• Lots of seals at all three dive sites, and both seals and sea lions frolicking at the East End.  Usually I see one or the other, as they are territorial, but here they seemed to be okay with each other.
• Talk about freindly seals - on the second and third dives I had seals come right up against me and look in my eyes from inches away.  They didn't seem to want me to leave, either... as I tried to depart the East End and swim back to the boat, three times I found my progress impeeded by a seal attached to one of my fins!
• At the first dive site, The Caverns, there must have been hundreds of halibut fry.  They are always a cool surprise, they blend in perfectly with the sand untill they move, by oscilating their body, which is basically one giant fin.  Rarely do you see more than one at a time, though... seeing a half dozen or more at a time taking off was something to see.
• At Caverns there were hundreds of molts laying in the sand from some sort of crab I have never seen before.  It had an elongated body like a mole crab (also known as the sand crab, found at beaches everywhere), but was around 3 inches long and an inch wide, and had at least one claw, which the mole crab lacks.  I didn't see any live specimens, I'll have to keep an eye out for this critter in the future.
  
• Lots of invertabrate life at East End:
  • Many large colorful anemone, including a variety I had previously not seen, with multiple shades of purple crowned with tips of crimson.
  • A white sea cucumber with orange bristles, which I have seen on previous occassions, but had never seen feeding.  Beautiful plumage!
  • A couple of the largest hermit crabs I've seen, wearing large turret shells.  This is the first I've seen hermit crabs at Ana Capa, the only ones I've seen in the Channel Islands were at Santa Cruz, and always at night.
  • I've seen sea hares (picture a bulbous slug with big floppy rabbit-ear-like appendages) in different colors - black, green, brown - but never one in a deep crimson red before.  I was so entranced I laid in the sand in front of it for several minutes, until it started to crawl onto my mask!  I kept wondering if another diver might mistake me for unconscious and try to rescue me

Another site with some pics of these beasties
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/11/return-of-the-giant-jellyfish/

So, they bought up a company that the government outsources to for tax auditing and collection... then they start sending out 1099s to a large portion of their portfolio that they can't collect from, potentially causing those people a tax nightmare.  Any bets as to whether RDS might reap the benefit of this....Enron, here we go again....

1. According to their own web site (http://www.portfoliorecovery.com/about.asp), they have acquired over $24 billion in debt portfolios.
   
2. Looking through their SEC filing for last year, these have been purchased for an average of $0.02 on the dollar.
3. For the purpose of accounting assets in their SEC filings, they value the portfolios they buy as assets based on the potential amount they can collect, not the actual purchase price.
4. They are amortizing their portfolio over three years, i.e. the value of portfolios drop each year after purchase until they are valued at $0 at three years.

"The general threshold for perforating the skin is about 330 feet a second.  Apart from bone, skin offers the greatest resistance to penetration. If it can pass through the skin it is potentially lethal, even if the bullets are small.  If you shoved something 3mm across into someone's chest you could kill them. It's the same with these bullets, they could penetrate the heart." As the manufacturer points out, though, the energy produced is less than one tenth that of an air rifle:
http://www.swissminigun.com/ammunition.html

In fact, looking at the weight of the projectile in question (0.12 grams), it has no more mass than a soft-air BB, which generally range from 0.12 to 0.2 grams.  I've personally been hit by more than my share of those, at velocities up to 400 fps, and have only had a couple of occasions where any blood was drawn.  The cross section with these bullets is smaller, but if someone shot me with this little revolver, I think I would be inclined to ask them to stop it...

But they go way further with this:

"Jonathan Spencer, consultant forensic scientist and firearms expert, said that although the gun, which fires bullets at a speed of 399 feet a second, was tiny, it could still prove fatal and in the eyes of the law was as dangerous as a machine gun."
"It is capable of killing someone. Under section 5 of the Firearms Act it would be a prohibited weapon. It would be on the same scale as a machine gun."

For some reason, I have trouble fathoming this comparison:

"In September 2006 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives(ATF) in New York issued a warning about the gun after being alerted by a police officer who spotted it on a website.  Special Agent William McMahon said the gun was so small it could pass for a key fob, and warned it made the perfect stealth weapon for serious criminals." Ummm, ya, a seriously retarded criminal, in my opinion - one that would be willing to spend around $6,000 (more, on black market, I'm sure) for a gun that could only possibly have any effect at point blank range, and even then might do little or no harm.... it would seem to me that a simple shank would have far more predictable results.

I think someone has been watching too many James Bond movies.....

On page 38 of http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Market_Consequences-report.pdf there is an interesting bit of information on how bureaucrats at the EPA evaluate the cost vs benefit of potential policies:

So if I'm reading this right, the average person would be willing to spend $7.7 million to extend their life one year, and that this is the basis for determining the cost effectiveness and relative impact of environmental policies?  I hope the EPA never has to save us from a real threat - they could rationalize spending the entire GDP of the U.S. to save 0.4% of its population!

Maybe I sound callous about this?  What is the value of a human life?  The problem in putting such a number to it, though, is the abuse of power it enables, because it makes no economic sense.  We're talking about a theoretical value man-year of life that would take the average wage earner around 250 years to earn!  How can we as citizens possibly bear the level of financial burden that could potentially find license in such reasoning?

Yep, Michelle, Global Warming is a hoax, sure…….Why can’t you conservative windbags get around the fact that this IS NOT a poltical issue?? In the past few years in the US, we have witnessed a Tsunami that virtually wiped out a city , fires that are destroying much of the West Coast, a record number of Tornadoes [clip]

 

Quoted from:

http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/2007/08/10/hot-news-nasa-quietly-fixes-flawed-temperature-data-1998-was-not-the-warmest-year-in-the-millenium/

Keef, I assume you are referring to the Tsunami that hit Crescent City? That was minor compared to the one that hit the same spot in 1964 - no deaths vs 122 in 1964, $700,000 in 2006 dollars vs over $7 million in 1964 dollars. I used to live in Crescent City, there are still boats and anchors along the 101, well inland of the shore.

But that’s not the point…. the real question is what this has to do with global warming, as it was caused by a 8.1 earthquake off of Japan, in the Ring of Fire, an area historically known for great seismic activity. Blaming this on global warming is exactly the kind of alarmism that takes this out of the realm of science and into the the realm of junk science, fear mongering, and yes, politics.

Something to realize about a “record number of tornados”, the correct statement would be a “record number of observed tornados”. Previously remote areas areas are populated more now than ever, and even where there isn’t a trailer park for one to hit, doppler radar has allowed us to detect tornados that would previously never have been recorded. But even given that, if we take a look at the tornado records you’ll find what you are saying is not true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_records

In fact, here’s a record set this last year: “Before the Greensburg EF5 tornado on May 4, 2007, it had been 8 years and one day since the US has had a confirmed F5 or EF5 tornado. The last confirmed F5 or EF5 hit southern Oklahoma City and surrounding communities during the May 3, 1999 event”.

As for the West Coast burning down, I’ve lived here for most of my 39 years, mostly in southern california, and it’s an accepted norm that we get hit by firestorms every 2-3 years. The only difference now is that more and more people are building houses in mountainous suburbs, so there is a lot more property damage potential than ever before.

Sorry, not all things can be blaimed on global warming,

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

Now this gives a new meaning to the term "manned flight"! 

 Yes, that picture is for real.  Visit his web site for more:

http://www.jet-man.com/actuel_eng.html