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I can't seem to leave some news stories alone...
Weird Science
I'm not going to disagree that smoking is bad for people.
And I mean the smoking of anything...tobacco, pot, crack, corn silk, whatever.
The bottom line is that pulling particulate matter into your lungs is not good for you. Look at coal miners if you disagree.
But...
I tried to look up the data in this study, and guess what? It is not available to anyone not a part of the study team. It is secret—classified if you will—and cannot be examined by outsiders. Nor can any of the study process. Nor can any of the raw data.
WTF?
The goal of science is the open and free examination and evaluation of ideas and theories. You come up with a hypothesis and put it out there. Other people are welcome to blow holes in it. You then alter your ideas and repeat the process. Eventually, the truth filters out.
But when we start to hide the entire process, we no longer have science.
We have politics.
Any research where the process is closed in any way is suspect. Odds are that the data, evaluation, and results are wrong at best.
At worst, they are faked.
See references to ClimateGate for a classic example.
This whole secret study tells me that there are no where near 600,000 deaths per years related to second-hand smoke. In fact, I doubt they can prove that there is even one death.
It's pretty clear that the study was done to prove a predetermined precept. In other words, it was faked.
Just like ClimateGate.
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 30
1016 - English King Edmund II died.
1700 - 8,000 Swedish troops under King Charles XII defeated an army of at least 50,000 Russians at the Battle of Narva. King Charles XII died on this day.
1782 - The United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.
1803 - Spain completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France.
1804 - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase went on trial accused of political bias. He was later acquitted by the U.S. Senate.
1835 - Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born. He wrote "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" under the name Mark Twain.
1838 - Three days after the French occupation of Vera Cruz Mexico declared war on France.
1853 - During the Crimean War, the Russian fleet attacked and destroyed the Turkish fleet at the battle of Sinope.
1875 - A.J. Ehrichson patented the oat-crushing machine.
1897 - Thomas Edison's own motion picture projector had its first commercial exhibition.
1936 - London's famed Crystal Palace was destroyed in a fire. The structure had been constructed for the International Exhibition of 1851.
1939 - The Russo-Finnish War began when 20 divisions of Soviet troops invaded Finland.
1940 - Lucille Ball and Cuban musician Desi Arnaz were married.
1949 - Chinese Communists captured Chungking.
1954 - In Sylacauga, AL, Elizabeth Hodges was injured when a meteorite crashed through the roof of her house. The rock weighed 8½-pounds.
1956 - CBS replayed the program "Douglas Edward and the News" three hours after it was received on the West Coast. It was the world's first broadcast via videotape.
1962 - U Thant of Burma was elected secretary-general of the United Nations, succeeding the late Dag Hammarskjold.
1966 - The former British colony of Barbados became independent.
1967 - Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower announced their engagement.
1971 - ABC-TV aired "Brian's Song." The movie was about Chicago Bears' Brian Picolo and his friendship with Gale Sayers.
1981 - The U.S. and the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva that were aimed at reducing nuclear weapons in Europe.
1982 - The motion picture "Ghandi" had its world premiere in New Delhi.
1986 - "Time" magazine published an interview with U.S. President Reagan. In the article, Reagan described fired national security staffer Oliver North as a "national hero."
1988 - Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co. took over RJR Nabisco Inc. with a bid of $24.53 billion.
1989 - Alfred Herrhausen was killed in a bombing. The Red Army Faction claimed responsibility of killing Herrhausen the chairman of West Germany's largest bank.
1989 - PLO leader Yasser Arafat was refused a visa to enter the United States in order to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York City.
1993 - U.S. President Clinton signed into law the Brady Bill. The bill required a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks of prospective buyers.
1993 - Richard Allen Davis was arrested by authorities in California. Davis confessed to abducting and slaying 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma.
1995 - President Clinton became the first U.S. chief executive to visit Northern Ireland.
1998 - The Deutsche Bank AG announced that it would acquire Bankers Trust Corp. for $10.1 billion creating the world's largest financial institution.
2000 - David Spade was assaulted with a stun gun by his longtime personal assistant, David Warren Malloy. Malloy attacked Spade during a burglary of Spade's home in Beverly Hills.
2001 - For the first time in its history, McDonald's teamed up with a retail partner on its Happy Meal promotions. Toys R Us provided plush figures from its Animal Alley.
2001 - In Seattle, WA, Gary Leon Ridgeway was arrested for four of the Green River serial killings. He was pled innocent on December 18, 2001.
2004 - In Stockholm, Sweden, the Carl Larsson painting "Boenskoerd" ("Bean Harvest") was sold at auction for $730,000. The work had been in a private collection for more than a century. The Larsson work "Vid Kattegatt" ("By Kattegatt") sold for $640,000 at the same auction.
Whose Birthday Is It?
Jonathan Swift 1667
Mark Twain 1835
Winston Churchill 1874
Brownie McGhee 1915
Efren Zimbalist, Jr. 1918
Virginia Mayo 1920
Richard Crenna 1926
Dick Clark 1929
G. Gordon Liddy 1930
Teddy Wilburn 1931
Bob Moore 1932
Abbie Hoffman 1936
Jimmy Bowen 1937
Robert Guillaume 1937
Paul Stookey 1937
Luther Ingram 1944
Rob Grill 1944
Roger Glover 1945
David Mamet 1947
Margaret Whitton 1950
Mandy Patinkin 1952
Shuggie Otis 1953
June Pointer 1954
Jeannie Kendall 1954
Billy Idol 1955
John Ashton 1957
Bo Jackson 1962
Jalil 1963
Ben Stiller 1965
Paul Wheeler 1965
Frank Ifield 1975
Allan Sherman 1975
Mindy McCready 1975
Clay Aiken 1978
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
I can't seem to leave some news stories alone...
Here Is One Thing We Can't Afford
Yes, that's right...
We can not afford NOT to fund the space program.
We have all heard the old standard clichés about how the money could be better spent here on the ground. And you know what? Those old tired statements are 100% accurate. We could better spend money here on the ground.
Except for one thing...
Since the space program started way back in the 1950s, for every dollar spent on the program, $2.50 of growth was created.
The US economy, along with that of the entire European Union, is in the toilet. The object here is not to explore the reasons for that, but instead to find one part of the solution. Do the math now...if we pump $1-billion into the space program, we will see about $2.5-billion in economic growth.
The reasons are pretty clear...
Private space contractors will hire people and sub-contractors. The sub-contractors will hire people and sub-sub-contractors. Everyone will buy goods from suppliers. The suppliers will hire people. All these people now working for the contractors, sub-contractors, sub-sub-contractors, and suppliers will have more money to spend, so they will all go shopping at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart will hire more people. The new Wal-Mart Associates will have money, so they will go shopping, too. Maybe at Target. And everyone pays taxes, and since there are more people making more money, tax revenues increase.
And yes, we now have a viscous cycle building. And all of sudden, we see good, sustainable growth of the economy.
But there is one key thing to all of this...
Government has to shrink and spending on nonsense has to go away. Without these things, the cycle goes in the wrong direction, just as it has for the last two years. We spend more and more just to keep the government growing. No one cares about the economy, only government. In fact, while I am not prepared to say that it is a fact, there is good evidence that the goal all along has been to crush the US economy.
So, where do we cut to get the $1.2-billion needed to fund the space program? How about repealing ObamaCare? That alone would save us better than $2-trillion.
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 29
1530 - Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, former adviser to England's King Henry VIII, died.
1864 - The Sand Creek Massacre occurred in Colorado when a militia led by Colonel John Chivington, killed at least 400 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who had surrendered and had been given permission to camp.
1890 - Navy defeated Army by a score of 24-0 in the first Army-Navy football game. The game was played at West Point, NY.
