Hockey Season has Begun....

And oh how after only a month and a half I'm exhausted. This year Poppy joined Frudoch in playing ice hockey. She has done a great job. So good in fact that after playing only 2 games she was asked to try out for the Select Team. Poppy scored her first goal in her second ever game on a one timer. It was if she played the game for years. Throughout the first few weeks all the coaches kept asking her how many years she has played. They never believed her. While not the fastest player she uses her brain and plays really smart. Poppy does things her brother can't do like using the boards to avoid opponents. She just plays a smart game. Tonight she had the second round of Select tryouts and she is holding her own. I don't know whether she will make the team as there are some fantastic 8 year olds out there. I'm just happy she got the chance.

Frudoch has had a super start to year 2. He has scored in the first 2 games and has had probably 20 shots on goal in the first 3. His playing time has been almost exclusively on the forward line with just a couple shifts on defense. He learned some moves at a summer camp and uses them all the time with good success. He too was invited to tryout for Select team and thru tonight's second tryout he looks pretty good. Again I don't know what exactly the coaches are looking for, but he is doing well. Most other parents think he is a lock to make the team. I'll wait for the coaches to tell him that. All in all its been a wonder improvement over last year as he never was given an opportunity to really play last year. This year both kids have GREAT coaches and they are progressing each week.

I am exhausted though as we go to the ice rink monday, wednesday, friday,saturday, and sunday right now. Its alot of running and of course its cold. Then again with it being in the teens and twenties this last 2 weeks the rink feels cooler. I've even been nominated to bench coach for Poppy's team when the coach is with her other team. For 2 of the three games I've been the coach and its sorta fun except I can't really follow the game too much. Poppy loves it though.

F35 Goes Supersonic for the First Time

Accelerates To Mach 1.05 With Full Internal Payload Onboard

Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter felt the need... the need for SPEED! The advanced fighter aircraft flew supersonic for the first time last week, accelerating to Mach 1.05 (about 680 miles per hour) in testing November 13.

Lockheed says the test validated the F-35 Lightning II's capability to operate beyond the speed of sound and was accomplished with a full internal load of "dummy" weapons on the one-hour flight.
"The F-35 transitioned from subsonic to supersonic just as our engineers and our computer modeling had predicted," said Jon Beesley, Lockheed Martin's chief F-35 test pilot. "I continue to be impressed with the aircraft's power and strong acceleration, and I'm pleased that its precise handling qualities are retained in supersonic flight, even with a payload of 5,400 pounds (2,450 kilograms) in the weapons bays."

Beesley said it was also a significant achievement for a test aircraft to fly supersonic for the first time with the weight of a full internal load of weapons. The milestone was achieved on the 69th flight of F-35 aircraft AA-1.
For the test, Beesley climbed to 30,000 feet and accelerated to Mach 1.05, or about 680 miles per hour, over a rural area in north Texas. The F-35 accomplished four transitions through the sound barrier, spending a total of eight minutes in supersonic flight.

The flight was preceded by a high-subsonic mission earlier in the day. Future testing will gradually expand the flight envelope out to the aircraft's top speed of Mach 1.6, which the F-35 is designed to achieve with a full internal load of weapons.
F-35 AA-1, a conventional takeoff and landing variant (CTOL), and F-35 BF-1, a short takeoff/vertical landing variant (STOVL), together have combined for 83 test flights.

Euros to Allow "Wonky" Vegetables to be Sold

This story ran today on the BBC. Apparently the Euros have standards for their veggies. I have no idea why I found this entertaining, but it is little funny. Check it out before you go to a supermarket and find carrots with 3 tips or a crooked cucumber....




Regulations that stop strange-shaped fruit and vegetables being sold are about to be changed by the European Union. But are we willing to eat wonky veg?
When you see a carrot with two prongs, a knobbly potato or a blemished strawberry, does your stomach turn? Are you transported back to the That's Life episodes of your youth by the slightest morphological oddity in anything you eat?


