Bon Jovi to do that free show | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/19/2010

March 19th, 2010

Remember how Jon Bon Jovi had promised Philly a free concert when the Philadelphia Soul — which he was an investor in — won the Arena Bowl in the summer of 2008?

Bon Jovi went on WMMR this morning to announce that he will pay up: a free, special ticketed performance for former Soul season ticket-holders and fans on Wednesday (3/24) at the Wachovia Center at 5 p.m. — before the second of two sold-out shows at the center.

Those who don’t have tickets can hear it live on 93.3 or wmmr.com.

Fans can enter to win tickets online at www.wmmr.com and through on-air call outs on WMMR.

Bon Jovi made the promise on WMMR’s Preston and Steve show.

I always wondered what happened to that… if it’s going to be before his actual show – you think it’ll be a couple of songs on acoustic then he says “See Ya!”

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Uncle Sam Wants to “Friend” You

March 17th, 2010

Could Airborne Bears Catch Bin Laden?

March 17th, 2010

ARLINGTON, Va. — Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden?

That’s one suggestion the Pentagon has received from someone who noted, quite correctly, that a bear’s sense of smell is much more powerful than a bloodhound’s.

“Overnight, Parachute some bears into areas [bin Laden] might be,” the innovator wrote. “Attempt to train bears to take off parachutes after landing, or use parachutes that self-destruct after landing.”

The bears-in-the-air idea, and scores of others, came from people who clicked on the “contact us” button on the Defense Department’s Web site, which allows the general public to ask questions or make suggestions.

Not that the Pentagon needs any particular help in the idea department. Not long ago, for example, the agency spent $2 million to find out whether honey bees could be relied upon to sniff out roadside bombs.

The Defense Department provided Stars and Stripes a sampling of some of the more bizarre feedback it gets through its Web site, www.defense.gov. The authors’ names were withheld, but all spelling, grammar and paranoia are authentic.

“Would there be time to construct a Noah’s Ark Biosphere in North America if there is an emerging Global War starting in the Middle East?” asked one concerned citizen. “I don’t know … I only know that I have worked on such a project for many years now.”

The specifications for the recommended ark are outlined in the Bible, the writer noted, adding that it could preserve a specimen of the human population for up to 300 years.

“Then after the period of ‘Hibernation’ people and materials would emerge to repopulate the Earth,” the person wrote.

Another correspondent asked for help with some personal issues.

“I still have people torturing my pelvis and lungs with dispersed sound waves and my eye and stomach, hip, pelvic region with other types of sound waves,” the person wrote. “When the secret service came out they had a letter all prepared by my mother to force me on disability and not let me live with her and try to leave me penniless and homeless again.”

One writer let the Defense Department know of a dream something was about to happen. Likely on a Friday.

“I have no idea what this might be, do you?” the person asked.

And as might be expected, many of those who e-mail the Defense Department have searching questions about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“Has anyone at the Department [of] Defense noticed that the Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11, and that when you dial emergency services in the USA you dial 911?” the person wrote. “If so, is this merely a coincidence?”

——————————————–

Some of the messages …

Below are a sampling of some of the more bizarre messages sent to the Pentagon through the “Contact Us” link on the Defense Department Web site. Bears have scent detection that is far superior to bloodhounds! Trained bears with GPS and day/night cameras around their necks might be able to hunt down the scent of UBL, even in and through any caves and tunnels!!! Overnight, Parachute some bears into areas UBL might be. Attempt to train bears to take off parachutes after landing, or use parachutes that self-destruct after landing.

———

So do you have any top scret information you would to like to tell me? i am doing a project for my senior economics class, and was just wondering…email me back.

