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Earendel - LiveJournal.com
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Got to give the guy credit for balls.
Oregon lawn-chair pilot plans 300-mile flight
By JEFF BARNARD, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 3, 5:05 AM ET
GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Like many Americans, Kent Couch plans to settle into a lawn chair during the Fourth of July weekend. Unlike everyone else, his feet will dangle high above the lawn.
Couch is set to launch himself skyward on Saturday aboard his lawn chair, which will be attached to 150 giant latex party balloons filled with helium. His goal: to fly more than 300 miles from his gas station in central Oregon to somewhere in Idaho, preferably Boise.
It will be his third attempt to fly by the seat of his pants to Idaho — he doesn't wear a seat belt.
"The first time, nobody wanted to be involved at all," Couch told The Associated Press in a phone interview Wednesday. "They were thinking I was a lunatic, I mean a balloon-atic. My friends shunned me. But this time it's different. "
He now has a corporate sponsor, a team of volunteers and his wife Susan's blessing.
Couch, 48, was inspired to go up, up and away by the 1982 lawn-chair flight over Los Angeles by truck driver Larry Walters, whose adventure brought him a measure of fame, but also a $1,500 fine for violating air traffic rules.
Couch made his first ascent in 2006, floating for six hours before shooting out a few balloons with his pellet gun to descend. He apparently shot out too many balloons because he had to use his parachute to land. He never found the lawn chair.
Last year, he flew 193 miles before running low on helium and landing in a patch of sagebrush. A gust of wind blew away that chair. It was found in May by a ranchers checking the fence line on their eastern Oregon property.
Couch has appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" and NBC's "Tonight Show with Jay Leno." He has enjoyed his time in the limelight, but said he isn't flying a lawn chair for fame and fortune.
Cluster ballooning is inherently risky, but the ride is generally carefree, he said.
"When you're up there, there's not much stress," he said. "There's a little stress on the way down. A few navigational issues you've got to deal with. But there's nothing, really, I can do but enjoy it."
With corporate sponsorship this year, he says he's much better equipped and hopes to cross the Wallowa Mountains in northeastern Oregon and make it to Idaho and beyond. He figures the rig costs about $6,000, mostly for helium.
The balloons are tied to a framework attached to a reclining lawn chair. He is using 15-gallon barrels as a water ballast, which he can drain to gain altitude.
"If I get up around 15,000 feet, I'll pop a couple balloons," Couch said. "If I get too low, I'll release some water. All the way you go it's like a seesaw, up and down, up and down. You can't feel yourself going up and down. You have to look at the altimeter."
Couch will have a finger clip to monitor the oxygen level in his blood and a tank of oxygen should he venture too high. He'll have a GPS tracking device attached to his chair and another in his pocket, allowing his location to be monitored on his Web site.
He'll bring duct tape and zip ties for emergency repairs, extra clothes and a blanket to ward off the cold at higher altitudes. He'll munch on beef jerky, boiled eggs and chocolate.
"You don't want to eat much," he said. "There's no bathrooms up there on that chair."
If all goes well this year, the lawn-chair pilot says he'd like to fly across the English Channel and even Australia.
"I don't mind them thinking I'm nuts," Couch said. "I've done my research and I feel plenty confident."
Had a nice weekend. Went to V2 a wine bar over in Smyrna Friday night with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) shalie where we met starlancer and LJ less Mike, Lisa, Paul and Beverly. Nice little place a bit reminiscent of back alley speakeasy. It got pretty crowded around 10 o'clock.
shalie gave me a 32 inch plasma TV as a combination birthday and thank you gift Saturday. We also shopped around to find a table to fit next to her desk.
I spent Saturday night and Sunday working on building a device so we could mount it in the armoire. Finally got it up and mounted early Sunday evening.
shalie Spent the rest of the evening looking up the code so we could program the remote.
Unfortunately, we missed fwod's birthday get together. If I'd known they'd still be there till ten, we would have driven down.