Terms and conditions
If so, you are not going to like what the European Commission (EU) is about to do. Barring a surprise result in a vote, "marketing standards" for 26 vegetables are about to be repealed.
If there has been one truly effective stick to beat the EU with over the years, it has been the bizarre and Byzantine reams of regulation it is accused of promulgating.
The classic anti-EU story is that "faceless eurocrats" were banning the curved cucumber. It was all the more powerful for having a solid basis in truth. Namely, Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1677/88 of 15 June 1988.
Blemishes and discolourations
Class I cucumbers must "be reasonably well shaped and practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber)". Class II "slightly crooked cucumbers may have a maximum height of the arc of 20 mm per 10 cm of length of the cucumber".
These are allowed to have some blemishes and discolourations. Any cucumber more crooked must be packed separately and must be otherwise cosmetically perfect.

This potato is said to be one of the tastiest, but would you eat it?
So if a cucumber is crooked and has a blemish on it, it cannot be sold in a shop or market. It is allowed to go for processing, but often the cost of transport to a manufacturer is prohibitive and the produce is simply allowed to rot.
Carrots are in the same boat. Commission Regulation (EC) No 730/1999 of 7 April 1999 says they must be "not forked, free from secondary roots".
Commission Regulation (EC) No 85/2004 of 15 January 2004, any apple under 50mm in diameter or 70g in weight cannot be sold.
Every year tonnes of perfectly-edible produce across the EU is thrown away so that when you walk into the supermarket all you see is rank after serried rank of cosmetically perfect fruit and vegetables.
The first regulations were introduced across the EU in the 1980s and have been amended and supplemented since.
Amusing carrots
Michael Mann, the European Commission's Agriculture spokesman, notes that when the rules on fruit and vegetable standards were brought in 20 years ago the eurocrats were not inventing a new category of regulation, but merely seeking to standardise already existing laws across Europe.
And of course, member states have been responsible for deciding how to police and punish the fruit laws.

HOW RULES WILL CHANGE
Rules for 26 fruit and vegetable scrapped
Rules for 10 retained
But sub-rule produce can be sold in shops if labelled as "for processing" or similar formulation
Scrapped 26 are: Apricots, artichokes, asparagus, aubergines, avocadoes, beans, brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, cherries, courgettes, cucumbers, cultivated mushrooms, garlic, hazelnuts in shell, headed cabbage, leeks, melons, onions, peas, plums, ribbed celery, spinach, walnuts in shell, watermelons, witloof chicory
10 retained are: Apples, citrus fruit, kiwi fruit, lettuces and endives, peaches and nectarines, pears, strawberries, sweet peppers, table grapes, tomatoes
"We wouldn't encourage people to come down too heavily on people selling amusing carrots," says Mr Mann.
In the UK, enforcement is administered by the Rural Payments Agency. They deal with breaches of the marketing standards mainly by educating and warning the offending traders and suppliers, but there are "four or five" prosecutions a year.
Rotten produce for sale may be more likely to result in action than oddities of shape, but it remains the case that both are against the law.
Only in June, a trader in Bristol was stopped by the RPA from selling 520 kiwi fruit that were slightly too small.
In recent years, even supermarkets have been kicking against the regulations. Waitrose launched an "ugly" range of Class II produce for jam-making and cooking in 2006.
More recently Sainsbury's withdrew a promotion of discount Halloween-themed vegetables, saying they had realised managers could get a criminal record for selling non-standard produce. The supermarket also launched a campaign to "Save our Ugly Fruit and Veg". It estimated that, to take one example, 20% of British onion production is wasted because it fails to meet the standards. They lobbied EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel over the issue.
Authenticity
But Ms Boel already decided some time ago that the marketing standards had to be radically changed. By next summer, once member states have had time to put the changes into effect, wonky veg will be on supermarket shelves.
That is not to say, of course, that consumers will be rushing to buy this strange fruit.



