IBGerm

In American history, we learn about the heroes of the Revolutionary War, the discovery of the American continent, and other stories that illuminate the courageous people who contributed to the formation of the United States. In learning about Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, we’re regaled with stories of their personal valor—how Washington chopped down his cherry tree, how Columbus proved the world wasn’t flat, and how Franklin discovered electricity in a lightning storm.

We seem to have also learned some quaint stories, despite the fact that not one of them is true. George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree;  geological evidence from his boyhood home shows that no cherry trees have ever grown there. A preacher looking to sell books propagated the story. These stories sold as historical fact would be better categorized as sheer fiction.

Columbus Proved the Earth Was Round
Contrary to the popular wisdom, no one in 1492 thought that the earth was flat. Navigators knew that the earth had a curvature since at least the fourth century B.C. Washington Irving, writing 450 years later, started the myth when he misrepresented the truth in his book On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers. Columbus only wanted to prove that Asia was closer than previously thought. He did run into land, all right, but it wasn’t Asia or America. Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas, and never actually set foot on the North American continent. Furthermore, Columbus can hardly be credited with discovering a continent that Europeans had been exploring and trading on ever since the Vikings landed circa 1,000 A.D.

Pilgrims Founded the First American Settlements
The Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. The Puritans, a completely different group of settlers, also arrived in 1620, and started their colony in Massachusetts Bay. Many people, and even historical sources, confuse these two separate groups of people, and claim that they were the first settlers to reach the New World. But they weren’t. King James I sanctioned the Jamestown colony and settled in Virginia in 1607 as an investment to find new trade routes. Even before that, the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke was settled in North Carolina in 1587, organized by Sir Walter Raleigh to enrich the coffers of Elizabeth I. The Spanish may still take offense to Roanoke being labeled the first colony, since they settled the city of St. Augustine, Florida, twenty-two years earlier in 1565.

The Ride of Paul Revere
This Boston silversmith was virtually unknown until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized him in his 1863 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Actually, Revere didn’t make that trip alone. He rode from Boston to Lexington and then Concord, MA with two other men, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock of the British army’s impending arrival. They never would have shouted, “The British are coming!” because it would have alerted the king’s patrols. Besides, most of the colonists at the time still considered themselves British, too. The poem turned Revere into a hero when in reality, he was arrested along the way and forced to walk home horseless. Prescott was the only man who actually completed the journey.

Benjamin Franklin’s Kite Experiment
Ben Franklin was a true renaissance man … statesman, writer, and inventor. Therefore, we can assume that he was smart enough not to intentionally get himself struck by lightning. Scientists have known of electricity since the 1600s, and Franklin himself only wanted to know if our atmosphere carried a charge. He theorized an experiment wherein he could fly a kite with a key attached to try to collect ions and generate static. The idea of flying the kite in a thunderstorm is a dramatic exaggeration, and luckily, there’s no evidence that he ever performed either version of the experiment. If he did ever try to fly the kite in a thunderstorm, he would probably have died, as that kind of strike would most likely have been fatal. Modern-day scientists who attempt to re-create the experiment can vouch that it’s a decidedly bad idea.

Funny huh?

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I am not one to cry chicken little that the sky is falling but people need to stop and take warning about what they post on the social networking sites like   MySpace(people still use that one?) as well as Tweeter and Facebook. At the very least limit correctly those that can see your post, tweets etc… I have read two funny articles in the past few weeks about a gut that tweeted he was going on vacation and didn’t secure all his personal information. Guess what!, he got robbed while he was away. Read here.  Now I just read that the newly appointed head of Britain’s Secret Service (MI6) had to step down because his wife posted vacation pictures of them as well as didn’t limited who could see the posts and who her friends were. Everyone in the world knew this guys friends and some higher level stuff. Big security breach. Read here. People wise up! Take heed now! Just my two and a half cents!!.

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It is funny because I am not normally a big supporter of anything that Microsoft has pushed out into the world, but this little gem of a software was  mentioned in passing one day and I decided to try it out. (Thank you Larry Henry). What makes it even funnier is that this is rumored to blow away most of the competition this area is concerned. If blogging is your bag baby, then try this out…http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/. I am actually using it right now to write this blog article out. This little baby has many plug-ins for the most popular blog platforms out there such as WordPress and Blogger. It so helps helps the blogging process with its build in tools such as spell checker (we all know I need that), image editing tools, and allows you to preview your post before you well post it. It has plug-in support for Flickr accounts, Twitter, as well as well Digg baby. 