1929 - The first airplane flight over the South Pole was made by U.S. Navy Lt. Comdr. Richard E. Byrd.
1939 - The USSR broke off diplomatic relations with Finland prior to a Soviet attack.
1945 - The monarchy was abolished in Yugoslavia and a republic proclaimed.
1947 - The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution that called for the division of Palestine between Arabs and Jews.
1961 - The Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft was launched by the U.S. with Enos the chimp on board. The craft orbited the earth twice before landing off Puerto Rico.
1963 - A Trans-Canada Airlines DC-8F with 111 passengers and 7 crew members crashed in woods north of Montreal 4 minutes after takeoff from Dorval Airport. All aboard were killed. The crash was the worst in Canada's history.
1963 - U.S. President Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.
1967 - U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was leaving the Johnson administration to become president of the World Bank.
1971 - The Professional Golf Championship was held at Walt Disney World for the first time.
1974 - In Britain, a bill that outlawed the Irish Republican Army became effective.
1975 - Bill Gates adopted the name Microsoft for the company he and Paul Allen had formed to write the BASIC computer language for the Altair.
1981 - Actress Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island, CA, at the age 43.
1982 - The U.N. General Assembly voted that the Soviet Union should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
1986- Actor Cary Grant died at the age of 82.
1987 - A Korean jetliner disappeared off Burma, with 115 people aboard.
1987 - Cuban detainees released 26 hostages they'd been holding for more than a week at the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, LA.
1988 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the rights of criminal defendants are not violated when police unintentionally fail to preserve potentially vital evidence.
1989 - In Czechoslovakia, the Communist-run parliament ended the party's 40-year monopoly on power.
1990 - The U.N. Security Council voted to authorize military action if Iraq did not withdraw its troops from Kuwait and release all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991.
1991 - 17 people were killed in a 164-vehicle wreck during a dust storm near Coalinga, CA, on Interstate 5.
1992 - Dennis Byrd (New York Jets) was paralyzed after a neck injury in a game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
1994 - The U.S. House passed the revised General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
1994 - Fighter jets attacked the capital of Chechnya and its airport only hours after Russian President Boris Yeltsin demanded the breakaway republic end its civil war.
1996 - A U.N. court sentenced Bosnian Serb army soldier Drazen Erdemovic to 10 years in prison for his role in the massacre of 1,200 Muslims. The sentence was the first international war crimes sentence since World War II.
1998 - Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected legalizing heroin and other narcotics.
2004 - The French government announced plans to build the Louvre II in northern France. The 236,808 square foot museum was the planned home for 500-600 works from the Louvre's reserves.
2004 - Godzilla received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Whose Birthday Is It?
Louisa May Alcott 1832
Busby Berkeley 1895
C.S. Lewis 1898
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. 1908
Madeline L'Engle 1918
Vin Scully 1927
Diane Ladd 1932
John Mayall 1933
Meco Monardo 1939
Peter Bergman 1939
Chuck Mangione 1940
Jody Miller 1941
Dennis Doherty 1941
Felix Cavaliere 1944
Suzy Chaffee 1946
Garry Shandling 1949
Barry Goudreau 1951
Jeff Fahey 1952
Joel Coen 1954
Howie Mandel 1955
Jeff Fahey 1957
Cathy Moriarty 1960
Andrew McCarthy 1962
Kim Delaney 1964
Don Cheadle 1964
Neill Barry 1965
Wallis Buchanan 1965
Martin Carr 1968
Jonathan Knight 1968
Gena Lee Nolin 1971
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
Here we go again...
Before we get into this, I want to make it clear that I am not Christian. I'm also not Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi, or anything else that you have likely heard of. Oh, I'm not Wiccan, either. Exactly what my faith is doesn't matter, so long as you understand that I'm not Christian.
Anyway...
I have always liked Christmas. I like the trees, the decorations, the food, and all the rest. Yeah, yeah...that's not what Christmas is about. Yeah, right...put Christ back in Christmas. Whatever. Remember that I don't believe in all of that.
The fact is that I like the season.
My husband, Jack, is Christian, though he doesn't "practice" it much. And Jack likes Christmas decorations, too.
Lots of them.
He dug out the decorations the other day—all 37 boxes of them—and decided that we don't have enough lights. I guess he's right...I mean, Las Vegas has more lights than we do. So he made a trip to Wal-Mart with both of the girls in tow. He needed someone to help carry the lights and help him load them in the truck. I declined.
When Jack got home with the lights, I saw it was a good idea that he took the girls with him. He needed both Amanda and Debbie to get the bags and boxes all in the back of the truck. Oh, I forgot to mention that "the truck" is a Ford F-350 with 4-doors, a long (8') bed, dual tires in the rear, and a diesel motor. The back seat was full of stuff and the bed was more than half full.
He wouldn't tell me how much he spent. Jack's reasoning was basically that since I never tell him how much I spend on clothes or jewelry, he doesn't need to tell me what he spent on lights and such. Silly man. Amanda told me...$976.22.
Oh, the money doesn't bother me. Not even a little.
The fact that when he turns the lights on that half of San Diego county will go into a brown-out condition is a bit off-putting.
So today Jack started to put up the lights. He'll be at it for days, and that's just the first run. There will be repeated trips to get each strand just perfect. There will be more trips to replace bulbs that are out. And then there is the thing I am really worried about...
Last year, Jack rented a thing called a "cherry picker" to do the lights in the trees. It looks just like the one in the linked picture. A big, truck-mounted gizmo that looks like it will fall over at any moment.
Now I love Jack to death. He is, as far as I am concerned, the perfect husband and father. He's brave as evidenced by the fact that he was a SEAL in the Navy and worked for the Secret Service for a while. But he has never worked in construction, and maybe it's just me, but a cherry picker looks like construction equipment. That makes me wonder about just how bright Jack really is.
And he's rented it again for this year.
And hired some guys to help him.
And bought about ten cases of beer.
Men, heavy equipment, electrical devices, and beer usually means there is trouble ahead. All they need is some dynamite.
After all, the last words of a redneck are, "Hey, fellas! Watch this!"
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 28
1520 - Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean after passing through the South American strait. The strait was named after him. He was the first European to sail the Pacific from the east.
1582 - William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway were married.
1757 - English poet, painter and engraver William Blake was born. Two of his best known works are "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience."
1919 - American-born Lady Astor was elected the first female member of the British Parliament.
1922 - Capt. Cyril Turner of the Royal Air Force gave the first public exhibition of skywriting. He spelled out, "Hello USA. Call Vanderbilt 7200" over New York's Times Square.
1925 - The Grand Ole Opry made its radio debut on station WSM.
1934 - The U.S. bank robber George "Baby Face" Nelson was killed by FBI agents near Barrington, IL.
1942 - 491 people died in a fire that destroyed the Coconut Grove in Boston.
1943 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin met in Tehran to map out strategy concerning World War II.
1953 - New York City began 11 days without newspapers due to a strike of photoengravers.
1958 - The African nation of Chad became an autonomous republic within the French community.
1963 - U.S. President Johnson announced that Cape Canaveral would be renamed Cape Kennedy in honor of his assassinated predecessor. The name was changed back to Cape Canaveral in 1973 by a vote of residents.
1964 - The U.S. launched the space probe Mariner IV from Cape Kennedy on a course set for Mars.
1977 - Larry Bird was introduced as "College Basketball's Secret Weapon" with a cover story in Sports Illustrated. (NBA)
1978 - The Iranian government banned religious marches.
1979 - An Air New Zealand DC-10 flying to the South Pole crashed in Antarctica killing all 257 people aboard.
1985 - The Irish Senate approved the Anglo-Irish accord concerning Northern Ireland.
1987 - A South African Airways Boeing 747 crashed into the Indian Ocean. All 159 people aboard were killed.
