I was watching CNN this morning, and besides the usual death, destruction and disease they feed us there was something actually interesting and funny. (Fox news is way worse about, Be afraid!, though, and I do think Fox makes some things up. "Dude..." toke "..let's say the Spanish have a huge f*ckkin bomb they hid in Dali's house..."; "Dude, who's Dali?")

What's long and hard and full of seeds and...green?

Newsflash: Watermelon is maybe nature's Viagra. What? Yep. Forget oysters. Apparently watermelon is chok-a-block full of the enzyme citrulline, which relaxes and dilates blood vessels, which makes your thingamabob get hard. Fourth of July picnic and your sister's annoying kids are being their usual spoiled bratty selves, mosquitoes are biting your ankles, your sister's husband is playing your least favourite and his most favourite band on the stereo, Rush, very loud (and singing to it) and presto, whammo, you're hornier than Ron Jeremy. "Honey, could you help me in the kitchen?"

Citrilline is converted by the body into arginine. Arginine makes nitric acid. Nitric acid dilates blood vessels. Thingamabobs thus stand up on end. (Many cases with thingamabobs not working are due to this not working right for whatever reason.)

Watermelon balls, anyone?

What's round and pink and soaked in vodka (no, it's not Lindsey Lohan's purse)?

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Milk now costs more than petrol (aka gasoline). This is normally the case most of the time, in the US of A. However, with gas now at about $4 per gallon, that makes milk more than $4 per gallon, which is expensive, which is why it is in the news.

A combination of events caused this rise. The obvious is higher transport cost due to higher fuel prices. Milk is transported by diesel trucks, and diesel costs more than gasoline in the US. Another event is flooding. Add droughts to that too. Cows eat stuff that grows in the ground. When the crops they eat are disrupted, the cost of feeding the cow goes up. In case you are not aware (and if you are not, God help you), most milk comes from cows. (That, the most common kind, is the milk that is being discussed here.)

Costco, a US company that sells items (anything from Ralph Lauren jeans to vitamins to tomatoes) in "bulk", or larger amounts (like you have to buy twelve rolls of paper towels instead of one) to the regular person (anyone who buys a membership), has announced it will do its part to lower milk prices by its innovative new square plastic milk jug*. They say this will help with prices, because this enables them to tranport more gallons of milk on the trucks than would normally be the case. (Om...wouldn't weight be more of an issue, since the heavier the load, the more fuel the truck uses? So, if you could stack more jugs in a truck, wouldn't it cost more to move it?)

Costco apparently has the most intelligent rocket scientist geeks on the planet back there in the think-tank working on ideas for them (they snitched them from NASA with lures of chocolate chip muffins in dozen-count boxes and six-packs of Oil of Olay daily cleansing face wash with AHAs).

Newsflash** to Costco:

duh...

*  Plastic is made from fossil fuel. If you want to use less fossil fuel, do not use plastic.

** Square things to put milk in were invented in 1932.

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What is your personal motto?

Always have an alibi.

Preferably airtight. I mean, you never know when somebody you detest will turn up dead. Which is generally a good thing, of course. But if the circumstances are suspicious, you might get hauled in for questioning. Best to be prepared.

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Thanks, to the Republican Party. Thanks, George and Dick. And Condaleeza. And muchas gracias, to the Energy Secretary who used to work for ExxonMobil.

Thanks

Thanks for keeping fuel prices down lower than anywhere else on the planet, and allowing auto makers to create a fantasy world of overly large vehicles that drink gas faster than Lindsay Lohan sucks down a vodka martini; now that they (fuel costs) are rising to realistic cost nearly overnight (the UK and Europe have been paying more than twice) we can suffer mightily.

Thanks for getting our country into a war that you lied about, that has no positive results whatsoever and costs many lives, and billions of dollars, a year. And thanks for approving more billions recently since it went overbudget this year (and thanks John McCain for voting for that too, yep).

Thanks for all the things you have done to increase CO2 output so we can increase global warming faster than we were ten years ago, and now there are widespread droughts and flooding.

Thanks that with the combination of crazy weather and high fuel, food, that thing we need to survive, will be ever higher in price.

Thanks for allowing greedy wankers to build way too many new houses in stupid developments, and this creates a housing glut and ruins the market, so that the economy goes into the sh*tter. (not to mention all the natural resources that go into building them, as well as the natural habitats removed---and farmland---and oye! Wassup up with getting rid of so much farmland? How 'bout the cost of importing food, ya dummies!)

Thank you so much, for making the near future (and the now, and the past...) suck. Cheers. And by the way, I really do NOT care about Jenna Bush's wedding, y'all. I would rather read about Tiger Woods, than her. (Unless she gets arrested again.)

