Weather WTF!

Right now I am kinda worried. We have some severe weather moving in and I am listening to my scanner and its going nuts. I have the weather spotters and the police and fire departments programed in along with the TV station remote trucks. They haven't sent the TV people out yet. I guess they wait till the damage is done. The storm is coming in at 80 MPH! I never heard of a storm moving that fast, maybe on Jupiter but not one Earth! The only good thing about it is that the storm will be over with soon. The bad news is that fast forward speed adds to the wind speeds so we can expect some severe straight line winds. The thing I am more worried about is flooding since the ground is still partially frozen from the past couple of weeks of extremely cold weather.

I'll let you know when I get through this.

I can hear the wind and rain hitting the roof and its pretty bad. So far the trailer isn't shaking like it usually does with these storms.

Now this is something you don't see every day - A shoplifting Dog!

As featured on CNN

Two Score years ago we journeyed to the moon at Christmas Eve

On December 24th 1968, Apollo 8 was placed into orbit around the moon. In recorded history, she was the first manned vehicle to orbit our natural satellite. The year of 1968 was tumultuous, with riots at the Democratic National Convention, student protests all over the country, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the Tet Offensive in the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War, the brutal suppression of the Revolution in Czechoslovakia by the Soviets and on and on. It seemed that the world was tearing itself apart.

At NASA, there were growing concerns that the Soviet Zond program would prove triumphant over Apollo by at least placing a man around the moon in a Free Return trajectory or worse yet, into orbit around the moon. With that the Soviets could claim another space first in a string of firsts. So, the decision makers at NASA planned a bold step. With the ongoing integration problems with the Lunar Module, they decided to leave the vehicle behind, sending the Command Module alone to the moon. The flight was to take place over the Christmas holiday in 1968.

Once arriving at the moon, Apollo 8 took this spactacular picture which has become iconic;

For the first time in history, the majority of mankind could look upon the whole Earth, from a distance and realize how fragile and unique it was. We only had one and it need to be cared for. There is no other place to go.

On Christmas Eve, the astronauts, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, broadcast to Earth. They flew over the desolate surface and described it to their audience on the Earth. The lonely, stark, yet beautiful land was presented to the television viewers. Then, as they closed their broadcast, the Astronauts began to read. First Bil Anders, then Jim Lovell, and finally, Frank Borman:



Transcript:

William Anders

"We are now approaching lunar sunrise and, for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Jim Lovell

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Frank Borman

"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

At this one time, never was Earth so inspired, so together. For this moment, the wars didn't matter, the riots had no meaning, and life itself was something to be cherished.

For all my friends I would like to repeat what they said and bless all of you, all of you on the Good Earth

What every mother needs!

My new Toy!

I have had my new phone for a couple of weeks. I have had a cell phone for many years and this is the first one that I have had a lot of gadgets on one. This one can play music and has an FM radio on it and can get my e-mail and so on and so forth. I have had so much fun but especially with the music. I have an i-Pod now in a way. I have spent a few days transferring my library from my computer to my phone. I have a couple of my audio books on the phone, maybe three or four. I am surprised at all the junk I can put on there!

I think the next level is more computerized like a little computer. I know there are probably phones like that out there. But I love my phone!

Christmas

To those that say "Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."

I present you with this:

War Between India and Pakistain based on a fake call?

What does this say about how on the edge this whole world is? It says a lot about how easy this world may slide into war and the sinister forces that are at work to drive the world into chaos.

Might Hoax Call Have Triggered A War?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 6, 2008

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(CBS) By CBS News' Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad.

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How close were India and Pakistan to war, when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice picked up the phone on Friday, November 28, to call India's foreign minister to convey Pakistan’s extreme anxiety after terrorists stormed luxury hotels and a Jewish center in Mumbai?

That was one of the key questions making the rounds of the Pakistani capital Islamabad today, as speculation grew in the country’s press over reports of a phone call which turned out to be a hoax.

The rumor was that last Friday India's foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee had called Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari and threatened Islamabad with dire consequences following the Mumbai attacks.

The fear of a wider conflict after the call was so intense that Zardari picked up the phone and called Rice, a top Pakistani government official told CBS News on condition of anonymity. "It felt like the clock was ticking away to doomsday," he said.

A European ambassador who also spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity said fears of a clash between the two nuclear-armed neighbors grew rapidly on November 28 after the call, prompting Rice's intervention to stop what the U.S. at the time may have considered a deepening slide in Indo-Pakistan relations leading to war.

According to the European ambassador, Rice told Mukherjee that the Pakistanis were "extremely worried that they were on a conflict escalation ladder with India which could provoke an all-out war."

During Rice's conversation with Mukharjee, she mentioned receiving a "distress message" from Pakistan, though she did not reveal to the minister the name of the Pakistani who called at the time, said the European ambassador quoting detailed information he had compiled together.

The call subsequently turned out to be a hoax, though the circumstances in which it was made have forced both Pakistani and Indian officials to investigate the matter.

A Pakistani minister who also spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity said the number used by the caller in Delhi to ring the operator at President Zardari's presidential residence in Islamabad "was one of the numbers from the Indian foreign minister's office in the Indian capital."

However, he quoted Indian officials denying to Pakistan that Mukherjee ever made the call and taking the position that "sophisticated technology must have been used to create an Indian number without anyone knowing that the caller was not Mukherjee."

Indian officials have said Mukherjee was in Calcutta, the southeastern Indian city, at the time he supposedly made the phone call.

Pakistani officials have also raised the possibility of a prankster in the Indian foreign ministry using the minister's official telephone, to provoke a crisis in Indo-Pak relations.

The case has also raised the possibility of lax procedures in President Zardari’s official residence. In normal times, such a phone call would have been diverted to a senior official at the president's palace, who would then have called back the number in Delhi to confirm that it was Mukherjee on the line, before connecting him to the Pakistani president.

Pakistani officials also revealed that the same caller from Delhi, shortly after calling President Zardari, then called up Secretary Rice's number in the U.S., but was not put through to her.

On Saturday, Pakistan's largest-selling English newspaper, the DAWN, in a front page report titled "A Hoax Call That Could Have Triggered War," wrote:

"Whether it was mere mischief or a sinister move by someone in the Indian external affairs ministry, or the call came from within Pakistan, remains unclear, and is still a matter of investigation. But several political, diplomatic and security sources have confirmed to Dawn that for nearly 24 hours over the weekend the incident continued to send jitters across the world. To some world leaders the probability of an accidental war appeared very high."

The European ambassador who spoke to CBS NEWS warned that the hoax call raises the dangerous possibility of “the failure to follow procedure and tampering of communication systems, bringing these two nuclear armed countries close to war."

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