Name: Norman Anthony Aguero Currently a student at FIU. My major is chemistry and my minor is physics. My goal is to hopefully earn a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry.
In a March change of regulations, the Pentagon began saving money by reducing "combat-injury" benefits for all except those wounded while actually fighting, explaining that combat-"related" injuries were simply not worthy of full compensation. Thus, in examples offered by The Washington Post in November, Marine Cpl. James Dixon and Army Sgt. Lori Meshell were not entitled to full combat-injury coverage for their Iraq wounds (Dixon from a roadside bomb and a land mine, and Meshell while diving for cover during a mortar attack) because neither was actually fighting at the time. (Dixon, initially denied about $16,000 by the classification, recently won a hard-fought reversal, but Meshell, drawing $1,200 less per month because of the change, is still appealing.) [Washington Post, 11-25-08]
Jay Schwartz, Yahoo! Front Page
December 24, 2008 03:36:01 PM
The Internet is great for: 1. Checking mail. 2. Getting stock quotes. 3. Finding proof that ghosts exist.
At least that's how it seems given all the people that click on stories, videos and more claiming to be evidence of encounters with spirits. Ghosts may be dead, but they aren't going away, and in fact emerged as the most sought-after supernatural phenomenon of 2008. Possibly the ghost-with-the-most this year was the weird blue mist at the gas station. Spirit from beyond, or trick of light? No one knows, but it was fun to search about.
Speaking of fun, in a year of serious global troubles and political milestones, the Web has to thank people like Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer. The two Georgia residents announced to the world that they had a frozen Sasquatch corpse. This claim melted like the ice around the rubber gorilla costume that they present to the public. The elaborate Bigfoot hoax kept the Internet buzzing for days.
The annual "discovery" of an alleged Chupacabra in Texas also provided the online world with a doozy of a diversion. The mythical goatblood-sucking creature of the American Southwest is often subject to supposed sightings, but the existence of an apparent specimen generated hype worthy of a horror film. Sadly, to the horror of many transfixed Web users, the body turned out to be a mangy pit bull.
These two hoaxes were cherries on the proverbial sundae of paranormal enthusiasm. People gravitating to old classics like aliens, the Loch Ness Monster, and vampires kept cryptozoologists busy updating their websites.
One last popular search term may prove that ultimately, the real monsters of the world are as impressive as those we can imagine. Megalodon was a prehistoric shark approximately 40 to 60 feet long. Yes, a shark as big as a truck. Some people believe that this terrifying creature still exists in the deep waters of the world, sparking fear and fascination across the collective cyber-unconscious. Who wouldn't want to see what one would look like?
As the remote corners of the earth vanish, and the few remaining natural secrets of the world are unveiled, the imagination will probably continue to run wild with new mystery beasts (we didn't forget about you, Montauk Monster!) Heck, even our president-elect has a fondness for terrifying fictional creatures.
People who scrimp on sleep are more likely to develop hardening of their arteries, a precursor to heart disease, research suggests.
Calcified arteries were found in nearly a third of people who slept fewer than five hours a night.
This dropped to around one in 10 for those who slept an extra hour, the Journal of the American Medical Association study of 495 adults found.
Experts said getting enough sleep was important for good heart health.
In the study, the volunteers underwent two CT scans, designed to assess the build-up of calcium in the heart's arteries, five years apart.
Although this single study does not prove that short sleep leads to coronary artery disease, it is safe to recommend at least six hours of sleep a night
Dr Diane Lauderdale, lead researcher
They also filled out sleep questionnaires, kept a sleep diary and wore a wrist monitor for six nights that measured movement to give an estimate of how long they were actually lying still and asleep.
At the first scan, none of the volunteers had any calcification in their arteries but five years later 61 of them did.
This calcification appeared to be linked with lack of sleep.
The risk was lowest for those who regularly had more than seven hours sleep each night.
Lead researcher Dr Diane Lauderdale, of the University of Chicago, said there were several possible explanations for the link that they found.
Stress-related
Firstly, there may be some factor not yet identified that can both reduce sleep duration and increase calcification.
Or it might be down to blood pressure - high blood pressure increases the likelihood of calcification and blood pressure goes down during sleep.
