http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2322626/Ich-bin-ein-Berliner-Fifty-years-President-Kennedys-trip-Berlin-stunning-black-white-photos-immortalise-day.html

Ulrich Mack, a prior to this visit unpublished photographer, captured these and many other black and white photographs of President Kennedys famous visit to Berlin Germany. These and a hundred or so more are soon to be published in a book documenting that visit.

I recently moved to a house with a sugar ant infestation. Every room had those little rascals. My dog's food dish was a favorite meeting place as was my toaster and then there was that trail of ants on the rubber seal of my refrigerator YUCK!!!

So I checked the Internet for a cheap home remedy and found a few sites advocating the use of borax. One such site had tons of witness testimonials which sang the praises of this simple remedy. Figuring that the price was right, (about 10$) I gave it a try.

I found the borax at a local hardware store, the small jar of jelly at Safeway. I found a small lidded plastic (feta cheese) container to mix and store it in and mixed up a batch at about 50/50 strength. I poured a little into a few small jar lids then stored the rest in the fridge. Next I placed those bait filled lids where the ants were partying but not where my dog would get at them. Within 24hrs. the ants had found the bait, they utterly loved the stuff. They took the bait back to their nests. Each day saw fewer and fewer ants in my home.

It is now a week into my experiment and I am happy to report that my ant problem is tremendously reduced . At this point I am confident that the ants are going away. I feel good enough about this simple solution to recommend it here. If you do try this method, be sure to label your ant poison as such before storing it away for future use and don't set your bait out where pets or kids might find it.

So you want to impress that gal at the local coffee kiosk or maybe just your chums at school while at recess, well this bit of hand slight should get their attention.

For materials you will need a single match from a book of matches and an inkpen or magic marker.

If the match is dark on one side and light on the other no further preparations are needed but if not then darken one side of the match with your pen or marker.

Grasp the match by the match-head between your thumb and pointer finger and hold the match vertically upright with one flat side or the other facing you.

Next, keeping the match held vertical slide your thumb and finger in such a way that the match twirls exposing one side then the other. Get a feel for this as it is critical for the 'trick' to work properly. I find moistening my thumb and finger first helps.

Now add in the motion of twisting your wrist so that the match held upright is now facing down. Then reverse the motion so the match is back upright. Do this while twirling the match, get a good 'feel' for the combined motions.

Now do the combined motions in this controlled fashion: as you twist your wrist moving the match from upright to down twirl the match between your thumb and finger so only one side remains facing you. Practice this a bit doing so at a moderate speed. Notice how it appears that instead of seeing just the one side of the match it appears you are seeing both the front and the back of the match, that "both" sides are now the same color (" both " sides dark or " both " sides light) . This then is the illusion in your new magic trick.

Now that you see how the illusion works practice this trick holding your hand in a more comfortable position, for me I am holding the match horizontal flipping the match from left to right while twirling it between finger and thumb.

With practice you can perform this simple slight of hand easily amazing most who have never seen it before. One additional twist is to write your victim's name on one side of the match, show him that it is only on the one side but not the other and then watch his face as you show him that it has 'disappeared' entirely only to reappear on " both" sides.

Have fun.
c

Disclaimer: it's probably best you do not take the matches to school if you are too young too be messing with matches anyway.

First my relationship with HALO:
I love FPSs and RPGs with Halo being my all time favorite storyline and game to play. The Elder Scrolls comes in second for me. Btw it has been a yearlong fantasy of mine to combine the two universes along with combining their utterly different gameplay.

I have played all of the prior Halo games, beating each on legendary. I prefer any replay on legendary. Storming the beech on legendary, looking for the Silent Cartographer in Halo 1 with the music turned up loud enough to annoy my neighbors is still a huge thrill for me. I do not play any games co-op or online. I am more the specialist-solo Halo geek so I can not comment on co-op gameplay.

I purchased the game on the 6th at its release date and completed it 4 days later on normal difficulty with tons of hours spent watching and listening to all of the election and retarded amounts of post election coverage. Yeah, the game was that short!

My first impression is one of sadness for the trajectory the Halo storyline has taken. No spoilers here, Halo's twists and turns in it's story arc worked fine for me until now. This new trajectory feels too predictable, I sorta 'knew' what was about to happen at most stages of the game and found myself disappointed as my predictions came to pass. This was not the case for me in prior games.


Visually the game is much improved in some areas and remains the same in others. The gritty unpolished faces are now gone but all too often I felt like I was in areas designed by the designers of the movie 'Tron', a complaint I have had with two of the earlier games.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning the new weaponry and discovering how best to kill the new bad guys. I was forced into new tactics of combat if I wanted to go toe to toe with these new badguys, this I thoroughly enjoyed. Testing out the old weapons on them was equally cool.

I am a big fan of the revised Battlestar Gallactica. It's opening theme music poignant and fitting. The Halo themesong is definitely my favorite earworm for any game. I missed that themesong this time around but enjoyed the Battlestar Gallactica-esc new theme.

Unfortunately, unlike music from earlier games, this time around for me the chapter music got in the way of gameplay, ranging from tedious to outright annoying!