Your result for The Commonly Confused Words Test... English GeniusYou scored 100% Beginner, 86% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 87% Expert! You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!
Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!
For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.
Take The Commonly Confused Words Test at HelloQuizzy
Last night was fun
I went to the Alchemy event at the Blue Tower Gallery and got to hang with some old friends for a bit. It was a fund raiser for the burning man event in August. They had a bunch of great art and fun folks.
from my phone.
The gallery had a little movie theater in the back that showed footage from the Burning Man event in Nevada. Watching the various clips gave me a chance to really see the soul of Burning Man and the different people involved in making it happen.
I had to leave early to go to a birthday party at the Pentagon Club at the Dekalb Peachtree Airport. A friend was turning fifty and celebrating at the airport. The Pentagon Club is an old traffic control tower that a bunch of pilots rent for functions. We got to hang out with the pilots and watch the planes take off and land amidst the electric blue lines of the landing strips on the midnight colored blacktop. Midnight rolled around and it was time for this fifty year old to head home to bed.
| What type of person do you attract? Your Result: You attract Yuppies! You attract the very well-dressed, job oriented type of people. They usually have their finances together, are 'middle of the road' on most topics, generally happy with the 'main-stream' of things. If it is stability you are after, these are good people to attract, if you seek adventure, it may be time for an overhaul. | | You attract models! | | | You attract artsy people! | | | You attract geeks! | | | You attract unstable people! | | | You attract rednecks! | | What type of person do you attract?
Quizzes for MySpace |
You Scored an A
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You got 10/10 questions correct.
It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors.
If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs.
As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human.
And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.
|
Ganked from starlancer
Your result for The What Middle Earth race do you belong to Test... The What Middle Earth race do you belong to Test
You scored high in morality and intelligence, but lower in physical strength and aggression, which means you're probably a Wizard. Counted among the very wise and (with that one exception) good creatures of Middle Earth are the Wizards, or Istari. Though they appear as old men, the Istari are actually powerful Maiar spirits sent from Valinor to Middle Earth to act as caretakers of the land and guides to men and beasts. Their supernatural heritage means they're also the only line of defense against rogue Maiar like Balrogs. Though only Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast are named through the novels, there are two other Wizards at large in Middle Earth, quietly working to bring tranquility to their surroundings.
Your polar opposite is the Urûk-Hai. Take The What Middle Earth race do you belong to Test at HelloQuizzy
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.
Alrightty, Time for another latte
No higher death risk in long-term coffee drinking By Will Dunham
Mon Jun 16, 7:56 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Long-term coffee drinking does not appear to increase a person's risk of early death and may cut a person's chances of dying from heart disease, according to a study published on Monday.
Previous studies have given a mixed picture of health effects from coffee, finding a variety of benefits and some drawbacks from the popular drink. The new study looked at people who drank caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee.
Researchers led by Esther Lopez-Garcia of Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in Spain followed 84,214 U.S. women from 1980 to 2004 and 41,736 U.S. men from 1986 to 2004.
They found that regular coffee drinking -- up to six cups a day -- was not associated with increased deaths among the study's middle-aged participants. In fact, the coffee drinkers, particularly the women, experienced a small decline in death rates from heart disease.
The study found no association between coffee consumption and cancer deaths.
"Our study indicates that coffee consumption does not have a detrimental effect," Lopez-Garcia, whose research appears in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, said in a telephone interview. "It seems like long-term coffee consumption may have some beneficial effects."
There has been a debate among scientists about the health effects of drinking coffee, which typically contains the stimulant caffeine and a number of other important compounds.
The people who took part in the research completed questionnaires on how frequently they drank coffee, other diet habits, smoking and medical conditions. The researchers then studied the mortality risk over the period of the study among people with different coffee-drinking habits.
The study found that women who reported drinking two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease than women who did not drink coffee. The researchers saw a smaller decreased risk for men but it was not statistically significant.
