In Arizona::
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/09/137078844/arizona-blaze-threatens-multi-state-electrical-grid
In the Great Plains, the Midwest, and the Big Apple
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/09/137084209/sizzling-heat-turns-much-of-u-s-into-a-frying-pan
Monthly Archives: June 2011
Pawn Star on Life & People
I am something of a “Pawn Stars” Junkie. Rick Harrison just wrote a book and was interviewed on NPR. Some interesting observations:
“Two years ago, a man walked into the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas with a pair of diamond earrings.
Pawn dealer Rick Harrison asked him the typical questions — Where did you get it? Where is the receipt? — and the man readily answered. Harrison filled out the required paperwork and paid the man $40,000 for his merchandise.
The very next day, Harrison found out the earrings were stolen. The victim got her earrings back and the criminal was prosecuted. Harrison, meanwhile, was out $40,000.
“It’s the cost of doing business,” Harrison says. “That’s the way I look at it. … And Las Vegas is a crazy town at times. There’s a lot of high-end things I get. So you have to know about … really large diamonds, really expensive watches. … So it’s a lot different than most places.”
Harrison, a second-generation pawn shop owner, is one of the stars of The History Channel’s reality series Pawn Stars. The show follows Harrison, his father, Richard, his son Big Hoss and his son’s friend Chumlee as they meet and haggle with customers who bring in all sorts of objects to sell and pawn. Harrison and his relatives assess the value of the objects — and try to determine whether or not they’re fake — before offering their customers a collateral loan or money for their merchandise.
Harrison’s new memoir, License to Pawn, details how he became an expert in, among other things, spotting fake Rolexes (he sees at least one a day), customer relations, human behavior, antiques and economics — all through running his 24-hour-a-day pawn business over the past 30 years.
License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver
By Rick Harrison and Tim Keown
Hardcover, 272 pages
Hyperion
List Price: $23.99
How Pawn Shops Work
Pawn shops, Harrison says, have been around for thousands of years and are among the oldest forms of banking. The way it works is simple: Customers provide a personal item as collateral to receive a loan from a pawn broker, who can then sell the product if the customer doesn’t pay back the loan plus interest in a set amount of time.
to read more, go to: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/09/137033690/pawn-star-rick-harrison-on-his-deals-and-steals
Consciousness & The Brain
Does Our Brain Really Create Consciousness?
by Peter Russell, Physicist & Author
Western science has had remarkable success in explaining the functioning of the material world, but when it comes to the inner world of the mind, it has very little to say. And when it comes to consciousness itself, science falls curiously silent. There is nothing in physics, chemistry, biology, or any other science that can account for our having an interior world. In a strange way, scientists would be much happier if minds did not exist. Yet without minds there would be no science.
This ever-present paradox may be pushing Western science into what Thomas Kuhn called a paradigm shift–a fundamental change in worldview.
This process begins when the prevalent paradigm encounters an anomaly — an observation that the current worldview can’t explain. As far as the today’s scientific paradigm is concerned, consciousness is certainly one big anomaly. It is the most obvious fact of life: the fact that we are aware and experience an internal world of images, sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Yet there is nothing more difficult to explain. It is easier to explain how the universe evolved from the Big Bang to human beings than it is to explain why any of us should ever have a single inner experience. How does all that electro-chemical activity in the physical matter of the brain ever give rise to conscious experience? Why doesn’t it all just go on in the dark?
to read more go to:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-russell/brain-consciousness_b_873595.html
A New NIMBY
A New Kind of NIMBY: Nature in My Backyard
by David Suzuki, founder David Suzuki Foundation
On reading about the growing resistance to a mega-quarry being proposed for southern Ontario, I had an epiphany about the media’s use of the term NIMBY, for “not in my backyard.” It’s normally used to describe grassroots efforts to block everything from landfills and windmills to big box stores and bike lanes. NIMBYism has taken on a negative association, often implying naive or parochial resistance to projects that challenge the status quo in a community.
But NIMBYism isn’t always bad. Although it can arise out of fear of something new or different in a community, it can also be the result of genuine concern for the local environment. I’d like to propose a new kind of NIMBY, one that is positive and reflects a true sense of caring for our communities. Let’s go green and say yes to Nature in My Backyard.
To read more, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/david-suzuki/environment-canada_b_872869.html
Lost Opportunity for Louisiana
In Historic Flooding On Mississippi River, A Missed Opportunity To Rebuild Louisiana
by Chris Kirkham of the Huffington Post
PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. — For decades, a mixture of industrial development and erosion has carved away at southern Louisiana, eliminating nearly 2,000 square miles of land and making the area increasingly vulnerable to storms that sweep in from the Gulf of Mexico.
Every day the Mississippi River delivers the raw materials required to replenish this lost territory: mud and sand that drop at the mouth of the waterway and would amass there, were nature allowed to run its course.