1989 - Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci arrived in New York after escaping her homeland through Hungary.
1990 - Margaret Thatcher resigned as prime minister of Britain.
1992 - In Bosnia-Herzegovina, 137 tons of food and supplies were to be delivered to the isolated town of Srebrenica.
1992 - In King William's Town, South Africa, black militant gunmen attacked a country club killing four people and injuring 20.
1993 - The play "Mixed Emotions" closed after 48 performances.
1994 - Jeffrey Dahmer, a convicted serial killer, was clubbed to death in a Wisconsin prison by a fellow inmate.
1994 - Norwegian voters rejected European Union membership.
1995 - U.S. President Clinton signed a $6 billion road bill that ended the federal 55 mph speed limit.
Whose Birthday Is It?
John Bunyan 1628
Jean Baptiste Lully 1932
William Blake 1757
William Stanley 1858
Brooks Atkinson 1894
José Iturbi 1895
Charles Alston 1907
Dick Vance 1915
Wes Westrum 1922
Gloria Grahame 1923
Berry Gordy, Jr. 1929
Hope Lange 1933
Ethel Ennis 1934
Gary Hart 1936
Michael Ritchie 1938
Gary Troxel 1939
Bruce Channel 1940
Norm Beaudin 1941
Paul Warfield 1942
Randy Newman 1943
R.B. Greaves 1945
Joe Dante 1946
Susan Spencer 1946
Vern Den Herder 1948
Beeb Birtles 1948
Paul Shaffer 1949
Alexander Godunov 1949
Ed Harris 1950
Judd Nelson 1959
Jon Stewart 1965
Anna Nicole Smith 1967
Matt Cameron 1962
Roy Tarpley 1964
apl.de.ap 1974
Dawn Robinson 1968
Scarlett Pomers 1988
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
I rarely do endorsements. In fact, I have only done one paid endorsement in my entire life, and in all honesty, I regretted it.
Long story.
I have done a few spontaneous endorsements of products and services that I like. I am never paid for these, and I would not accept payment if it were offered. To me, there is something about a paid endorsement that smacks of graft.
Anyway...
I like fruit. There are only a few fruits I don't like, and some people find those odd. For example, I don't care for peaches, but I will eat them sometimes fresh. Never in a pie or otherwise cooked. I think it's a texture thing. And I don't like pears at all. Most of the other common fruit I like. Bananas, grapes, melons of all kinds, strawberries, blueberries, apricots, and so on down the list are all fair game and have a short life expectancy around me.
My favorite fruits are apples. All kinds of apples. Delicious (all variations), Gala, Fuji, MacIntosh, Braeburn, you name it. Until a month or two ago, I had to say that my favorite apples were Fuji. They are sweet and have a good, firm texture to them.
But then I found something new...
The local Wal-Mart recently converted to a Super Center, and so they now have foods. Part of that is a nice produce section. I went there with the family and I decided to get some apples, and as I was browsing the several bins, I saw an apple that looked a little like a Gala, or maybe a big Fuji. The name on the apple was "Honeycrisp". I never heard of them, but they looked good, felt very firm, and had a great color. The downside was that while most of the other apples were $1.39 a pound, the Honeycrisp were $2.27 a pound.
I bought about five of them.
When I got them home, I had Maria put the apples in the fridge since I like my apples cold. It wasn't until the next afternoon that I wanted a snack and grabbed one from the drawer. I went back to my office and settled in a bit, then I picked up the fruit and took a big bite.
The first thing I noticed was that the chunk was so crisp that it seemed to almost pop off the apple and into my mouth. A delightful crunch accompanied every chew I made on the piece.
And then the flavor hit me...as the name implied, the apple was very sweet with a honey-like flavor in the mix of apple juice. The skin gave a very slightly bitter hint to offset some of the sweetness, and that is a good thing. The sweetness of the Honeycrisp might be over-powering if not for that!
I ate the entire apple without stopping or even setting it down. I gnawed at the core like I was half-starved, trying to get every last piece of the wonderful flesh. I even licked my fingers when I was done!
Since that first bite of this amazing apple, I have been buying about a dozen a week. I have at least one every day, and some days I will eat three of them.
I really can't say enough about how good the Honeycrisp apple is.
I did a little research and found the web site honeycrisp.org. There is a lot of information there about this apple, and they even have links to several growers where you can order the apples on-line if you can't find them in your local stores.
Yes, I know the Honeycrisp apples are expensive. Even at Wal-Mart they are nearly 70% higher than "normal" apples.
But this is a classic case of getting what you pay for, and it only costs a little more to go first class...
And the Honeycrisp is a first class apple.
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 27
1684 - Japan's shogun Yoshimune Tokugawa was born.
1701 - Anders Celsius was born in Sweden. He was the inventor of the Celsius thermometer.
1779 - The College of Pennsylvania became the University of Pennsylvania. It was the first legally recognized university in America.
1839 - The American Statistical Association was founded in Boston.
1889 - Curtis P. Brady was issued the first permit to drive an automobile through Central Park in New York City.
1901 - The Army War College was established in Washington, DC.
1910 - New York's Pennsylvania Station opened.
1939 - The play "Key Largo," by Maxwell Anderson, opened in New York.
1951 - Hosea Richardson became the first black horse racing jockey to be licensed in Florida.
1963 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress.
1970 - Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was attacked at the Manila airport by a Bolivian painter disguised as a priest.
1973 - The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president after the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew.
1978 - San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by Dan White, a former supervisor.
1980 - Dave Williams (Chicago Bears) became the first player in NFL history to return a kick for touchdown in overtime.
1983 - 183 people were killed when a Colombian Avianca Airlines Boeing 747 crashed near Barajas airport in Madrid.
1985 - The British House of Commons approved the Anglo-Irish accord giving Dublin a consulting role in the governing of British-ruled Northern Ireland.
1987 - French hostages Jean-Louis Normandin and Roger Auque were set free by their pro-Iranian captors in West Beirut, Lebanon.
1989 - 107 people were killed when a bomb destroyed a Colombian jetliner minutes after the plane had taken off from Bogota's international airport. Police blamed the incident on drug traffickers.
1991 - The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that led the way for the establishment of a UN peacekeeping operation in Yugoslavia.
1992 - In Venezuela, rebel forces tried but failed to overthrow President Carlos Andres Perez for the second time in ten months.
Whose Birthday Is It?
Mona Washbourne 1903
James Agee 1909
"Buffalo" Bob Smith 1917
Bruce Lee 1940
Eddie Rabbit 1941
Jimi Hendrix 1942
Caroline Kennedy 1957
Charlie Burchill 1957
Lori Barbero 1960
Charlie Benante 1962
Mike Bordin 1962
Fisher Stevens 1963
Robin Givens 1964
Skoob 1970
Jaleel White 1976
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
I can't seem to leave some news stories alone...
How Much Will You Lose?
I have a friend living nearby up here on mountain who works at Wal-Mart. By California standards, he doesn't make a great living, but he makes enough to pay the bills and support his hobby of off-road motorcycle riding in the desert. The big thing for him is that he likes working for Wal-Mart. He says it makes him feel good to know that he helps people to, as the company slogan says, save money and live better.
But he is concerned about taxes.
I should mention that he is single, has no children, and is traditionally a liberal. He admits voting for Obama, Boxer, and Brown.
So, when he visited the other day for a few hours, we went to the web site http://www.extendthecuts.com/ and entered his information. He makes about $12 an hour. That comes to about $25,000 a year. Guess what?
His taxes will go up by $418.75 under the Senate plan.
And keep in mind that this is the same Senate who has said that only the rich will see a tax increase.
I congratulated my friend on being wealthy.
Thank God we have the House to stop the insanity.
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 26
1716 - The first lion to be exhibited in America went on display in Boston, MA.
