Swig, swag and a tellers jet lag.

Thing is, a mules work on a donkey ain't a horse's stud, them prairies land some keyote's some easier picking's in a man's back yard, but, a man's day's work ain't a holla in the yonder's ass, no sir, squating in them there cactus's ain't a keyote.


http://video.uk.msn.com/watch/video/awesome-trampoline-wall-tricks/1j4ye9iet

Npower fined £2m over complaints

Energy supplier npower has been fined £2 million by regulator Ofgem for mishandling customer complaints.

Npower has been fined over customer complaints

Energy supplier npower has been fined £2 million by regulator Ofgem for mishandling customer complaints.

It is the second heavy fine levied on one of the "big six" energy firms over complaints handling in the space of four months following a £2.5 million fine for British Gas in July.

Ofgem said npower failed to record all details of the complaints it received, did not give customers enough details of the redress service offered by the energy ombudsman and failed to put in adequate processes to deal with complaints.

The regulator said it is also investigating the way EDF Energy, another of the big six suppliers, handles its complaints.

Sarah Harrison, Ofgem's senior partner for sustainable development, said: "Consumers have a right to expect that energy companies will comply with the standards. Npower failed to do so and, although it took remedial action, it has incurred a penalty for failing consumers."

Ofgem added that the fine would have been higher had the company not admitted the breaches of regulations and taken action to improve its complaints procedures.

Npower, which is owned by German group RWE, is the UK's fourth largest provider and supplies about 3.3 million customers. This month it put up its average tariffs for gas by 15.7% and electricity by 7.2% because of rising wholesale power prices.

The firm was fined £1.8 million in 2009 by Ofgem for mis-selling after complaints from customers about its doorstep sales team.

Adam Scorer, director of external affairs at consumer rights group Consumer Focus, said: "It is welcome to see Ofgem willing to hammer home the point that unless energy companies start treating consumers fairly there will be a price to pay.

"Customers need to be confident that suppliers will deal with their complaint quickly and fairly and that there will be consequences when they don't play fair."

A stiff whooper new mornings present ain't a hair of the dog round them clumsy city folk toiling on the train tracks, no sir, me, a cottons tanning neck and a real pritty flask of yonder cherub milk...

Yiiiiii haaaaaa!!!!!!!!!

Horse husslers, cattle and broom weeds.

Me and ma look mighty strange brushing them there praries with the hounds hollering yonder, mule thirst breeds a flowers bredth of an acre...

Knights tour...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Knight%27s_tour_anim_2.gif


Stem, waters stone throw and a bean, three days ferment and a whiskeys sock for the clock is a days graze!!!

September remember...

A while is a while and a river is a place man should keep clean if his face is seen... Darn it...

A king on country is like looking at his cuffs, you tell how much care is in the garden, but, the garden grows, well, ain't much complaining around the business register...

 

Space Junk Problem Reaches 'Tipping Point'

  

       

It's bad news for all you aspiring space tourists out there. Soon, the only ticket into space may be of the suborbital variety and nothing more ambitious, like actually flying into orbit.
Earth is now surrounded by so much space junk that a leading expert on the issue has declared that we are at a "tipping point" -- it may soon become too dangerous to venture into low-Earth orbit (LEO) through fear of having a manned spaceship punctured or a communications satellite trashed.
SEE ALSO: Space Station Alert as Debris Makes 250 Meter Near Miss
Ex-NASA scientist Donald Kessler led a National Research Council study into the orbital situation, and the outlook is grim. In Thursday's announcement on the study's findings, the amount of orbital rubbish "has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures."

WATCH VIDEO: NASA TRIES TO BREAK SATELLITES.

This is the nightmare scenario of the Space Age, and Kessler is all-to familiar with its ramifications. In 1978, when working in NASA's Environmental Effects Project Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, he developed what became known as the "Kessler Syndrome."
As a space debris expert, Kessler realized that at some point in the future, after mankind has dumped all kinds of refuse, dead satellites, and nuts and bolts in LEO, the condition may be met when collisions between pieces of space junk become commonplace. After each collision, more and more pieces of debris are created, causing further collisions -- a cascade effect would follow. Kessler now has the dubious pleasure of having a space "syndrome" named after him.
SEE ALSO: New Radar Net to Catch More Space Junks
"We've lost control of the environment," he said. And he's not wrong -- more junk is being left in orbit than ever and we have no way (yet) of removing the trash.
Although we may not be seeing the Kessler Syndrome in full-swing, there have been two recent incidents that dramatically demonstrate what's going on above our heads.
In 2009, two satellites -- a defunct Soviet-era satellite and a functioning Iridium communications satellite -- smashed into one other at a relative speed of 7.2 miles per second, creating 1,700 pieces of debris large enough to be tracked from Earth. Each of those chunks of shredded satellite became more pieces of space junk to be avoided.
SEE ALSO: CubeSails to Drag Space Junk from Orbit
When you consider how big space is (even in LEO) and the vanishingly small likelihood of two spacecraft bumping into one another, you suddenly realize that it must be getting crowded up there.
However, the worst contributor to the space junk problem came two years earlier when the Chinese tested an anti-satellite missile on their Fengyun-1C satellite. The system obviously worked; over 2,700 pieces of the destroyed craft remain in orbit today.
These two incidents doubled the amount of debris buzzing around.
So what can be done?
The study doesn't thoroughly examine the ways we might clean up our orbital neighborhood -- although it does single out some ideas examined by DARPA -- but it does stress that we need to act soon, before it's too late.
Image: An artist's impression of the space junk problem (satellites are overemphasized). Credit: ESA


