A woman knocked on my door the other day, triggering the barking mechanism inside Maggie, my 100 lb. chocolate lab which, very much like a political salesman, is difficult to hush once they get going. The woman was old, and she had to work her chin off of her chest with a couple shoulder dips and lifts, simply to see me standing above her. Out of consideration I stepped down onto the porch so she wouldn’t have to work so hard, and that’s when I noticed her hands stuffed with packages of photo cards.

“Have you heard of Timothy Slick, or Rodney Starchman?” she asked as she fumbled their cards from the stack. “How about Don Glimmer, or Pat Pearlywhite?” The sheen of the cards caused them to slip and they fanned in her frail forearm, and just as they were about to fall to the porch I reached out to spare her the grief. That’s when I noticed they had elephants all over them.

“What, they’re all Republicans?” I asked, turning them over and around to see all of the smiling faces. They smiled for trust until it hurt. “Not one Independent even?” She stared up at me and her lower lip started quivering. After the moment it took her to gather her cards and thoughts she spoke up as if she’d just remembered that she forgot to buy milk that morning. “Why no!” She looked frightened. “You see, we believe there’s too many people in government jobs, and these candidates here all want to get rid of them.”

“Is that what they’re running on this time?” I asked. “Leaving tens of thousands more to collect unemployment? And who will pay all of the taxes when they are no longer getting any income whatsoever?”

“Well taxes are another thing we want to get rid of because the taxes we pay under Obama is ruining us all!”

“Really? And how is that when taxes didn’t go up at all? And let me ask you this…” I wasn’t going to give this lady the nicety she was most likely getting from every other house on the block – that “Oh but she’s a poor old woman whose only trying to help her cause,” benefit of the doubt, and simply because she was not only voting against her own better interests but she was voting against mine. “… if nobody is paying taxes then where will all of the money come from?”

“Money for what?”

“Money for everything. Every time the population grows we need more police and firefighters. We need street repairs, and public works in general. Costs for education? Where will all of that money come from?”

Her head pistoned in and out of her shoulders as she looked away to the street, panning like an imbedded lawn sprinkler, and just like one she brought her head around quickly to answer the question. “We believe that by cutting all of the government jobs we’ll have more than enough money…”

“But none of these people will be paying taxes then, that’s my point. They won’t have any income, so they won’t pay any taxes. Look, do you think that we’d be in a better position handing back our government to the same people who drove us into the recession we’ve been trying to get out of?”

She started laughing a ‘how dare you talk that way about my child if I was your mother I’d spank your lights out but your generation made spanking illegal so I’d hit you even harder’ laugh. Her teeth were yellowed with the same amount of history she wanted to slap into my head, but I knew for all intents and purposes that she was nothing more than an anti-progressive. She was nothing more than a tea partier too tired to party, and so she settled in with her long time companions, the Republicans. Then her laugh turned sour. “Oh sure, blame the Republicans!” she said.

“They were in charge of Washington when all of this happened,” I reminded her. “And now they want to protect the banks that gambled our economy into the gutter.”

And then the strangest thing happened. It wasn’t the look of intense shock that her face suddenly morphed into, nor was it the way that she pointed up to me with her twisted witch-finger as if she were putting me under  the same evil spell that drove her political views her entire life, but it was the 7 words that followed. “The banks were forced to do that!”

Yup! Apparently the most recent claim coming from the faux-conservative wall of “duh” is that the banks were forced into driving our economy into the gutter. The dog was still barking and without the slightest hitch in timing. Ruff Ruff Ruff Ruff… she went on and it sounded as if someone wouldn’t give the ignition of a dead engine a break. I knew she was just trying to bark some logic into this lady, so I let her go on. I didn’t care if Maggie was tainting my image as some ordinary middle-class citizen, and making me look more like trailer trash who happened upon a stroke of luck. The dog was right, “Listen up or get off my porch.”

This time I was doing the laughing. “Really? The banks were forced to do it?”

