Saturday, October 31, 2015

Happy Halloween

The city is a happy place for fans after the Mets won Game 3 of the World Series last night. Today is about children Trick or Treating and more. There's heightened security - a term we have all become accustomed to - for Halloween, the World Series, the Halloween Parade, the New York Marathon, among other events around town as the weather cooperates. Enjoy.

November 1 - Return to Standard Time in the U.S.



Halloween Images - Astronomy Picture of the Day


10 of the Spookiest Haunted Houses in America  
Live Science - October 29, 2015

Happy #Arachtober! Spiders Take Over the Web for Halloween  
Live Science - October 22, 2015




October 31, 2015


Crystalinks Halloween Files




Witchcraft




Samhain




Harry Houdini Died October 31, 1926


My brain is the key that sets my mind free.

Harry Houdini Quotes





I have recently been examining all the known superstitions
of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition
(Christianity) one redeeming feature.
They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

Thomas Jefferson



When the human race has once acquired a superstition
nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.

Allow me to make the superstitions of a nation and
I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.
Mark Twain


Superstitions




Friday, October 30, 2015

Friday


When Halloween comes on a weekend, and the weather is cooperating, the city comes alive. Lots of emotions and fun in store this year. Parties and 'Trick or Treating", the Halloween Parade in the West Village, Citi Field hosting its first World Series as we cheer on the Mets, the NYC Marathon, among other things starting today.

Halloween is about scary stuff. Would you consider the state of the world scary enough? What scares you most today?

Interested in a Live Exorcism tonight ... Destination America TV.


In other news ...

The Senate voted early this morning, after an all-night session, to approve the bipartisan budget deal that was reached this week between congressional leaders and the White House. The bill now heads to President Obama's desk for his signature.

While China is abandoning its one-child policy, experts say that economic overhauls and investments in technology, health care and education are more important to the countryƕs future. Even so, the expense of raising a second child is overwhelming for most Chinese families.

Retailers are priming the pump for holiday sales. Target, Walmart and Macy's say they will open again this year on Thanksgiving, while some smaller chains are taking a stand against holiday sales creep.

The S.E.C. issues rules today to let small companies crowd-fund from friends, family or any interested investors. Since the 1930s, only those with $1 million in net worth or annual income of $200,000 were allowed to invest in start-ups.


This week's news and birthdays can be found on Crystalinks Ezine.




Thursday, October 29, 2015

Thursday

Let's get the the GOP debate. I don't see a winner - never do - but see a shift in focus for the candidates and the people. To me, none of it matters as no one can change what's going to happen in the time remaining in the hologram. It's obvious that Donald Trump's abrasive behavior is starting to wear on voters though he still is determined to make change for the country and I wouldn't count him out. Glad to see Jeb Bush is falling but so was his grandfather back in the day and he rallied in the spring. If you were still following the debates, there's lots you can see in here in media as candidates continue to abuse each other.

In a formal vote today, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin is set to be installed as House speaker, which is often called the second most powerful job in Washington. Goodbye, John A. Boehner. It's time for change.


Migrants continue to enter Europe from Africa and the Middle East, trying to reach their destination before winter arrives. Winters are not easy in European countries, I hope they realize that.


It looks like the World Series momentum remains with the Kansas City Royals, especially as one of their pitcher lost his father Tuesday. Let's see what happens when the Mets return to Citi Field in New York Friday night. Don't count the minutes out yet.


More news later today when I update from Ezine.




Hair Shedding


Recently, I read an attractive female client, 52, who has been a hairdresser for 32 years and plans to work as long as she can as she loves it. She also suffers from ADHD and must always be busy - still working 7 days a week, seeing many clients in a day. At age 4, she told her mom she wanted to be "beauty-tian" when she grew up and has no patience for today's young adults who are lost.

