Slope 45
10 years ago
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Friday, December 07, 2007
George Bush Guides Desperate Homeowners To Religion
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. homeowners who could face crippling mortgage payments will have a hard time getting help if they call a telephone number President George W. Bush recommended on Thursday -- he gave them the wrong number.
"I have a message for every homeowner worried about rising mortgage payments: The best you can do for your family is to call 1-800-995-HOPE," Bush said after a White House meeting with administration officials and lenders on a new plan to help.
Unfortunately he was a couple digits off, it is actually 1-888-995-HOPE(4673). That gets you through to the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit group which offers free housing counseling for homeowners.
Moments after Bush completed his remarks, a White House aide told reporters the president misspoke and gave the correct number.
Calls to the wrong number Bush gave out were met with a busy signal. A search on the Internet showed it belongs to the Freedom Christian Academy which offers religious-based curriculum for home schooling and is located in Ponder, Texas northwest of Dallas.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. homeowners who could face crippling mortgage payments will have a hard time getting help if they call a telephone number President George W. Bush recommended on Thursday -- he gave them the wrong number.
"I have a message for every homeowner worried about rising mortgage payments: The best you can do for your family is to call 1-800-995-HOPE," Bush said after a White House meeting with administration officials and lenders on a new plan to help.
Unfortunately he was a couple digits off, it is actually 1-888-995-HOPE(4673). That gets you through to the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit group which offers free housing counseling for homeowners.
Moments after Bush completed his remarks, a White House aide told reporters the president misspoke and gave the correct number.
Calls to the wrong number Bush gave out were met with a busy signal. A search on the Internet showed it belongs to the Freedom Christian Academy which offers religious-based curriculum for home schooling and is located in Ponder, Texas northwest of Dallas.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Monday, December 03, 2007
DOC: All The Calculators You'll Ever Need
Need to balance your checkbook or calculate monthly mortgage payments? Or perhaps you need your body mass index or blood pressure chart? Maybe you need unit conversions? Geometric or trigonometric calculations perhaps? It's all right in this one MS Excel file. Check it out!
Click here to download. If asked whether to open or save, Save the document to your computer, and then you can open it from there.
Click here to download. If asked whether to open or save, Save the document to your computer, and then you can open it from there.
Cricket Thermometer
Outdoor temperature can be determined by counting the chirps of a cricket.
Crickets chirp by rubbing their wings or legs over each other. Yet it is only the males of the species that make this noise — they do so to attract mates. Therefore, when you're happily listening to the soothing sound of crickets chirping, you're actually eavesdropping on a courting ritual meant to warn off other lust-filled male crickets and to draw interested females to the ones doing the
serenading.
The notion that counting the chirps of crickets can serve as an informal way of working out the temperature is not new — in 1897, physicist Amos Dolbear proposed the reverse of that idea, stating outdoor temperature determined the number of cricket calls one would hear. Over the years, his way of looking at this relationship was turned on its head — people now count the chirps to get the temp rather than consult the thermometer to figure out how many cricket calls they will hear.
We've encountered a variety of "cricket chirp thermometer formulas" over the years. One specifies counting the chirps over a 40-second interval, then adding 38 to that number to achieve the current temperature. Another say it's chirps over 14 seconds then add 38. Yet a third says it's number of chirps heard in 15 seconds then add 48.
The formula endorsed by The Old Farmer's Almanac seems the most reliable:
To convert cricket chirps to degrees Fahrenheit, count number of chirps in 14 seconds then add 40 to get temperature.
Example: 30 chirps + 40 = 70° F
To convert cricket chirps to degrees Celsius, count number of chirps in 25 seconds, divide by 3, then add 4 to get temperature.
Example: 48 chirps ÷ 3 + 4 = 20° C
Dr. Peggy LeMone of The GLOBE Program (a science education program funded by NASA, NOAA, NSF, and others) studied the theory during the summer of 2007 at her home in Boulder, Colorado, and posted her findings post to her blog on 5 October 2007. Greatly simplifying her research, she found that when she counted the chirps during a 15 second span and then added 37 to that number, the resultant figure did closely approximate the actual air temperature (Graph 1). However, when she slightly adjusted the formula by recording chirp counts at 13 second intervals, then adding 40, the results even more closely adhered to the actual air temperature (Graph 2). Her findings (chirps in 13 seconds plus 40) confirms The Old Farmer's Almanac's wisdom (chirps in 14 seconds plus 40).
