JabberWocky!

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited President Bush at Camp David recently and in a video on Monday you can easily see how President Bush was very eager to show he can be as jocular with new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as he was with his old buddy, Ex Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But I think that it is obvious that 56 year old Brown is Not planning on becoming a Poodle for Anyone like Ex Tony Blair did. I Really do not foresee any Big Dog / Poodle Dog cartoons in the future for This Pair!!!

The Brown Bush Show

That’s it for me today! Hope to see you again soon for some more…

For those of you that have been reading JabberWocky! for a while, you may have noticed that I have not been around for a couple of weeks, (at least I Hope you have noticed)!!

Due to technical difficulties beyond my control, (thinking I was going to die), I have been unable to be around!!

Today, I am making my Very Slow comeback! Hopefully, Uni & I will be back to normal soon around here!!

I would like to thank those of you that have sent me cards and letters, I have very much appreciated them!!

Today I would also like to say “Hi”! to HDW, and say that I have missed you sooooo much!!

Thought of the Day:
If someone owns a piece of land, do they own it all the way to the center of the earth?

Well, that’s about it for me today! Hope to see you back again soon for some more…

I was visiting Forbes.com a few days ago and I came across a section that told about Unusual Places to Sleep, and I must agree, they did come up with some very unusual options to say the least!

There are “hotels” that range from sleeping in the Treetops of the Amazon Rain Forest, a cave in the Ozark Mountains, the Hydropalace in China where you are anchored in the Yellow Sea to Undersea accommodations in Florida and everything in between!

Prices varied greatly also with these Unusual Places to Sleep. The accommodation prices ranged anywhere from $175.00 per night in an Ice Hotel in Canada to $1950.00 in Conn. where the options range from a helicopter to a log cabin!

Personally I did not sleep anywhere as unusual or luxurious as any of these places last night…did you?

Thought for the day:
What if the hokey-pokey really is what it’s all about?

That’s all for me today! Hope to see you back again tomorrow for more…

If any of you remember Friday I was talking about how burping or the appearance of burping cows cause a lot of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and even though I was making it a little light story for Friday the more I read the more interesting it became!

As I read more I found out that 65% of the methane in the atmosphere is attributable to agriculture, with a significant portion arising from dairy cows. Methane is about 23 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Greenhouse gases, (water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone), are components of the atmosphere that contribute to the greenhouse effect. Some greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere, while others result from human activities such as burning of fossil fuels such as coal.

The Greenhouse Effect is when sunlight reaches the surface of the Earth, some of it is absorbed and warms the Earth. Greenhouse gases naturally blanket the Earth and keep it about 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it would be without these gases in the atmosphere. This is know as global warming.

Methane is a colorless, odorless, flammable gas. Cows, sheep, goats, buffalo, termites, and camels produce & release methane naturally. When these animals burp, methane is released and in one day, a cow can emit ½ pound of methane into the air. Now multiply that by 1.3 billion cattle each burping methane several times per minute, I don’t have to tell you that is an incredible amount of methane released into the atmosphere every day!

In the UK the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, (DEFRA), has begun a $1.5 million study examining how to curb methane emissions from cows, pigs and sheep.

They are not only trying to develop a new diet, as I mentioned Friday, but also investigating cows that are bred to live longer and thus reduce the number that are needed to produce the same amount of milk as before.

Sheep will be used in some studies because their digestive systems are similar to cows and they are considered more manageable.

As far as animal manure goes the project will look into breeding cows with more efficient stomachs, which then produce less waste. (Inventing a new cow and then cloning it, sort of)?

In Germany they are working on a pill which would trap more energy in the first of a cow’s four stomachs, thus cutting down on emissions.

In 2003, New Zealand went as far as proposing a “flatulence tax” on the large diary industry but was forced to back down because of a popular outcry. (How this is suppose to make the cows stop flatulating,(?), is way beyond me)!!

As you can see, in the past few years an international campaign has been waged against cow flatulence and how to solve the problem!

Whether or not any of these ideas will work…who knows, but certainly many different avenues are being investigated!