1731 - English poet William Cowper was born. He is best known for "The Poplar Trees" and "The Task."
1789 - U.S. President Washington set aside this day to observe the adoption of the Constitution of the United States.
1825 - The first college social fraternity, Kappa Alpha, was formed at Union College in Schenectady, NY.
1832 - Public streetcar service began in New York City.
1867 - J.B. Sutherland patented the refrigerated railroad car.
1922 - In Egypt, Howard Carter peered into the tomb of King Tutankhamen.
1940 - The Nazis forced 500,000 Jews of Warsaw, Poland to live within a walled ghetto.
1941 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. In 1939 Roosevelt had signed a bill that changed the celebration of Thanksgiving to the third Thursday of November.
1942 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing to begin December 1.
1942 - The motion picture "Casablanca" had its world premiere at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.
1943 - The HMS Rohna became the first ship to be sunk by a guided missile. The German missile attack led to the death of 1,015 U.S. troops.
1949 - India's Constituent Assembly adopted the country's constitution The country became republic within the British Commonwealth two months later.
1950 - China entered the Korean conflict forcing UN forces to retreat.
1958 - Maurice Richard (Montreal Canadiens) scored his 600th NHL career goal.
1965 - France became the third country to enter space when it launched its first satellite the Diamant-A.
1973 - Rose Mary Woods, told a federal court that she was responsible for the 18-1/2 minute gap in a key Watergate tape. Woods was U.S. President Nixon's personal secretary.
1975 - Lynette"Squeaky" Fromme was found guilty by a federal jury in Sacramento, CA, for trying to assassinate U.S. President Ford on September 5.
1979 - The International Olympic Committee voted to re-admit China after a 21-year absence.
1983 - A Brinks Mat Ltd. vault at London's Heathrow Airport was robbed by gunmen. The men made off with 6,800 gold bars worth nearly $40 million. Only a fraction of the gold has ever been recovered and only two men have been convicted in the heist.
1985 - The rights to Ronald Reagan's autobiography were acquired by Random House for $3,000,000.
1986 - U.S. President Reagan appointed a commission headed by former Sen. John Tower to investigate his National Security Council staff after the Iran-Contra affair.
1988 - The U.S. denied an entry visa to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, who was seeking permission to travel to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly.
1990 - Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz at the Kremlin to demand that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait.
1990 - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. agreed to acquire MCA Inc. for $6.6 billion.
1992 - The British government announced that Queen Elizabeth II had volunteered to start paying taxes on her personal income. She also took her children off the public payroll.
1995 - Two men set fire to a subway token booth in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The clerk inside was fatally burned.
1997 - The U.S. and North Korea held high-level discussions at the State Department for the first time.
1998 - British Prime Minister Toney Blair made a speech to the Irish Parliament. It was a first time event for a British Prime Minister.
1998 - Hulk Hogan announced that he was retiring from pro wrestling and would run for president in 2000.
2003 - The U.N. atomic agency adopted a resolution that censured Iran for past nuclear cover-ups and warning that it would be policed to put to rest suspicions that the country had a weapons agenda.
Whose Birthday Is It?
Eric Severeid 1912
Eugene Ionesco 1912
Charles M. Schulz 1922
Robert Goulet 1933
Marian Mercer 1935
Rich Little 1938
Tina Turner 1938
Jean Terrell 1944
John McVie 1945
Art Shell 1946
Scott Jacoby 1955
Jamie Rose 1959
Linda Davis 1962
Steve Grisaffe 1965
Garcelle Beauvais 1966
Maia Campbell 1976
Peter Facinelli 1973
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
I can't seem to leave some news stories alone...
Efficient Government—Now There's An Oxymoron
This is a really bad idea, and this alone is good reason to repeal ObamaCare.
Think about what this says...in most cases, the insurance company can only keep 15-cents of every dollar to pay for overhead and make a profit. That means that the company must work at 85% efficiency.
In case you're wondering, the US government functions at about 2.25% efficiency.
Anyway...
Very few operations can hit that mark. In fact, I don't know of any for-profit entities that do it.
And let's face facts...health insurance is a business, and a business exists to make money. If a business can't make money, it folds up. Pretty simple. Simple enough, in fact, that even the extreme left should be able to understand the concept.
And they do...
The idea all along with ObamaCare has been to create the "single payer" system with the US government as the payer. Well, this will do the trick.
If the insurance company can keep only 15% of revenue (and the only revenue stream they have is premiums) to pay their overhead and put profit into their pockets, they won't last long.
The first step will be to cut services. No more preventative care. No more hospice care. No more nursing home care. No more home health care. No more physical therapy. You get the idea.
The next step will be to cut personnel. No more 24-hour support. It will take months instead of days to do treatment authorizations. Medical reviews will take even longer, maybe years. Fewer doctors and nurses working for the insurance companies to help with case evaluations. Less oversight for quality of care.
The last step will be to pull up stakes and quit the business.
Bada-bing, bada-boom, we have the single payer solution.
Most cost estimates, even those from the GAO, put this at about $2.5-trillion per year.
And you thought the deficit couldn't get any bigger!
Silly conservatives!
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 25
1715 - Sybilla Thomas Masters became the first American to be granted an English patent for cleaning and curing Indian corn.
1758 - During the French and Indian War, the British captured Fort Duquesne at what is now known as Pittsburgh.
1783 - During the Revolutionary War, the British evacuated New York. New York was their last military position in the U.S.
1837 - William Crompton patented the silk power loom.
1850 - Texas relinquished one-third of its territory in exchange for $10 million from the U.S. to pay its public debts and settle border disputes.
1867 - Alfred Nobel patented dynamite.
1882 - The first of 400 performances of "lolnathe" took place.
1884 - J.B. Meyenberg received the patent for evaporated milk.
1920 - The first play-by-play broadcast of a football game was aired in College Station, TX. The game was between the University of Texas and Texas A&M.
1936 - The Anti-Comintern Pact, an agreement between Japan and Germany, was signed.
1947 - Movie studio executives meeting in New York agreed to blacklist the "Hollywood 10," who were cited a day earlier and jailed for contempt of Congress when they failed to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.
1952 - Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" opened in London.
1955 - In the U.S., the Interstate Commerce Commission banned racial segregation on interstate trains and buses.
1957 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a stroke.
1970 - Japanese author Yukio Mishima committed ritual suicide after giving a speech attacking Japan's post-war constitution.
1973 - Greek President George Papadapoulos was ousted in military coup.
1976 - O.J. Simpson (Buffalo Bills) ran for 273 yards against the Detroit Lions.
1983 - Mediators from Syria and Saudi Arabia announced a cease-fire in the PLO civil war in Tripoli, Lebanon.
1985 - Ronald W. Pelton was arrested on espionage charges. Pelton was a former employee of the National Security Agency. He was later convicted of 'selling secrets' to Soviet agents.
1986 - U.S. President Reagan and Attorney Gen. Edwin Meese revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to rebels in Nicaragua. National Security Advisor John Poindexter resigned and Oliver North was fired.
1990 - Poland held its first popular presidential election.
1992 - The Czech parliament voted to split the country into separate Czech and Slovak republics beginning January 1, 1993.
1993 - Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedki escaped an attempt on his life when a bomb was detonated by Islamic militants near his motorcade.
1995 - Serbs protested in the streets of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo The protest was against a peace plan.
1998 - Britain's highest court ruled that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose extradition was being sought by Spain, could not claim immunity from prosecution for the crimes he committed during his rule.
1998 - President Jiang Zemin arrived in Tokyo for the first visit to Japan by a Chinese head of state since World War II.
1998 - The IMF (International Monetary Fund) approved a $5.5 billion bailout for Pakistan.
Whose Birthday Is It?
