The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

07:06 Jan 31 2009
Times Read: 818

~Read This, neat info~



I've been a coin collector for many years but I don't really follow metal prices except for gold and silver. Well it seems I should have been paying more attention.



Currently US nickels are actually worth $0.06+ because of rising nickel (the metal) prices. And the US penny (dates prior to 1982) is worth $0.02+ because of copper prices.



Sadly it's illegal to melt nickels or cents for their metal content. If caught you could face a $10,000 fine plus.

Ordinarily I (or any real collector) would never think about melting coins, period. However, nickels and cents are made in the billions each year and it would be fairly easy to insure the supply of collectible coins and keep their value low while being able to take advantage of a profit making opportunity.

If only I had known this before the law was made Dec 14, 2006.



Regardless, I do plan on saving all of my pennies and nickels that were made prior to 1982...just in case :)



Who'd a thunk it, the dollar is practically worthless but the penny is worth twice it's face value.

02:45 Jan 31 2009
Times Read: 827

According to the Bible one sign of the "end times" is an increase in earthquake activity.



Now, this is by no means an in depth scientific survey but it is an interesting trend.



According to the USGS in the year 2000 there were 22,256 earthquakes world wide. Of those 161 were mag 6.0+ and there were 231 deaths total.

In 2007 there were 29,685 earthquakes world wide, 196 6.0+ quakes and 712 deaths.



In 2008 there were a total of 31,422 quakes and 88,011 deaths.



From 2000-present there have been 257,535 quakes, 1,443 mag 6.0+ and 463,632 deaths.



The total number of major (6.0+) quakes has only gone up a small amount overall but the number of deaths has sky rocketed. Even if you take out the 2004 quake/tsunami the numbers still point up, quite sharply too.



Just some things to think about.

13:03 Jan 28 2009
Times Read: 842


Sasha and Malia Dolls: First Family Fights For Privacy



Michelle Obama came out swinging in the war to preserve her daughters’ privacy, but history suggests she’s fighting a losing battle.



In her fourth full day as First Lady, Ms. Obama issued a statement criticizing the maker of Beanie Babies for marketing two new dolls called Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia, seemingly modeled on her children. “We feel it is inappropriate to use young, private citizens for marketing purposes,” Ms. Obama’s press secretary said in a statement Saturday. The dollmaker, Ty Inc., denies modeling the toys after the First Kids, but some other entrants in its line, including “Bubbly Britney” and a fur-bedecked “Precious Paris,” invite skepticism.



With her terse statement, Ms. Obama joins a long line of presidential parents who have fought, often in vain, for privacy for their kids. As long ago as 1893, baby Ruth Cleveland, the likely inspiration for the candy bar “Baby Ruth,” drew such a clamor of public affection after moving into the White House with her dad, Grover, that her parents became alarmed and tried to shield her, says presidential historian and author Doug Wead.



Jacqueline Kennedy battled the Secret Service to allow Caroline to ride her pony in private, and also set up a private preschool for her two children in the White House. Sometimes, she even battled her husband, becoming angry with John Kennedy for releasing photos of her children at play in the White House when she was away.



The Bush family worked hard to shield teenage twins Jenna and Barbara; but after their exploits, including Jenna’s fine for underage drinking, drew the spotlight, Laura Bush’s pleas for privacy went largely unheeded.



Such exposure can harm small children’s sense of identity. In a touching book, “Too Close to the Sun,” Curtis Roosevelt, grandson of Franklin, tells how his experience growing up largely in the White House damaged his sense of self. After spending his years from ages 3 to 15 idolized in the media as “Buzzie,” the president’s grandson, Mr. Roosevelt, now 78, says now, “my life’s work has been climbing out of that hole and becoming a human being with my own identity.”



The challenges will likely be greater for the Obamas. How do you think Michelle Obama should handle such issues? Is she right to fight product marketers in this way? Or in doing, does she just risk calling more attention to their promotions?



Source:

http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2009/01/26/sasha-and-malia-dolls-first-family-fights-for-privacy/



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This place has lost it's freaking mind. I didn't think that minors or children of elected officials were public citisens. When did it become OK to place the burden of maddening celebrity on children who didn't ask for it? When did it become alright to take the image of someone and make a profit off it with out their permission?

Celebrities spend millions of dollars (over all) to protect the rights to their image, should non-elected minors not have the same right?



This whole freedom of speech/ freedom of enterprise or expression thing has gone way to far. You don't have the right to do or say whatever you want. It's one thing if you're doing a parody it's another if you're just stealing someones image. I got caught up in a bit of a struggle when folks started calling me racist, a Nazi and other things -publicly- and when I went to defend myself I found that I was on the wrong end of the law. When did this happen or has it always been OK to steal an image, lambaste someone or other similar things?

02:16 Jan 14 2009
Times Read: 879

I agree that ADD/ADHD is a real disorder that affects some children and adults but the idea that it's some epidemic is absolutely insane.



If adults want to take a bunch of drugs and not take responsibility for their actions by blaming it on an illness most of them don't have that's fine, doing it to kids is something else.



The symptoms and signs of ADD/ADHD are nothing more than the annoying aspects of childhood. Excessive talking, fidgeting, being rude etc is not a problem, getting D's in school is not indicative of some disease. When you start down that road you turn into a shitty parent and give the government way more control over the physical and mental growth and stability of our children than they should have.



Did you know that the human brain doesn't stop growing until the age of 12 and that it doesn't stop developing until the age of 23 in some cases? So, despite the fact that the child's brain isn't developed you want to give them drugs in the same DEA classification as cocaine? Adderall, Ritalin etc are extremely potent stimulants who's chemical make-up is classified as mixed-Amphetamine-salts the same class as pure meth (the drug that makes your teeth fall out).



Only about 10% of the children diagnosed with ADD/ADHD actually have it which means the other 90% run the risk of having severe long term mental side-effects and can even end up with permanent psychosis.



It makes me both mad and worried to see so many kids medicated with things that people go to jail for decades for selling. Yeah some parents are at their wits end with unruly kids but some many more, in all reality, just don't care enough to work with their child(ren) to help them through a temporary phase. Studies show that a good many of these "problem children" are actually advanced and all medicating them does is squash bright, valuable and unique people.



--X

02:35 Jan 05 2009
Times Read: 896

Dec. 21, 2012 from an astrological perspective is when the sun aligns itself with the center of the Milky Way. This only happens every 26,000 years. Many believe that this occurrence will signal the end of the world. One reason for this is because as the sun aligns itself it enters into a dark region of space which is generally seen to be a bad thing.



Now from a scientific perspective the only thing that could happen, as the sun reaches this center alignment, is a possible gamma ray burst.

The center of the galaxy is filled with very old stars, several million of which are going around the central black hole at millions of miles an hours. If one of these stars exploded they could release a burst of gamma rays. Gamma radiation is pretty much the most powerful radiation there is. Should a GRB happen and be pointed directly at us, even from thousands of light years away, it would cook the earth to a charred crisp in a matter of hours to days.



Of course it would mean that the actual GRB happened many thousands of years ago.

Now the thing is this dark region of space the sun will be entering into is actually a thick cloud of dust and debris. It's highly possible that should a GRB occur this dust cloud would shield the Earth making the GRB both invisible and undetectable except by IFR and X-Ray detectors meaning that it would be totally harmless.



This galactic alignment, realistically, is nothing more than a really cool and rare happening that has happened many hundred of thousands of times before (over 4.6 billion years) and will happen hundreds of thousands of times again.



An interesting note, there was a recent GRB that was visible from Earth.



News story -



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080321-brightest-object.html



Actual recording -