Quote of the Day

"Make no mistake about it: the attack on the public service unions in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana is the first volley in an all-out war by conservatives on all unions. If they succeed at destroying them, they'll have eliminated the last great countervailing force against the political power of corporations in this country."  Donald Kaul - What's At Stake In Wisconsin

Every Once in Awhile

I see this labeled as Best Commercial Ever.

Miles on Monday

 Photos taken 2/21/2011

I Stand With Wisconsin

Click here

Happy Birthday Elizabeth Taylor

 To me Elizabeth Taylor is and always has been the most beautiful woman in the world.  Her later humanitarian work has shown that her soul is also beautiful.  I wish her a very Happy 79th Birthday.  Text below from Wilipaedia.


Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE (born 27 February 1932), also known as Liz Taylor, is an English/American actress.^[1] A former child star, she grew to be known for her acting talent and beauty, as well as her Hollywood lifestyle, including many marriages. Taylor is considered one of the great actresses of Hollywood's golden age. The American Film Institute named Taylor seventh on its Female Legends list.

 Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in Hampstead, a wealthy district of North West London, the second child of Francis Lenn Taylor (1897–1968) and Sara Viola Warmbrodt (1895–1994), who were Americans residing in England. Taylor's older brother, Howard Taylor, was born in 1929.

Here parents were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas. Her father was an art dealer and her mother a former actress.  Shortly before the beginning of World War II, her parents decided to return to the United States to avoid hostilities. They settled in Los Angeles, California, where Sara's family, the Warmbrodts, were then living. Taylor appeared in her first motion picture at the age of nine in There's One Born Every Minute, her only film for Universal Pictures.

Taylor has devoted much time and energy to AIDS-related charities and fundraising. She helped start the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) after the death of her former costar and friend, Rock Hudson. She also created her own AIDS foundation, the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation (ETAF). By 1999, she had helped to raise an estimated US$50 million to fight the disease. In 2006, Taylor commissioned a 37-foot (11 m) "Care Van" equipped with examination tables and X Ray equipment and also donated US$40,000 to the New Orleans Aids task force, a charity designed for the New Orleans population with AIDS and HIV. The donation of the van was made by the Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation and Macy's.

She was born with a mutation that caused double rows of eyelashes, which enhanced her appearance on camera.  Taylor appeared in her first motion picture at the age of nine.it was Taylor's persistence in campaigning for the role of Velvet Brown in MGM's National Velvet that skyrocketed Taylor to stardom at the tender age of 12. Taylor's character, Velvet Brown, is a young girl who trains her beloved horse to win the Grand National. National Velvet, which also costarred beloved American favorite Mickey Rooney and English newcomer Angela Lansbury, became an overwhelming success upon its release in December 1944 and altered Taylor's life forever.

Taylor was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for the following films:Raintree County (1957) opposite Montgomery Clift; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) opposite Paul Newman; and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) with Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn and Mercedes McCambridge.

In 1960, Taylor became the highest paid actress up to that time when she signed a one million dollar contract to play the title role in20th Century Fox's lavish production of Cleopatra, which would eventually be released in 1963.

Taylor won two Academy Awards both for Best Actress, and was awarded the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Academy Award in 1992 for her work fighting AIDS. She joined the list of two time Academy Award winning Best Actress winners which includes Luise Rainer, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Jodie Foster and Hillary Swank. (Bergman has a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as well, and Helen Hayes, Maggie Smith, Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep have an Oscar apiece for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Katharine Hepburn has 4 Best Actress Oscars.) ^[32] In 1999, Taylor was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

You can read the Kennedy Center Biography for Elizabeth Taylor here.



And a description of that evening in 2002 here.

Elizabeth Taylor Rose

Just popped into my head

Scott Walker should run for President.  He has proven that he can unite American workers.

New Medicine

The Internets are wonderful. You can get all sorts of helpful information.  My blogfriend Dr. Ur-Spo posted this today. I must off to find me some..(Not that I need it.)

Found For Friday

Note - If you came directly here for the Jokes please scroll down to the post below to see some exciting pictures from the Discovery Launching yesterday taken by Bob Kelly.