Andrew Carnegie 1835
Carry Nation 1846
Virgil Thomson 1896
Joe DiMaggio 1914
Augusto Pinochet 1915
Ricardo Montalban 1920
Etta Jones 1928
Nat Adderley 1931
Kathryn Crosby 1933
Matt Clark 1936
Percy Sledge 1940
Tracey Walter 1942
Ben Stein 1944
Bob Lind 1944
Bev Bevan 1946
Jonathan Kaplan 1947
John Larroquette 1947
Amy Grant 1960
John F. Kennedy, Jr. 1960
Bernie Kosar 1963
Mark Lanegan 1964
Dougray Scott 1965
Stacy Lattisaw 1966
Erick Sermon 1968
Christina Applegate 1971
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
I can't seem to leave some news stories alone...
Star Light, Star Bright
That's a pretty good track record. Finding 500 exoplanets in 20 years is pretty impressive. That's 25 a year...about two every month.
So what?
I'm all for research and knowledge for its own sake, but I can't for the life of me see what use this knowledge will find any time in the future.
It's not like we'll ever go to any of these planets. First, the technology for such a trip is very far in the future. Second, we lack the drive to actually do it.
Hell, we have TV remotes because people don't have the ambition to walk to the TV and change the channel!
Yeah, I've heard all about the "fact" that because there are other planets, that means there could be life on them. Whatever. The vast majority of people believe that we are all there is. You could show them live video of Martians doing the wave at a Dodgers' game and they would say it was faked. The rest of the people seem to think that the aliens are already here taking samples.
It's the latter group that worries me...
Think about this for a minute...the earliest alien abduction story I could find that is clearly stated is from 1936. There are hints that it could go back a LOT farther, but let's use 1936 as the starting point. That would mean that aliens have been doing the old snatch-and-grab of humans for almost 75 years. Let's assume that they put the bag on 10 people a year. That's 750 folks who have been abducted.
The stories are all remarkably similar...the aliens grab the person, they do a medical exam of one form or another—often involving an anal probe, a worrisome aspect in its own right, but I digress—and then tell the human something about life in the [fill in your favorite star's name here] system before erasing the person's memory and putting them back.
There are a bunch of problems with this...
(1) Are the aliens incompetent? Why kidnap so many people to do a physical on them? Looking at maybe a dozen random people would tell a reasonably bright alien all they need to know about human biology. If we assume that the aliens see men, women, boys, girls, and each race as a different species (a reasonable assumption), that still comes out to maybe a hundred people.
(2) Why put the people back? Wouldn't it be easier to "dispose" of the people? I mean, from a security point of view, dead-you-name-its tell no tales. And the aliens are clearly worried about security, or else they would simply land at the Super Bowl during halftime and say hello. Besides, I hear we taste like chicken.
(3) Again, are the aliens incompetent? Why is it that their memory eraser never seems to work just right? After trying it on at least 750 people, one would think they would have the bugs worked out. Or at least that they would find a better way to deal with the security issues. See #2 above.
So, what is the point to all of this?
Damned if I know.
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 24
1615 - French King Louis XIII married Ann of Austria. They were both 14 years old.
1859 - Charles Darwin, a British naturalist, published "On the Origin of Species." It was the paper in which he explained his theory of evolution through the process of natural selection.
1863 - During the Civil War, the battle for Lookout Mountain began in Tennessee.
1871 - The National Rifle Association was incorporated in the U.S.
1903 - Clyde J. Coleman received the patent for an electric self-starter for an automobile.
1940 - Nazis closed off the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Over the next three years the population dropped from 350,000 to 70,000 due to starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps.
1944 - During World War II, the first raid against the Japanese capital of Tokyo was made by land-based U.S. bombers.
1947 - The "Hollywood 10," were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in their industry.
1947 - John Steinbeck's novel "The Pearl" was published for the first time.
1963 - Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald live on national television.
1969 - Apollo 12 landed safely in the Pacific Ocean bringing an end to the second manned mission to the moon.
1971 - Hijacker Dan Cooper, known as D.B. Cooper, parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727 over Washington state with $200,000 in ransom.
1983 - The Palestine Liberation Organization released six Israeli prisoners in exchange for the release of 4,500 Palestinians and Lebanese held by the Israelis.
1985 - In Malta, Egyptian commandos stormed an Egyptian jetliner. 60 people died in the raid.
1987 - The U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to scrap short- and medium-range missiles. It was the first superpower treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons.
1989 - Czechoslovakia's hard-line party leadership resigned after more than a week of protests against its policies.
1992 - In China, a domestic jetliner crashed, killing 141 people.
1993 - The U.S. Congress gave its final approval to the Brady handgun control bill.
1993 - Robert Thompson and Jon Venables (both 11 years old) were convicted of murdering 2-year-old James Bulger of Liverpool, England. They were both sentenced to "indefinite detention."
1995 - In Ireland, the voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment legalizing divorce.
1996 - Rusty Wallace won the first NASCAR event to be held in Japan.
1996 - Barry Sanders (Detroit Lions) set an NFL record when he recorded his eighth straight 1,000-yard season.
1998 - AOL (America Online) announced a deal for their purchase of Netscape for $4.21 billion.
Whose Birthday Is It?
Zachary Taylor 1784
Bat Masterson 1853
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864
Scott Joplin 1868
Dale Carnegie 1888
Garson Kanin 1912
William F. Buckley, Jr. 1925
Johnny Carver 1940
Paul Tagliabue 1940
Pete Best 1941
Donald "Duck" Dunn 1941
Billy Connolly 1942
Lee Michaels 1945
Dwight Schultz 1947
Stanley Livingston 1950
Clem Burke 1955
Terry Lewis 1956
Denise Crosby 1957
John Squire 1962
Gary Stonadge 1962
Chad Taylor 1970
Collin Hanks 1977
Katherine Heigl 1978
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
I can't seem to leave some news stories alone...
Making It Worth Their While
What was Gates expecting? The red carpet and a lap dance?
Seriously, is it any surprise that Latin America is cool to the US? The fact of the matter is that we rail against the several socialist regimes there and the fact that they are opening up to other countries, but we offer them no other choice.
Just using Bolivia as an example, yes, we send them a lot of money every year, but are we doing anything to make Bolivia self-sufficient? No, not a thing. We are merely trying to make Bolivia and it's people as dependent on the US government as we are doing with the American people. Gee, that's a very liberal thing to do.
The fact is that the Bolivian people do not want to be dependent on the US. They want to be their own people and have their own country. I can't blame them for that.
So, how do we make the Bolivians our real friends? That's easy.
We let them be Bolivians.
Offer help in very clearly defined ways that will grow the Bolivian economy to the point that they no longer need our handouts. Yes, it really is just that simple.
You do that, and all of a sudden we are in a competitive market. US companies can compete to get into Bolivia. And the way they will do that is by showing the Bolivians that the US companies provide a better value than those from other countries.
But it all comes down to one very simple fact...
People do not need or want handouts.
People often need a hand up.
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 23
1765 - Frederick County, MD, repudiated the British Stamp Act.
1835 - Henry Burden patented the horseshoe manufacturing machine.
1889 - The first jukebox made its debut in San Francisco, at the Palais Royale Saloon.
1890 - Princess Wilhelmina became Queen of the Netherlands at the age of 10 when her father William III died.
1936 - The first edition of "Life" was published.
1943 - During World War II, U.S. forces seized control of Tarawa and Makin from the Japanese during the Central Pacific offensive in the Gilbert Islands.
1945 - The U.S. wartime rationing of most foods ended.
1948 - Dr. Frank G. Back patented the "Zoomar" lens.
1961 - The Dominican Republic changed the name of its capital from Ciudad Trujillo to Santo Domingo.
1971 - The People's Republic of China was seated in the United Nations Security Council.