Lemons and water in a ranch glove grip for a day makes a fine refreshment for the cowboys around them parts...

Cowboy shoes???

Them there cotton pickin rooting tooting keyote's, a howling and a stealing yonder crops blowing round the barn side view, I'm a yawning afternoon on them there plains, me and daisy, old mcdonald, and sing a song a six pence are mulling them vultures on that there horizon, they'll be a lot for answering on them townsman, still, a liquering bickering ol fool should be a womans delight in a barnyard full of hays fright...

Lol... me getting old, the walking does the talking when the thought is at court, hanging for the banging, and the sack for the ladies pack...

I''LL BE COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE COMES, I'LL BE COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE COMES, I'LL BE COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN, COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN, COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE COMES, YII HAAA!!!!!

Pollution Killing Flower's Fragrance
Environmental Scientists Fume About Disappearing Flower Fragrances

August 1, 2008 — Biochemists have shown that air pollution inhibits the distance that flower's fragrances can travel. Scent molecules usually travel easily in the air, but pollutants break them apart, which destroys the smell. The researchers found that these delicate odors responsible for attracting bees and other pollinating insects are traveling as little as one-third of their former distances.

---

Soon, it may be harder to stop and smell the roses. Something is killing off flower's sweet smell. Now, we can discover what the culprit is.
Ah, the sweet smell of flowers can be hard to resist. When you go and visit a garden the first temptation you have is to smell a flower, explains Jose Fuentes, Ph.D., atmospheric scientist University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va.
But hurry up and catch a whiff while you still can.
Atmospheric and environmental scientists report that flower's scents are being destroyed. What's to blame for the disappearing aromas? Pollution. Fumes from cars and factories are pumping pollutants into the air, which may be destroying flower's fragrances.
"What we find is that these fragrances only travel one-third of the distance that they used to travel," Dr. Fuentes says.
Flowers produce scent molecules that travel easily in the air. Pollutants break apart the fragrance molecules, destroying their smell. Our noses will miss the pleasant fragrance, but bee's depend on it.
"The pollinators are spending more time trying to locate food and less time trying to actually harvest food that they need," Dr. Fuentes notes.
Wiping out flower scents could have a major impact on bee populations. But we can help bring back the bees and flower smells.
Dr. Fuentes explains, "One specific action that we can take is to really work towards having a very clean environment."
Flower populations may also diminish because plants need bee's to pollinate that allows flowers to reproduce. Now, we can make a clean effort for a chance to smell the flowers.

HOW WE SMELL: A smell is the sensory response to the complex mixtures of chemicals in the air around us, called odorants. We are able to sense these chemicals because they bind to protein receptors that line the cells in our nose. Each kind of receptor can only detect specific chemical compositions, producing the sensation of different smells. These receptor proteins are produced from about 1,000 different genes: almost 3 percent of our total gene count.
THE NOSE KNOWS: Our sense of taste is partially enhanced by smell, which is why food may taste bland when we have a cold that blocks the nasal passages. Nerve receptor cells within the nose detect odors carried into the organ by air, and transmit signals to the brain through the olfactory nerve.
ABOUT AIR POLLUTION: Air pollution is made up of many kinds of gases, droplets and particles that can remain suspended in the air. This makes the air dirty. The easiest way to visualize airborne particles (also called aerosols) is to exhale outside on a cold day and watch the fog come out of your mouth when water vapor forms water droplets. The same thing happens in the atmosphere, but for different reasons. Under certain conditions individual molecules come together and form particles -- a chemical soup. In the city, air pollution may be caused by cars, buses and airplanes, as well as industry and construction. Ground-level ozone is created when engine and fuel gases already released into the air interact when sunlight hits them. Ozone levels increase in cities when the air is still, the sun is bright and the temperature is warm.

Ranch hands apply...

Been airing the water respectfully these recents, listening a yonder and afar tells reminisce days bounty,  plentiful teaching them desk makers in them there workshops...

