Scuttlebutt Pipeline

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Canadian actor James Doohan’s remains along with two hundred other people were launched on the first commercial sub-orbital launch today from the new Spaceport America site.

Spaceport launch a success
By Jose L. Medina Sun-News reporter
Article Launched: 04/29/2007 01:00:00 AM MDT

UPHAM — Same place, much different result: Spaceport America is officially open.

For the first time, a vehicle launched from New Mexico’s fledgling commercial spaceport in southern Sierra County reached space as the SpaceLoft SL-2 rocket — built by UP Aerospace of Farmington, Conn. — made history at 8:58 a.m. MDT Saturday.

“You’re standing on hallowed ground now. Spaceport America is now an official spaceport,” said UP Aerospace President Jerry Larson, who helped design the rocket.

Wende Doohan and Suzan Cooper, widows of Star Trek actor James Doohan and Mercury 7 astronaut Gordon Cooper, pressed the “go” button which sent the SL-2 and small amounts of their husbands’ ashes and 200 others on board into space.

“Keep going, keep going. That’s it. Eleven, twelve, that’s it. We got it!” said Eric Knight. The UP Aersopace CEO counted the seconds it took for the SL-2 to burn off all its fuel, putting the 20-foot rocket at a coasting speed of 3,400 miles per hour and a sure trajectory to space. It reached an altitude of almost 73 miles before falling back to Earth, splitting in two, deploying parachutes and landing safely at White Sands Missile Range, 33 miles east of the launch site. A sonic boom thundered down on the remote site and the hundreds of onlookers watching about four miles away from the mission control center. Among those witnessing the historic event were the BBC and CBS. The launch was carried live on CNN.

“This just put us on the map,” Knight said. “We’re a small company. We don’t have the millions and millions of dollars in marketing to put the word out. It’s really to show off what we can do. We were really not on the map. We are now.”

UP has plans for as many as six additional flights later this year. A date for the next launch has not been set.

With the launch, UP Aerospace not only gave themselves more credibility, they also gave the $198 million commercial spaceport project more viability and gave families of those whose cremains were on the rocket a great source of comfort.

“He worked in aerospace for 40 years,” James De Carufel, 60, of Atlanta, Ga., said of his late father, Arthur. Some of his ashes were on UP’s rocket.

“This is probably the best thing that could happen … when he hit space, I’m sure he had a big smile on his face,” De Carufel said.

Family members paid $495 to place a few grams of their relatives’ ashes on the rocket. Celestis, a Houston company, contracted with UP to send the cremated remains into space.

Charles Chafer, chief executive of Celestis, said last month that a CD with more than 11,000 condolences and fan notes was placed on the rocket with Doohan’s remains.

Doohan died in July 2005 at age 85. The cremains of Gene Roddenberry, who created “Star Trek,” were sent into space in 1997.

Cooper died in October 2004 at the age of 77. Cooper piloted the sixth and last flight of the Mercury program and later commanded Gemini 5.

Saturday’s launch was in stark contrast to UP’s first attempt to reach space last year from the spaceport site.

On Sept. 25, after more than a seven-hour delay, UP launched its SpaceLoft XL. The XL corkscrewed out of control seconds into its flight and never reached space. With officials powerless to control it, the rocket crashed west of WSMR and was destroyed. Company officials blamed the failure on a faulty fin design.

UP’s second rocket made it off the ground less than half an hour behind schedule Saturday, thanks in part to someone mistakenly wandering into a secured area.

On the technical side, almost all systems on the rocket performed well, Larson said. The lone malfunction was a signal beacon that kept WSMR from being able to track the vehicle in the opening moments of the 13-minute flight.

The weather also cooperated with surface winds staying below 20 miles per hour and opening a window for launch.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is said to be developing the spaceport north of Van Horn, Texas. Bezos’ Blue Origin is working to develop tourist space flights.

British billionaire Richard Branson also has announced plans to launch a space tourism company, which is expected to have its headquarters at the New Mexico spaceport.

source: Las Cruces Sun News

A rare find was discovered at the construction site of an upcoming Wal-Mart in Phoenix, Arizona. While digging a hole to plant a tree on the site workers discovered the remains of an 8,000 year old camel. A rare and impressive find to be sure.

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) — Workers digging at the site of a future Wal-Mart store in suburban Mesa have unearthed the bones of a prehistoric camel that’s estimated to be about 10,000 years old.

Arizona State University geology museum curator Brad Archer hurried out to the site Friday when he got the news that the owner of a nursery was carefully excavating bones found at the bottom of a hole being dug for a new ornamental citrus tree.

“There’s no question that this is a camel; these creatures walked the land here until about 8,000 years ago, when the same event that wiped out a great deal of mammal life took place,” Archer told The Arizona Republic.

Wal-Mart officials and Greenfield Citrus Nursery owner John Babiarz have already agreed that the bones will go directly on display at ASU.

Archer said some of them may be placed on display very soon, but most will take several months “to get sorted out and stabilized.”

“In my 15 years at ASU doing this work I can think of six or seven times when finds this important have been made,” Archer said. “This is the first camel. Others have been horses, once a mammoth on Happy Valley Road. This sort of thing is extremely rare.” (source)

Am I the only one who wonders if Wal-Mart will allow the archaeologists to work peacefully? Someone I can’t help but pressure being placed to speed things up, no matter that the site itself holds the most information from which we can use to learn from.