1979 - In Dublin, Ireland, Thomas McMahon was sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of Earl Mountbatten.
1980 - In southern Italy, approximately 4,800 people were killed in a series of earthquakes.
1983 - The first Pershing II missiles were deployed in West Germany. In response, the U.S.S.R. broke off International Nuclear Forces (INF) talks in Geneva.
1985 - Larry Wu-tai Chin, a retired CIA analyst, was arrested and accused of spying for China. He committed suicide a year after his conviction.
1985 - Gunmen hijacked an Egyptian jetliner en route from Athens to Cairo. The plane was forced to land in Malta.
1986 - In Manila, President Aquino dismissed Defense Minister Enrile.
1988 - Wayne Gretzky scored his 600th National Hockey League (NHL) goal.
1989 - Lucia Barrera de Cerna, a housekeeper who claimed she had witnessed the slaying of six Jesuit priests and two other people at the Jose Simeon Canas University in El Salvador, was flown to the U.S.
1991 - Yugoslavia's rival leaders agreed to a new cease-fire, the 14th of the Balkan civil war.
1991 - The Sacramento Kings ended the NBA's longest road losing streak at 43 games.
1992 - The play "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me" opened.
1994 - About 111 people, mostly women and children, were killed in a stampede after Indian police baton-charged tribal protesters in the western city of Nagpur.
1995 - Charles Rathbun, free-lance photographer, was booked in Hermosa Beach, CA, for investigation of murder in the disappearance of model Linda Sobek. He was later convicted.
1998 - Dennis Rodman filed for an annulment from Carmen Electra. The two had been married on November 14, 1998.
1998 - The tobacco industry signed the biggest U.S. civil settlement. It was a $206-billion deal to resolve remaining state claims for treating sick smokers.
1998 - A U.S. federal judge rejected a Virginia county's effort to block pornography on library computer calling the attempt unconstitutional.
2001 - A crowd of 87,555 people watched the Texas Longhorns beat the Texas A&M Aggies 21-7. The crowd was the largest to see a football game in Texas.
Whose Birthday Is It?
Franklin Pierce 1804
William H. Bonney (Billy the Kid) 1859
Boris Karloff 1887
Harpo Marx 1888
Maurice Zolotow 1913
Ellen Drew 1915
Michael Gough 1917
Jerry Bock 1928
Betty Everett 1939
Susan Anspach 1945
Steve Landesberg 1945
David Rappaport 1951
Boris Gebenchikov 1953
Bruce Hornsby 1954
John Henton 1960
Maxwell Caulfield 1961
Charlie Grover 1966
Ken Block 1966
Kurupt 1972
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
Those of you who have followed my blog for any length of time either here at my new blog home or back on MySpace (before MySpace got stupid) know that I only rarely write about, well, writing.
Before I get into the actual why of that, let me tell you a little bit about my writing career...
I have some 30-odd active pen names. That is to say that I have books in print under all of those names that are currently available. There are perhaps that many more pen names that are not active that I have used in the past. There are another six or eight names that I use for screenplays and similar media. I write in more than two dozen different genres. I sold my first story when I was 13 and my first book when I was just shy of 16.
It may seem unrelated, but I am totally deaf, and I have been since birth. Like many profoundly deaf people, my speech is very hard for people who aren't around me a lot to understand. Here is why this matters...I would have a hard time making a living doing most jobs. Yes, I did a stint as a waitress at a fast-food diner-like place and did pretty well, but that was because 90% or more of the customers were regulars. They knew to look at me when they ordered so I could read their lips, and they soon learned to understand me when I spoke to them. I can't use a regular phone.
Since I was selling some things I wrote, being an author seemed like the logical career choice.
The gig has worked out pretty well for the last 20+ years.
And that's why I seldom blog about writing. Writing is my full-time job. It's all I do.
Many authors today write part-time. That's nothing new, and the reasons are simple. There are two ways to make a living writing:
(1) Write a couple of blockbuster best sellers and make a few hundred million from them.
(2) Write a couple thousand plain bestsellers and make a few hundred million from them.
JK Roland follows plan #1.
I follow plan #2.
Anyway...
Writing full-time is very different from writing part-time. And everything is different, including the motivations, the priorities, and even the approach.
A big example is that a part-time author can afford to sit back and take the time for endless edits and revisions and total rewrites. They have another source of income, so it doesn't matter how many tries it takes to get the piece right. A full-time author has to get it right the first time. If I don't publish, I don't eat.
Another case is the concept of "being inspired". A full-time author can't afford to wait for the muse to decide to come sit on their shoulder and whisper the story into their ear. I can't tell you how many times I have hidden behind a door waiting for my muse to come back from the kitchen with a tuna sandwich. Then I jump out, grab the bitch, and force her to tell me stories. I have to...if I don't publish, I don't eat.
These differences are what make me hesitant to write about writing. Most part-time authors can't begin to comprehend the things that change when you write for a living.
On the other hand, most full-time authors—myself included—can't see how the part-timers can not write all the time.
And I do mean "write all the time". In an average year, I write 18 full-length novels (average of about 135K words) and some 40 or so stories under 20K words. In a typical day, I spend 14 hours or more writing. Seven days a week. And there are no holidays.
Sometimes I envy the part-timers.
Other times, I wouldn't write part-time if you paid me.
Oh...
You do pay me.
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 22
1699 - A treaty was signed by Denmark, Russia, Saxony and Poland for the partitioning of the Swedish Empire.
1718 - English pirate Edward Teach (a.k.a. "Blackbeard") was killed during a battle off the coast of North Carolina. British soldiers cornered him aboard his ship and killed him. He was shot and stabbed more than 25 times.
1880 - Lillian Russell made her vaudeville debut in New York City.
1899 - The Marconi Wireless Company of America was incorporated in New Jersey.
1906 - The International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin adopted the SOS distress signal.
1909 - Helen Hayes appeared on stage for the first time. She was a member of the cast of "In Old Dutch."
1910 - Arthur F. Knight patented a steel shaft to replace wood shafts in golf clubs.
1917 - The National Hockey League (NHL) was officially formed in Montreal, Canada.
1928 - In Paris, "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel was first performed publicly.
1935 - The first trans-Pacific airmail flight began in Alameda, CA, when the flying boat known as the China Clipper left for Manila. The craft was carrying over 110,000 pieces of mail.
1942 - During World War II, the Battle of Stalingrad began.
1943 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss the measures for defeating Japan.
1950 - The lowest scoring game in the NBA was played. The Fort Wayne Pistons (later the Detroit Pistons) defeated the Minneapolis Lakers (later the Los Angeles Lakers) 19-18.
1961 - The film, "A Man for All Seasons", opened in New York City.
1963 - U.S. President Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, TX. Texas Governor John B. Connally was also seriously wounded. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was inaugurated as the 36th U.S. President.
1967 - The U.N. Security Council approved resolution 242. The resolution called for Israel to withdraw from territories it had captured in 1967 and called on adversaries to recognize Israel's right to exist.
1972 - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon lifted a ban on American travel to Cuba. The ban had been put in place on February 8, 1963.
1974 - The U.N. General Assembly gave the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status.
1975 - Juan Carlos I was proclaimed King of Spain upon the death of Gen. Francisco Franco.
1975 - "Dr. Zhivago" appeared on TV for the first time. NBC paid $4 million for the broadcast rights.
1977 - Regular passenger service on the Concorde began between New York and Europe.
1983 - The Bundestag approved NATO's plan to deploy new U.S. nuclear missiles in West Germany.
1984 - Fred Rogers of PBS' "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" presented a sweater to the Smithsonian Institution.
1985 - Anne Henderson-Pollard was taken into custody a day after her husband Jonathon Jay Pollard was arrested for spying for Israel.
1985 - 38,648 immigrants became citizens of the United States. It was the largest swearing-in ceremony.