 

University fee levels announced

 

Almost three-fifths of universities will charge the maximum 9,000 pounds for at least one of their undergraduate courses

More than a third of English universities have been granted permission to charge fees of £9,000 as standard from 2012, it has been confirmed.
Students starting degree courses from next year face average tuition fees of almost £8,500. Overall, almost three fifths of universities will charge the maximum £9,000 for at least one of their undergraduate courses.
University fee levels for next year have been released by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), as it published each institution's plans for preventing disadvantaged youngsters being priced out of higher education.
Every university which wants to charge more than £6,000 in fees has had to have its proposals for recruiting poorer students approved by OFFA.
These "access agreements" will be reviewed each year, with institutions that fail to meet their agreed targets on recruitment and retention facing fines or losing the right to charge more than £6,000.
OFFA on Tuesday confirmed that 123 universities, plus 18 further education (FE) colleges submitted access agreements for approval. Of these, all but two, both from FE colleges, have been agreed so far.
Among those that have had their access agreements approved, 80 universities and one FE college (58%) will now charge fees of £9,000, the maximum allowed, for one or more of their courses.
More than a third (38%) of universities - 47 out of the 123 that submitted proposals - will charge £9,000 across the board. This includes many of England's most elite institutions, including Oxford and Cambridge.
When FE colleges are taken into account, 48 institutions out of 139 will set the maximum fee as standard. But OFFA insisted that just 7% of institutions will have an estimated average fee of £9,000 after fee waivers for poorer students are taken into account.
These institutions are Bradford University; Durham University; University of East London; University College Falmouth; Lincoln University; University of the Arts London; University College London; University of the West of England, Bristol; and Plymouth College of Art.




How a man has a family at that age in them concrete mainframes a liquer boy could attempt his reason with his cup, but, them tumbling broom plants seem real much and plenty...

Bag of grain and valley drips of water, right there yes sir, yonder and me, we talk plenny...



It's a mighty fine day there cowboy, you could walk your way right over that there ridge and collect you some hours on the sleep...


Watering the ground with that there grain and grape cook.

Happy birthday MM...

Well, it's a good day for sipping sweet juice, mind that sugar stick honey it's been floating in that casker plenty recent, 6 weeks in that rock soil and kicking and a coming that it is, yes sir, warm me some hands on a womans home machine, yes, yes mam, plenty and mighty happy...







30 May 2011 Last updated at 13:25

Germany: Nuclear power plants to close by 2022




Germany's coalition government has announced a reversal of policy that will see all the country's nuclear power plants phased out by 2022.
The decision makes Germany the biggest industrial power to announce plans to give up nuclear energy.
Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen made the announcement following late-night talks.
Chancellor Angela Merkel set up a panel to review nuclear power following the crisis at Fukushima in Japan.
There have been mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany in the wake of March's Fukushima crisis, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.
'Sustainable energy' Mr Rottgen said the seven oldest reactors - which were taken offline for a safety review immediately after the Japanese crisis - would never be used again. An eighth plant - the Kruemmel facility in northern Germany, which was already offline and has been plagued by technical problems, would also be shut down for good.
Six others would go offline by 2021 at the latest and the three newest by 2022, he said.


Nearly a quarter of German's electricity comes from nuclear power so the question becomes: How do you make up the short-fall?
The official commission which has studied the issue reckons that electricity use can be cut by 10% in the next decade through more efficient machinery and buildings.
The intention is also to increase the share of wind energy. This, though, would mean re-jigging the electricity distribution system because much of the extra wind power would come from farms on the North Sea to replace atomic power stations in the south.
Protest groups are already vocal in the beautiful, forested centre of the country which, they fear, will become a north-south "energie autobahn" of pylons and high-voltage cables.
Some independent analysts believe that coal power will benefit if the wind plans don't deliver what is needed.
And on either side of Germany are France, with its big nuclear industry, and Poland, which has announced an intention to build two nuclear power stations.

Germany's nuclear power politics
Mr Rottgen said: "It's definite. The latest end for the last three nuclear power plants is 2022. There will be no clause for revision."