These cucumbers are easily stacked and packed
Supermarkets are frequently blamed for pushing standardisation. Varieties are chosen for their durability or their appearance, and if size and shape are uniform, packaging is easier to make.
"People have been brainwashed into believing everything has to be a uniform size," says Geoff Stokes, secretary of the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners.
"It has always struck me as more to do with the supermarkets wanting to package things easier, if everything is the same shape and the same size,"
But we've had years of cosmetically perfect vegetables. And the supermarkets which have chosen to sell only the most aesthetically pleasing items might argue they were only serving the desires of their customers.
And how many people always pick the cheaper, less cosmetically pleasing, Class II vegetables when they're out shopping?
Heritage
If there's anything that can break our conditioning for liking regular-shaped vegetables, it's the current economic climate and the increasing awareness of the environmental cost of food production.
"The idea is to avoid waste," says Mr Mann. "Economic times are hard. Why shouldn't people be allowed to go into supermarkets and get apples that are smaller and cheaper?"
The looming recession could well spark a market for misshapes when the law changes next summer, says Michael Barker, fresh foods correspondent of the Grocer magazine.
"When people are short of money the last thing we want to be doing is to be restricting the amount of fruit and vegetables we can sell. It may be stuff with blemishes, slightly misshapen, not that there's anything wrong with it.
"There is all sorts of anecdotal evidence that people are really much more interested in the authenticity and heritage at the moment."
Cookery shows have started paving the way for wonky veg, with many emphasising taste over presentation, realness over blandness and variety over conformity.
The regulations that are being repealed say nothing about taste. But once prejudices are set to one side, that is probably what most people want from their produce, however knobbly.

George Bush's Resignation Speech

PRETTY MUCH SUMS IT UP
BUSH'S RESIGNATION SPEECH
The following 'speech' was written recently by an ordinary Maine-iac [a resident of the People's Republic of Maine ]. While satirical in nature, all satire must have a basis in fact to be effective. This is an excellent piece by a person who does not write for a living.



The speech George W. Bush might give:

Normally, I start these things out by saying 'My Fellow Americans.' Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.
I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people. I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.
Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media.

Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this 'blood for oil' thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq 's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied...People Died' either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named ' Clinton ' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?
Now some of you morons want to be led by a junior senator with no understanding of foreign policy or economics, and this nitwit says we should attack Pakistan , a nuclear ally. And then he wants to go to Iran and make peace with a terrorist who says he's going to destroy us. While he's doing that, he wants to give Iraq to al Qaeda, Afghanistan to the Taliban, Israel to the Palestinians, and your money to the IRS so the government can give welfare to illegal aliens, who he will make into citizens, so they can vote to re-elect him. He also thinks it's okay for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and we should stop our foreign aid to Israel . Did you sleep through high school?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.

That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.'

Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time yo u send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times, USA Today, or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol or Dancing with Stars.

I co uld say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient for years. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America .

Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.


PS - Yo u might want to start learning Farsi, and buy a Koran.

Here it is

Election time.

Only this time The excitement is not there. In the past 2 presidential elections I've sat on the edge of the chair all night. Not this year. As of 9pm eastern its over. The country is going in the shitter. Socialism is here. The future of our country will soon be ruined forever. Make no mistake this is not about race. This is about a person so ill qualified to lead being put in charge. I am scared for the future. Nobody knows anything about Obama. In fact we know far more about Osama then Obama. Thats scary. The economy will not magically return. In 4 years the country will be in such a sad state that people will be begging to leave. Its not right the way the media jumped on the Obama bandwagon and kept the kid gloves on. They never asked the same questions they did of Bush or even of Gore and Kerry. Its pathetic what the country has become. People blindly following this guy that they know nothing about. His openly racist wife as first lady is just awful. In 1976 I quit eating peanut butter as 9 year old. I've never gone back. I have no idea what I'll quit for this guy as I like the rest of the country no nothing about him and he is now our commander in chief elect.

Go ahead and celebrate. You will all be worse off in the next 4 years as Socialism takes hold. Its not going to be pretty. I like keeping what is mine. You should have like that too. You will find out what Obama stands for when your 401K, SeP IRA, and other retirement accounts are taxed at obscene levels. Better get used to hiding your money in your mattress and buy your guns now as your 2nd Amendment rights will soon be severely curtailed.