1986 - An Iranian surface-to-surface missile hit a residential area in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, wounding 20 civilians.
1986 - Attorney Generel Meese's office discovered a memo in Colonel Oliver North's office that included an amount of money to be sent to the Contras from the profits of weapons sales to Iran.
1986 - Mike Tyson became the youngest to wear the world heavyweight-boxing crown. He was only 20 years and 4 months old.
1988 - The South African government announced it had joined Cuba and Angola in endorsing a plan to remove Cuban troops from Angola.
1989 - Rene Moawad, the president of Lebanon, was assassinated less than three weeks after taking office by a bomb that exploded next to his motorcade in West Beirut.
1990 - U.S. President H.W. Bush, his wife, Barbara, and other congressional leaders shared Thanksgiving dinner with U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
1990 - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced she would resign.
1993 - Mexico's Senate overwhelmingly approved the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1993 - American Airlines flight attendants ended their strike that only lasted four days.
1994 - Inside the District of Columbia's police headquarters a gunman opened fire. Two FBI agents, a city detective and the gunman were killed in the gun battle.
1994 - In northwest Bosnia, Serb fighters set villages on fire in response to a retaliatory air strikes by NATO.
1998 - CBS's "60 Minutes" aired a tape of Jack Kevorkian giving lethal drugs in an assisted suicide of a terminally ill patient. Kevorkian was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder.
2005 - Angela Merkel was elected as Germany's first female chancellor.
2005 - Microsoft's XBOX 360 went on sale.
Whose Birthday Is It?
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) 1819
Charles de Gaulle 1890
Hoagy Carmichael 1899
Benjamin Britten 1913
Lew Hays 1914
Rodney Dangerfield 1921
Geraldine Page 1924
Lew Burdette 1926
Robert Vaughn 1932
Michael Callan 1935
Allen Garfield 1939
Terry Gilliam 1940
Tom Conti 1941
Guion S. Bluford 1942
Billie Jean King 1943
Wade Blasingame 1943
Floyd Sneed 1943
Aston Barrett 1946
Steve Van Zandt 1949
Greg Luzinski 1950
Tina Weymouth 1950
Craig Hundley 1953
Jamie Lee Curtis 1958
Jason Ringenberg 1958
Mariel Hemingway 1961
Stephen Geoffreys 1964
Nicholas Rowe 1966
Boris Becker 1967
Scarlett Johansson 1984
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
To really appreciate this, you need to know something about humans...
Humans are not predators. We are opportunistic scavengers. In other words, we will eat pretty much anything we can get our hands on.
We are not designed to hunt. Think about it...in a fight between an unarmed human and, say, a bear, guess who will win. Every time. The real predators out there have a pet name for humans...
Lunch
Without tools (guns, knives, rocks, sticks, nuclear warheads), we are pretty far down the food chain. It is totally fair to call humans prey animals.
And like most prey animals, we have certain instincts.
Turn on the National Geographic Channel and watch a show about the big cats. They stalk their prey, and they do it in all the right ways...they stay downwind. The stay hidden. They move slowly. But even with all the stealth, the herd of [fill in the name of your favorite hoofed animal] can sense there is danger nearby. They get nervous and more alert. They will often even look in the direction of the the stalker, even though there is no scent or visual stimulation. The prey just somehow knows that they are in danger.
Humans have that, too. We often have "feelings" that something bad is about to happen. We tend to dismiss those "feelings" because our logical brain knows better.
At least right up to the point where the mugger jumps out of the alley.
Personally, I think we need to listen to those instincts. Most cops and soldiers learn to do that. So should the rest of us.
Anyway...
I want you to image that you are in, let's say, India and you decide to go for a little swim. You find a wonderfully clear lake, strip down, and jump in. You're splashing about, having a great time, when all of a sudden your prey instincts go off. The hair on your neck stirs to attention, and you find yourself trying to look in every direction and hide at the same time. You freeze, hoping the danger will pass. Since there can't possibly be sharks in a lake, you decide that it would be safer under the water than on the surface, so you take a deep breath and slowly sink.
And your alarms scream in your head. You slowly turn around in the water, and you see this...
Yes...it's still safe to take a bath.
Maybe.
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 21
1620 - The Mayflower reached Provincetown, MA. The ship discharged the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, on December 26, 1620.
1694 - French author and philosopher Jean Francois Voltaire was born. At age 65 he spent only three days writing "Candide."
1783 - The first successful flight was made in a hot air balloon. The pilots, Francois Pilatre de Rosier and Francois Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes, flew for 25 minutes and 5½ miles over Paris.
1789 - North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1871 - M.F. Galethe patented the cigar lighter.
1877 - Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of his phonograph.
1922 - Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the first woman to serve as a member of the U.S. Senate.
1929 - Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali had his first art exhibit.
1934 - The New York Yankees purchased the contract of Joe DiMaggio from San Francisco of the Pacific Coast League.
1942 - The Alaska highway across Canada was formally opened.
1953 - British Natural History Museum authorities announced that "Piltdown Man" was a hoax.
1962 - U.S. President Kennedy terminated the quarantine measures against Cuba.
1963 - U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, arrived in San Antonio, TX. They were beginning an ill-fated, two-day tour of Texas that would end in Dallas.
1973 - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, announced the presence of an 18½-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to the Watergate case.
1979 - The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was attacked by a mob that set the building afire and killed two Americans.
1980 - An estimated 83 million viewers tuned in to find out "who shot J.R." on the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas. Kristin was the character that fired the gun.
1980 - 87 people died in a fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas, NV.
1982 - The National Football League (NFL) resumed its season following a 57-day player's strike.
1985 - Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested after being accused of spying for Israel. He was later sentenced to life in prison.
1986 - U.S. Attorney General Meese was asked to conduct an inquiry of the Iran arms sales.
1987 - An eight-day siege began at a detention center in Oakdale, LA, as Cuban detainees seized the facility and took hostages.
1989 - The proceedings of Britain's House of Commons were televised live for the first time.
1992 - U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, issued an apology but refused to discuss allegations that he'd made unwelcome sexual advances toward 10 women in past years.
1993 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted against making the District of Columbia the 51st state.
1994 - NATO warplanes bombed an air base in Serb-held Croatia that was being used by Serb planes to raid the Bosnian "safe area" of Bihac.
1995 - France detonated its fourth underground nuclear blast at a test site in the South Pacific.
1995 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 5,000-mark (5,023.55) for the first time.
1999 - China announced that it had test-launched an unmanned space capsule that was designed for manned spaceflight.
2000 - The Florida Supreme Court granted Al Gore's request to keep the presidential recounts going.
2001 - Microsoft Corp. proposed giving $1 billion in computers, software, training and cash to more than 12,500 of the poorest schools in the U.S. The offer was intended as part of a deal to settle most of the company's private antitrust lawsuits.
2002 - NATO invited Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.
Whose Birthday Is It?
François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) 1694
William Beaumont 1785
Rene Magritte 1898
Stan Musial 1920
Vivian Blaine 1921
Joseph Campanella 1927
Jean Shepard 1933
Laurence Luckinbill 1934
Marlo Thomas 1938
Dr. John 1940
Natalia Makarova 1940
Juliet Mills 1941
Marcy Carsey 1944
Harold Ramis 1944
Goldie Hawn 1945
Lonnie Jordan 1948
Livingston Taylor 1950
Lorna Luft 1952
Cherry Jones 1956
Brian Ritchie 1960
Nicollette Sheridan 1963
Bjork Gudmundsdottir 1965
Troy Aikman 1966
Alex James 1968
Chauncey Hannibal 1968
Ken Griffey Jr. 1969
Pretty Lou 1971
Kelsi Osborn 1974
Jena Malone 1984
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 20
1620 - Peregrine White was born aboard the Mayflower in Massachusetts Bay. White was the first child to be born of English parents in present-day New England.