“Yes, it was Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and all of the regulations…”

“Fanny and Freddy had hardly the share in this that the free market banks had. The Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns’s, and as far as regulations there weren’t any, because Clinton under the guidance of a Republican majority chose to do away with bank regulations.”

She just stood with her head shaking, whispering, “No, the banks were forced to do it by the Democrats.”

“No, they weren’t,” I responded. “You just can’t admit that your party bears the brunt of this train wreck of an economy, and I think it’s sad because while all these people are trying to turn it around your party wants to see it fail just so they can get back into power. Well, ma’am, I’m sorry but I don’t vote straight party lines like you do. I try to find the best candidate for the job, and anyone refusing to help our country in a time of crisis is not only an utter ass, but is a treasonous utter ass. I’m sorry if I can’t help you out.” With that I walked back inside and shut the door. I watched her waddle down the steps and down the driveway, shaking her head the entire time. Maggie had to be settled down before she could go back to basking in the sun through the bay window, waiting for the next thing to roar her engines over – the busy squirrel scampering through the yard, the neighborhood skateboarder. I sat watching the lady as she crossed my neighbor’s yard. She was there a whole twenty seconds and back the next day handing him a sign to post in his yard. “Sick freaks,” I said to Maggie. She wagged her tail. “Total halfwits.” She rolled onto her back. It was her way of begging for belly-scratches. “You know Maggie-Moo? I wish you were a Democrat in Washington,” I told her. “At least you know how to bark back.”

Event organizers shield the scene where the Russian contestant Vladimir Ladyzhenskiy died

Many of us have grown awfully tired of hearing the international community deride Americans. Just deriding our own, as many of us do when acting as faithful stewards to protect our beloved motherland from the evils of ignorance and apathy, is tiring enough. The last thing we want to hear is some foreign media outlet calling us stupid, or lazy, or fat, or any of the derogatory remarks we mostly agree to call ourselves – It’s a human thing; the right to call ourselves what we want while outsiders are not allowed to. So when members of the international community (I guess it’s p.c. for “foreigners”) makes our dumbest look somewhat intelligent, well… I guess it gives us a reason to smile, point fingers, and do that taboo name-calling thing, like the way I’m choosing to call Russian Vladimir Ladyzhenskiy and Finland’s own Timo Kaukonen a couple of morons.

The two were the finallists in the World Sauna Championships – an annual contest in Heinola, Finland where contestants endure rising temperatures for as long as possible. In front of a crowd of over 1,000 spectators the two were inside of the 230 degree sauna for 6 minutes when Ladyzhenskiy collapsed. The heated booth, where water is poured onto the stove every thirty seconds for as long as needed to claim a winner, was rushed by event organizers. Kaukonen, despite getting sick, refused to leave the sauna and had to be forcefully removed, whereas Ladyzhenskiy died shortly after. Kaukonen was rushed to the hospital where he was treated for severe burns and was listed in stable condition. 

Hakon Eikesdal, a photographer with the Norwegian daily Dagbladet, said it appeared the two men were bleeding from heat blisters in various parts of their bodies. Oddly enough, in Finland where hanging aboout in sauna’s is one of the country’s favorite pasttimes, sweltering in 230 degree heat is quite common.”I know this is very hard to understand to people outside Finland who are not familiar with the sauna habit,” the event spokesman Ossi Arvela said. “It is not so unusual to have 110 degrees (230 Farenheit) in a sauna. A lot of competitors before have sat in higher temperatures than that.”

Perhaps the best news that has come from this came from Arvela, when he claimed that the contest has been held since 1999, and ”… it will never be held again.”

It was always believed that the earliest of the human genus, Homo habilis (Handy Man) were the first toolmakers. That was until recently when a team of international researchers discovered two ribs of a large hoofed animal that roamed modern Ethiopia nearly 3.5 million years ago.

The evidence came to life when the ribs were studied, revealing slices in the bone, suggesting the use of tools 800,000 years beyond what was previously believed. From the ancestor known as Australeopithecus aferensis, the genus from which the famous “Lucy” came, the bones are believed to have been cut with tools the primates used in skinning the meat. “In this part of the world, at this time period, the only [hominid] species found to this point has been afarensis,” Shannon McPherron said. McPherron, an archaeologist from The Max Plancke Institute, is the co-author of the study that was published yesterday in Nature magazine.

