More photographic evidence of the Birthday Bonanza!

Brandy and I invited several folks over to the house this weekend to celebrate our birthdays. It was a lot of fun and a big thanks to everyone who came out for the shenanigans.

We fired up the grill and pulled out the drinks for all of our guests. However, I completely underestimated the amount of food I had planned to cook. We planned for 2 hamburgers a person as well as corn on the cob and roasted potatoes. MLONF brought along additional hamburgers as well as chicken. Now, I do not have a small grill, but let’s say it took me 45 minutes to an hour to cook all the food on the grill.

We had three varieties of hamburgers:

1. Pre-made normal beef patties. Yummy!
2. Ground beef and Ground pork mixed with onions and slight seasoning. Yummy +1!
3. Ground beef and Ground pork mixed with onions, chipotle peppers, and an assortment of spices. Yummy +2!

For our 17 guests, we ended up with 35+ hamburgers, 12 chicken legs, 16 ears of corn, and 4 small pans of potatoes. This does not include the pasta salads, barbecue weenies, fruit salads, and desserts. Needless to say, we ate well.

Speaking of cake, Christian baked us a special Birthmeh Cake.

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This interesting article at money.cnn.com promotes various products whose inspiration is Mother Nature herself and natural phenomena that scientists are working to duplicate. Biomimicry could lead to a brand new generation of products and inventions allowing people to gain benefit from natural designs.

Read on…

Product design by Mother Nature - June 1, 2007

Natural designs, honed through millions of years of evolution, tend to be surprisingly efficient. Products built along those lines could replace the detritus of the first industrial age with cleaner, more elegant, and much more sustainable substitutes.

“Biomimicry has become a methodology for finding answers to engineering or design questions,” says Janine Benyus, who wrote one of the first books on the subject and now consults with companies looking to profit from biomimics. “You take an engineering problem like how to lubricate or adhere to something, and you find examples of how nature has solved that problem. If you look carefully, you can always find technologies shaped by natural selection that hold the answers.”

If you are in the Cape Canaveral area this evening, be on the lookout for the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

NASA: Atlantis is ready to launch - CNN.com

After a three-month delay, NASA entered the final day of a launch countdown for space shuttle Atlantis Thursday with no major technical problems looming and a forecast for promising weather. Forecasters predicted an 80 percent chance that the weather would allow NASA to launch its first space shuttle mission of the year at 7:38 p.m. ET Friday.

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Ok, not quite the epic battle of the titans, but still interesting nonetheless.

Concerned reader, Marcy, has alerted me that Anderson Cooper will be covering the mysterious bee disappearances on tonight’s (May 15th, 2007) show.

From the newsblurb:

It’s a mystery of epic proportions — bees vanishing in the billions without a shred of evidence. Anderson Cooper takes you inside the forensic investigation: What’s killing the bees? Watch tonight, 10 ET.

Hit the link for more details:
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/

AC 360 on CNN at 9 central 10 eastern

As more is revealed about this situation, the more concerned I am. There’s not much I can do about it, but concerned I remain.

CNN is the latest news outlet reporting on the missing bees. An alarming statistic — 25% of the US bee population has vanished. That’s a lot of bees… and considering they pollinate a grand majority of US crops, this is huge. (more…)

Okay, I’ll admit it. I am curious about the bee situation. So I’m following it as various articles come up, and more than likely, I’ll continue posting here about it.

From the article:

“Preliminary work has identified several likely factors that could be causing or contributing to CCD,” says Dennis vanEngelsdorp, acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. “Among them are mites and associated diseases, some unknown pathogenic disease and pesticide contamination or poisoning.”

So, it could be wi-fi electrical interference or some form of disease. Either way, there doesn’t seem to be a solution sighted in the near future.

ScienceDaily: Honey Bee Die-off Alarms Beekeepers, Crop Growers And Researchers

Powered by ScribeFire.

Apparently, this is becoming a big issue. First, they report the electromagnetic radiation may be a cause for bees to lose track of where “home” is. And now more bees, into the billions according to the article, are being lost.

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Reading along my usual news sources today brought up an interesting article about the disappearance of large amounts of bees. And strangely, it has been attributed to electromagnetic radiation released from many of our high-tech gadgetry — mainly cell phones. (more…)

Born from Huntsville, Alabama, comes a movie adaptation of the scientific book: Flatland.

If you don’t know what this is, you will, more than likely, not care about this. However, since I like stuff like this, I shall pass it along to you.

First, the book:

Second, the movie stuffs:

Now entering Flatland [AL.com]

Flatland: The Film - Produced in Alabama
Flatland: The Movie - Produced in Hollywood
Enjoy!