1789 - New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1818 - Simon Bolivar formally declared Venezuela independent of Spain.
1873 - Budapest was formed when the rival cities of Buda and Pest were united to form the capital of Hungary.
1889 - Astronomer Edwin Hubble was born. Hubble discovered and developed the concept of an expanding universe. In 1924 he proved the existence of galaxies other than our own.
1901 - The second Hay-Pauncefoot Treaty provided for construction of the Panama Canal by the U.S.
1910 - Francisco I. Madero led a revolution that broke out in Mexico.
1925 - Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Brookline, MA.
1929 - The radio program "The Rise of the Goldbergs," later known as "The Goldbergs," made its debut on the NBC Blue Network.
1943 - During World War II, U.S. Marines began their landing on Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands.
1945 - 24 Nazi leaders went before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.
1947 - Britain's Princess Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh in Westminster Abbey.
1959 - Britain, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Sweden met to create the European Free Trade Association.
1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis ended. The Soviet Union removed its missiles and bombers from Cuba and the U.S. ended its blockade of the island.
1962 - Mickey Mantle was named the American League Most Valuable Player for the third time.
1967 - The Census Clock at the Department of Commerce in Washington, DC, went past 200 million.
1969 - The Nixon administration announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part of a total phase out of the substance.
1970 - The majority in U.N. General Assembly voted to give China a seat, but two-thirds majority required for admission was not met.
1975 - After nearly 40 years of absolute rule Spain's General Francisco Franco died.
1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to address Israel's parliament.
1983 - An estimated 100 million people watched the controversial ABC-TV movie "The Day After." The movie depicted the outbreak of nuclear war.
1986 - Dr. Halfdan Maher, the director of the World Health Organization, announced the first coordinated global effort to fight the disease AIDS.
1987 - Police investigating the fire at King's Cross, London's busiest subway station, said that arson was unlikely to be the cause of the event that took 31 lives.
1988 - Egypt and China announced that they would recognize the Palestinian state proclaimed by the Palestine National Council.
1989 - Over 200,000 people rallied peacefully in Prague, Czechoslovakia, demanding democratic reforms.
1990 - Saddam Hussein ordered another 250,000 Iraqi troops into the country of Kuwait.
1990 - The space shuttle Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, FL, after completing a secret military mission.
1992 - A fire seriously damaged the northwest side of Windsor Castle in England.
1993 - The U.S. Senate passed the Brady Bill and legislation implementing NAFTA.
1994 - The Angolan government and rebels signed a treaty in Zambia to end 19 years of war.
1995 - Princess Diana admitted being unfaithful to Prince Charles in an interview that was broadcast on BBC Television.
1998 - Afghanistan's Taliban militia offered Osama bin Laden safe haven. Osama bin Laden had been accused of orchestrating two U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and later terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
1998 - Forty-six states agreed to a $206 billion settlement of health claims against the tobacco industry. The industry also agreed to give up billboard advertising of cigarettes.
2001 - The U.S. Justice Department headquarters building was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy building by President George W. Bush. The event was held on what would have been Kennedy's 76th birthday.
Whose Birthday Is It?
Edwin Hubble 1889
Chester Gould 1900
Alistair Cooke 1908
Evelyn Keyes 1919
Beryl Sprinkel 1923
Robert F. Kennedy 1925
Kaye Ballard 1926
Estelle Parsons 1927
Richard Dawson 1932
Kim Weston 1939
Dick Smothers 1939
Norman Greenbaum 1942
Veronica Hamel 1943
Judy Woodruff 1946
Duane Allman 1946
John Walsh 1947
Richard Masur 1948
Bo Derek 1956
Jim Brown 1957
Sean Young 1959
Todd Nance 1962
Mike D. 1965
Sen Dog 1965
Ming-Na Wen 1967
Phife Dog 1970
Marisa Ryan 1974
Josh Turner 1977
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
This Day In History
Courtesy of
On-This-Day.com
November 19
1794 - The U.S. and Britain signed the Jay Treaty, which resolved the issues left over from the Revolutionary War.
1850 - The first life insurance policy for a woman was issued. Carolyn Ingraham, 36 years old, bought the policy in Madison, NJ.
1863 - U.S. President Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.
1893 - The first newspaper color supplement was published in the Sunday New York World.
1895 - The "paper pencil" was patented by Frederick E. Blaisdell.
1919 - The U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles with a vote of 55 in favor to 39 against. A two-thirds majority was needed for ratification.
1928 - "Time" magazine presented its cover portrait for the first time. Japanese Emperor Hirohito was the magazine's first cover subject.
1942 - During World War II, Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans along the Don front.
1954 - Two automatic toll collectors were placed in service on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey.
1959 - Ford Motor Co. announced it was ending the production of the unpopular Edsel.
1966 - Sandy Koufax (Los Angeles Dodgers) announced his retirement from major league baseball.
1969 - Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made man's second landing on the moon.
1970 - Hafiz al-Assad seized power in Syria.
1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to set foot in Israel on an official visit.
1979 - Nolan Ryan (Houston Astros) signed a four-year contract for $4.5 million. At the time, Ryan was the highest paid player in major league baseball.
1981 - U.S. Steel agreed to pay $6.3 million for Marathon Oil.
1984 - Almost 500 people died in a firestorm after a series of explosions at a Mexico City petroleum storage plant.
1984 - Dwight Gooden, 20-year-old, of the New York Mets, became the youngest major-league pitcher to be named Rookie of the Year in the National League. (MLB)
1985 - U.S. President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began their summit in Geneva.
1990 - NATO and the Warsaw Pact signed a treaty of nonaggression.
1993 - The U.S. Senate approved a sweeping $22.3 billion anti-crime measure.
1994 - The U.N. Security Council authorized NATO to bomb rebel Serb forces striking from neighboring Croatia.
1997 - In Carlisle, IA, septuplets were born to Bobbi McCaughey. It was only the second known case where all seven were born alive.
1998 - The impeachment inquiry of U.S. President Clinton began.
1998 - Vincent van Gogh's "Portrait of the Artist Without Beard" sold at auction for more than $71 million.
1998 - Michelle Lee received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1999 - In Istanbul, Turkey, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded a two-day summit after adopting a new arms accord. During the conference, Russia was criticized for its military campaign against Chechnya's separatist movement.
2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush signed the most comprehensive air security bill in U.S. history.
2002 - The oil tanker Prestige broke into two pieces and sank off northwest Spain. The tanker lost about 2 million gallons of fuel oil when it ruptured November 13th and was towed about 150 miles out to sea.
2002 - The U.S. government completed its takeover of security at 424 airports nationwide.
2003 - Eight competing designs for a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center were unveiled. One design would be built at the site of the World Trade Center.
Whose Birthday Is It?
James Garfield 1831
Tommy Dorsey 1905
Indira Gandhi 1917
Alan Young 1919
Larry King 1933
Dick Cavett 1936
Ted Turner 1938
Garrick Utley 1939
Pete Moore 1939
Dan Haggerty 1941
Calvin Klein 1942
Ahmad Rashad 1949
Robert Beltran 1953
Kathleen Quinlan 1954
Glynnis O'Connor 1955
Ann Curry 1956
Scott Jacoby 1956
Allison Janney 1960
Matt Sorum 1960
Meg Ryan 1961
Jodie Foster 1962
Terry Farrell 1963
Gail Devers 1966
Jason Scott Lee 1966
Travis McNabb 1969
Tony Rich 1971
Savion Glover 1973
Tamika Scott 1975
Kerri Strug 1977
Keep Loving!
Melodee Aaron, Erotica Romance Author
Melodee's Books at BookStrand
Inquisitor Betrayer