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The really educated and informed varmint says, it is an issue of "supply and demand". A parakeet could give a better informed answer to the issue.

GB's parakeet's quick fixes to high oil prices:

Turbines

solar farms

hybrid cars

Bike

Feet. They're not just for the treadmill.

Clothesline

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Over my four day weekend I spent time down in Southern Illinois hiking and taking photos with my girlfriend. Took just over 400 images while I was out and about, and got some much needed time out in nature.

Garden of the Gods

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ruins in Sichuan Province

Death toll: 21,500 confirmed.

Recent activity: Powerful aftershocks at 11:34 PM local time (11:34 Am EST) magnitude 5.1; 1:25 PM EST, magnitude 5.5, both of which triggered more landslides and building collapses.

Update on the reach of orginial earthquake at 7.9 on May 12: It was felt in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand.

I can not find news on the dam at Zippingpu yet. The Chinese gov't claims it "plugged the cracks", but I do not feel comfortable about a claim such as that.

After on left, 2006 on right. Images by Taiwan National Space Organisation

A set of imagery from 2006 and the present in Sichuan Province. The strikingly brown areas in the current image are places devastated by the earthquake (showing bare earth from landslides, etc). This set of images is from the Space and Major Disasters organisation that was given to the Chinese government to assist with the disaster. To form this org, countries teamed up, starting in 2000, where they share their satellite imagery for disasters. Members include China National Space Admin, Indian Space Research Org, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NOAA, NASA, and Argentine Space Agency.

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May 15, 2008 10:30 AM EST

Confirmed death toll: 19,509

Projected death toll: 50,000

Est. people still buried: ~ 30,000

Also affected: Taiwan

Amount of people estimated to be affected (loss of loved ones, homeless, damage to homes, workplaces, loss of power, injuries, lack of access to water and food): ~ 10 million

Other problems:

• Sichuan Province is home to many dams, and they are damaged by the quake. One dam, the Zipingpu Dam which was recently contructed among very high criticism including that of seismologists and geologists, about its being erected in a quake zone near a faultline, has suffered four inch cracks as well as landslides. This dam stands 500 feet in height and is about 35 miles from the epicentre of the quake. There are an estimated 400 dams with damage from the quake.
• Minyuang is home to several nuclear weapons facilities which have been damaged, reported by the the China Nuclear Engineering and Construction Corporation on its website, but it does not report if there are any leaks or descriptions of the damage.
• Massive mud and landslides have blocked 2 rivers from continuing on their course in Qingchuan County. A huge lake has formed from the backed-up water. They have made an appeal for geologists to develop a rescue plan to assist in resolving this before further disaster strikes.

Celebrities donating: NBA star Yao Ming, proposed over a quarter of a million dollars of personal funds for aide.

Foreigners present at time of the quake: a group of American and British tourists on a WWF trip to observe giant pandas, all were safe and airlifted out today. The pandas at the breeding centre in Wolong were reported safe.

How to help: http://www.interaction.org/china

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Magnitude: Now 7.9, according to the USGS

Epicentre: 31.021°N, 103.367°E

Death Toll: over 12,000

Still missing: over 18,600

Aftershocks: magnitude 4 to magnitude 6

The USGS now states that the quake resulted from "The earthquake reflects tectonic stresses resulting from the convergence of crustal material slowly moving from the high Tibetan Plateau, to the west, against strong crust underlying the Sichuan Basin and southeastern China."

In the Eocene Epoch, India slammed into Asia, which created the Tibetan Plateau over time. So this stress was built up from the west and the east. There is nowhere for China to go when this pressure builds up from both sides. It has no release but for earthquakes.

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regional plate tectonics map

           China’s southwestern region has some major faults, and off its coast the Pacific Plate is jamming itself beneath the continental crust of China as well as the Philippines Plate, which is also cramming itself beneath China. Between the Pacific Plate and the Philippines Plate lays the Mariana Trench, the deepest trench in the ocean. This all means, lots of tectonic activity, lots of stuff moving around and lots of stress building up. Which means, now and then to relieve the stress, earthquake.

Last night while people were sleeping in the US, morning time UK while people were rising for work, an earthquake struck in Sichuan Province, southwestern China. It buried 900 students beneath their school, among others. The death toll at this time for the province,  is 8,500 people.

It registered 7.8 on the Richter Scale, according to the USGS. Its epicenter was ten kilometers deep (6.2 miles).  Over 900 miles away in Beijing, people felt the shaking. In Shanghai, skyscrapers swayed like leaves in the wind.  People in Thailand, Vietnam and Pakistan felt it.

The deadliest recorded earthquake China has suffered killed nearly a quarter of a million people in 1976 (updated May 13; was orginally reported 1978, figure taken from an AP report).

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