That’s all for me today, I hope to see you back again tomorrow for some more…

If any of you are hanging out or keeping company with cows a lot then you know that they are not known for their manners; in fact they seem to burp,* (according to U.K. scientists),…a Lot, get close to one and it will invariably burp right in your face! But! Did you know that if we used modern plant-breeding methods to find new diets for cows that make them burp less than it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

It seems that the key is to develop new varieties of food that are easier for the cows to digest as well as provide a proper balance of fiber, protein and sugar.

Farmers have been looking for ways to cut methane emissions amid warming climates and scientists seem to think that this could be an alternative solution.

The average dairy cow belches out about 100 to 200 liters of methane each day, making diet changes a key potential factor in reducing this greenhouse gas. There is a common misconception though about how methane gets into the atmosphere, scientists seems to think that it is actually through belching rather than the other end!

Greenhouses gases are widely blamed for causing global warming. By introducing easier-to-digest legumes that tend to reduce methane emissions is an example of what scientists are beginning to explore.

Farmers will also need to learn to balance cows’ legume intake with other food and to develop different species of grass that are also more digestible.

After reading this I started thinking about last week-end and the Live Earth Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, I wonder if all of the singers knew they were singing to reduce Cow Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

*According to another reliable source of mine: “They do have burp like behavior when they chew their cud, (Looks like burping). Their normal eating behavior is to quickly chew and swallow as much feed as possible, then lay down, regurgitate and re-chew the food later. This is called chewing their cud. Their digestive system takes advantage of fermentation to digest food, so they do give off a fair bit of methane and other gaseous byproducts. Some out one end, some out the other.”

(Looks like Cows are Real Pigs to me)!

I need to say a special thanks to The Wandering Cowboy turned Graphic Designer, HDW, for the extra lessons he gave me last night on Cow Etiquette!

That’s it for me this week! Hope to see you all back here again on Monday for some more…

Former First Lady Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson has died at the age of 94. 1912-2007

She was the 36th First Lady in the 1960’s, widow of Lyndon Baines Johnson who was sworn in on November 22, 1963, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and in her later years she became an advocate for beautifying public landscapes such as highways, (her legacy was America the Beautified). “Lady Bird Johnson embodied all that is beautiful and good about the great state of Texas”, gov. Rick Perry said. She was also a strong advocate for the Head Start program.

“Lady Bird” Johnson was also a very successful businesswoman. She used part of her inheritance from her mother and her husbands connections to purchase a faltering Austin radio station in 1942 for $17,500. She turned it around and later used the station as a base for a multimillion-dollar communications company based in Austin.

She was the mother of two daughters, Lynda Bird, (1944), & Luci Baines, (1947).

“Lady Bird” was born Claudia Alta Taylor in 1912 in Karnack, Texas, a small town near the Louisiana line. She got her unusual nickname while still a toddler from her nurse, who proclaimed the child was as “purty as a lady bird.”

She attended the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1933 and earned a journalism degree a year later.

She hoped to become a newspaper reporter, but she met 26-year-old Lyndon Baines Johnson, a congressional aide at the time, and married him in 1934 after a whirlwind courtship and soon moved to Washington.

She campaigned tirelessly and used part of her inheritance to fund her husband’s first bid for public office where he won a congressional seat in 1937.

Lady Bird Johnson was briefly hospitalized last month with a low-grade fever, and returned to her home in Austin on June 28. Upon news of her death, Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered flags in the state to be flown at half-staff.

A History in Pictures

That’s all for me today hope to see you tomorrow for some more…

On Tuesday, Microsoft released six security fixes, 3 of them rated “critical”, to its regularly scheduled software update.

These 3 fixes are designed to prevent malicious hackers from remotely taking control of computers without permission.

One update targets a vulnerability in Excel, that allows hackers to break into a PC if its user opened a tainted spreadsheet.

The 2nd update addresses critical holes in its .NET Framework, a library of computer code that is part of its newest operating system, Windows Vista, and versions of Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

And the third critical update is intended to prevent attacks on Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003.

