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China reports first case of Zika virus disease in a man who had traveled to Venezuela. (ABC News)

A pregnant Australian woman in the state of Queensland tests positive for the Zika virus.

 (ABC News Australia via MSN)

She has evidently passed away.....

I like them. Post more. ;-)

Turns out the mechanic broke the sunroof window while trying to fix the car. So Cadillac said they would pay to repair it. (Although it will take them another day)

They just called up... (at 4pm) to let me know they just got the new glass for the sunroof.

The service advisor asks me if it is "ok". I respond. "it is what it is".... What else can I say?  

He quickly responds that he will take 10% off of my bill. 

Sigh.... the Cadillac Engineers could have avoided all of this in the first place with a better design.

• Proven oil reserves: 297,170 MMbl (#1 in the world; 20% of world reserves)
• Oil production: 3 MMbl/day (3.56% of world production)
• GDP (nominal) per capita: $7,576 (#76 in the world)
• Population: 30,206,307 (#44 in the world; %0.42 of world population)...

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Venezuela-not-a-lot-richer-given-that-its-sitting-on-the-worlds-largest-oil-reserves-and-has-a-population-of-only-30-million

I like how he concludes his essay. 

"And the last thing that I'll leave you with is the wealth of the Chavez family: $550 million . So much for Socialism."

"Of course eventually you would get vaporized. I'll explain why. At 99.99% of c you are not only moving at that whopping speed away from Earth, but also plowing through the interstellar medium (ISM). About 1% of the mass of the ISM is dust. The dust particles are about 10^-17 kg in mass and there is about one of those dust particles every cubic hectometer, or 1 particle every 1million cubic meter of ISM. Now let's assume that the front or our needle-like ship has an area of 100 square meter. That means every 10 km we travel we hit one such particle. The energy of the hit is mcc, where m is multiplied by the gamma factor of 70 (see other answers) and c squared is about 10^17. So every dust spec hits with an energy of 70 Joule. Compare that to a 0.1 kg apple hitting you at about 100 km/h. At almost the speed of light we are doing 300,000 km/s which is 30,000 dust specs hitting like apples per second, at 70 Joules per hit, is 2,100,000 Joule per second or 2.1 MW, that is Mega Watt! So we do not need headlights. Isn't this barrage of hits slowing us down? Let's check it out. The impulse delivered per dust spec is gamma times rest mass times light speed times number of hits per second, or 70 times 10^-17 times 3 times 10^8 times 30,000, or number of hits per second, or about 0,0063 kg m/s^2 or o.oo63 N for Newton, that is the like the force corresponding to the weight of less than a gram on Earth. That is very easy to compensate by a tiny rocket engine that is ignited for a short time during a day. So at these phantastic velocities we see the difference between Energy and Momentum. The higher the speed, the higher the energy and the momentum just can't keep up. So why would you eventually get vaporized?Because you would eventually hit a dust particle of a microgram, or 10^-9 kg, which would have a yield of about 10^10 Joule, which would basically kill the ship, because that is like a 10 ton truck hitting you at 3600 km/h. Sorry Trekkies, no Enterprise, ever. " - Ben H.

"The notion of mass "increasing" with velocity is an outdated one. Under current definitions of "mass", mass doesn't increase at all with velocity; instead, it is an intrinsic property of the object in question, which is the same in all reference frames.

... If you're inside your rocket ship traveling at 99.99% of the speed of light relative to Earth, you wouldn't be able to tell you were moving at all without looking out the windows (or at your instruments, etc.) Specifically, you would not somehow have more trouble moving because of your increased inertia, and you would not see time slow down for yourself. It's only observers on Earth who would see your time slow down and your inertia increase."

The magnitudes of most of the famous effects of special relativity (time dilation, length contraction, increase in inertia) are determined by the "gamma factor",

γ=11−v2/c2√γ=11−v2/c2.