But nature has proven no match for the century-long federal governance of the Mississippi as a vital marine highway: Five enormous ships operated by the federal government dredge the sediment collecting at the mouth of the river daily, then carry much of it into open waters offshore and dump it there, sending it into oblivion.
This year’s historic flooding along the Mississippi River resonated as a threat to low-lying communities, sending families scrambling to preserve homes and property. But it was also a missed opportunity on an epic scale, say conservationists: The heavy rains that swelled the Mississippi loaded it with a massive supply of natural building materials that could have buttressed the Gulf Coast land. Instead, levees built to tame the river directed this sediment down to the mouth, where the federal ships are hauling it away.
To read more and see the images, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/09/in-historic-flooding-on-m_n_873623.html
Australia’s UFO Files – Lost
Australia’s military loses its UFO X-Files?
Posted 2011/06/07 at 10:59 am EDT
CANBERRA, June 7, 2011 (Reuters) — Australia’s military has lost its X-Files, detailing sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, across the country, a newspaper report said on Tuesday.
After a two-month search in response to a newspaper Freedom of Information (FOI) request, which forces government officials to release documents of public interest, Australia’s Department of Defence had been unable to locate the files, the Sydney Morning Herald said.
“The files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost,” the department’s FOI assistant director, Natalie Carpenter, told the paper. Defence officials could not be contacted by Reuters.
The only file Defence had been able to locate was a folder called: “Report on UFOs/Strange Occurrences and Phenomena in Woomera,” a military weapons testing range in the center of Australia’s vast outback, Carpenter said.
to read more go to:http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre7560x4-us-australia-ufo/
Monsanto At it Again
Will another one bite the dust????
_________________________
Monsanto signs royalty deals with Argentine farmers
By Hugh Bronstein
Posted 2011/06/07 at 1:50 pm EDT
BUENOS AIRES, June 7, 2011 (Reuters) — Bruised by a lengthy battle over royalties in Argentina, U.S. seed giant Monsanto is asking the nation’s farmers to sign contracts promising to pay to use the company’s new seed technology.
A farmer sows soy in the Pergamino district of the Buenos Aires province October 29, 2010. REUTERS/Nicolas Misculin
Argentina is one of the world’s biggest soybean exporters and production is growing, making it a huge potential market for Monsanto’s new genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready 2 Yield soy variety.
The company, however, is wary of Argentine laws because its original Roundup Ready soy variety was never patented in the South American country — although it became ubiquitous — provoking years of legal wrangling with the government.
to read more go to:http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre75656v-us-argentina-monsanto-soy/
Correlation – Geomagnetic Storm & Earthquakes?
Geomagnetic storm to slam planet on Wednesday, earthquake frequency to rise
| Published on June 7, 2011 8:50 pm PT – By Jim Duran – Writer – Article Editor and Approved – Warren Miller |
(TheWeatherSpace.com) — NOAA is warning of a geomagnetic storm sometime on Wednesday, which may knock communications and grids in some locations.
The Sun released a moderate-classed solar flare (M2) on Tuesday. This flare was a different kind because it started out slow, then the sun blasted it off like a volcanic eruption.
Satellites recorded this rare event (Video Here).
“This is the type of time where people should have their earthquake kits handy,” TWS Senior Meteorologist Kevin Martin said. “There isn’t much evidence, but it is a growing fact that solar storms trigger earthquakes here on Earth. Peru just had a magnitude-6.0 earthquake, and this usually means Baja and California are next in line.”
Meteorologists are against Martin for his belief and stance that solar storms trigger earthquakes, but there is a growing amount of eyes that are being opened to the possibility it may actually hold weight.
fr/http://www.theweatherspace.com/news/TWS-06_07_2011_geoquake.html
Geomagnetic Storm Warning
fr/spaceweather.com
STORM WARNING: NOAA forecasters estimate a greater than 25% chance of geomagnetic storms on June 9th. That’s when a CME from the magnificent flare of June 7th is expected to deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
Amazing Solar Flare
MAGNIFICENT FLARE: On June 7th at 0641 UT, magnetic fields above sunspot complex 1226-1227 became unstable and erupted. The resulting blast produced an M2-class solar flare, an S1-class radiation storm, and an unbelievable movie:
Credit: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
“It looks like someone kicked a clod of dirt in the air,” says solar physicist C. Alex Young of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in a Youtube video. “I’ve never seen material released in this way before–an amazing, amazing event.”
Much of the plasma thrown up by the blast simply fell back to the sun–indeed, that’s what makes the footage so dramatic. In the movies you can see blobs of hot gas as large as Earth making bright splashes where they hit the stellar surface. Some plasma, however, reached escape velocity and left the sun in the form of a coronal mass ejection: movie. Traveling faster than 1100 km/s, the CME should deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th or June 9th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives.
fr/spaceweather.com