well Feb 20th is not only my birthday but also sadly the day Hunter S Thompson killed himself. Ralph Steadman had some interesting words to say about everything.

[url]http://www.flyingdogblog.com/2009/02/20/ralph-steadman-and-george-stranahan-remember-hunter/[/url]

[IMG]http://www.flyingdogales.com/elist/assets/AOW20090220_ralphhunter.jpg[/IMG]

Remembering Hunter

Today marks the four-year anniversary of Hunter S. Thompson’s death. One of the most iconic figures from the last 50 years, Hunter S. Thompson is closely tied to Flying Dog Brewery. Of course, he convinced his friend and Gonzo co-conspirator Ralph Steadman to illustrate our labels. But he also gave us a quote that graces most every label of beer that we produce: Good people drink good beer.

Not a day goes by that we don’t think about Hunter and the indelible mark he left on society. And although it bums us out that he isn’t with us today, Hunter S. Thompson’s spirit lives on in the form of his writings and films. This week, during Conan O’Brien’s last shows in the “Late Night” time slot, Conan has been revisiting clips from the last fifteen years. Tuesday’s show featured a segment shot on location in Upstate New York with Hunter and Conan. Watch them drink whiskey and shoot guns, in typical Dr. Gonzo style:

As is the Flying Dog tradition on this day, we’ve asked those who knew him to write a little something about Dr. Gonzo. Flying Dog Brewery founder George Stranahan and Gonzo Artist Ralph Steadman sent in some stories about Hunter.

We encourage you to toast Hunter S. Thompson tonight with a glass of the beer that was inspired by him, Gonzo Imperial Porter. We certainly will be.

George Stranahan Remembers Hunter

It’s the beginning of my fifth year without Hunter, and I’m feeling like a five year old trying to understand the mysteries and predicaments of the human condition.

The peacock’s shriek was unmistakable. It came at first light and it was close, right over my head, on the roof. To call Hunter at first light was an adventure that had to be taken. He was awake and “still up,” drunk and crazed. “Goddamn birds got outta their cage last night.” He assigned some specific blame here, he himself was blameless. “Two of ‘em were found in Little Woody eaten by coyotes. That’s the last one you’ve got there, I’ll be right up.”

And he was. Shorts, sneakers, Tilly hat and with badminton net in hand. My house is two stories, so the peacock was twenty feet up and so was Hunter, hunched over, tiptoeing along the very edge and coaxing, “you wretched c… sucking bitch sit still for one more second…” I was terrified at his unsteadiness and wondered who do I call for a fallen and almost certainly dead Hunter found at first light on my porch?

With a lurch and a stagger Hunter tossed the badminton net right over the bird, clutched it to his breast and collapsed away from danger. I was learning that he had an extraordinary sense of his own capacities either drunk or sober.

[IMG]http://www.georgestranahan.com/[/IMG]

Ralph Steadman Remembers Hunter

Hunter began to speak of images that disturbed his peace of mind. ‘Ralph, I have this horrible image of me strapped inside a wheelchair- and I’m in an Old People’s Home. I look around the room and old people are looking straight at me from their own wheelchairs, lined up against the wall as though they are waiting their turn to go- or maybe to flee!  I scan the room dolefully- then- out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of a wizened ole crone. She has an evil leer across her wrinkled face and she is crawling across the floor-slowly- towards me. She is cackling to herself and I know, Ralph, what she is going to do- and I am helpless! Yes, Ralph!  She is going to fondle my balls!!’

He told me that story just like that as an example of why he was suffering ‘the Death of FUN’. Unimaginable torture!!

What I do every year is take a large sheet of paper, a bottle of ink and a brush, look up at the moon – even if there isn’t one – then I whack it with the biggest blot I can make, date it and time- and then I sign it and toast his memory in a bottle of beer. I find it the most satisfying thing to do and it frees the frustration and sense of loss.

Like you couldn’t look outside and tell yourself, but the February rodent weather prognosticators have weighed in and are predicting six more weeks of winter.

This morning we’ve heard from Nova Scotia’s Shubnedacadie Sam, who couldn’t help but notice his shadow, emerging from his pen at 7 a.m. to the sound of bagpipes and a town crier and hopes the groundhog would be a harbinger for warmer days. It was not to be.

“He saw his shadow and went back in,” said Jacqueline Parker, a spokesperson with the Nova Scotia provincial government. “It’s six more weeks of winter.

Then Punxsutawney Phil’s handlers dragged the groundhog meterologist out of his Pennsylvania burrow during a ceremony on Gobbler’s Knob, where he also saw more winter on the way.

Phil’s prediction was read by Mike Johnson, vice president of the town’s Inner Circle, from a scroll that said: “The bright sky above me shows my shadow before me, and six more weeks of winter it will be.”

Town authorities say Phil is always correct about the duration of winter but according to the U.S. National Climate Prediction Center, Phil and other U.S. and Canadian groundhogs get it right about 39% of the time

Ontario’s Wiarton Willie then weighed in: “The sun has peaked, my shadow I see, six more weeks of winter it will be.”