Graph 1
Graph 2
Now, granted, this mode of determining the temperature will work only when there are crickets about. Also, it's accurate only down to 55 degrees Fahrenheit or so, because crickets either aren't about or aren't in the mood for love at lower temperatures.
Crickets chirp by rubbing their wings or legs over each other. Yet it is only the males of the species that make this noise — they do so to attract mates. Therefore, when you're happily listening to the soothing sound of crickets chirping, you're actually eavesdropping on a courting ritual meant to warn off other lust-filled male crickets and to draw interested females to the ones doing the
serenading.
The notion that counting the chirps of crickets can serve as an informal way of working out the temperature is not new — in 1897, physicist Amos Dolbear proposed the reverse of that idea, stating outdoor temperature determined the number of cricket calls one would hear. Over the years, his way of looking at this relationship was turned on its head — people now count the chirps to get the temp rather than consult the thermometer to figure out how many cricket calls they will hear.
We've encountered a variety of "cricket chirp thermometer formulas" over the years. One specifies counting the chirps over a 40-second interval, then adding 38 to that number to achieve the current temperature. Another say it's chirps over 14 seconds then add 38. Yet a third says it's number of chirps heard in 15 seconds then add 48.
The formula endorsed by The Old Farmer's Almanac seems the most reliable:
To convert cricket chirps to degrees Fahrenheit, count number of chirps in 14 seconds then add 40 to get temperature.
Example: 30 chirps + 40 = 70° F
To convert cricket chirps to degrees Celsius, count number of chirps in 25 seconds, divide by 3, then add 4 to get temperature.
Example: 48 chirps ÷ 3 + 4 = 20° C
Dr. Peggy LeMone of The GLOBE Program (a science education program funded by NASA, NOAA, NSF, and others) studied the theory during the summer of 2007 at her home in Boulder, Colorado, and posted her findings post to her blog on 5 October 2007. Greatly simplifying her research, she found that when she counted the chirps during a 15 second span and then added 37 to that number, the resultant figure did closely approximate the actual air temperature (Graph 1). However, when she slightly adjusted the formula by recording chirp counts at 13 second intervals, then adding 40, the results even more closely adhered to the actual air temperature (Graph 2). Her findings (chirps in 13 seconds plus 40) confirms The Old Farmer's Almanac's wisdom (chirps in 14 seconds plus 40).
Graph 1
Graph 2
Now, granted, this mode of determining the temperature will work only when there are crickets about. Also, it's accurate only down to 55 degrees Fahrenheit or so, because crickets either aren't about or aren't in the mood for love at lower temperatures.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Winter Images
Crossbill feeding on fir trees
Female Northern Cardinal on a Snowy Pine
Red Fox
Red Fox chasing a snack
Adelie Penguins in Hope Bay, Antarctica
Swimming Emperor Penguins, Antarctica
Polar Bear, Svalbard, Norway
All the Comforts of Home
Unexpected Guests, Polar Bears
Mount Thamserku, Nepal
Illinois Canyon, Starved Rock State Park, Illinois, USA
Icerbergs, Cook Inlet, Alaska, USA
Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada
Big Thompson River, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA
Anchorage, Alaska, USA
South Tufa Grove, Mono Lake, California, USA
Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA
Hallstatt, Austria
Statuary Walk, Central Park, New York City, New York, USA
Central Park, New York City, New York
Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia, Canada
Mount Robson and Berg Lake, Canada
Staubbach Waterfall, Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria, Germany
Denali National Park, Alaska, USA
Mount Rainier and Tipsoo Lake, Washington, USA
LaSalle County, Illinois, USA
Winter Haven, Germany
Icebreaking, Antarctica
Icebreaking, Antarctica
Antarctica
Antarctica
Eroded Iceberg in Lemaire Channel, Antarctica
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