This is where Allan Steinhardt's answer comes from. It's the factor by which inertia increases, and it's the factor by which we used to say your mass increased, before "mass" was redefined. (Again, this is all according to an observer who sees you moving at 99.99% of the speed of light relative to them; according to you, everything about you is "normal".)" Source

The Governing Body lives on the top floors.  (Not the roof of course)

42 minutes ago, BTolan said:

I would contact BBB see what they can do and check your contract very closely you may have unknowingly bought a vehicle with flood damage and the dealership is trying to cover their tracks.

I bought it at another dealership back in 2009. So it must be their engineering. Good thoughts though ;-)

Start a new topic for different artistts/songs

Whenever it would rain I would notice a pool of water on the carpeted floorboards on the passenger side.

Evidently the drains (front and back) are plugged / collapsing and causing rainwater to pool inside the car.

The dealership is going to chatge me $850 to fix this problem.

Really? A tube "collapsing" at less than 100,000 miles? What kind of quality tubing is that?

Nevermind the dealership trying to "soak" me by offering to rip out all my carpeting to avoid mold. I figure I will save some $ and wet vac it out myself.

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The previous problem of the tire pressure monitor going bad will only cost me $167 to fix. (ONE TIRE)

Wonderful Cadillac engineering at work.... I should have remembered all the little things that would break on my mothers 1977 Cadillac Eldorado. Sigh.

My next car will be a Tesla. Less things that can break.... oh.. and with no sunroof. ;-)

FBI Director James Comey says that investigators still can't open a phone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino attackers, despite efforts to try to unlock it. Comey made the comments during a Senate hearing that focused on worldwide threats

Grass fires pushed along by 35 mph wind gusts forced an elementary school to keep some of its children after hours as a wildfire risk threatened Oklahoma ahead of its annual tornado season.

Marco Rubio says he's disappointed in his performance Tuesday in New Hampshire's Republican presidential primary, and he's blaming himself. The Florida senator pointed to his performance in the last Republican debate on Saturday as the reason.

Jeb Bush thanked his supporters for a strong finish in New Hampshire telling them they have "reset the race." He said the Republican party needs someone transparent and tested to beat Hillary Clinton, adding, "I'm that guy."

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump won the New Hampshire Presidential Primary on Tuesday. Trump finished far ahead of other Republican candidates. (

Mormon fundamentalist leader Warren Jeffs is in jail for marrying young girls. However, a DOJ investigation has revealed much deeper corruption in his community. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian hosts of The Young Turks discuss.

“Former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs is in jail for taking two young girls as spiritual brides—and the sordid practice has continued after his arrest, according to local police.

When the Water Canyon School reopened in 2014, it was the first time in 13 years that students in Hildale, Utah, could attend a public school. The closure hadn’t been for lack of children in the town, though.

Hildale is one-half of a religious community once known as Short Creek, which now numbers around 7,500 and spans the Utah-Arizona border. It’s the nerve center of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), a breakaway Mormon sect whose polygamous, patriarchal practices have often landed it in hot water with the law.”

This is a story that gives new meaning to "The Little Engine That Could" in a profound way.

One source explains:

If you could build a time machine and go back to Earth's distant past, you'd get a nasty surprise. You wouldn't be able to breathe the air. Unless you had some breathing apparatus, you would asphyxiate within minutes. For the first half of our planet's history, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. This life-giving gas only started to appear about 2.4 billion years ago.[1]

In what is called the "Great Oxidation Event," something very little appeared that started making the earth habitable for us through photosynthesis. What happened? This:

Cyanobacteria is responsible terraforming earth, transforming it from an iron-rich water world with a choking, impenetrable carbon-dioxide atmosphere to one with blue water and a clear oxygenated atmosphere. They also enlarged the coastlines of the nascent continents, called cratons. It took these little guys millions of years to accomplish this! Cyanobacteria is also very nutritious for human consumption. Where did cyanobacteria come from, being able to terraform a planet and provide humanity with nutrition? Humanity's best friend from the Creator.

Footnotes:
[1] The Event that Transformed Earth http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150701-the-origin-of-the-air-we-breathe