She also shared something else I had already knew ... women shed their hair more in the fall. I added that hair shedding is not just seasonal but can be caused by health (physical and emotional) issues, lack of iron, medications, dieting, among other external and internal factors. What I found interesting is that several times during her reading she pulled out some of her shoulder length black hair .. casting the strands to the floor. This was a first for me with a client. I addressed this to be sure she realized what she was doing, which she did, saying she had this pattern since her teen years ... ah ... the time when mental illness starts to show itself, especially during times of stress. The pattern is called Trichotillomania, an impulse control disorder - OCD.

Conclusion ... there are the normal reasons women lose hair in the autumn compounded by genetic pre-disposition to various emotional disorders.

Autumn seems to be about "Fall" - as a Season, Clocks fall back, hair falls out, and those with SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder - emotionally begin to fall into familiar depressive patterns.




October 30, 1938

Orson Wells broadcasts H. G. Welles' War of the Worlds.



A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

Orson Welles Quotes 1

Orson Welles Quotes 2




Jack O Lanterns and Grandkids that got braces this month



Joie, 13, Matthew, 12




Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Chocolate

National Chocolate Day. Are you a Chocoholic?

The Salon du Chocolat, a global meeting of chocolatiers, begins in Paris.
There's a fashion show featuring chocolate couture.
Final of the World Chocolate Masters - a competition for chocolate and pastry chefs.




Wednesday October 28, 2015


Was it the full moon or Halloween tricks as strangeness prevailed in Kansas City
  World Series: Biggest moments from Royals' Game 1 win over the Mets   CNN - October 28, 2015
Looks like the 2015 World Series is off to a dynamic start. The Kansas City Royals beat the New York Mets 5-4 in the 14th inning early Wednesday morning to claim the first game of the series. Both on and off the field, it was a wild and wacky contest from the start.
The longest Game 1 ever - 14 innings.
The first in-the-park homer in decades.
The power goes out - a rare electronics failure.
Google Fiber fails for one hour.
A Royals pitcher gets terrible news - his father died.


In another showdown ...
  Showdown in the South China Sea: How did we get here?   CNN - October 28, 2015
Dotted with small islands, reefs and shoals, the South China Sea is home to a messy territorial dispute that pits multiple countries against each other.


Yet another showdown ... For now it seems Hillary Clinton is the best we have ... if she doesn't go to jail. Seriously. On to the next GOP Debate ..
  Six things to watch at the Republican debate   CNN - October 28, 2015
Fight night: Trump vs. Carson
Jeb Bush, no longer center stage
Carly Fiorina: Third debate's the charm?
Debt ceiling: To raise or not to raise
Crunch time for the bottom-tiers
Will there be much of a debate?


Highway funding .. a trip down Memory Lane.
We've been down this road before: Federal highway funding is expected to run out on Thursday. In the end, Congress will to come through with another extension to let the Highway Trust Fund finance transportation infrastructure improvements. Those are badly needed, as American roads get a D grade from civil engineers. The nation's poor roads led President Dwight D. Eisenhower to support the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, authorizing the creation of what came to be more than 45,000 miles of mostly toll-free high-speed roads. Mr. Eisenhower's passion for better roads went back to 1919. As a young lieutenant general back from World War I, he was part of an 80-vehicle military convoy that took 62 days to travel to San Francisco from Washington. The vehicles took a beating on the mostly unpaved roads, when they weren't slipping into a ditch or getting blown off a cliff. Crossing water sometimes meant building a bridge. Difficult, tiring, and fun, is what he called the trip, made at an average crawl of 6 miles per hour. Mr. Eisenhower's unforgettable road trip in 1919 ended up being a boon for American drivers.




Tuesday, October 27, 2015

The Pitchers

The momentum continues tonight as the Mets play the Royals in Kansas City - Game 1 of the 2015 World Series. It's been 15 years for our Mets and for many fans the thrill of a victory is a walk down memory lane. For younger fans - many of who play baseball - it's the excitement of seeing their home team win the pennant. This is Halloween Week - a time for children to get out there have fun and hopefully those here in New York see their team win.