Though it stands as reasonable to believe that tool-use was much older than previously thought simply by the sophistication of what we’ve discovered and marked as being the “oldest tools”. It’s easy to understand tools as originating from rocks being used in their natural state. A rock with a naturally sharp edge would’ve been used to cut, while those with more of a blunt edge would’ve been used to crush objects like bone to get inside to the marrow. As with anything, tools went through stages of evolution, as their function was passed down through generations over millions of years. “We’ll have to find more than these two bones, but if we fill in the record and we find more evidence of this, then we might be looking at a kind of learned behavior that was then shared and passed along in and amongst these groups,” McPherron said.

Though Lucy and her peers might not have been manufacturing tools, it appears they were using them almost a million years before we ever knew.

 I have to thank the person whose bumper sticker asked “Why do we kill people, who kill people, so we can say that killing people is wrong?” for giving me something to wrestle over - can “eye for an eye” justice be considered progressive thought?

Being considerate is a key to being a good human – putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is another way to say it. With regards to Capital Punishment there are a few parties to consider. There’s the victim, the victim’s family, and the perpetrator’s state of being. Unfortunately for the perp’s family, well unless they’re the victims then the consideration they receive is nothing more than an “obituary-esque” line or two at the close of the news bit, with some sort of “We really can’t figure it out. He never hurt anyone in his life.” Often people look at them as if they’re to blame – as if they are somehow guilty for letting the person grow up to commit murder, or at least blamed for letting them out of the house.

Normally the thought process travels a line beginning with the imagery of the act – putting yourself in the shoes of the victim and trying to imagine what they endured. From there, depending on your own personality, the imagery, or consideration can fork. It can either go to the victim’s family members, or to the perpetrator’s state of mind. “Who could do such a thing?” is sometimes the question immediately following the news of the act. Were they sane and if they were then how could they do something so sickening? Can someone be sane and perform such a gruesome act, or does it rely on loss of reason, even if only for a short moment? If this is how your brain works in these moments it is without a doubt that you’ll eventually get to the family members of the victims. If your brain works the other way, and you cannot think to put yourself in the shoes, or mind of the murderer, then there’s that chance that you never will. It is really not so strange to believe that the killer might never be considered but is simply judged. In fact, this is one of those things the person with the “Why do we kill people…” bumper sticker is often so upset about – the lack of consideration we give the perpetrator. Some activists rail against writing off the guilty and putting them to their death without ever taking into consideration their mental state. Though it’s the job of the courts to determine that, yet often the pressure and influence the victim’s family has on the jury, just from sitting in the courtroom, is enough to sway a verdict. Those left to suffer further, hoping their child is in a “better place”, and knowing they’ll never share another moment with them again, hope the murderer does not get a ruling of insanity – they want them dead.

And how could they be blamed when only the torso of their seven year old daughter was found in the woods after being brutally molested? There’s no way to blame them for seeking retribution in the most violent way. The news itself stirs imagery that brings sorrow and disgust to those not even related to the victim. Imagine that being your daughter – pure and smooth one minute, and the next a bruised and bloated chunk of nakedness pulled from beneath the undergrowth. One can’t help but to relive the horror, and hope that it all happened so fast that the girl didn’t know what hit her. Nobody wants to imagine a slow and tortuous death, not at least for someone who most likely was a very innocent person. At 7 years of age, what could they have possibly done to have deserved that fate? The victim’s parents could certainly imagine a slow and tortuous death for the masochistic murderer. When asked if the dead man on the gurney brought on a feeling of relief now that their child’s murderer was gone, the parents often reply with a lame satisfaction in their voices. “At least we know he’ll never be able to do this to anyone else.” They may or may not have closure, but retribution will never be felt. In their eyes, one could see their longing to hear that the brutal killer had to endure the exact scenario their child endured, since it’s hardly fair that the child suffered extreme terror from a lengthy session of excruciating pain – torture and dismemberment, unfathomable pain; while the guilty party now has years to prepare for their fate. They are given the opportunity to finalize things – come to terms with themselves and whether they feel remorse or not, to make peace with their chosen guiding-spirit, to have last meals and final words. He’ll feel a prick of the needle and he’ll fall asleep forever. There is no pain, no horror, save that which comes from the fear of entering the unknown, or forever leaving behind the known.

