Welcome to my Autohagiography.
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Also, this really sounds like he's saying "transforming the jews! We Need your support!"
Most tribal people probably ate less than 100 species or plants and animals, and excluding the animals, I wouln't be surprised if an even higher percentage of their plant calories came from even fewer sources than in our diets today. We get wheat and rice and corn, but until 500 years ago, each of those crops was the sole staple of different regions. Mayans ate corn, probably a lot of it, and Japanese ate cart loads of rice, and Europeans subsisted on bread. Yes they also collected weeds from the field, but as a source of nutrients a cartload of rice and a cartload of weeds add up to a diet based almost entirely on rice.
Therefore, I propose that despite the radical indutrialization of our food supply, we eat a more diverse number of plants than ever before in human history. Only 100 years ago, no human had ever eaten a mango and an avocado on the same day. And yet I eat those all the time. Plus cherries and blueberries, and sometimes dragon fruit and kiwano melons.
At the end of the event, a man yelled out to Obama that he will be a better president than George Bush. Obama responded, “So would you!”
"(Julia Child) lights up the scene briefly, as (she) did the day before yesterday when with her bare fingers, she snatched a set of cannellini beans out of the pot of boiling water with the cry, ‘Wow! These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock.’”
Here's the artist's website; it streams 3 non-crunk songs.
Reminds me of The Tick's nemesis the Human Ton and his literate sidekick Handy, but alas there is no youtube of that.
I showed it to Josh in my next class, and he offered to use his skills as a Metalworking TA to refine the stuff. That sounded great to me, and we agreed to split the loot 50/50.
The jar had about 3.5 pounds of gravelly black metal rocks and dust in it, but there was no telling exactly how much silver could be extracted from it. Why would the professors and students price the jar at 50 cents if they thought there was any real use for the stuff? But we were optimistic.
Josh (l) and newly enlisted metalworking classmate Tyler (r) melted down the rocks with giant blow torches while I helpfully watched.
Then, with most of the impurities removed, they did their best to pour the liquid silver into bar-molds.
After that, they gave each bar to me to file off glass impurities and flatten as best I could (using a hammer and an anvil), making them suitable for running through a press that can smash metal into sheets.
After all was said and done, we had 19 ounces of silver! Success!
Silver is selling for about $13.50 per ounce! It took us about 2 hours to turn the 50 cents of dirty metal gravel into $200+ of silver! I gave half to Josh (who gave a bar to Tyler) and kept 9.5 ounces for myself. I offered the silver to the other jewelry students at $10/ounce, and sold 3.7 ounces for $35. I still have a big 4.4 ounce bar and a 1.4 ounce nugget, but mostly because people didn't have cash on them. Next week I expect to sell the bar and maybe keep the nugget, just so i have something to illustrate this story (besides my nifty new jar!).
Supposedly there was another 50 cent jar of this stuff sold earlier in the day, but you can't win them all.
The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.
The Cabinet-level position, to be known as Secretary of the Nation, was established by an executive order Sept. 2, but has remained unfilled in the intervening weeks.
At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.
Among the new secretary's duties are preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States, commanding the U.S. armed forces, appointing judges and ambassadors, and vetoing congressional legislation. The secretary will also be tasked with overseeing all foreign and domestic affairs, including those relating to the economy, natural disasters, national infrastructure, homeland security, poverty, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To fill such a role, the White House is searching for someone with enough stature and confidence to deal directly with heavyweight administration figures such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
Bush said the creation of the post directly addresses the increasingly complex and sometimes overwhelming challenges facing the executive branch in the 21st century. Although he acknowledged that the tasks facing the new appointee will be extraordinary, Bush ended his announcement on a positive note.
"As your president, it is my duty to see this nation through any crisis, no matter how severe. And as your president, I pledge to you that I will find a man capable of doing just that," Bush said. "I will not—I repeat, I will not—let you down."
Genghis Khan's empire connected and amalgamated the many civilizations around him into a new world order. At the time of his birth in 1162, the Old World consisted of a series of regional civilizations each of which could claim virtually no knowledge of any civilization beyond its closest neighbor. No one in China had heard of Europe, and no one in Europe had heard of China, and, so far as is known, no person had made the journey from one to the other. By the time of his death in 1227, he had connected them with diplomatic and commercial contacts that still remain unbroken.
In American terms, the accomplishment of Genghis Khan might be understood if the United States, instead of being created by a group of educated merchants or wealthy planters, had been founded by one of its illiterate slaves, who, by the sheer force of personality, charisma, and determination, liberated America from foreign rule, united the people, created an alphabet, wrote the constitution, established universal religious freedom, invented a new system of warfare, marched an army from Canada to Brazil, and opened roads of commerce in a free-trade zone that stretched across the continents.