 Arriving home, a husband was met at the door by his sobbing wife.

Tearfully, she explained,"It's the druggist. He insulted me terribly this morning on the phone."

Immediately, the husband drove downtown to confront the druggist and demand an apology. But before he could say more than a word or two, the druggist told him,"Now, just a minute, listen to my side of it.

"This morning the alarm failed to go off, so I was late getting up. I went without breakfast and hurried out to the car, just to realize that I'd locked the house with both house and car keys inside and had to break a window to get my keys. Then, driving a little too fast, I got a speeding ticket. Later, when I was about three blocks from the store, I had a flat tire. When I finally got to the store a bunch of people were waiting for me to open up. I got the store opened and started waiting on these people, all the time the darn phone was ringing off the hook. Then I had to break a roll of nickels against the cash register drawer to make change, and they spilled all over the floor. I had to get down on my hands and knees to pick up the nickels and the phone was still ringing. When I came up I cracked my head on the open cash drawer, which made me stagger back against a showcase with a bunch of perfume bottles on it. Half of them hit the floor and broke. Meanwhile, the phone is still ringing with no let up, and I finally got back to answer it.

"It was your wife. She wanted to know how to use a rectal thermometer.

"And believe me mister,
as God is my witness,
All I did was tell her."

Did you ever wonder why there are no dead penguins

On the ice in  Antarctica   - where do they go ?
                                  
Wonder no more ! ! !

It is a known fact that the penguin is a very ritualistic

Bird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life.

 The penguin is very committed to its family and will

Mate for life, as well as maintaining a form of

Compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life.

 

If a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, other

Members of the family and social circle have been

Known to dig holes in  the ice, using their vestigial

Wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for

The dead bird to be rolled into and buried.

The male penguins then gather in a circle

Around the fresh grave and sing:

 

 

                         "Freeze a jolly good fellow"

                         "Freeze a jolly good fellow."

 

                         "Then they kick him in the ice hole." 

                       
                      
          You really didn't believe that I know anything about penguins, did you?

As he lay on his deathbed, the man confided to his wife, "I cannot die without telling you the truth. I cheated on you throughout our whole marriage. All those nights when I told you I was working late, I was with other women. And not just one woman either, but I've slept with dozens of them."

His wife looked at him calmly and said, "Why do you think I gave you the poison?" 

The Ventriloquist

A young ventriloquist is touring the clubs and one night he's doing a show in a small town in New Brunswick .

With his dummy on his knee, he starts going through his usual dumb blonde jokes. Suddenly, a blonde woman in the 4th row stands on her chair and starts shouting,  "Ive heard enough of your stupid ass blonde jokes!  What  makes you think you can stereotype women that way? What does the color of a person's hair have to do with her worth as a human being?    Guys like you who keep women like me from being respected at work  and in the community, and from reaching our full potential as a person, because you and your kind continue to perpetuate discrimination against not only blondes, but women in general and all in the name of humor!"

The embarrassed ventriloquist begins to apologize, and the blonde , "You stay out of this, mister!  I'm talking to that little  f---er on your knee!"

 A couple made a deal that whoever died first would come back and inform the other if there is sex after death.

Their biggest fear was that there was no after-life at all.

After a long life together, the husband was the first to die.

True to his word, he made the first contact:

" Mary... Mary "

"Is that you, John?"

"Yes, I've come back like we agreed."

"That's wonderful!   What's it like?"

"Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex. I have breakfast and then it's off to the golf course.

I have sex again, bathe in the warm sun and then have sex a couple of more times.

Then I have lunch (you'd be proud - lots of greens). Another romp around the golf course, then pretty much have sex the rest of the afternoon. After supper, it's back to golf course again.

Then it's more sex until late at night. I catch some much needed sleep and then the next day it starts all over again"

"Oh, John are you in Heaven?"

*

*

*

*  

* 

"No... I'm a rabbit in North Dakota" 

 One dark night outside a small town in Minnesota , a fire started inside the local chemical plant and in a blink of an eye it exploded into massive flames. The alarm went out to all the fire departments for miles around.