No one in that scenario is trying to send a message to the public saying ‘killing is wrong’. In fact, the pros and cons we often hear circling the issue of capital punishment comes mostly from those who have only ever been on the outside of the issue. They hear about these things in the news, and like myself we share our opinions. Between both parties murder is in the air, and the victim’s family, more often than not, is frothing at their jowls waiting to take their turn. The reason capital punishment is still carried out in the 21^st century is mainly so the family members of the victim can gain retribution and closure; they need the weight of the heinous imagery that will undoubtedly haunt them for life, lifted from their chests.

There are a few things we have to take into account – receiving a death penalty is often more expensive than life in prison – endless appeals forces the longer term of hanging about on Death Row. Often it amounts to nothing more than life in prison as the average time a Death Row inmate waits for execution is 12 years, and many die waiting. It’s apparent that with over 3,000 inmates awaiting their execution throughout the United States, along with the tens of thousands of murder cases that received lesser sentencing, capital punishment can hardly be seen as a deterrent. Not to mention that with advanced DNA testing, we’ve determined that many on Death Row who we originally thought were guilty were actually innocent. Who knows how many people we’ve put to death who never committed any crime?

Since our courtrooms lack any god to exact the wrongs we deal with in society, we have to take on the role of Judge. We determine whether or not the person is capable of rehabilitation – though often enough if the murderer is of sound mind, enough to be rehabilitated, the act they committed is suddenly inexcusable as it might not be if the person suffered from some clinical mental illness. If the guilty is clueless as to what they’ve done it’s harder to hate the individual, for they lacked control and awareness of what was happening while it was happening. This is where morality comes into play; to kill, or not to kill? The notion of following a commandment as being any valid reasoning behind a verdict is ludicrous, lest the gods come down and make the judgment for us. How moral would it be to allow the family of the victim to suffer, while the guilty goes on in life, perhaps finding life in prison a nightmare, yet knowing the occasional moments of happiness and laughter – something stolen from the victim. How moral is leaving the victim’s family members without any retribution, or closure? For you with the bumper sticker, nobody is saying killing is wrong as much as they’re saying their child, or any loved-one for that matter, was brutally raped and murdered, and now they’re going to hope to find peace by having the guilty put to death, even if it’s a very soft, and painless death.

In the end it boils down to only one thing – is the guilty party of sound mind, and most importantly WAS the guilty party of sound mind when the incident took place? If guilty and of sound mind, maybe the judgment should be left to the family members of the victim at this point. There are those who believe in amnesty, and perhaps it should be their right to refuse playing a part of the eye for an eye form of justice. Only they truly know what it would take to feel closure, because in the end the closure they seek lies along the only moral path. Unfortunately for them, having the killer killed may not even work to bring about any sense of retribution, but it should probably be theirs to determine whether or not killing is wrong.

So, when we ask “Why do we kill people, who kill people, so we can say that killing people is wrong?” the only answer I can come up with is, ‘We don’t', because when passing down a sentence for someone killing another, that thought of killing being wrong is already long gone. What’s left is the question, “How do we make the best of a bad situation?”

US Propaganda Leaflets

Right wing Conservatives in America, mostly those referred to as the “religious right”, have an immense distrust toward all things Islam. They see Muslims as people that are hell bent on taking out the West, and harbor an innate fear of their intentions. It’s this distrust that drives them to utter their justification for war – “We’re killing them over there so we don’t have to kill them here.” It’s that ubiquitous sign of religious prejudice and paranoia that plagues Christian Conservatives, and when confronted on that issue they heave their chests in support of their beliefs. It’s unfortunate that their cries are so loud they reverberate across the oceans, and that so many abroad seem to think that all Americans are as equally intolerant. Consequently, much of the world has an equal distrust toward American intentions.