This year seems to be about the pitchers as baseball's pace has never been faster - meaning the rate of travel of each pitched double-seamed, 108-stitched cowhide, rather than the speed of the games themselves. For the first time in history, the major leagues' average fastball topped 92 mph, and no one harnessed that velocity so regularly as the New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals who threw 95 or faster more than any other teams in baseball: 22.1% of all Mets pitches and 14.8% of all Royals pitches. On display as the World Series starts Tuesday are some of the game's most dynamic pitchers with live arms: The Royals will send their history-making trio of Dominican starters - Edinson Volquez, Johnny Cueto and Yordano Ventura - and the Mets will oppose with their 20-something quartet of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz.




Tuesday October 27, 2015

Full Moon 3° Taurus




Tuesday October 27, 2015


Earth Changes.
The aftermath of Monday's powerful 7.5 earthquake that struck Afghanistan near its border with Pakistan may be more frightening than what we do know. Rescuers are struggling to reach remote areas affected by the magnitude-7.5 quake. So far, the number of deaths in Pakistan and Afghanistan exceeds 300. Areas of the Persian Gulf could be hit by waves of heat and humidity so severe by the end of this century that being outside for several hours could threaten human life, a new study says.


Bikini islanders seek US refuge as sea levels threaten homes   BBC - October 27, 2015
About 1,000 Bikini islanders have applied to relocate to the United States as rising seas threaten their adopted home.


Five years of discord between Republican congressional leaders and President Obama took a breather overnight, as they reached a tentative deal on a two-year budget plan. The budget agreement would modestly increase spending, cut some social programs and raise the federal borrowing limit, averting a government debt default in November. It still faces House and Senate votes.

  Budget deal divides Hill Republicans   CNN - October 27, 2015


Obama travels to Chicago today to talk at a conference of police chiefs about overhauling sentencing laws. Congress is considering legislation - its first major criminal justice overhaul in a decade - to cut certain mandatory minimum prison sentences to address federal prison overcrowding.


A U.S. Navy destroyer has passed close to the artificial Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, in a direct challenge to Beijing. Most of the world does not recognize China's territorial claim on the island chain, nor on much of the South China Sea.


The death of a 24-year-old Nevada woman at a center that uses extreme cold for therapy is prompting scrutiny of cryotherapy's safety. The treatment is used by athletes and celebrities, but it is rarely studied and is not regulated by any one group. Doctors do not agree on its benefits.


Walmart is joining Amazon in pushing ahead with plans to use drones for home delivery and at its distribution centers and stores.


There are so many young men like him out there today.

Sixty years ago today, "Rebel Without a Cause" opened in U.S. movie theaters, a month after its 24-year-old star, James Dean, died in a car crash. The film is now part of the National Film Registry for its cultural, historic and aesthetic significance.


Penny for your thoughts. History of the Penny in several English-speaking countries

How long will the American penny last? Some coin experts say for only about 10 years. 'The plight of the 1 cent coin adds another chapter on Wednesday. That's when shops in Ireland, on a voluntary basis, can start rounding cash purchases in euros up or down to the nearest 5 cents, to reduce the need for 1 and 2 cent coins. (A euro cent is equivalent to about 1.1 U.S. cents.) Rounding is likely to be extremely popular, judging by a trial run in which 85 percent of consumers and 100 percent of retailers wanted to see it spread nationwide. The Central Bank of Ireland says that, in euros, it costs 1.65 cents to make a 1 cent coin, and 1.94 cents for a 2 cent one. (In the U.S., the mint says a penny costs 1.7 cents to produce and distribute.) Countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain have dropped their lowest-denominated coins over the last 30 years or so. The U.S. did too, back in 1857, when the half-cent coin was eliminated, followed by the end of 2 and 3 cent coins.



Sunday, October 25, 2015

Halloween

It's Halloween Week which (witch) ends as clocks move back
one hour Sunday November 1 at 2:00 a.m. in many time zones.

What tricks does the illusion have in store for us this week?
I hope your week is filled with many treats.