When the volunteer fire fighters appeared on the scene, the chemical company president rushed to the fire chief and said, "All our secret formulas are in the vault in the center of the plant. They must be saved. I will give $50,000 to the fire department that brings them out intact."

But the roaring flames held the firefighters off.

Soon more fire departments had to be called in as the situation became desperate. As the firemen arrived, the president shouted out that the offer was now $100,000 to the fire department who could bring out the company's secret files.

From the distance, a lone siren was heard as another fire truck came into sight. It was the nearby Norwegian rural township volunteer fire company composed mainly of Norwegians over the age of 65. To everyone's amazement, that little run-down fire engine roared right past all the newer sleek engines that were parked outside the plant.

Without even slowing down it drove straight into the middle of the inferno. Outside, the other firemen watched as the Norwegian old timers jumped off right in the middle of the fire fought it back on all sides. It was a performance and effort never seen before.

Within a short time, the Norske old timers had extinguished the fire and had saved the secret formulas. The grateful chemical company president announced that for such a superhuman feat he was upping the reward to $200,000, and walked over to personally thank each of the brave fire fighters.

The local TV news reporter rushed in to capture the event on film, asking their chief, "What are you going to do with all that money?"

"Vell," said Ole Larsen, the 70-year-old fire chief, "Da first thing ve gonna do is fix da brakes on dat focking truck!"

 Mother Superior was on her way to late morning prayers, when she passed two novices just leaving early morning prayers, on their way to classes. As she passed the young ladies, Mother Superior said, 'Good morning, ladies.'

The novices replied, 'Good morning, Mother Superior, may God be with you.'

But after they had passed, Mother Superior heard one say to the other, 'I think she got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.'

This startled Mother Superior, but she chose not to pursue the issue.

A little further down the hall, Mother Superior passed two of the Sisters who had been teaching at the convent for several years. She greeted them with, 'Good morning, Sister Martha, Sister Jessica, may God give you wisdom for our students today.'

'Good morning, Mother Superior. Thank you, and may God be with you.'

But again, after passing, Mother Superior overheard, 'She got out of the wrong side of bed today.'

Baffled, she started to wonder if she had spoken harshly, or with an irritated look on her face. She vowed to be more pleasant. Looking down the hall, Mother Superior saw retired Sister Mary approaching, step by step, with her walker. As Sister Mary was rather deaf, Mother Superior had plenty of time to arrange a pleasant smile on her face, before greeting Sister Mary.

'Good morning, Sister Mary. I'm so happy to see you up and about. I pray God watches over you today, and grants you a wonderful day.'

'Ah, Good morning, Mother Superior, and thank you. I see you got up on the wrong side of bed this morning.'

Mother Superior was floored!

'Sister Mary, what have I done wrong? I have tried to be pleasant, but three times already today, people have said that about me.'

Sister Mary stopped her walker, and looked Mother Superior in the face.

'Oh, don't take it personally, Mother Superior. It's just that you're wearing Father Murphy's slippers.!

 The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

The book about Teflon contained no frictional characters

What is the difference between a well dressed man on a bicycle and a poorly dressed man on a tricycle? A tire

As a young boy, Brutus' mother often cautioned him not to run with Caesars.

I dropped a tub of margarine in the kitchen and ended up with a Parkay floor

I couldn't resist the last two. Have a great week-end. Thanks for stopping by.

Dazzled by Space Shuttle Discovery - Photos by Bob Kelly

Bob went to Florida for the last launching of the Space Shuttle.  He shares the experience with us on Bailey's Buddy. jcs  


Space Shuttle STS-133 blasted off in the late afternoon sun at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 4:50 PM.  It had been many months in the making originally scheduled for a November, 2010 launch, but was delayed because of equipment related problems that NASA officials were meticulous about fixing so all would be perfect!   