Drinking decaffeinated coffee was associated with a small reduction in overall mortality risk, the researchers said.
The people in the study had no history of cardiovascular disease or cancer when they entered it. The women were nurses and the men doctors, dentists and other health professionals.
Some studies have indicated coffee is a great source of antioxidants, substances that may protect against the effects of molecules called free radicals that can damage cells and may play a role in heart disease, cancer and other ailments.
Recent studies have offered a mixed picture on the health effects of coffee.
A study that came out in January found that pregnant women who drink two or more cups of coffee a day had twice the risk of miscarriage as those who avoid caffeine. Another study appearing in January found that drinking caffeinated coffee lowered a woman's risk of ovarian cancer.
(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Bill Trott)
Phone numbers
I just changed phones and unfortuately not all the numbers transfered. If you get a chance, drop me a line with your current number so I can update my phone.
earendel@netzero.com
Cheers
Earendel
Ganked from prismfire
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BE HONEST! Answer the questions in a comment, then repost on your own journal if you wish!
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VW's 235 mpg Car
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/05/27/transportation-tuesday-vws-235mpg-concept-coming-soon/
Schedule to be available in 2010.
Coffee Beans May Be Newest Stress-Buster
By Ed Edelson, HealthDay Reporter - Fri Jun 13, 8:47 PM PDTProvided by:
96% of users found this article helpful.- FRIDAY, June 13 (HealthDay News) -- Just sniffing that first hot cup of coffee in the morning may help ease some stresses you might be feeling, a South Korean trial indicates.
When rats inhaled the aroma of roasted coffee beans, a number of genes were activated, including some that produce proteins with healthful antioxidant activity, the researchers reported.
"The meaning of it is not totally clear yet," said Dr. Peter R. Martin, director of the Institute of Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University. "What it does show is that coffee smells do change the brain to some degree, and it behooves us to understand why that is happening."
The findings, from a team led by Han-Seok Seo at Seoul National University in South Korea, were expected to be published in the June 25 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
The experiment was done with laboratory rats, some of whom were stressed by being deprived of sleep. The researchers did detailed genetic studies that showed the activity of 11 genes was increased and the activity of two genes was decreased in the rats that smelled the coffee, compared to those who did not. In effect, the aroma of the coffee beans helped ease the stress of the sleep-deprived rodents.
The experiment provides "for the first time, clues to the potential antioxidant or stress-relaxation activities of the coffee bean aroma," the researchers wrote.
And they added, "These results indirectly explain why so many people use coffee for staying up all night, although the volatile compounds of coffee beans are not fully consistent with those of the coffee extracts. In other words, the stress caused by sleep loss via caffeine may be alleviated through smelling the coffee aroma."
"They used the latest in technology to see how brain expression of RNA changed," Martin said. RNA is the molecule that carries out the instructions encoded in genes. "This is just the beginning of a very interesting line of investigation," he added.
The aromatic compounds responsible for coffee's odor may be antioxidants, "but they are not the same as the major antioxidants that are in the drink," said Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.
Chemically, the antioxidants in liquid coffee are polyphenols, Vinson said. Those in the aroma are heterocycle compounds containing sulfur or nitrogen atoms.
"There are two ways to get things into your system, and the quickest way is to smell them," Vinson said. "Caffeine gets into the brain via the blood stream. Here, aromatic molecules get into the brain through the olfactory system. The levels in the air are parts per million, so obviously these are minor components in the air. But they are doing something."
Previous studies have shown that coffee consumption can reduce depression and suicide risk, as well as relieve stress, effects generally attributed to the caffeine in coffee, the researchers noted. But while some 900 compounds that float away from the bean have been identified, this is the first study to assay their possible effects, they added.
It's too early to recommend that people feeling stress sniff coffee to ease their way, Martin said. But, he added, "people who don't even drink coffee are fascinated by the odor of it. Ever since my little boy was two years old, he has loved the odor of coffee. I have always thought that coffee has some mystic quality, and there is some deep historical basis for it."
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