*** When times are tough what do you do? Laughter is the best stress reliever! Here are 8 posts from this week's posts at Denny's blogs for you to enjoy.
From Denny: Between Colbert and Stewart, well, let's just say they have BP's shenanigans covered. Nothing gets past them!
In my ongoing effort to provide stress relief when the national conversation is so depressing - because of the BP Gulf Coast oil spill, a fragile economy and politicians who continually refuse to do right by the American people - we all need to keep laughing our way through these times until they get better. Trust that times will get better and they will. Until then, while we are in transition, we must develop coping skills for managing daily stress like making sure we are laughing often.
This is one of those times when it is true that "the pen is mightier than the sword" for the right kind of writing can bring relief to thousands in one moment over the internet. Pretty cool when you think about it. How many people can accomplish so much out of thin air? :)
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*** Check out news, political opinion - serious and funny cartoons, recipes, science and health news, poetry, funny posts, photography, spiritual thoughts and great quotes.
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*** Check out the fun world soccer cartoons and click on more links to funny cartoon posts for this week!
From Denny: Come check out the best of this week's political cartoons, lampooning politicians, Life and sports. Instead of paging through 50 websites pages to look at one cartoon at a time, I've embedded a dozen or more per post to enjoy easily. Can you tell I find it annoying to load page after page just to see all the latest cartoons? :)
These were only a few world soccer cup cartoons available for embedding. To see more just click on the link under the cartoons to take you to the cartoonists' sites. It seems like every night on the TV news we would hear those vuvuzela horns making their joyful noise while they blew out everyone's eardrums. Cartoonists had a lot of fun with that cultural icon.
Congrats go the USA soccer team as they made us proud. It was an amazing run with upset after upset. We got some bad referee calls when it was obvious the gambling syndicate phoned in how they wanted the game to be called. America's team still went forward to win after win. This week it was Ghana's turn to win against America and knock us out of the race for the world cup.
America's team went into this competition with little hope and fewer expectations. As far as Americans are concerned our team was a Cinderella team. They succeeded in winning our hearts and ignited a huge interest in this country for the game of soccer. From my corner of the world, I'd say your game was well played, guys!
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*** Big Oil finds ways to eliminate the competition from taking over any segment of the fuel market in the world.
From Denny: OMEGA is an alternative energy program experiment costing $10 million. Turns out the NASA administrator of this project, Charles Bolden, also happens to own a large share of oil stock. So, the question of the day is: Does the influence of Big Oil extend to NASA?
What the OMEGA Project is all about
OMEGA = Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae.
It's a two-fold project that is a win-win for the environment. The idea is to grow algae as an alternative energy product - as well as a waste water eater to return clean water to the ocean. The lead researcher is Jonathan Trent at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. The project has three goals in mind. They wanted to be able to produce bio fuels using few resources and in a confined area. They were keen on finding an inexpensive way to clean municipal wastewater. The third idea was to capture the greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide that are produced in this process.
Basically, they go out into the ocean and lay down huge sheets of plastic bags filled with algae. The algae is fed waste water, and, true to their algae nature they clean the dirty water, removing what is foul by using the water, solar energy and carbon dioxide to accomplish their mission. The clean water gets leached back into the ocean through the huge plastic bags because the bags are only a one-way membrane for the clean water to exit.
Algae also creates bio fuel
Did you know that as the algae cleans the water it also produces fat soluble molecules called lipids? The algae produces sugars that it converts into the lipids. Those lipids can be harvested as an alternative energy bio fuel. NASA has been in the business of algae for a long time as it can be used as a fuel for life support systems in space. That was the reason for this experiment initially rather than as an alternative fuel source to supplant fossil fuel.
What about if the algae escapes its plastic bag confines? Could it invade the oceans with a new invasive species? Scientists say there is no worry about that since this is a fresh water algae. The minute the plastic bags were compromised and the salt water came rushing in the salt water would kill the algae.
So how long do these plastic bags last in the ocean? About three years is their estimate. Researchers suggest recycling the plastic bags as mulch or chopping them to build soil and retain moisture.
Economics and replacing fossil fuel
This whole idea is an economic model that is reasonably priced and easily accessible to even the more impoverished nations. What's more this OMEGA project made a bid last year to replace aviation fuel with this bio fuel! They think they can easily produce 21 billion gallons a year for aviation fuel. They figure they need to farm about 10 million acres of ocean to fill that order.
Downside of this project?
Scientists are still concerned about the plastic, wondering how well it can withstand pounding ocean waves, the sun and the cold temperatures. This whole process depends upon osmosis and researchers wonder if the plastic can become too brittle for the process to work easily all the time. They envision maybe franchising the process, having fishermen monitoring it constantly.
Conflict of interest with NASA administrator of this project owning oil stock
All this sounds like a great idea and quite usable to benefit the whole world. The problem is that this administrator of the project was also on the board of the Marathon Oil Company who basically told him to nix the project. They advised him that "this project was not worth the investment at this time" which he was quick to repeat to the media and in his reports about the viability of this project. Bolden owns about $500,000 to $1 million in Marathon Oil stock. Hmmmm.... just a bit of conflict of interest, don't you think?
Sound familiar with every other alternative fuel project for the past 30 years? Big Oil keeps on trashing the competition with callous disregard to the environment, the world economy and world health.
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*** Links to funny posts from several of Dennys blogs this week!
From Denny: I just love the enthusiasm of this funny dog running full tilt, tongue flailing out and slapping his face. He is undeterred and happy anyway. If only we humans could live in the moment like this dog. Well, not to worry, I've found some funny things on the web this week and posted them: jokes, funny quotes, funny photos and funny videos. Knock yourselves out. And, hey, make sure to send me photos of you laughing - and having a good time falling off your chair. :)
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*** Check out news, political opinion - serious and funny cartoons, recipes, science and health news, poetry, funny posts, photography, spiritual thoughts and great quotes.
*** THANKS for visiting, feel welcome to drop a comment or opinion, enjoy bookmarking this post on your favorite social site, a big shout out to awesome current subscribers – and if you are new to this blog, please subscribe in a reader or by email updates!
From Denny: The world is full of funny, and, in these trying political and economic times, we all need to laugh as much as possible! These are some of the posts I've put up this week on The Social Poets and Ouch Outrageous Obnoxious And Odd blogs.
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