———

I still have people torturing my pelvis and lungs with dispersed sound waves and my eye and stomach, hip, pelvic region with other types of sound waves. When the secret service came out they had a letter all prepared by my mother to force me on disability and not let me live with her and try to leave me penniless and homeless again. They want me to marry the Jewish pilot they’ve been blaming and calling black and live in my mothers home and be tortured and watch us on candid camera. I am going to a disability doctors appointment today. And leaving and going into low-income housing in the Washington DC area in dead air space so my mother will pay off my credit card like she said in her letter. That meets the requirement of the letter and I am not going to stay and be tortured because the pentagon would not fire their employees and the secret service did not get you to make a statement to tell the pentagon to stand down. I will make a statement all across the US as I drive out and the pilots usually only stay a couple weeks when I leave Hermiston so everyone else out here will be taking the heat instead of me and they have already been playing with the cops, sheriffs, judges, etc with magnetic waves and no one can tell the difference. They just use me for confessional and keep saying I am schizophrenic and torturing me to cover for them and make themselves feel better while they screw everyone. Since the Jewish pilot they have been calling black has been threatened if I leave and they have already been playing with him. If you really want him married to me to protect him and break this cycle – you’d better have him land on my doorstep.

———

Would there be time to construct a Noah’s Ark Biosphere in North America if there is an emerging Global War starting in the Middle East? I don’t know … I only know that I have worked on such a project for many years now. If a Global War emerges and much life and civilization is damaged or destroyed due to the use of massive weapons then there may be a need to construct a survival Ark … of Biblical proportions .. a Dome City .. a New Jerusalem Ark .. to preserve a remnant of earth-kind and make it possible for the earth to be resettled some 200 or 300 years in the future. The problem is it takes a lot of resources to build a modern day Noah’s Ark … and lots of planning and development. Yet it seems reasonable to assume this planning should be done if there is only a ten percent chance of Global War even within the next 20 years let alone the next 20 months.

The Bible lays out the basic specifications for the New Jerusalem Biosphere … not very many people realize how this is fully realized. The concept of a city 1300 miles on a side is ludicrous yet if the 12,000 furlong measure is transformed into an overall measure of length, width and height in combination then this parameter can be consistent with the 4500 by 4500 cubit specification in Ezekiel . Here lies the key .. along with the 12 tower design .. the twelve towers being the twelve foundations. And so if goes … and these specs lay the foundation for a modern day Noah’s Ark.

Is there time to do the detailed design and development work .. and lay out the materials and foundation and build the structure and infrastructure … I don’t know … But if there is going to be a Global War then I believe some sort of Noah’s Ark would have to be build to ride out a period of intense atmospheric damage. Then after the period of “Hibernation” people and materials would emerge to repopulate the Earth.

———

Why didn’t the huge wingspan of the Boeing 757 make a mark in the walls of the Pentagon?

———

I read a lot of books about 9/11. And so I have a question: How can it be, that Flight AA 175 was bigger than the hole in the pentagon?

———

here is my question and i’m sure you will not read this or even get back to me or you will even lie to me but here it is simply: why was there no plane at the penagon after there was supposely one that flew into there? and why is there only a couple cameras that we are alowed to see?? i have been doing some research and things are just not adding up and i’m very very very curious if you could please e-mail me back i would really appriacate it thanks

———

Explain the unexplained? Or should I say confess your sins? The questions regarding 911/Pentagon seem relevant. What shall we expect next on Friday of any week? I heard a dream once that something big would happen on a Friday? I have no idea what this might be, do you? I have also heard that America and Canada will cooperate in sharing it’s military freely in the event of anything that may transpire really soon. I am hearing alarming rumors and stories, what do you have to say? I am only a concerned citizen asking under the umbrella of “freedom of speech”, can you answer with the say freedom I ask?

———

Has anyone at the Department if Defense noticed that the Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11, and that when you dial emergency services in the USA you dial 911? If so, is this merely a coincidence

 

Dude… parachuting military bears…

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Da Vinci ‘predicted world would end in 4006’

March 15th, 2010

A date for your diary: Leonardo da Vinci predicted that the world would end on November 1, 4006, according to a Vatican researcher.