Our nation is currently stuck in a financial hangover largely because of the recently diffused war in Iraq, and the current war in Afghanistan, sucking trillions from our coffers of tax dollars. If President Obama were to quit in Afghanistan now, the Christian Conservatives would call to have his head on a pike… again. But as soon as the President signed his first defense budget, the war in Afghanistan was his to own. The Conservatives were overjoyed with being able to pass over their bumbled military endeavor to the Democrats. They pointed their fingers like kids in the schoolyard, “It’s Obama’s war now, yup!”

One of Barack Obama’s presidential-campaign promises was to refocus our military attention on Afghanistan. During the marathon to the 2008 election, when the right wing neo-cons constantly questioned ‘Who do you trust to lead us in war?’, Senator Obama proposed his plan to draw down the troop levels in Iraq and shift the resources back to where they should’ve been all along – Afghanistan. On countless occasions, he accepted the weight of the war on his shoulders before he ever became president. So the sudden surprise that Republicans received was in fact no surprise at all. It was nothing more than another instance where their paying attention to anything beyond anti-liberalism fell short of their blind faith in all things on the right-wing.

Conservatives couldn’t bask in their glory for very long, however, for deep inside they knew what we all know – this is their war, as most wars are. It is the right wing that proposes the inflated defense budgets, normally ballooned to leaving all other domestic spending in its immense shadow. They are those who supported the war in Iraq, even after all of the lies and deceit that the Bush-Cheney administration used in starting the war were uncovered. With regard to the war in Afghanistan, well, why wouldn’t they support it? It’s another war against Muslims and their distrustful religion of Islam.

Earlier this week, the Obama Administration offered a half billion dollars to revamp the infrastructure of Pakistan and Afghanistan with hopes of “earning the trust” of their people. The thought process goes a bit like this: To relieve the chances of rogue cells plotting to wage terror on American soil, the governments of these developing, or third-world countries need to have centralized power, and with influence that stretches to all borders. The only way to do this is to have a first-world populace, and the only way to gain that status is by having a first-world infrastructure. In helping them finance their infrastructure the plan of earning the people’s trust suddenly becomes two-pronged; they are left with their necessary first-world hydroelectric dams, power grid, and hospitals, and secondly the people can see that it was funded by western nations. Once these nations have more control over their pockets of human habitation that might currently be ruled by maniacally greedy people, armed to the teeth, and who lack any sense of value for the lives of fellow humans, these centralized governments can stamp out these terrorist cells themselves. It would allow them to kill them over there so we don’t have to kill them here – A much better scenario than members of the right wing would have it.

The question that needs to be asked, however, is how possible is it for the West to gain the trust of the people in the Middle-East? Can building a couple hydroelectric dams and a few hospitals really work to change their outlook on western civilization? To have a change in mind they must first have a change in heart. Can the upgrade in their power grids erase thousands of years of bad blood? Why should we expect Muslims to trust Christians when the history of war between the two dates back as far as the time when they each realized the other’s existence? Never meaning to imply that America should be considered a Christian nation, but when our federal defense team employs hyper-Christian military forces like Blackwater, now Xe Services, LLC.,  who have been reported to use extreme religious prejudice in their motives for killing, most nations would venture to bet that ours is a Christian nation. At the very least, theocratic nations would see it that way. Opposing denominations within the Islamic religion alone have spent thousands of years perfecting their hatred for one another; the thought of a Christian from the West extending a helpful hand could surely bring about an uncomfortable pause in the moment, along with at least a short sequence of ocular nerve twitching. Is it difficult to wonder how people whose everyday lives are engrained with their religion, as opposed to the brush-over one might get from a couple hours in church on a Sunday morning, might feel a bit iffy about their historic enemy erecting buildings, and reconstructing power grids on their property? Even supplying them with all of the military goods they needed to repel a Soviet occupation did nothing to earn their trust, why would they now, especially when Christians harbor as much distrust toward them?