Alternatively, stress or a stress hormone like cortisol, which has been tied to decreased sleep and increased calcification, may play a role.
She said: "Although there are constant temptations to sleep less, there is a growing body of evidence that short sleep may have subtle health consequences.
"Although this single study does not prove that short sleep leads to coronary artery disease, it is safe to recommend at least six hours of sleep a night."
Ellen Mason, of the British Heart Foundation, said: "It is not yet clear quite how sleep affects our heart disease risk, but this study adds to previous research suggesting that getting enough sleep may help to keep our heart and circulation healthy.
"Sleep is essential for our body's ability to repair itself and with the party season in full flow, it is important to try and get enough rest.
"Drinking alcohol late at night and getting up early can mean we're not getting enough quantity, or quality, of sleep."
Free Holiday Leftover Meal For Homeless Who Sign Contract and Confess Christ
Outreach Ministry
Freehold, Iowa - Pastor Deacon Fred announced earlier this week that Landover Baptist will be providing free Thanksgiving leftover meals for the homeless population in downtown Freehold, Iowa. "They will have to confess Christ at the door, and sign an agreement where our church will get 25% off of all future money they get from panhandling," said church treasurer, Gil Anderson. "We all know that these lazy irresponsible people won't learn a thing if they get a free handout. The agreement they sign will teach them a valuable lesson about life and maybe make them think twice about becoming a lay-about in God's favorite town, Freehold, Iowa!"
Church members are asked to donate leftovers from their Thanksgiving meals to assist in the homeless dinner which will take place one week after Thanksgiving. "Someone will be by your houses with a bucket," said Pastor Deacon Fred. "We want to make this as easy as possible for everyone, so you just have to dump whatever slop you have left over into the bucket and we'll pitch it into some trash cans and let them cook it up down at the junkyard."
Homeless people who qualify for the free leftover meal will also be asked to sit through a small church service where they will sing hymns and smile through several photo sessions with wealthy church members and local Republican politicians. They will also be required to listen to Pastor Deacon Fred's 2-hour Thanksgiving sermon. There will be an additional altar call after the service for those who wish to rededicate their lives to Christ again after making a profession of faith two-hours earlier.
Disclaimer: So-called, "Christian" homeless people are not welcome to the free meal since we all know that there is no such thing as a Christian homeless person (at least not in Freehold, Iowa). The "Christian" homeless person will be offered a chance to deny Christ and then reconfess Him, then rededicate under Pastoral supervision. Deacons will be on hand to take the person through a brief series of salvation questions and if they answer each one correctly, a Pastor will make a determination of sincerity and decide whether or not the person gets a free meal.
That's the author in this photo. Recognize the guy behind him?
Is The Day the Earth Stood Still fiction, or fact?
The re-release of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which opens Friday, Dec. 12, and the original version from 1951, could be more factual than you think. For a more mind-blowing experience watching either version of this movie, view it as an historical documentary, and not science fiction.
Be careful though because the current movie trailer indicates a departure from the 1951 script. Instead of portraying extraterrestrial beings as the peaceful emissaries they historically have been in real life, Hollywood again seems determined to impose its addiction to fictional violence on the masses.
Boulder resident, Paola Harris, teaches a course about Hollywood’s role in disclosing UFO information. She has proposed that the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still (DESS) may have been the first collaboration between the military and film industry. The goal was to get the public used to the reality that “we are not alone”.
Many U.S. Presidents have known about UFO’s from “outer space”. On February 22, 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote a “Double Top Secret” memorandum to the “The Special Committee on Non-Terrestrial Science and Technology”. He wrote about using “…non-terrestrial know-how in atomic energy…” and “…coming to grips with the reality that our planet is not the only one harboring intelligent life in the universe.”
The 1947 crash of a “flying saucer” in Roswell, NM was acknowledged by the Army on one day and denied the next day with a staged photo of some man-made debris. But witnesses reported that there were bodies and debris not from Earth. At the time, Roswell Army Base was the only authorized location to store atomic bombs.
The 1951 DESS movie takes place in Washington, D.C. with an ethical emissary from outer space seeking peaceful relations with Earth and warning world leaders to not use atomic weapons. In real life, the following year in July 1952, numerous UFO’s were seen hovering over the U.S. Capitol for hours. Photos of the UFO’s were part of front-page stories.