Crystalinks Halloween Files

Samhain


'Spooky' Halloween Asteroid May Actually Be a Comet   Live Science - October 24, 2015
The big asteroid that will zoom past Earth on Halloween may actually be a comet, NASA researchers say. The roughly 1,300-foot-wide (400 meters) asteroid 2015 TB145, which some astronomers have dubbed "Spooky," will cruise within 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) of Earth on Halloween (Oct. 31) - just 1.3 times the average distance between our planet and the moon. Though 2015 TB145 poses no threat on this pass, the flyby will mark the closest encounter with such a big space rock until August 2027, when the 2,600-foot-wide (800 m) 1999 AN10 comes within 1 Earth-moon distance (about 238,000 miles, or 385,000 km), NASA officials said.

Happy #Arachtober! Spiders Take Over the Web for Halloween   Live Science - October 22, 2015
Photographers and researchers from around the world are teaming up to share spectacular (and sometimes skin-crawling) photos of one of Halloween's most popular mascots: spiders. But even if they're not your favorite animals, spiders do capture the spirit of the season, and these eight-legged beauties happen to be very cooperative models, according to the folks who started Arachtober, the group devoted to sharing spider-themed photos on social media. Arachtober started in 2007 as a friendly exchange between two Flickr-using macrophotographers, Joseph Connors IV and Ashley Bradford. (Macrophotography is the art of capturing magnified images on film.) Both Connors and Bradford happened to have a lot of spider pictures saved up, and they figured October, the month of Halloween, would be a good time to share the photos with their followers on Flickr.




October 25, 2015

World Pasta Day 2015   Google News

Pasta: History, Evolution, More   Wikipedia




Tuesday October 27, 2015

Full Moon 3° Taurus




Tuesday October 27, 2015

The NY Mets vs Kansas City Royals




My Grandson Michael was invited by the head baseball coach at Amherst College in Mass., to spend this weekend - Homecoming Weekend. They are building a new baseball field which will be ready when he starts college next fall. I can't wait to hear more about his adventures there. His mom, my daughter Zsia, celebrates her birthday Tuesday October 27.




Saturday, October 24, 2015

Hurricane Patricia


  Hurricane Patricia roars into Mexico -- then quickly crumbles   CNN - October 24, 2015
Hurricane Patricia roared into southwestern Mexico then rapidly crumbled Saturday, hours after it hit luxury resorts and impoverished villages with equal ferocity.

  Flood rescues in Texas as torrential rain keeps coming   CNN - October 24, 2015
That admonition is heard so often when roads flood that it rings in the ears of many American motorists.




October 25, 2015 - "Make a Difference Day".

The desire to find your purpose and make a difference is encoded in each of us.

This takes us to healing and helping others.

Make a Difference Day to benefit communities across country  
USA Today - October 24, 2015




Friday October 16, 2015 - interview by a reporter from The Home Reporter


Friday October 23, 2015 - Follow-up story posted in today's newspaper.

Photos taken by one of the reporters from The Home Reporter.

My pic is on the top right. I talked about increased surveillance.




Friday, October 23, 2015

Hurricane Patricia
a Record Breaker


  Historically strong Hurricane Patricia -- with 200-mph winds -- menaces Mexico   CNN - October 23, 2015
With 200-mph sustained winds and even more powerful gusts, Hurricane Patricia was the strongest hurricane ever recorded by the U.S. National Hurricane Center as it bore down Friday on Mexico's Pacific coast.




October 23, 2015

Sun in Scorpio

Happy Birthday to the Scorpio Readers.




Large Hadron Collider Could Be About To Find A Parallel Universe   Yahoo - October 22, 2015
The Large Hadron Collider is now firing at its highest-ever energy level - and scientists hope we could find a parallel universe. It won't be a parallel universe as seen in science fiction - but it could give our understanding of physics is about to take a very big jolt indeed. One of the many mind-scrambling ideas on the table is that the Big Bang never happened, and the universe has always existed. Just as many parallel sheets of paper, which are two dimensional objects (breadth and length) can exist in a third dimension (height), parallel universes can also exist in higher dimensions Cern employee Mir Faizal from the University of Waterloo said.