Prior to sending troops into Afghanistan, America waged a propaganda war – After jamming radio transmissions and replacing them with those showing a pro-western sentiment, we sent in air-strikes, where military planes dropped thousands of leaflets onto the people below. The leaflets held rewards for the capture of Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders, while also characterizing the Americans as being friends to the Afghani people. It’s now safe to assume the leaflets didn’t have a vastly positive effect on gaining their trust, for it’s one thing to claim a friendship, but another to leave that new friend for the dogs still patrolling their streets, and keeping them intimidated and living in fear.

It appears that the only way to truly gain a long-lasting trust between the Muslim and Western nations is to lose the religion; yes, it’s truly that difficult. For as long as the two cling to their myths like babies to breasts one will always feel the need to enlighten the other, and if need be, by way of great force. As long as someone is being taught to believe that their god or prophet is better than the other’s they will always feel the need to defend their all-powerful omnipresence; apparently gods need the help of humans to defend themselves against the evil other.

At this point it is impossible to say whether or not the helping hand idea will work to benefit either side in the long term. The Mid-East could very easily thank the West before shooting them in the eye. The Mid-East could also thank the West before their own blows it all to smithereens for Allah’s sake. Perhaps it will have such a profound effect on Muslim nations throughout the Middle-East that they’ll open their arms to us as we’ve never experienced before. For now we can only hope to earn the trust of their people through these means, and hope it spills over to when our troops can come home for good, and they themselves can quell the calls for Jihad. Although it seems that as long as there are people willing to die for their god(s), erecting some utilities as a peace offering is futile, and leaves me with a glass half-full of distrust.

Photo Courtesy of IMEMC.ORG

It should come as no surprise that right wing Republicans are not the only crowd crying out for military action against Iran. Last month from Riyadh, it was made public when Saudi Arabian jet fighters cleared their airspace to allow the free passage of Israeli fighter planes running a mock airstrike on Iran. Though the Saudi’s later denied the clearance orders, one US diplomat claimed the Saudi military has fully agreed to keep their jets grounded once Israeli fighters have entered their airspace. “The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over – and they will look the other way,” a US military source in the region confirmed.

This act of alliance doesn’t stop with the Saudi’s, however, as other nations in the region are in line with Israel’s endeavors against Iran. Until the recent unrest sparked by aid flotillas en route to Palestinians living in Gaza, even Turkey had pretended to be unaware of Israeli jet fighters flying in their airspace. Though, the Turk’s sudden restrictions set on the Israeli Air Force may be a bit too late, as the latter have already used that permissive window of time to amass squadrons of fighter planes just north of the Turkish border in Georgia.

With the conservatives in the house and senate begging our government to attack Iran, an American “blind-eye” turned from the threat of an Israeli attack would not come as much of a shock. And any counter attack would only invite retaliation from the armadas of US ships currently occupying the Black Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian Gulf. In their folly, Republicans have publically backed the Iranian “Green” movement – the insurgence of an anti-theocracy, pro-democracy portion of the Iranian population which would be acceptable if they would simply agree to backing the movement vocally. Of course, the right wingers would rather send American troops as a show of support, as their blinders of arrogance continuously shield all common sense. Many military and diplomatic strategists have warned war-mongering conservatives like John McCain that any involvement in that movement may backfire, and may actually push many “Green” supporters back into supporting their government against western influences. It’s largely understood that a logical rebuttal against the American right-wing equates to arguing with a wall, however.