From best to worst my personal ranking of this game in the overall scheme of the Halo games:
Halo 1
Halo Reach
Halo 2
Halo ODST
Halo 3 and 4 tie for last place and truth be told, I am not too sure which of those two will be on the bottom of my list yet.

Unlike all of the Halo games of the past, after my first run through on normal difficulty I am in no great rush to dive back into it on Legendary difficulty.
(edited to add: a mere two weeks after release and with plenty of time off to watch the elections and aftermath, I beat Halo 4 on Legendary. No, I am not THAT good, the game is just THAT easy. Considering that it took over two months for me to beat Halo 2 on Legendary, I feel safe in saying that this game was too short and too easy).

Where gameplay for Halo 4 is as good as ever, (my thanks to 343 industries for that), the plot was so disturbing to me I have been left feeling this one is tied with Halo 3 as the weakest of the six. I suspect I will not be alone among Halo geeks with my review.

Women voters are a slightly larger demographic then male voters and they overwhelmingly vote against the Republican meme on women's issues. If the Republicans hold true to form, they will run further ro the right on all issues and once again back the anti-abortionist agenda. This single issue will sink Republicans with women voters.

We just watched one of our women Senators pull off what most thought impossible. Patty Murray of Washington State as Chief Strategist for the Senate Democrats, not only held the line, she increased our seats in the Senate.

Just throwing it out there but might we consider the 'Senator in tennis shoes', Patty Murray as a viable candidate for POTUS in 2016.

You asked for our help Mr. President. We did right by you. Now it is your turn. Do what is right by us.

http://donsiegelman.org/

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Righties don't seem to understand that greed can in some cases be bad for America. They claim that in a free market system one should be allowed to maximize profits in any way the law allows, that this is good for America.

My counter to this: How many of our soldiers paid the ultimate price to support greed? When we got hit at Pearl Harbor, when we got hit on 9/11, American citizens gave up their livelihoods, signed on the dotted line, held up their right hand and swore an oath to defend our nation. They did this to defend mom and apple pie and democracy. They did NOT do this to defend some bastard's right to take away mom's apple pie or her democracy.

....in October. Can anyone explain Gov. Romney's early strategy here?

Oh and another thing.....



I thought Republican candidate Romney was.....um .....Republican! When I went to bed yesterday he was a Republican! Didn't he speak at that RNC down in Tampa?

Now Gov. Romney is fighting for 'Four More Years'! Do we automatically get his Electoral Votes too or do we have to wait for him to sign them over to President Obama
or somesuch?

Geese Louise, just when I thought I had some understanding of the American election process everything gets all complicated.

If by sunrise tomorrow I awaken to a world where the Free Republic has an automatic 'Spell Check' feature MY head will explode!

Not long after 9/11 a request from NY asked for ideas for a memorial. Here is mine.

In the center of the area where the towers fell I would like to have seen made an apple, a ten to fifteen foot tall clear solid glass apple.

In the center of this apple I would liked to have seen a red heart, no not one of those stylized ones we see on cards on Valentine's day, instead a glass human heart, double sized with veins and arteries fading as they reached out into the glass of the apple.

On the outside of this apple in an etched band, a band between knee to head high, I would like to have seen the full names of each victim. I would like to have seen those names not etched but embossed, standing out from the glass, clear and strong, easy to see, easy to touch and easy to see through to that heart in the center of that apple.

Constructed around and enclosing it, a building only slightly taller than our Apple. It would be wide enough to allow three or four to walk around the apple shoulder to shoulder-not very wide at all because any larger diminishes the private personal experience I would see for this memorial.

On the inner wall of this building, shelves, cubby-holes and cork boarding for personal items and photos left behind. These items to be cleaned off monthly, whisked away to a second building used as a museum-a bridge of sorts from the past to the future.

This building would be lit only from the Apple itself and black on the outside, circular in shape. White noise added to drown out any sounds from outside NY.

A technology we currently possess would light this building from the inside. During the day, daylight would be brought in via fiber-optics, lighting the apple from the inside out.

Thousands of these fiber optic cables, one for each victim would be positioned on the new structures which replaced the Twin Towers.
These would catch the suns light.

These fibre optic cables would channel the sun's beams of light through to the heart of that apple then burst forth to illuminate many hundreds of the names on the outside of that Apple.

Those beams of light would brighten or fade as the sun moved guaranteeing that at some point each name was lit at least once per day if not much more oftener. At night and on severely cloudy days this would be done by electronic means, ideally imitating the natural light.

This then would be my apple. A tribute saying that these people are forever remembered and be forever in the heart of the big apple that is New York.

This memorial would be a place for those who visit to have an up close and quietly personal experience.

I would add this one touch: upon request a photo of a selected name, lit up by natural light given to any who should ask, free of charge and paid for by WE THE PEOPLE'S tax dollars. That's not such a big thing to ask of us I think.

That is the apple I would have given them.

When I say: Three piece Canadian band, incredible vocals, incredible guitar, incredible bass, incredible drums, and non mainstream songs you would be right to think RUSH! Well not to take anything away from them, they are high on my list too but....

If you have never been exposed to this other Canadian three piece band and you need to rock out a bit...(or if you want to see a Jim Morrison ghost come to life) here is a live version of The River as performed by The Tea Party
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=fw2kNHlB1KM