Scientists at Large Hadron Collider hope to make contact with Parallel Universe in days   News Hour - October 22, 2015
The staggeringly complex LHC atom smasher at the CERN centre in Geneva, Switzerland, will be fired up to its highest energy levels ever in a bid to detect - or even create - miniature black holes. If successful a completely new universe will be revealed - rewriting not only the physics books but the philosophy books too.


Thursday, October 22, 2015

Thursday Highlights


Hillary is a Scorpio - Oct. 26. The sting is on ... Wait for it.

It's make it or break it time for Hillary/Hellary fresh off a symbolic victory with the decision of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. not to run for president. Hill faces a public grilling before a congressional committee today as you know and most likely consider it a farce. When will this go away? When will the Clintons and Bushes go away? When will the lies and conspiracies go away? When what freezes over? Is that an ice age joke? The House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, will also confront her over statements she made about her use of a personal email account as secretary of state. I still says she gets the nomination and doesn't go to jail. The more fun question is who does she run against.


John Boehner said he works 100 hours a week. How can Paul Ryan do that and still have time for his family? Many people now what it's like to either be married to their work or live with someone who is. It leads to all sorts of resentments and issues.
Representative Paul D. Ryan appears to have the votes needed to be elected House speaker next week, after a conservative group of Republicans gave him their somewhat divided support. Among his conditions for serving, Mr. Ryan, 45, said he would not give up time with his family. If elected, he would be the youngest speaker in more than a century.


Slovenia, the smallest country on the Balkan migration route, is asking the European Union for police help to handle the increasing flow of migrants there after Hungary sealed its border with Croatia. The European Union has called a meeting of leaders of affected countries over the weekend.


Road Rage. If you drive you've experienced it and perhaps cursed and cut someone off. In this crazy world, it sometimes goes too far.
A 32-year-old man faces murder charges in Albuquerque in connection with the death of a 4-year-old girl who was shot in a road-rage incident.


Ice Cream. Last week I read a women who owns an Ice cream delivery company in Staten Island. She brought me a cartoon of Chipwiches the only ice cream I like.

Seventy years ago in Glendale, Calif., Irvine Robbins opened the first shop that would grow into the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain, which now has more than 7,000 locations. Mr. Robbins, who worked in his father's ice cream parlor and dairy as a kid, invited his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, into business with him. They initially ran separate stores, but merged them into Baskin-Robbins (the name order decided by a coin toss) in 1953. The chain's trademarked ƒ31,Ɠ which is now incorporated into the B and R of the company logo, was meant to designate a flavor for each day of the month. But since 1945, the company has rotated among more than 1,000 varieties, including Coconut Grove, Cotton Candy, Litchi Gold, Plum Nuts and ChaChaCha (cherry chocolate chip). Mr. Baskins died shortly after the pair sold their ice cream empire in 1967, but Mr. Robbins stayed with the business until 1978. He died in 2008. Besides pioneering flavors, Baskin-Robbins also broke ground on the business side. The founders expanded in 1953 by franchising their stores at a time that was rare. Today, all the locations are franchises. The company's quarterly earnings come out today through its parent company, Dunkin' Brands.




Always Follow the Momentum

The Mets are the National League World Champions sweeping the playoff series in 4 games
beating the Cubs last night by a score of 8 to 3.

Next stop ... The World Series ... played in Scorpio.




October 23, 2015

Sun in Scorpio

Happy Birthday to the Scorpio Readers.




Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Always Follow the Momentum

The excitement grows as the Mets took game 3
of the NLCS at Wrigley Field last night 5-2.

They are one win from their first pennant since 2000. They meet again tonight.




Tuesday

Mammograms. I know they save lives but I often feel the results are off and at the very least a second test and a second opinion should be given. The problems with the world of healing is that everything contradicts itself in the end.
In a turnabout, the American Cancer Society now says women should start having mammograms at age 45 and continue yearly until 54. It previously recommended mammograms and clinical breast exams starting at age 40. Here are the group's new screening guidelines.


Wealthy people can better care for themselves.
Swedish researchers have found that the higher a person's income, the lower the risk of death after heart surgery. Those in the richest one-fifth of the patients studied were 29 percent less likely to die than those in the lowest-income group. But the authors concede that it is possible that severe cardiac illness leads to lower income rather than the other way around.