Amazingly enough yesterday marked an eventful time for both of the Wal-Mart Supercenters in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Las Cruces PD were forced to evacuate both locations when a bomb threat was called in.

With many turning to sites such as SponsoredReviews in order to earn a bit of cash it’s not surprising that many are resorting to less than ethical blogging standards in order to keep a steady flow of income rolling in. The site that allows advertisers to buy reviews is offering up this concise but helpful guideline for all bloggers to take a gander at.

Many of the guidelines are a rehash of basic ethics and responsibility, such as the hiding or cloaking of affiliate links, failure to disclose ect. But there is one that was listed that that surprised and impressed me to see published. It’s soemthing I talk about regularly on my personal blog and I’m always amazed at the amount of people that are shocked that I will have to pay taxes or that I should pay taxes on the income I’ve received from my online jobs.

Respect Tax Law: bloggers and webmasters tend to equate online money with tax-free. Under the U.S. Law any income you make is taxable. If you win money playing online poker you will need to pay taxes. If you earn money through donations on your site you will need to pay taxes. The key factor is whether your blog is a hobby or a business. There is no definitive answer for this question, but a good starting point is whether your earnings are higher than your expenses. Do not forget to take into consideration the contributing writers as well. If you pay them more than $600 yearly you will need to file a 1099 form. You can read more about the Tax Law on the IRS website.

Thank you SR for publishing this.

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Last night I made my first attempt in making an edible dish for my kitties and I was met with an amazing amount of success. Denali will eat just about anything, provided it doesn’t eat her first, and given the fact that she apparently doesn’t mind eating coyote meat that might not be an entirely accurate description of dietary tastes. Isis however is absolutely finicky. Though she likes canned cat food, only certain flavors appeal to her and she certainly doesn’t like to eat it on a regular basis either. She’s not much for human food either except for, strangely enough, cookies and the odd bites from one of our hamburgers. She does love chicken though, so endeavored to make something that would appeal to her since she is the one in primary need right now. We still have a sufficient amount of safe dry food left.

I didn’t have enough ingredients readily available to make a properly well balanced dish for the cats but seeing Isis trying to crunch dry food for another nigt was out of the question so I made due with what I had. Somehow I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams! Both Isis and Denali loved this recipe! Isis even went back into the kitchen and availed herself of the remains from their dinner twice! Three helpings. That is utterly amazing for my finicky girl.

The ultimate test came earlier today when I took out the portion I had placed in a covered bowl and spooned out a serving to her. It was still chilled a bit from the refrigerator and had a thin coating of her medicine on it but Isis happily dug into it. Now I know this dish is appealing to cats. Now I happily offer this recipe up to you:

What you’ll need:

• 2 chicken breasts, skinned.
• 2 teaspoons catnip
• 1 bay leaf (whole)
• 2 cups steamed white rice
• 1/2 cup milk
• blender
• large mixing bowl
• strainer

Preparation

In a pan, add in white uncooked rice, bay leaf, and catnip and allow to boil. When the rice is soft and ready, carefully strain so as not to loose the bay leaf and catnip.  When finished place in a covered mixing bowl and set it to the side.

Over an open flame, grill both breasts until cooked. Do not add any sauces or herbs - especially garlic! When ready the chicken should be nice and tender. Remove chicken from grill and cut into bite size portions then place into a blender. Set blender mode to chop and proceed until all pieces have been finely diced up.  As you do this add in a bit of milk to allow the blender to better able chop and blend the meat. Do not add in all of the milk yet.

Once  the chicken is finely chopped and mixed with some milk pour it into the mixing bowl where you have the rice. Carefully stir and mix the ingredients. Due to the stickiness of the rice you will need to add in a bit of milk and a touch of warm water as you stir. you do not want the mixture to be runny though so do not add in all of the milk at once - you may not need it! The mixture texture should be akin to making cookie dough or tortilla mixture.

Once the mixture has been fully mixed and the texture is as desired it is ready to serve. This mixture makes approximately 5 servings for 2 cats.

Now, because my mother interfered this recipe was altered slightly from my original intention, it remains to be seen what results the original would have yielded, so if you’re feeling gutsy you may want to try alternating the preparation of the chicken. Leave the skin on, boil instead of grill ect. The choice is completely up to you.

Please note, this mixture is not perfectly balanced so you would not wish to feed this to your animal continuously over a lengthy period of time. It would be akin to you having a fast food diet. However, if you do not have the time or money to run out to the store to buy all of the recommended ingredients to make a perfectly balanced meal and you do not want to risk the cat food on the shelves this is a quick and simple alternative that will tide your cat over nicely. It will also serve as a great treat as well. Enjoy!

Smorty.com is another site that allows bloggers to get paid for blogging. A new cash crop in adversiting is blog advertising and many advertisers are jumping on board. So if you enjoy blogging and would like to make a little bit of money on the side this might be something you want to look into. Unless you have an exceptionally high trafficked site, not even google adsense can compare to the amount of money you can make on a regular basis in this line of marketing.

So how exactly does Smorty.com work and how do you sign up? Smorty.com requires that you have or register a paypal account for payments, once you have that though you’re in the clear. All you need is a blog and the ability to blog. Smorty shows you te advertisers and their products that they want advertised. You pick the advertising assignments you want to do this way you are blogging about something that interests you. Once you select an opportunity you are given four days to complete it and then you just submit the post via their online form. Provide the name of the post and the post’s url then click submit and it’s done. Each opportunity payout varies, but thus far I have not seen an opportunity under $6.

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