It was loud, wonderful, and all I hoped it would be.  I was in a special VIP viewing site along a causeway just a mile or so east of the Kennedy Space Center.  I was still six miles away from the launch on pad 39A, but I reached out as much as I could with my big lens, and while it does not look like the stills you see in newspapers, that are shot from remotely controlled cameras, so close that no one can be near them….these are my shots that I saw, and as such are special to me, and hopefully to you as well.  I was surprised most by the extreme orange brightness of the flames coming from the solid rocket boosters.  The delay for the roar of the engines was fun to hear as by the time we heard it six miles away the Shuttle was thousands of feet into the air. 

Ready

Cap Retracted

Ignition

Through The Steam

Clearing the Tower

Got Boosters

Roll Over

Ascent Vertical

Ascent Horizontal

Throttle Up

Booster Separation

Exhaust Trail

Shuttle Tracking

It is already hot and humid in Florida by mid afternoon, and on Wednesday when I flew into this area it was 80 degrees, with humidity to match, under a full sun. The day was about the most totally perfect weather day you could ever imagine, with temps in the mid 70s, full sun, soft breeze coming from the Atlantic and the Banana River, low humidity…superlative!   There were about 5000 space fans at my viewing site all aching to see one of our finest achievements prove itself once again.  Estimates are that as many as 200,000 people will be viewing the launch here in various viewing locating around the Kennedy Space Center and elsewhere. 

Six Mile Lens

Big Glass

Some of my 5000 Causeway Friends

We were picked up by a NASA bus in a parking lot at 7 AM, driven to the Kennedy Space Center where we and our "stuff" we brought along, all had to get off the bus.  We were free to visit sights at the Space Center, but we had to take our stuff with us.  Mine was my checked suitcase I used to fly out here, now emptied of everything and holding the roller camera bag, with big lens, other lenses, batteries, and things like that.  The suitcase also held my tripod and a special Wimberely head to hold the big lens and make it more steady and responsive. 


It took two hours for us to depart and get out of our area, back into the public roadways and out to our parking lot where we met, and then it took me driving for two more hours to finally reach the hostel.   It seemed many of the 200,000 people were in front of me as we crawled slowly back down Cheney Highway to where my hotel is located. 


I rushed home and downloaded my photos making the images look the best I could, and have shared a few of them with you here.  If you want to know more about this mission just Google STS-133 (STS stands for Space Transportation System)…duh!, and this is the 133rd shuttle flight.  This particular flight it to be the final flight for the Shuttle Discovery, as it is to retire proudly and at some point be displayed properly so others can visit it up close and personal.  This mission is one of re-supply of equipment on the International Space Station, and also the installation of the last USA modules to be attached to the Space Station.  This module among other things includes a humanoid looking robot who will be able to perform functions on the station remotely, as I understand it. 


That leaves only two shuttles that are still flying and that would be the Atlantis, and Endeavor.  Endeavor is to launch sometime in mid March, under the hand of Captain Kelly!!  His wife was the congresswoman who got shot in Tucson, Arizona a month or so ago, and hopefully she is going to be here for the launch. Atlantis at this point is available if a problem with Endeavor would occur, then it would be capable of being launched.  I believe it may have a mission of its own if it is not needed as a backup, sometime later in 2011.  Of course if Congress re-evaluates NASA funding, things could still change and perhaps other flights added. 


Shuttle Discovery is the oldest surviving member of the fleet as has some momentous flights in its history.  It was the the first shuttle to dock with the Russian Mir space craft in orbit.  It was the first flight back into space after the tragic accident of the Challenger, and then again late the Colombia shuttles.  In October, 1998 it took, 77 year old John Glen back into space for a memorable shuttle experience. 


Friday will be a free day to see some other NASA exhibits I missed, and to walk along the Canaveral National Seashore, soaking up the surf and sun.  Meanwhile Iowa is to get 1-3 inches of snow this weekend, so that may be what I am coming home to a few days from now.  For the moment I am honored to be in this place, to see and share this momentous event.  It is one I will enjoy describing to my incredible sweet and vibrant grandsons, Charlie and Quinn, and doing so several times as they grow older and want to know more.  Thanks for listening….

Jay here-  I watched the launch on TV and it was more exciting knowing Bob was there. I found this on YouTube.