by those inside through a window), and then just disappeared. and when it was on me i had such a hard time moving, concentrating, speaking, thinking….and had this odd idea that a dark brown boxy car with dark-tinted windows was pulling up the driveway, until i realized that the light was coming from behind me and not from the driveway, and that there was no car coming up the driveway. there was a full moon that night as well–you could draw a triangle between it, the light, and the driveway points, yet that moon illumined no dark shape behind the light, even though it was just above the treeline and i could see the dark shape of the trees. like maybe a helicopter to which a search light might have been attached. and everything so eerily silent. but when i turned to look at the source of the light is when it flashed to the house and disappeared. very odd. slowly i regained proper functioning of my motor skills with the dawning realization that something completely unordinary and just a bit frightening had occurred. i wish i could write this off to some sort of imbibed substance, but i was unfortunately sober at the time and had been for a long while before and a long while after. not much of an unsober person i suppose.

so….strange aircraft.

Climate Change is Natural

i get this depressed little laugh when people are so swayed by manbearpig’s (if you watch episode 1006 of south park you’ll figure out my meaning if you don’t know already!) global warming creation.

that’s not to say it doesn’t feel a little warmer than when i was a kid; however, i just don’t think people are the solitary reason for it. nor do i feel that it’s a trend that will last forever. in fact, this summer has been rather cool compared to last summer.

i find it silly to think that the earth herself cannot go through cycles. everything else does. i’m not saying to use that as an excuse to be wicked to her. she’ll get you eventually. but when i think about all these wealthy bigwigs leaving way more of a “carbon footprint” than i ever could expecting me to front the cash to make the world a better place…….hey, i already use way less utilities than the average person. i’ve lived without utilities. i don’t just drive to town on a whim…..and if i lived in a city i wouldn’t be using a car. but you really can’t afford solar paneling or other really cool get-you-off-the-grid-but-still-have-power-to-run-your-laptop-for-work-and-communication-etc devices when your earnings are poverty level. and guess what, i receive no benefits or aid from the government/taxpayers either.

and florescent bulbs aren’t the answer. they contain mercury. and blow just as quickly as incandescents in my house. sometimes quicker. and i know they do better in “turn them on leave them on” areas. they still blow. i’m lucky to get a few months use out of them, and i hate the type of light they give off too. so unnatural. gave me massive headaches every single day when i started middle school (went from an old elementary school without florescents to a brand new middle with nothing but…)

but here is something interesting i came across some weeks back to demonstrate the fads of science:

in the june 1965 issue of National Geographic, that’s Vol. 127 No.6 on pages 794-795 they have this large picture of Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska. but it’s the caption that really interests me:

“Tortured ice pinnacles 60 to 100 feet high dwarf visitors at the face of the Mendenhall, a glacier that melts faster than it moves forward. Scientists predict that the face may begin advancing again toward the end of the 20th century. By then, as their study of climatic cycles indicates, colder temperatures and heavier snowfalls will have replaced the relatively warm and snow-scant winters now prevailing along the Alaska coast. Mendenhall Lake, 115 feet deep near the glacier, did not exist when this century began.”

science has fads too. it has philosophies. it has its own religious fundamentalists. i really don’t believe we know much more than the ancients did. we have a lot more technology…but since when did technology improve us as humans? it made some things easier, but have we truly changed for the better? have we truly become more intelligent, or have we merely altered our culture, our language so that we are merely different today–not better. big words and big machines do not a genius make.

The Time Travel Fund – give a little, get a lot (maybe)

just another little interesting tidbit floating out there…

for a mere $10, you can secure a place in the future!!!

that’s right—according to their website, by the time time travel becomes a reality, the fund will have grown enormous enough via interest to hopefully cover the costs of going back in time and collecting you, possibly even supporting you financially until you adjust to the new lifestyle!

You have a few options for when you want to be collected:

1. You could be retrieved seconds before your recorded point of death. This brings up several points: By retrieving you right before your recorded “death” it reduces the chance of any Star Trek[tm] type paradoxes. Perhaps a “clone” of your body will be grown and inserted back in time to your point of death to take your place for the funeral. This possibility also assumes that by then medical science will have advanced to the point where you can be revived, and your body rebuilt to a younger, stronger state. Just think, you may one day wake up 1000 years in the future, a young, healthy and physically 18 years old, with several hundred years of life ahead of you.

2. You are retrieved, given the grand tour, and then put back to when you were retrieved, either with or without your memories of the future intact. This may or may not be desirable to you.

3. You are retrieved, and live a normal life in the future. Back at the time of retrieval, your disappearance is treated as an unsolved mystery.

Some restrictions apply however:

You will not be retrieved if you die by suicide. Sorry, but we don’t want your family blaming us for you killing yourself because you think you will get to the future sooner.

You will not be retrieved if you die by execution, or are killed in the process of, or the result of, committing a crime. You are responsible for your actions, and the fund is not an excuse for you to take your frustrations out on society. (Note: You are not automatically excluded if you are the victim of a crime.)

There are no guarantees. None whatsoever. This is pure speculation, but it is a chance. Should something happen such as the people of the earth bombing themselves back to the stone age, you probably won’t be retrieved. The fund is a chance to visit the future, not a guarantee. If you want a guarantee, go buy a savings bond and wait for seven years.

It’s so little a donation, how could you not resist? See you in the future…