Along with these 3 “critical” updates the other lesser updates were for the firewall built into Windows Vista, and for Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 and Windows XP Professional.

PC users can visit Microsoft’s Security Website to download these updates, or sign up for an automatic security update program.

Thought of the Day:
Do stairs go up or down?

That’s all for me today, join me tomorrow for more…

I use to have a friend that was a Voyeur, and he freely admitted it. He found it was nothing to be ashamed of. He was always telling me, “I like to watch”!

Voyeurism is a taboo idea to many people but if truth be known, All of us have a bit of Voyeurism in us, we are just not as freely to admit it as my friend was.

It is all part of our human nature we all slow down on the freeway to see if we can see some gore when we see an accident up ahead or when someone is being arrested, we stare and are just dying of curiosity to know why! Is she a murderer or is he a wife beater or did she embezzle millions of dollars from the company she works for, No! I’ve got, it he’s a “Peeping Tom”, he likes to watch women in various stages of undress without them knowing it!!!! “Oh! I could always tell he was a strange one with those beady little eyes”!

Come on, don’t tell fibs about it, we all do it, we just don’t all admit it!

Well I will admit it if no one else will! I’m a Voyeur! And a few weeks ago I started becoming interested in a site that I had only read about, it had not even gone live yet!

And then finally it did! At 1pm on Thursday, June 28, the HBO Voyeur Website went live and I have been keeping a close eye on what has become my very interesting, most of the time strange neighbors on the corner of Broome & Ludlow and other areas in Virtual, New York City!

The HBO Voyeur Project is a collection of multi-media stories that HBO has built around the theme of Voyeurism.

See what people do when they think no one is Watching

is the tagline that they have used to describe the experience that starts in the streets of New York City, behind the windows that we pass everyday. It comes together in a silent film that extends to the HBO channel, HBO on Demand, and online at HBO Voyeur.com. There are “artifacts” of the characters everywhere, pieces of story which have been sprinkled around the Web and in the real world to heighten the experience for those who like to “get involved”. The point of the HBO Voyeur Project is to get the viewer to confront the Uncomfortable question: “Do You Like To Watch?”

The Story Gets Deeper… is the blog for the HBO Voyeur Project written by Kesu James, who works primarily as a digital writer. She was contacted by HBO because of a documentary she had done about online experiences. They asked her to be an impartial third party and to document the progress of the project in a blog and the result has been part journal, part promotion for HBO, and part documentation. She not only keeps you up to date about what is going on, project wise but she also gives tips & information to help you get caught up to date. I have added here on JabberWocky! so it is easy to get to from here at anytime!

Once inside your apartment you will hear the sounds of the city, see a pair of binoculars and the shade slightly open but when you click on either the shades or the binoculars the shades open up and you then find yourself being drawn closer to the apartment building across the way where all of the window shades are open and there is so much going on in each apartment you only need to click on Reveal Related Stories to see all or click on a single window and all is reveled in that particular apartment! Or, look on the bottom of the screen and you can choose what street and date that you would like to visit click on a street to see more unusual stories!

Me? I am Very Interested in the Artist/Assassin on West 41st Street and the weirdo in the shorts and knee socks that likes to take vacation pictures with the “Stiffs” at Myreson Funeral Home!

When you get into your apartment if you scroll down to the bottom you will find much more information. If you click on “Learn More” you will become privy to the cast of characters, where they are located, who they are and what their roll in the whole thing is by hovering over their highlighted area of your phone book!

It is a very interesting apartment if…You Like to Watch! I know my friend the Voyeur does…Do You?

Thought of the Day:
What is the “Baby on Board” sign for? Does it help us decide which car not to hit in case of an accident?

That’s all for me today, I hope to see you back again tomorrow for some more…

WELL! Was that something or was that something? I’m talking about Live Earth, The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, of course! It was so good to see so many of you there! The buttons on my Live feeds from my blogs were just about wore with all of the clicks!

I went to a Sub-Concert here in Amsterdam with a couple of friends of mine, which I really enjoyed very much, (even had decent weather, the first in a couple of weeks!), and when I rolled in the door at home and tuned in again on Sunday around 3:00 am my time, 9:00 pm Saturday New York time, history had already been made with more than 9 million live online streams to users viewing the worldwide music event aimed at promoting awareness of climate change.