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The Federal Reserve warned local governments, state contractors, and other potential recipients of the state of California issued IOU’s. Sacramento  issued IOU’s back in 1992, most banks accepted the IOU’s then.

The Fed warned to check with banks about details about the IOU’s before depositing the IOU warrants. $3.4 billion dollars in IOU’s will be handed out. If the IOUs were not handed out California would run out of cash by the end of July.

These are desperate attempts from Californian politicians that are facing a growing budget deficit. The IOUs will add to the growing debt with interest that will amount in the millions.

http://www.sco.ca.gov/5935.html

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I don’t know if everyone has this same issue, but. When you order stuff online etc and have to track the orders, but they ship out of different carriers. Found a site that allows you to just enter the tracking number and it auto-detects the shipper, gives you the package track, as well as a google map showing where it was last at.

http://www.packagemapping.com/

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Would you trust a glass floor suspended 103 stories in the air?  The Sears Tower is offering a new way to push your fear of heights right over the edge. Sears  Tower officials say the inspiration for the balconies came from the hundreds of forehead prints visitors left behind on Skydeck windows every week. “The Ledge,” as they’re collectively called, hangs 1,353 feet in the air. With transparent walls and ceilings, visitors say its like floating in the sky, and the view is, of course, spectacular. Don’t worry, those glass floor can withstand five tons, but just to be safe, jumping up and down is probably not a good idea. [AP]

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Urine broken down into hydrogen using electrolysis.

With the dearth of low-emission fuels and the high cost of renewable energy generating system such as photovoltaic cells have tempted automobile manufacturers to look towards sources which are present in abundance. Being the most abundant in the universe, hydrogen has always fantasized car manufacturers as a green fuel which doesn’t bring any performance issues along as well. However, conventional process used to generate hydrogen from water and finally transporting it, aren’t as ecofriendly as the fuel itself is.

Researchers at the Ohio University are trying to solve the riddle by generating hydrogen from a cheap and readily available waste – urine. These researchers believe that electrolyzing urine for hydrogen is easy as compared to generating hydrogen from water as in urine, hydrogen molecules aren’t as tightly held as in water. The system breaks down urea at a voltage of just 0.37 volts, which is significantly less than the 1.23 volts required to split water.

The research was initially conducted on synthetic urine made of dissolved urea, but later the group realized that the process was just as efficient when tried on human urine. The researchers believe that the technology can be scaled-up to generate hydrogen while cleaning up the effluent from sewage plants. The only downside is that urea gets converted into ammonia by bacteria very quickly, which could limit the usefulness of the technique.

This would solve the biggest issue with road trip, but they might have to include a female adapter.

Via: RSC

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Presto, a fast-loading Linux desktop you install from Windows, lives up to its promise of an alternative, speedy boot-up with quick web/email access. It is a paid Linux version and is in version 1.0 right now. Cost is 19.95 for the license, but can be run free in trail mode for about seven days to test it out.

Presto is a streamlined, stripped-down version of the Xandros distribution of Linux. Presto is said to run on pretty much any x86-based system. It was built for boot-up speed, and intends to give laptop users an alternative system to jump into when they really just want to check a site, check their email, or maybe tweak an Office-type file or two without having to wait for everything on their Windows PC to load, and load, and load …

Presto installs itself in the Windows Boot Menu as the non-default choice—though we wish it didn’t make it so the Windows default now requires an Enter stroke to load up. Regardless, from the boot menu shown below, it took Presto launches in about 7-10 seconds to get to a loaded desktop, with the mouse functional, Firefox responding to a click and loading, and the hard drive not under serious crunch.

And it’s probably faster, and possibly less battery-draining, for doing basic tasks, too. A very light and swift window manager and file browser are used, there’s not much graphics acceleration or transparency afoot—this thing exists solely to get you into Firefox, or maybe onto Skype or Pidgin, ASAP. Sure, your thumb drive will be recognized, and Presto can read and write to your Windows NTFS-formatted drive by default, but it’s really about having a small, agile space to do some work in and then save before the battery runs out.

After installing Presto from inside Windows, you’ll see a new option at the Windows Boot Menu for Presto, usually listed as the non-default choice.
Surprisingly soon after picking Presto, this is the desktop you land on. Everything’s pretty much on the sidebar, there’s no right-click options on the desktop, and no taskbar or ability to minimize windows—what you’ve got open is what you see. Windows can be resized, and accessed from a pop-out menu on the left-hand sidebar, or the standard Alt+Tab keyboard action. It’s either a creative constraint or pain in the rear, depending on how you look at it. Details on what’s listed on your sidebar upon booting up. Most are obvious, but the “IM” button launches Pidgin, and the shopping cart icon starts an “Application Store” to install and launch additional apps. The icons on the sidebar can be moved around, but it’s not apparent (without some standard Linux text file tweaking) how to add or delete options. Need more than just a browser, Pidgin, and Skype? The Application Store is where all your non-default apps are stored, and comes pre-loaded with RealPlayer (seriously?), Adobe PDF reader, and OpenOffice.org. Hit the “Application Store” icon, and a web page launches to search and browse available apps. A good number of our favorite Linux apps and utilities are available, like Picasa, AmaroK, and most of the standards in any GNOME or Linux distribution.