You can't blame Paul for at least trying.
Representative Paul D. Ryan is waiting for his Republican colleagues to decide if they will agree to conditions he set for serving as speaker of the House. In private talks Tuesday night, he called for more focus on communicating the party's message, and for an end to the antics of bomb throwers and hand wringers, according to lawmakers in the room.


12.5 months more of this ... I believe Hillary will win out over the Republican witch hunt and Bernie Sanders. But will she be president? I hope not. But it doesn't matter.
A longtime adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a conference call with top campaign donors tonight before Mrs. Clinton's testimony on Thursday to the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.


Give it up dude ... or did he ...
An independent campaign is still possible for former Senator Jim Webb, a onetime Republican, who dropped his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination after failing to gain traction.


If one was to pick an antichrist from the two guys below ... who would it be?
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria met in Moscow with President Vladimir V. Putin late Tuesday in an unannounced visit to discuss their joint military campaign in Syria, a Kremlin spokesman said today. Mr. Assad briefed Mr. Putin about the situation on the ground, and Mr. Putin said that Russia was ready to contribute to a political settlement of the conflict that has raged for more than four years.The meeting came after Russia and the United States signed an agreement aimed at regulating aircraft and drone flights over Syria.


Judicial system ... another corrupt system.
A group of more than 130 U.S. police chiefs, prosecutors and sheriffs today joins the movement to reduce the nation's incarceration rate, saying too many people are behind bars that don't belong there. Members of the group are to meet on Thursday with President Obama.


I'm considering 23andMe.
The DNA-testing company 23andMe announces today that it will begin providing customers with their own health information again - though less than before, and now with the F.D.A.'s approval.


Car Dramas.
Toyota Motors today begins U.S. sales of the Mirai, its hydrogen-powered sedan introduced last year in Japan. Separately, Toyota is recalling 6.5 million vehicles globally, almost half of them in North America, to fix a defect in the power window switch in Corolla, Camry and other models.



Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Politics

  Canada votes first new leader in 10 years as Justin Trudeau's Liberal party wins   CNN - October 20, 2015
Canada voted in its first new leader in 10 years in a general election that handed Justin Trudeau's Liberal party an absolute majority -- and dealt a stunning blow to incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The ascension of Mr. Trudeau, 43, comes 47 years after his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, first swept to power in the country. Many saw the election result as a rejection of Mr. Harper's focus on conservative issues.


Republicans meet tonight, hoping for a signal from Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin that he might be interested in becoming House speaker. The other candidates ƒare in a holding pattern, trying to figure out what Paul Ryan is really going to do,Ɠ Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, wrote in a text message.





Baseball Playoffs

Let's get to Wrigley Field where to night the Chicago Cubs play the NY Mets. If any of the Mets' young pitchers hadn't garnered enough national attention this season, captain David Wright thinks their performances on the big stage have turned them into "household names" this October. After Matt Harvey, 26, and Noah Syndergaard, 23, shut down the Cubs in the first two games of the National League Championship Series, the parade of pitching talent continues in Game 3 with Jacob deGrom, 27, the 2014 NL rookie of the year. Steven Matz, 24, is slated for Game 4 at Wrigley Field.




Weight Loss Programs That Began in Brooklyn

Arthur, my next door neighbor - and close friend - owns a weight loss company called Lean Chefs which you may have seen advertised in the 3+ years it's been in business. The food is delivered to customers each morning. The owner is health conscious.

This is not how I lost my weight, but it works. For me it's about protein and vegetables only - which I love. I spent most of my life normal size but went up and down in recent years. I'still only way back to 130 pounds and feel great. There are few people my age, 72, who have no health issues and are not on meds.


The Big" story this week is ... Oprah buying 10% of Weight Watchers - a failing company whose stocks soared creating a $43 million profit for her in one day. I wondered if she bought in to make millions and/or to lose weight. An endorsement from Oprah Winfrey is known to bring struggling brands into peak popularity. The Oprah Effect continues ... She will take a seat on the board for 5 years'.