On Feb. 20-21, 1954, President Eisenhower met representatives from another planet. Dr. Michael Salla of the Exopolitics Institute has offered details of this from eyewitnesses. The purpose of the meeting was to negotiate a treaty in which the extraterrestrial people demanded that the U.S. stop exploding atomic bombs. Eisenhower didn’t go for it. Nine days later on March 1st, the U.S. exploded its largest nuclear bomb to this day. The author of this article was born the same day.
Since then, many times extraterrestrial craft shut down nuclear missiles beyond the control of base commanders. Some of these commanders have spoken publicly about this on American television during 2008. But there was never any hostile intent by the alien crafts observed.
So read a little about disclosure of UFO’s and extraterrestrials. Then see if you can tell fact from fiction in the old or new version of this movie. Most of all though, have fun.
An ancient cave painting from northern Australia depicts a previously unknown species of large bat, researchers say.
The team thinks the rock art from Australia's Kimberley region could date to the height of the last Ice Age - about 20-25,000 years ago.
The painting depicts eight roosting fruit bats - also called flying foxes.
They have features that do not match any Australian bats alive today, suggesting the art depicts a species that is now extinct.
The findings have been published online in the scholarly journal Antiquity.
The bats would not have lived in the same cave as the painting; they are depicted hanging on a vine, which indicates a lowland forest habitat.
Jack Pettigrew, from the University of Queensland, and colleagues report that the eight bats in the painting have white markings on their faces.
No present day Australian flying foxes possess these features.
Megabats
Dr Pettigrew and his team then considered whether the bat matched any living "megabats" from other parts of the world.
Worldwide there are six such species, two in Africa and four living in islands off South-East Asia.
The two African species have irregular white markings, unlike the depiction.
One of the Asian species has a white patch above the eyes - which is inconsistent with the rock art; the other lacks the pale belly shown in the Kimberley painting.
This left Styloctenium wallacei, from the island of Sulawesi, Stylocteniummindorensis from Mindoro in the Philippines.
All are medium-sized with the distinctive white facial stripe shown in the cave art. All are fruit eaters living in lowland forest. Although Styloctenium have small white markings just above the eyes, these would not have been visible in profile, say the researchers.
On balance, say the researchers, Styloctenium is the closest living genus to the ancient species in the painting.
No fossil bats that could fit the bill are known from the local area.
"Fossilisation is notoriously poor in the rocky tropical environment of the Kimberley," Dr Pettigrew told BBC News.
Small fossil bats are known from Queensland's Riversleigh rocks, from which they can be extracted using acetic acid. But no flying fox remains have been found. The Queensland fossils are 30 million years older than the Kimberley flying fox.
Stripey face
The bat depictions were found on a sandstone wall protected by overhangs, near Kalumburu. They belong to a type of rock art known as "Bradshaw".
This Bradshaw rock art was painted more than 17,500 years ago by sophisticated artists. The style is spread over an area belonging to several Aboriginal nations, each of which has a different name for the rock art.
"The art site has been chosen so that it is not exposed to sun, has a flat wall for the art and a cap to protect the wall from the weather," Dr Pettigrew said.
There is considerable debate about whether past mammal extinctions in Australia were caused by human hunting pressure or by climate change.
The researchers regard bats as too mobile to have been hunted to extinction by the culture that produced the cave art.
The demise of the Kimberley white-faced megabats is more likely to have resulted from the climatic and ecological changes that followed the end of the Ice Age, say the scientists.
Although this single study does not prove that short sleep leads to coronary artery disease, it is safe to recommend at least six hours of sleep a night 
Freehold, Iowa - Pastor Deacon Fred announced earlier this week that Landover Baptist will be providing free Thanksgiving leftover meals for the homeless population in downtown Freehold, Iowa. "They will have to confess Christ at the door, and sign an agreement where our church will get 25% off of all future money they get from panhandling," said church treasurer, Gil Anderson. "We all know that these lazy irresponsible people won't learn a thing if they get a free handout. The agreement they sign will teach them a valuable lesson about life and maybe make them think twice about becoming a lay-about in God's favorite town, Freehold, Iowa!"
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