Mr Rottgen said a tax on spent fuel rods, expected to raise 2.3bn euros (£1.9bn) a year from this year, would remain despite the shutdown.
Mrs Merkel's centre-right Christian Democrats met their junior partners on Sunday after the ethics panel had delivered its conclusions.
Before the meeting she said: "I think we're on a good path but very, very many questions have to be considered.
"If you want to exit something, you also have to prove how the change will work and how we can enter into a durable and sustainable energy provision."
The previous German government - a coalition of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens - decided to shut down Germany's nuclear power stations by 2021.
However, last September Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition scrapped those plans - announcing it would extend the life of the country's nuclear reactors by an average of 12 years.
Ministers said they needed to keep nuclear energy as a "bridging technology" to a greener future.
The decision to extend was unpopular in Germany even before the radioactive leaks at the Fukushima plant.
But following Fukushima, Mrs Merkel promptly scrapped her extension plan, and announced a review.
Greens boosted Germany's nuclear industry has argued that an early shutdown would be hugely damaging to the country's industrial base.
Before March's moratorium on the older power plants, Germany relied on nuclear power for 23% of its energy.
The anti-nuclear drive boosted Germany's Green party, which took control of the Christian Democrat stronghold of Baden-Wuerttemberg, in late March.
Shaun Burnie, nuclear adviser for environmental campaign group Greenpeace International, told the BBC World Service that Germany had already invested heavily in renewable energy.
"The various studies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that renewables could deliver, basically, global electricity by 2050," he said.
"Germany is going to be ahead of the game on that and it is going to make a lot of money, so the message to Germany's industrial competitors is that you can base your energy policy not on nuclear, not on coal, but on renewables."
Shares in German nuclear utilities RWE and E.On fell on the news, though it had been widely expected.
But it was good news for manufacturers of renewable energy infrustructure.
German solar manufacturer, Solarworld, was up 7.6% whilst Danish wind turbine maker Vestas gained more than 3%.



Ain't one for thinking pretty much, still, land, soil, dirt, and my ranches horizon...

http://www.space.com/11794-lifeguarding-spacecraft-european.html

What did you say???

Spoke me some fairy talk back there... Cotton pickin mule men ain't got shoe shine boys whispering street talk in them there coffee boulevards, fancy words and tooth picks, no sir, ain't oblige in sherrif's good books...

 

Oaths of Office For Federal Officials

 

Congress

At the start of each new Congress, the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are sworn into office. This oath-taking dates to 1789, the first Congress; however, the current oath was fashioned in the 1860s, by Civil War-era members of Congress.

The Constitution specifies no details for the oath of office for Congress:

Constitution, Article 6 - Debts, Supremacy, Oaths The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The first Congress developed this requirement into a simple, 14-word oath:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States."

The Civil War led President Lincoln to develop an expanded oath for all federal civilian employees (April 1861). That July, when Congress reconvened, "members echoed the president's action by enacting legislation requiring employees to take the expanded oath in support of the Union. This oath is the earliest direct predecessor of the modern oath." 

The current oath was enacted in 1884:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

The public swearing-in ceremony consists of Representatives raising their right hands and repeating the oath of office. This ceremony is led by the Speaker of the House, and no religious texts are used. Some members of Congress later hold separate private ceremonies for photo ops.

When a man's toil ain't met his boots on a fire and stove story, out in them fancy brick rows, their gentlemans breaches, braces and straps, that there whiskey ain't much fine help...

 

Obama approval hits two-year high

More than half of Americans now say President Barack Obama deserves to be re-elected, according to a poll

Barack Obama's approval rating has hit its highest point in two years - 60% - and more than half of Americans now say he deserves to be re-elected, according to a poll.
The Associated Press-GfK poll, taken after US forces killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, gave worrisome signs for Republicans, showing the president's standing improved not just on foreign policy, but also on the economy.
Independent Americans - a key voting bloc in the November 2012 presidential election - caused the overall increase in support by sliding back to Mr Obama after fleeing for much of the past two years.
Comfortable majorities of the public now call Mr Obama a strong leader who will keep America safe. Nearly three-fourths - 73% - also now say they are confident that he can effectively handle terrorist threats. And he improved his standing on Afghanistan, Iraq and the US' relationships with other countries.
Despite a sluggish recovery from the Great Recession, 52% of Americans now approve of Mr Obama's stewardship of the economy, giving him his best rating on that issue since the early days of his presidency; 52% also now like how he is handling the nation's stubbornly high 9% unemployment.
The economy remains Americans' top issue. Impressions of the nation's fiscal outlook have improved following last Friday's positive jobs report, which showed American companies are on a hiring spree.
More people now say that the economy got better in the past month and that it is likely to continue doing so in the coming year.
Also, more Americans - 45%, up from 35% in March - say the country is headed in the right direction; still about half - 52% - say it is on the wrong track, meaning Mr Obama still has work to do to convince a restive public to stay with the status quo.
Overall, Mr Obama's approval rating is up from 53% in March and a 47% low point following last autumn's mid-term congressional elections in which Republicans won control of the House and gained seats in the Senate. It was 64% in May 2009, just months after he was sworn into office.
Also, 53% now say he deserves to be re-elected; 43% say he should be fired, making it the first time in an AP-GfK poll that more people say he should get a second term than not.

 

Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out Of Hand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Hp6T0Xpc4&playnext=1&list=PLEAA8A316A39E66DC/

That water in the can of beans makes them sparkling grapes in moonshine country...