Weight Watchers International is an international company based in the United States that offers various products and services to assist weight loss and maintenance. Founded in 1963 by Brooklyn, New York, homemaker Jean Nidetch, (October 12, 1923 - April 29, 2015). WW now operates in about 30 countries around the world.

An overweight housewife with a self-confessed obsession for eating meat, Nidetch had experimented with numerous fad diets before she followed a regimen prescribed by a diet clinic sponsored by the New York City Board of Health in 1961. After losing 20 pounds (9.07 kg), and finding her resolve weakening, she contacted several overweight friends and founded a support group which developed into weekly classes, and incorporated on May 15, 1963, into the Weight Watchers organization. In 1978, Weight Watchers was sold to the H. J. Heinz Company. Nidetch, who remained a consultant to the organization, established scholarship programs at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.




Migrant Situation in Europe

While many around the world are overindulging ... we go to ... Europe.

Sal, the superintendent in my building, just returned from 5 weeks in Europe. Much of the time was spent in Turkey his home country where concerns are about the November 1 presidential election, the explosion last week that rocked Ankara, and the ongoing migrant situation steeped in poverty and crime. He and his wife traveled around Europe where it is estimated there are 3 million migrants and counting from Africa and the Middle East.




October 21, 2015: Back to the Future Day


Time is an illusion ... ergo so is everything else. More than ever I think about Time Travel ... leading to a conversation with George about experiments in time. The symbolism at this level are labs often highlighted with the Nazi Program ... a grid I can easily revisit. I noticed a blue light emanating from what we call chaos or the void acting as a tether for time. There is nothing one can do but wait and watch at this level of consciousness. Are we going back to the future? time is imploding as its illusion ends.




If you watched the series finale of Continuum last Friday
Kiera made it back to the future ... but it wasn't what she had hoped for.
Read a Review




From a linear perspective we are almost out of time...

In reference to the 1985 film Back to the Future - the future arrives October 21, 2015 the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel in time. Many websites - like CNET, Gizmodo, ScienceAlert, The Upcoming and The New York Times - are taking a look at the 1989 movie's predictions of what 2015 would be like and comparing them to today's reality.

There are companies imitating art, or at least trying to replicate the movie's product placements. Pepsi, for one, is coming out with Pepsi Perfect, the drink McFly buys in the fictional 2015. About 5,000 limited-edition bottles (the drink inside is regular Pepsi) will be sold starting Wednesday for $20.15 each. Nike has reportedly been working on a self-lacing version of the Nike Mag trainers from the movie. Ford has a commercial for new 2015 models with flux capacitors, which allow time travel.





Poof! Futuristic Flying Vehicles Could Vanish After Deliveries   Live Science - October 20, 2015
Picture this: A tiny, floating device delivers a package into your arms, and then, before you can say "thanks," it disappears into thin air. Such a magical device may sound like something out of a Harry Potter movie, but it's real technology that could benefit people in remote areas. The development of this far-out delivery system is being led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense charged with developing new technologies for the U.S. military. Several years ago, DARPA launched its Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program, which is devoted to building small electronic systems that do their jobs and then self-destruct. Although it might sound counterintuitive to build something that's going to disappear, self-destructing systems are useful for a range of situations, according to DARPA. For example, sophisticated technologies (such as environmental sensors or communications tools) are often used on battlefields and then are left behind, where they can be scooped up by people who aren't authorized to use them, making them risky. Discarded electronics also pose a threat to the environment as they rust and decompose. But electronics that just disappear aren't saddled with these problems, DARPA officials said.


Update on Drones...

  U.S. announces task force to develop drone registry   Reuters - October 20, 2015
The Obama administration said on Monday that it would require drone owners to register their unmanned aircraft as part of an effort to curtail rogue drone flights that pose a danger to commercial aircraft and crowded public venues.




October 21, 2015

Orionids

  Orionids Google Videos

The Orionids are annual meteor showers located near the constellation Orion.