In New York City, another groundhog called Staten Island Chuck failed to see his shadow when he was lured from his cage by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, predicting that spring was near.

According to folklore, if a groundhog sees his shadow on Groundhog Day — Feb. 2, he’ll go back to his burrow, predicting six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t, there will be an early spring.

The belief that hibernating creatures can predict the arrival of spring was brought to North America by German immigrants in the 18th century.

Some other furry forecasters include Saskatchewan’s Snewsie, who is not technically a groundhog, but a gopher from Moose Jaw, and Watson Willow from Watson, Sask. Other groundhog prognosticators include Balzac Billy in Balzac, Alta., and Manitoba’s Merv in Oak Hammond Marsh, Man.

Woodchucks, what do they know anyway?
– With files from Canwest News Service and Reuters

Photo: Official groundhog handlers Ben Hughes (L) and John Griffiths (R) look at weather prognosticating groundhog Punxsutawney Phil makes his annual prediction on Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, Feb. 2, 2009. Phil saw his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter. (Reuters/Jason Cohn)

Damn Rights.

according to the DNA tests of what some hunters found thought to be the famed “bigfoot” they only found DNA from a possum, I’m not sure if that means it was just faked or what. think for yourself and not for others.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080815/us_nm/bigfoot_dc

PALO ALTO, California (Reuters) – Bigfoot remains as elusive as ever.

Results from tests on genetic material from alleged remains of one of the mythical half-ape and half-human creatures, made public at a news conference on Friday held after the claimed discovery swept the Internet, failed to prove its existence.

oh geez, this is too funny. I hope mr Gore gets what’s coming to him! haha…

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337710,00.html

The founder of the Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping a legal debate will settle the global-warming debate once and for all.

John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.

“Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question,” Coleman said.

“Since we can’t get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue,” Coleman said. “I’m confident that the advocates of ‘no significant effect from carbon dioxide’ would win the case.”

• Click here to watch video of Coleman on “Fox and Friends.”

Coleman says his side of the global-warming debate is being buried in mainstream media circles.

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  • Climate Debate

“As you look at the atmosphere over the last 25 years, there’s been perhaps a degree of warming, perhaps probably a whole lot less than that, and the last year has been so cold that that’s been erased,” he said.

“I think if we continue the cooling trend a couple of more years, the general public will at last begin to realize that they’ve been scammed on this global-warming thing.”

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com’s Natural Science Center.

Coleman spoke to FOXNews.com after his appearance last week at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York, where he called global warming a scam and lambasted the cable network he helped create.

“You want to tune to the Weather Channel and have them tell you how to live your life?” Coleman said. “Come on.”

He laments the network’s decision to focus on traffic and lifestyle reports over the weather.

“It’s very clear that they don’t realize that weather is the most significant impact in every human being’s daily life, and good, solid, up-to-the-minute weather information and meaningful forecasts presented in such a way that people find them understandable and enjoyable can have a significant impact,” he said.

“The more you cloud that up with other baloney, the weaker the product,” he said.

Coleman has long been a skeptic of global warming, and carbon dioxide is the linchpin to his argument.

“Does carbon dioxide cause a warming of the atmosphere? The proponents of global warming pin their whole piece on that,” he said.

The compound carbon dioxide makes up only 38 out of every 100,000 particles in the atmosphere, he said.

“That’s about twice as what there were in the atmosphere in the time we started burning fossil fuels, so it’s gone up, but it’s still a tiny compound,” Coleman said. “So how can that tiny trace compound have such a significant effect on temperature?

“My position is it can’t,” he continued. “It doesn’t, and the whole case for global warming is based on a fallacy.”

this is all i have to show since for some reason i couldnt view it myself… i am surrounded by trees and have a airport nearby that may be the reasons.

recent activity on the news has shown that the US Navy will be attempting to shoot a defunct satelite. this will be taking place perhaps tommorow evening which also co-insides with a lunar eclipse (and my birthday) it should be a interesting night to look up into the heavens, i hope the sky is clear.

after looking into some basic info online about this operation i came across some pictures of the documented space “Junk” that is floating around out there and holy jesus! is there ever a lot of it. it’s amazing shuttles ever manage their way through that tangled web of junk on their way to plant even more.

There are nearly ten thousand man-made objects larger than a softball in Earth orbit. Of these, only seven percent are operational satellites. The remaining ninety-three percent consists of dead satellites, rocket fragments and debris. While these objects are generally very far apart, their presence and great velocity can potentially interfere with space missions and even threaten the lives of astronauts – a tiny speck of paint from a satellite once dug a quarter-inch hole in a space shuttle window. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking these objects since 1961. Today, before every critical launch, analysts perform a collision avoidance test to make sure the mission will not cross paths with any of these objects.

source : http://www.massivechange.com/category/information/