Sunday, March 31, 2013

Cesar Chavez Day

Credit: United Farm Workers
Cesar Chavez:
“(Farm workers) are involved in the planting and the cultivation and the harvesting of the greatest abundance of food known in this society. They bring in so much food to feed you and me and the whole country and enough food to export to other places. The ironic thing and the tragic thing is that after they make this tremendous contribution, they don’t have any money or any food left for themselves.”
For every dollar Americans spend on food, only .06 cents goes to farm workers giving them an average income of 11,000 dollars a year.


More on Cesar Chavez
Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, March 29, 2013

Asparagus and Beef Stir Fry With Black Bean Sauce

Recipe here
Spring is here and with it neat bundles of asparagus are appearing in the grocery stores.  This is our favorite asparagus recipe, next to oven baked with garlic and olive oil.

Skim Milk Party


Happy Friday

Messier 77 is a barred spiral galaxy with an active black hole.  Messier 77 with its bright nucleus, well defined spiral arms and energetic star forming regions lies 45 million light years from Earth in the constellation Cetus.

Hubble Page for Messier 77

Wallpapers

1024x768
324.1 KB
1280x1024
561.7 KB
Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, March 28, 2013

The Daily Bread

No-Knead Beer Bread

My good friend and culinary craftsman, Jay suggested adding beer to my bread recipe.  Substituting 4 T of NA beer for the equivalent amount of water resulted in a smaller loaf, with a denser sponger and an amazing tasting crust.  Think we'll try this next time with some bitter beer, like St. Pauli Girl, NA. 


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Universal Background Checks


VoteVets.org created this ad for universal background checks.   You can send a note to your senators encouraging them to pass this rational gun control measure here.

Snooze Button, Detrimental?



The snooze button has always been my friend, this excellent two minute video presents evidence that my habit of repeatedly mashing the snooze button does more harm than good.  

Friday, March 22, 2013

Happy Friday

Credit: ESA
This is a baby picture of our universe, 13.8 billion years ago, before there were stars, galaxies or planets.  The image was created by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite that measures the cosmic microwave background from the Big Bang.  The universe spent the first 380,000 years of its existence as an opaque and extremely hot "soup" of elementary particles, protons, neutrons and photons.  Once the universe cooled sufficiently atoms began forming and light was free to travel.  That first light is what the Planck satellite captured in this image displaying tiny fluctuations in the temperature of the radiation. 
Enhanced by Zemanta

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

CISPA Is Back



CISPA is back, click here for a Faq on what CISPA is and why it's dangerous

 Fight with us against the Internet's latest threat, #CISPA. Let's stop this terrible bill. https://eff.org/r.2bJf via @EFF #CISPAalert
Enhanced by Zemanta

Monday, March 18, 2013

Veterans Waiting Over A Year For Benefits?



Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA):
A shocking report just came out about the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disability benefits backlog. It says that delays for new vets to receive disability compensation from the VA are much longer than originally reported, which is saying a lot. (If you’ve had a loved one file a claim, you know what I mean.)

We must end this backlog now. Sign a petition to call for action with IAVA.

According to the report, more than 900,000 veteran’s benefits claims are currently in the system, a number that VA expects to grow to over a million by the end of this month. Of the 600,000 backlogged, VA has said that the average wait time was 273 days, but this report reveals that veterans are waiting between 316 and 327 days after filing. Furthermore, despite spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on developing a digital claims process, 97% of claims are still on paper.

The wait is 490 days in New Orleans. 619 in Los Angeles. 612 in Indianapolis. 586 in Houston. 642 in New York. And 681 in Reno. That’s 681 days to get benefits for injuries received while at war.

681 days. That’s just ridiculous. And it’s gone on for long enough. The men and women who have sacrificed so much deserve better than that.

Sign the petition today to call on President Obama to establish a Presidential Commission to end the backlog. 

Hillary For Marriage Equality




Hillary Clinton:
LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones, and they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage. That’s why I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples. I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law, embedded in a broader effort to advance equality and opportunity for LGBT Americans and all Americans.

American's For Marriage Equality

Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Happy Friday

Credit: NASA, Large Image Here
NGC 922 is a ring galaxy located about 157 million light years away in the constellation Fornax.  The ring structure was formed when a smaller galaxy collided with the center of NGC 922 almost a third of a billion years ago. 

Wallpapers

1024x768
420.3 KB
1280x1024
716.6 KB

Sunday, March 10, 2013

The New Jim Crow


Michelle Alexander
But crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the past few decades -- and currently are at historical lows -- but imprisonment rates have soared. Quintupled. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth.
That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation's prisons and jails, which are overflowing with black and brown drug offenders.
The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander (Amazon)


Enhanced by Zemanta

Saturday, March 9, 2013

See Comet PANSTARRS At Twilight

Credit: NASA
A Comet, L4 PANSTARRS that should be visible to the naked eye makes its appearance on March 12 through March 24 low in the southwest skies just after sunset

NASA:
"There is a catch to viewing comet PANSTARRS. This one is not that bright and is going to be low on the western horizon, so you'll need a relatively unobstructed view to the southwest at twilight and, of course, some good comet-watching weather.

Well, there is one more issue -- the time of day, or night, to view it.
"Look too early and the sky will be too bright," said Rachel Stevenson, a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at JPL. "Look too late, the comet will be too low and obstructed by the horizon. This comet has a relatively small window."


Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Happy Friday

Full Size Here,  Credit: NASA, ESA
This Hubble Image showcases NGC 4921, a rare spiral galaxy in the Coma galaxy cluster.  The Coma galaxy cluster contains more than a thousand galaxies and is located 250 million light years from planet Earth.   This image only contains two stars from our Milky Way galaxy, at 11:00 o'clock all the other dots, specks and blurs in this image are galaxies.

Hubble Page for NGC 4921

Informative and interesting Hubble video featuring NGC 4921

Wallpapers

1024x768
209.9 KB
1280x1024
357.4 KB
Enhanced by Zemanta