The Washington Institute for Near Policy (WINEP), a think-tank closely tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued a letter this year in which Bush’s former national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Israeli Brigadier General Michael Herzog wrote, “By the first quarter of 2011, we will know whether [Iranian] sanctions are proving effective… The administration should begin to plan now for a course of action should sanctions be deemed ineffective by the first or second quarter of next year. The military option must be kept on the table both as a means of strengthening diplomacy and as a worst-case scenario.” Of course, only arrogance could ever play into the notion that military might strengthens diplomacy, considering a multitude of historic examples proves the opposite – Attack a country and watch all of the people who normally root on the underdog come out to join their resistance. In fact, America is notorious for defending the defenseless, why would we expect other countries to act differently? But it doesn’t stop the likes of William Kristol in his “Weekly Standard” where last month he argued, “Unfortunately, President Obama waffled while innocent Iranians were killed by their own government.” – Again, a half-witted bag of testosterone blinded by pride and arrogance but wielding a giant pen. Fortunately for all of us, Obama is the one keeping Israel’s itch scratched – or at least salved. We do not need more enemies which we’ll surely create by instigating another invasion, nor do we have the resources to afford it. Not to mention – the people are already building their own resistance, and instead of disrupting that by flexing muscles in their faces, why not let them fight their own battles, and earn their own democracy, their own peace?

Diagram courtesy of Solar Impulse

With 12,000 solar-cells attached to wings the size of a standard jet, and with a body as light as a car, the Swiss made HB-SIA solar plane has finally left the runway for it’s 24 hour flight to test its ability to fly in darkness.

Being the first of two vehicles of the Solar Impulse Project, led by pilot Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, who gained fame for making the first trans-global flight in a hot air balloon in 1999, the HB-SIA has already accomplished a full day flight back in early April. “For seven years now, the whole team has been passionately working to achieve this first decisive step of the project,” Borschberg said before taking off on the flight. He’ll bring the experimental plane on a climb to 27,900 feet before starting a slow descent, flying the plane with the stored solar energy until Thursday morning’s sunrise. 

“If this mission is successful, it will be the longest and highest flight ever made by a solar plane,” the SIP team said, eyeing the future HB-SIB – a larger version of the current prototype with upgraded avionics and a pressurized cabin. The HB-SIB will be used to make the first solar-powered manned-Trans-Atlantic flight in 2012, and with a Trans-Global flight pre-scheduled for 2013. 

Though for now, they’ll settle for the excitement of a successful nighttime flight, as it will prove the practical benefits of solar power in the aviation industry, as well as acting as the “poster child” for the use of solar power in many other industries.

Atop the oil slicked surface of the Gulf waters, hired shrimp boats drag fireproof boom. Running parallel to one another, they “sweep” the surface of its oil, seaweed, and any other marine life which might get corralled before setting it all on fire. They’re called “Burn Boxes”, and from them the black plumes rising to the clouds can be seen from many miles away.

 Amidst the confusion of cleanup and rescue teams currently operating in the Gulf of Mexico, one such group has been shoved out of the way by BP, and now must sit idly by and watch helplessly as their dependents burn alive. 

Captain Mike Ellis, a charter boat operator in the Gulf, was hired to help rescue sea turtles. That includes the Kemps Ridley turtles, which because of their status as “critically endangered” are currently protected behind a law wielding criminal charges and a $50,000 price tag on anyone capturing or killing one.

Hired for a three week stint Ellis had to prematurely shut down his operations as BP stopped giving him access to search through the mucky contents of the burn boxes before setting them aflame. “Once the turtles are in there, they can’t get out,” Ellis said.

Blair Witherington, a research scientist from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who is also a part of the sea turtle rescue effort told reporters, “It reflects the conventional wisdom of oil spills: If they just keep the oil out at sea, the harm will be minimal. And I disagree with that completely.”

Clinging to one of their main food sources – strips of Sargassum seaweed that in many instances stretch for miles, in which normally hide a variety of crustaceans, worms, and small fish – the turtles are only finding the sea-plants saturated in oil. “Most of the Gulf of Mexico is a desert. Nothing out there to live on. It’s all concentrated in these oases,” Witherington said. “…It’s the base of the food chain. And these areas we’re seeing here by comparison are quite dead.” He later added, “As far as I can tell, that whole fauna is just completely wiped out.”

It can hardly be expected for the heads of BP to care about anything other than the business they’ve built primarily on the theft of Iran’s natural resources in the early 1900’s – the theft which has brought upon so much anti-western sentiment that runs rampant throughout most of the middle-east even today. And how justifiable is slowing the cleanup process further for sea turtles when entire eco-systems are still endangered; still watching over the slicks ominously creeping straight toward them? To us who care about empowering the powerless it is very justifiable, as it’s only another instance of the same carelessness that brought this mess upon us in the first place.