That was also my Favorite time of Live Earth because when I tuned in again at 3:00 am, the fantasy love of my life, the devilishly handsome, John Mayer sang “Waiting On The World”, which happens to me my song of the moment for the last month!

The concert series opened in Sydney and then moved across the globe to all 7 Continents reaching up to 2 billion people!

And I am Very Happy to announce that as far as the 2nd attempt to close the Rio concert down…IT FAILED!! AND RIO DID ROCK AFTER ALL!!

Personally I think they should have locked , prosecutor Denise Tarin, from the office of the prosecutor, up for a while in an institution for trying to stop it not once but twice!! (She tried to get the show canceled siting insufficient security for the 700,000+ people expected. Hello! How about Carnival…it draws more than a mere 700,000 Every year, or the Rolling Stones concert held on the same Copacabana Beach last year that drew more than 1 million people, which she tried to stop, by the way and failed!)?? I don’t know, maybe she was just upset because Brazil was the only country hosting a Live Earth concert that was entirely free and open to the public!

I mean lets face it people, London would have been the place to hit if anything was going to happen! What with all of the BIG events held on the same day, Live Earth, Wimbledon, Tour de France starting there, the Santander British Grand Prix And the 2005 Memorial Bombing Ceremony, those good old Londoners were snubbing their noses up at the “bad guys” and telling the world “Bring It On! We don’t care, we aren’t going to allow you to stop us from enjoying ourselves!”, even after having 2 terror attacks less than a week before! Good for you guys, London!

Of course let us also not forget that we now have 7 New Wonders of the World also! In case you missed my post yesterday announcing them…they are:

• The Taj Mahal, regarded as the symbol of love
• The Roman Colosseum, originally called the Flavian Amphitheatre
• The Pyramid of Chichen, Itza, located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula. Chichen Itza was built by the Maya civilization
• Machu Picchu, a pre-Columbian city created by the Ruby/Prabhjot. Located on a mountain ridge
• Christ the Redeemer (statue), a symbol of Christianity, the statue has become an icon of Rio and Brazil.
• Petra, the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is famous for having many stone structures carved into the rock
• The Great Wall of China, built to protect the northern borders of the China. Several walls, referred to as the Great Wall of China, were built since the 5th century BC, the most famous being the one built between 220 BC and 200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.

Beginning on Sunday, after the concerts, you were able to watch concerts and video on demand, show highlights, search by artist if you happen to have a favorite & create and share your own Live Earth playlists on the Live Earth Website.

Everywhere on the Live Earth Website you can find tips on how to help our disparately in need Mother Earth and it does not have to be much you know! You can help by something as simple as using reusable drinking glasses, (which most of us do already), or lower your thermostat by just one degree and you will not only help our Mother Earth but you will save 3% on heating costs!

See! I TOLD YOU SO! Everyone of us can help without much effort at all!

Well, I hope you all enjoyed your week-end as much as I did! That’s all for me today, hope to see you back here again tomorrow for some more…

The votes have been cast and the ballots counted and the New 7 Wonders of the World are:

The Taj Mahal, regarded as the symbol of love

The Roman Colosseum, originally called the Flavian Amphitheatre

The Pyramid of Chichen, Itza, located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula. Chichen Itza was built by the Maya civilization

Machu Picchu, a pre-Columbian city created by the Ruby/Prabhjot. Located on a mountain ridge

Christ the Redeemer (statue), a symbol of Christianity, the statue has become an icon of Rio and Brazil

Petra, the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is famous for having many stone structures carved into the rock

The Great Wall of China, built to protect the northern borders of the China. Several walls, referred to as the Great Wall of China, were built since the 5th century BC, the most famous being the one built between 220 BC and 200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang

Click here: LIVE EARTH LIVE HERE! and you will be magically transported, Energy Efficiently of Course, to the Concert of the Century!

That’s all for me today! Hope to see you back again soon for some more…