Sabrina Sforza Galitzia said the clues were to be found in da Vinci’s Last Supper mural. The central half-moon window, or lunette, above his painting of Christ with his disciples before the Crucifixion contains a “mathematical and astrological” puzzle which she has deciphered, she said.

She claimed to have worked out that da Vinci foresaw the end of the world in a “universal flood” which would begin on March 21, 4006 and end on November 1 the same year. Documents showed that he believed that this would mark “a new start for humanity”, Ms Sforza Galitzia said.

“There is a da Vinci code — it is just not the one made popular by Dan Brown,” she said.

Ms Sforza Galitzia, who formerly studied da Vinci manuscripts as a researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles, now works in the Vatican archives.

Last year, the Vatican published her study The Last Supper of Leonardo in the Vatican, in which she examined a tapestry of the Last Supper made for King Louis XIII of France, based on da Vinci’s design for his famous mural in Milan.

She said she was working on a sequel which would explain da Vinci’s hidden “code”, involving signs of the zodiac and his use of the 24 letters of the Latin alphabet to represent the 24 hours of the day.

Da Vinci had seen the story of humanity as leading to “the sum of all things, the final reckoning” described in the Book of Revelations but also by ancient writers such as Plato and Aristotle, she told La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper.

He had been a scientist and man of faith who had lived in “difficult times” and had hidden his messages “so as not to be attacked,” she said.

The Last Supper, which measures 460cm by 880cm (15ft by 29ft), covers an entire wall at the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Da Vinci began working on it in 1495, and finished it in 1498. It was restored between 1978 and 1999 after it had badly deteriorated.

In his 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, filmed in 2006 and starring Tom Hanks as a Harvard “symbologist” called Robert Langdon, Dan Brown suggests that the figure at the right hand of Jesus in The Last Supper is not the Apostle John but Mary Magdalene, and that she was pregnant with Jesus’ child when he was crucified, and thus carried his bloodline.

The novel and film were both attacked by the Church as historically inaccurate as well as blasphemous.

Whew… everyone has been saying 2012… looks like we still have some time.

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Sooner or Later, We’re Going to Have to Deal with Mexico

March 15th, 2010

Everyone frets over Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, but Northern Mexico is a brutal war zone. This is unbelievable:

3 People with Ties to the US Consulate Shot

Their 1 year old baby was unharmed in the backseat… the situation down there is sounding more and more like Pancho Villa who the US Army had to stop. I guess history does repeat itself.

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Video Editing Training

March 14th, 2010

Anyone know of a good book or place to take a class to learn about video editing? I’m using Adobe Premiere Elements…

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Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion

March 14th, 2010

This is about a week old but still funny…

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Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer

March 14th, 2010

Heh – Hollywood is soo cliched that everything in this is recognizable:

Best line: “Inspiring final lines from a speech that douche bags will quote in THEIR FACEBOOK PROFILES!!!”

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Friday Night Recording @ The Office

March 14th, 2010

I had Steve over to the Office on Friday night to record some guitars for the new album (I want to say CD, but everything seems sooo old fashioned now with iTunes and digital downloads – what the hell are you supposed to call a collection of songs any more?). Here are a couple of pics, although he wished he could have done his hair first! :)

Steve playing my Strat – we wanted to use his Telecaster but we were having trouble keeping it in tune.

My desk in the Office. We were going direct into a POD X3 via USB. I’m using Sony Acid 6 again. No need to fix what is not broken, right?

Looks like an Am to me…

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Test to Posterous via Windows Live Writer

March 14th, 2010

Trying to get a bunch of tools connected… wish me luck.

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Raining…

March 14th, 2010
I can’t believe it is still raining. Please make it stop.

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Bruce, This One’s For You!