Photo credit: New York Post

With P.T. Barnum’s adage in mind “There’s a sucker born every day,” it’s fairly sad that nobody had ever confronted P.T. for doing the sucking. Too often, we hear of non-profit organizations caught profiting – their controllers sucking away the funds that should be put forth to help fix what they were intended to fix.

We’ve heard of corruption running through such organizations as the Shiloh International Ministries, who spent over 96% of the money they raised on management and fundraising, when their donors thought they were giving their money to help veterans, needy children, and the homeless in California. In South Carolina, Big Hope was founded to raise money for orphans, sick children, and needy families, though it was found to have less than 9% of the $3.24 million they raised actually applied to the cause. Likewise, The Foundation for American Veterans, Inc. in West Bloomfield, Michigan also spent less than 9% of $4.1 million on promoting social and recreational welfare for current and past U.S. Armed Forces members, dependents, orphans, widows, and widowers. In the most recent case, suckers in New York were taken for a ride by the United Homeless Organization.

Notorious on the NYC streets for their water jugs resting on tables draped in red cloths, and with the collectors adorned in red aprons, the nonprofit organization worked for decades gathering funds as a charity for the homeless – or so a mass of suckers were led to believe. Actually, those who dropped their change into the giant plastic vessels were only giving money to the guy in the apron, who paid a $15-$25 flat-fee for the use of that apron, the tablecloth, and the water bottle owned by UHO.

Back in the UHO office, Stephen Riley and Myra Walker, the founder and director respectively, were using the collections for personal living and travel expenses, and Riley was alleged to have four company vehicles transferred to his name as well. A June 18th ruling by Judge Barbara R. Kapnick has left Riley and Walker banned from working within a non-profit framework again, and their organization has been shut down. All UHO assets have been frozen, and a future hearing will determine the amount of damages and restitution owed to the public by the defendants.

“The Court’s judgment will permanently prevent UHO, Riley and Walker from exploiting the trust and good will of New Yorkers and visitors to New York City,” said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who also added, “This organization’s bad behavior should not undermine the public’s willingness to donate to legitimate charities.”

What’s most troubling is not that the spare change given by the public has vanished, but that there were many who were counting on those funds for basic needs, as it’s always the people these charities are built for that are the most damaged by the corruption and greed practiced by the leaders. Though in this case the homeless fall right in the middle of the public suckers, and Riley and Walker who just suck.

When ranked against Britain, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand, the United States finished in last place in a healthcare report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund.

American citizens pay nearly double of what citizens of the other developed countries are paying, and to add insult to injury (no pun intended) the care we receive is of lower quality, the report shows.

The data, taken from national patient and physician surveys, showed that in 2007 Americans paid an average of $7,290 annually, whereas in the comparative countries the people spent less than $3,900. Yet we receive less for our money, according to the fund’s Cathy Schoen who told reporters, “We rank last on safety, and do poorly on several dimensions of quality. We do particularly poorly on going without care because of cost, and we do surprisingly poorly on access to primary care and after-hours care.”

The report which judges quality, access to care, efficiency, equity, and the ability to lead long, healthy, and productive lives, showed that Americans are more likely to receive the wrong diagnosis or treatment, and that we’re most likely to be given the wrong tests.
The fund’s president Karen Davis was quoted, “As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it.”

Currently, the United States is the only developed country without public healthcare. Consequently, 46 million Americans are still without insurance. Many Americans still believe that the higher costs equate to having the highest quality healthcare, yet the report shows that out of the 7 countries the US finished 6th.

Perhaps the most surprising find came with regard to quality where England topped the list. England’s healthcare system is often used by conservative Americans as an example of a failed healthcare system. Of course, those who deride the English system rarely present valid examples to back up their convictions, yet they have a great influence on many Americans who are generally confused about the methods of health coverage offered throughout the international community.