Railroad tracks ... Thx Nita E! and Jack H!

Railroad tracks- An interesting re-cycle! 

Fw: railroad tracks

 

Railroad Tracks The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So, who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.   The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important! Now you know, horses' asses control almost everything; this explains a whole lot of stuff about Washington D.C., doesn't it?

a Bible Story ... Thx Clay V!

Nothing like a good Bible story to start your day.  Right, Clay!  We're both in trouble now.

Nothing like a good Bible story to make your day...

Adam was hanging around the garden of Eden feeling very lonely.
So, God asked him, 'What's wrong with you?'  

Adam said he didn't have anyone to talk to.

God said that He was going to make Adam a companion and that it would be a woman.

He said, 'This pretty lady will gather food for you, she will cook for you,

and when you discover clothing, she will wash it for you

She will always agree with every decision you make and she will not nag   

and will always be the first to admit she was wrong when you've had a disagreement.  

She will praise you!  

She will bear your children.

and she will never wake you up in the middle of the night to take care of them

She will NEVER have a headache and will freely give you love and passion whenever you want.'

Adam asked God, 'What will a woman like this cost?'   

God replied, 'An arm and a leg.'

Then Adam asked, 'What can I get for a rib?'

Of course the rest is history............!!!!

Wal-Mart - Interesting! ... Thx Pidge F!

Wal-Mart – interesting

It is quite interesting. Even if you do not forward it,

read it all the way to the end............


1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart every hour of every day. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

2. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.
3. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.
4. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English.
5. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.
6. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.
7. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.
8. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
9. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.
10. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)
11. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.

You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
This should be read and understood by all Americans -- Democrats, Republicans, EVERYONE!!

To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the
Legislature -- It is now official that the majority of you are corrupt and ineffective:

a.The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 237 years to get it right and it is broke.
b. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 77 years to get it right and it is broke.
c. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
d. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 48 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.
e. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 47 years to get it right and they are broke.
f. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 42 years to get it right and it is broke.
g. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 35 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.

You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars. AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH
A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM??

Folks, keep this circulating. It is very well stated. Maybe it will end up in the e-mails of some of our "duly
elected' (they never read anything) and their staff will clue them in on how Americans feel.

AND We have lost our minds to "Political Correctness" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're "broke" & can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.,??????????? In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile, Japan and Turkey..And Pakistan ........previous home of Bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!! Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income' receive no extra aid nor do they get any special breaks--nadda beyond shopping discounts... AND Congress wants to freeze Social Security payments...
You do know that Congress voted themselves a pay raise for 2013??? Google this—it’s true!!!

99% of people won't forward this. I'm one of the 1% -- I Just Did.

Obama Hate signs from Egyptian demos ... thx Pidge F!

PHOTOS FROM THE TAHRIR SQUARE PROTESTS!!

Curiously, a massive wave of anti-Obama sentiment in Egypt has been utterly ignored by main stream media, even though the protests may be the largest in all of human history.

 

PLEASE PASS THIS ON SO THE REST OF THE COUNTRY CAN SEE WHAT THE MEDIA IS RELUCTANT TO REVEAL AS TO WHAT THE REST OF THE WORLD THINKS ABOUT OBAMA!!!

Kilroy was here ... Thx Ramey H!

How many of you remember, Kilroy was here signs?

He is engraved in stone in the National War Memorial in Washington, DC- back in a small alcove where very few people have seen it. For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history. Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he was so well known- but everybody seemed to get into it. So who was Kilroy?  In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prizeof a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax , Massachusetts, had evidence of his identity. 'Kilroy' was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark. Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters. One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo. To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived. Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty , the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon. As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its' first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?" To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax, Massachusetts. And The Tradition Continues... EVEN Outside Osama Bin Laden's House!!!

Aphorisms of the year ... Thx Clay V!

I suppose you have seen several of these before--but might enjoy again.

APHORISMS FOR THE YEAR...

 

 

It's not whether you win or lose, But how you place the blame.   You are not drunk If you can lie on the floor Without holding on.   We have enough "youth".   How about a fountain of "smart"?   The original point and click interface Was a Smith & Wesson.   A Fool and his money can throw one heck of a party   When blondes have more fun,do they know it?   LEARN FROM YOUR PARENTS' MISTAKES USE BIRTH CONTROL   Money isn't everything, But it sure keeps the kids in touch.   Don't Drink and Drive You might hit a bump and spill something.   If at first you don't succeed Skydiving is not for you   We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.   Red meat is not bad for you Fuzzy green meat is bad for you.   Ninety-nine percent of all lawyers Give the rest a bad name.   Xerox and Wurlitzer will merge To produce reproductive organs.   Alabama state motto: At least we're not Mississippi   ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NO MATCH FOR NATURAL STUPIDITY.   The latest survey shows that Three out of four people make Up 75% of the population   "You know why a banana is like a politician?" "He comes in and first he is green, Then he turns yellow And then he's rotten."   "I think Congressmen should wear uniforms, You know, like NASCAR drivers, so we could Identify their corporate sponsors."

The reason Politicians try so hard to get re-elected is that they would 'hate' to have to make a living under the laws they've passed.

 

Newsweek- "Hit the Road, Barack!" ... Thx Lyle S!

"NEWSWEEK ON OBAMA" ... FINALLY!!!

 

 

 

 

Please open the attachment first!

 

 

 Better late than never 
 
Finally, Matt Patterson and Newsweek speak out about Obama.  This is timely and tough.  As many of you know, Newsweek has a reputation for being extremely liberal.  The fact that their editor saw fit to print the following article about Obama and the one that appears in the latest Newsweek,  makes this a truly amazing event, and a news story in and of itself. At last, the truth about our President and his agenda are starting to trickle through the �protective wall� built around him by the liberal media.
___________________________
I Too Have Become Disillusioned.

By Matt Patterson (columnist � opinion writer)
Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages.  How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life:  ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer;" a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.
He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator.  And then there is the matter of his troubling associations:  the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor";  a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor.  It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking:  how on Earth was such a man elected president?
Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day.  But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberal Dom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass . Let that sink in:  Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard - because of the color of his skin.

Podhoretz continues:  And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?
Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon - affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back.  Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.  Liberals don't care if these minority students fail;  liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action.  Yes, racist.  Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin - that's affirmative action in a nutshell,and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.

And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be?  As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental;  he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois;  he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate.  All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.
What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people � conservatives included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed.

The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clich�s, and that's when he has his Teleprompters in front of him;  when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all.  Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth - it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that  has failed over and over again for 100 years. (An example is his 2012 campaign speeches which are almost word for word his 2008 speeches)
And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles.  Bush did it; it was bad luck;  I inherited this mess.  Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the task.  It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. (The other day he actually came out and said no one could have done anything to get our economy and country back on track.)  But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?
In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.  When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense.  It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.