December 3rd, 2007

Well, I’ve been really busy with work and life and I haven’t been blogging in a while. (Sorry)

My buddy Bruce was asking what was up, so I figured I should set a little time aside tonight and write. I told him that since the mainstream media (MTM) has noticed the improvements in Iraq, I haven’t had to do much writing about it. But I told him that with the 2008 Presidential election heating up, I’ll probably have plenty to write about!

And boy was I right!

It seems that Hillary Clinton has fallen behind in the polls in Iowa and now trails Barak Obama. And she’s freaking out! Today she issued a press release attacking Obama and at first I thought it was a satire piece from the Onion:

Sen. Obama Rewrites History, Claims He Hasn’t Been Planning White House Run

Today in Iowa, Senator Barack Obama said: “I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for.”

Oh really?

“Senator Obama’s comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates and staff have said about his plans to run for President,” Clinton spokesperson Phil Singer said. “Senator Obama’s campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality.”

Immediately after joining the Senate, Senator Obama started planning run for President. “‘The first order of business for Senator Obama’s team was charting a course for his first two years in the Senate. The game plan was to send Senator Obama into the 2007-2008 election cycle in the strongest form possible’…The final act of the plan was turning up the talk about a potential Presidential bid, which was greatly aided by his positive press and suggestions by pundits that he run for President.” [U.S. News and World Report, 6/19/07 ]

His law school classmates say that Senator Obama has been planning Presidential run for ‘more than a decade.’ [A]ccording to those who know him, he has been talking about the presidency for more than a decade. “It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics,” says Harvard Law School classmate Christine Spurell. [Washington Post, 8/12/07 ]

15 years ago, Senator Obama told his brother-in-law he was planning to run for President. Craig [Robinson] pulled him aside [in 1992] and asked about his plans. “He said, ‘I think I’d like to teach at some point in time, and maybe run for public office,’ recalls Robinson, who assumed Senator Obama meant he’d like to run for city alderman. “He said no — at some point he’d like to run for the U.S. Senate. And then he said, ‘Possibly even run for President at some point.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, but don’t say that to my Aunt Gracie.’ I was protecting him from saying something that might embarrass him.” [Washington Post, 8/12/07 ]

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want To Be a President.’ His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga “asked her class to write an essay titled ‘My dream: What I want to be in the future.’ Senator Obama wrote ‘I want to be a President,’ she said.” [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’ “Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama’s kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, ‘I Want To Become President,’ the teacher said.” [AP, 1/25/07 ]

You have got to be kidding me…

First, Hillary Clinton issuing a press release ridiculing another candidate for “planning for years to run for President” is frankly hyper-ironic. Pot, meet kettle.

But the real jaw dropper here is that Hillary dug up Obama’s essays from 3rd grade and Kindergarten! LOL

So if you have a 6 or 7 year old son or daughter with political ambitions, you better teach them to be careful with their writings… it may come back to haunt them!

Is she really saying that no one but Hillary is allowed to have dreams of being President of the United States?

This reminds me of the Dean Scream… I wonder if she’ll make out better than he did.

Mark Steyn: World Should Give Thanks for America

November 18th, 2007

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Mostly because it’s a time for the family and it’s not overly commercialized. When Thanksgiving is approaching, you don’t have to worry about budgeting funds for gifts or credit card bills the following month. All you have to worry about is exercising and/or dieting to work off your over-consumption.

One of my favorite columnists, Mark Steyn, has written a column about Thanksgiving. As a Brit living in America, he always provides a unique perspective to things. It’s a very good column and an interesting perspective comparing the longevity of the US Constitution and the European constitutions. When you hear someone pining for America to be more like Europe, keep this in mind:

Thanksgiving (excepting the premature and somewhat undernourished Canadian version) is unique to America. “What’s it about?” an Irish visitor asked me a couple of years back. “Everyone sits around giving thanks all day? Thanks for what? George bloody Bush?”

Well, Americans have a lot to be thankful for.

Europeans think of this country as “the New World” in part because it has an eternal newness, which is noisy and distracting. Who would ever have thought you could have ready-to-eat pizza faxed directly to your iPod?