I coughed up for the paid version and have been using it for about two months now. To customize it, its a little difficult. It doesn’t have the XP feel that it should, but… for basic email, web surfing in a hurry, its great.

http://www.prestomypc.com/

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David Beckham has come under attack from L.A. Galaxy team-mate Landon Donovan just as he prepares to return for action with the MLS team.

Donovan turned down his own chance to stay in Europe. Donovan, who is the United States captain and wears the Galaxy armband in Beckham’s absence, also questioned the former England skipper’s leadership abilities, claiming he is too often silent in team meetings. “Maybe he’s not a leader, maybe he’s not a captain,” he said. “Fair enough. But at a minimum, you should bust your ass every day. That hasn’t happened. And I don’t think that’s too much for us to expect. Especially when he’s brought all this on us.”

Can Landon Donovan look at David Beckham and be thinking anything good about his teammate? According to the AP, Landon Donovan believes that Beckham has become a bad teammate. “I can’t think of another guy where I’d say he wasn’t a good teammate, he didn’t give everything through all this, he didn’t still care,” Donovan said. “But with (Beckham) I’d say no, he wasn’t committed.” Click here for all the quotes and details from the original AP article.

Beckham’s first two seasons in MLS were largely a miserable experience. An unbalanced Galaxy team struggled all year and missed out on the play-offs, with Gullit quitting before the end of the campaign. Gullit’s departure, is the moment Donovan believes the light went out for the club’s marquee player. “When David first came, I believed he was committed to what he was doing,” Donovan said. “He cared. He wanted to do well. He wanted the team and the league to do well. “Somewhere along the way – and in my mind it coincides with Ruud being let go – he just flipped a switch and said, ‘Uh-huh, I’m not doing it anymore’.” Beckham pushed for a loan move to AC Milan in January, and then extended it to the point that he missed half of the 2009 MLS season. That served as evidence that he does not care for the league, according to Donovan, who gave up his chance to play in Europe early in his career in order to stay at home. “My sense is that David’s clearly frustrated, that he’s unhappy and, honestly, that he thinks it’s a joke,” he said. “I also kind of feel (he has taken the team) for granted. I don’t see dedication or commitment to this team, and that’s troubling.”

Beckham is due to make his return for the Galaxy against the New York Red Bulls on July 16.

He will line up alongside Donovan in that game, but the striker does not want that to be the case for much longer. “Let’s say he does stay here for three more years,” Donovan said. “I’m not going to spend the next three years of my life doing it this way. This is f****** miserable. I don’t want to have soccer be this way.”

Has the Beckham experiment officially failed? With even the players now coming out and saying so, how can Beckham’s return have any chance of success? Does this make the MLS look bad even after the great showing of the National team in Africa? I know I am personally looking forward to booing Beckham (although we will not even see him in Dallas this year). I totally understand the desire to play for God and Country, but to trash the league that gave him a life line after all others didn’t offer a contract!! Tell me what do you think?

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The following comes courtesy of the Courthouse News Service wire:    

PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) – A woman says Major League Soccer player Nate Jaqua sexually assaulted her when she was attending the University of Oregon on a soccer scholarship. On July 1, 2007, the college soccer player and other members of the team met Jaqua at the popular college hangout Rennie’s Landing, according to the woman’s lawsuit in Multnomah County Court. Jaqua, whose real name is Jonathan Jaqua, discussed the differences between college and professional soccer with the plaintiff and her friends, the lawsuit says. The plaintiff says she trusted Jaqua because of his Major League status. At midnight, she headed home alone, but says Jaqua insisted on walking with her for several blocks. That’s when Jaqua attacked the plaintiff and “subjected her to a brutal, forcible sexual assault,” the lawsuit claims. The plaintiff says she had to quit the soccer team because of her memories, is afraid to be alone and is scared of men. Represented by Randall Vogt, she demands $10 million in damages.

Jaqua has played for Los Angeles Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo. He currently plays with the Seattle Sounders.

What do you think? Guilty? Did he do it? Is she just going after money?

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