And just when you think you’re on top of the general trend of novelty, it veers off in an entirely different direction: Continentals who grew up on Hollywood movies where the guy tells the waitress “Gimme a cuppa joe” and slides over a nickel return to New York a year or two later and find the coffee now costs $5.75, takes 25 minutes and requires an agonizing choice between the cinnamon-gingerbread-persimmon latte with coxcomb sprinkles and the decaf venti pepperoni-Eurasian-milfoil macchiato.

Who would have foreseen that the nation that inflicted fast food and drive-thru restaurants on the planet would then take the fastest menu item of all and turn it into a Kabuki-paced performance art? What mad genius!

But Americans aren’t novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany’s constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy’s only to the 1940s, and Belgium’s goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it’s not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s or Spain’s constitution, it’s older than all of them put together.

Read the whole thing!

Is the Surge Working??

November 18th, 2007

There was a comment on an earlier post of mine on my Daily Local blog that I found interesting:

gypsy hammond said…
The surge is working? That must explain why 2007 has seen the highest level of troop deaths since the war began. But then, defining success downwards has been a hallmark of this war and this administration.

While this reflects the usual “it’s all Bush’s fault” thought process, what caught my eye was the statement about 2007 being the highest level of troop deaths. So I went to icasualties.org to see if it’s true.

And it is.

But Gypsy’s comment is a little disingenuous. The commenter states that the Surge isn’t working because 2007 has the highest troop deaths so far.

So the critical point is: When did the Surge begin?

President Bush announced the Surge in January 2007, saying that 35,000 additional troops will be sent to Iraq. The troops were deployed between Febuary and May 2007. In June 2007, the Surge’s offensive operations began (once all of the troops were fully deployed).

Using Excel and the figures from icasualties.org, I built a chart to better reflect what is happening from January 2006 through November 2007 (click on the image for a larger view):

US Military Deaths in Iraq 2006-2007

So clearly, once offensive operations began in June 2007, US military deaths have begun to significantly decline. Coupled with the Anbar Awakening, it really looks like Iraq has turned around for the better.

The media hardly reports on Iraq anymore BECAUSE deaths are down, there are few if any car bombs, etc. etc. It reminds me of the old saying about the news media: “We don’t report when a plane lands safely, only when they crash”. That’s what is happening with Iraq RIGHT NOW! Even to the point that Afghanistan (which they’ve ignored for a while) is now being painted as a failure because Iraq is not.

What is really distressing though, is the complete and utter disconnect with reality I am observing from the Democratic Leadership (Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi in particular). They continue to say that the Iraq War is lost. And worse, they are continuing to try to cut off support for the troops to ensure that the war is lost.

Whose side are they on? We can all argue about how the war began, but the reality is that it happened and we need to deal with the current situation. And the current situation shows that the Iraq War can be (and possibly is) won. To continue to try and pull the rug out from under the troops when they are succeeding is one of the most politically suicidal moves I have ever witnessed. The American people may not agree with how the war started or if the war was worthwhile, but few Americans want our troops to lose – and that’s something that Reid and Pelosi obviously don’t understand.

The Last of the Last

November 13th, 2007

Here’s a really nice (although sad) article in the New York Times about the last surviving American soldier from World War I:

Over There — and Gone Forever

Four years ago, I attended a Veterans Day observance in Orleans, Mass. Near the head of the parade, a 106-year-old named J. Laurence Moffitt rode in a Japanese sedan, waving to the small crowd of onlookers and sporting the same helmet he had been wearing in the Argonne Forest at the moment the armistice took effect, 85 years earlier.

I didn’t know it then, but that was, in all likelihood, the last small-town American Veterans Day parade to feature a World War I veteran. The years since have seen the passing of one last after another — the last combat-wounded veteran, the last Marine, the last African-American, the last Yeomanette — until, now, we are down to the last of the last.