History for April 26 - On-This-Day.com John James Audubon 1785 - Ornithologist, naturalist, painter, Frederick Olmsted 1822 - Journalist, landscape designer, Rudolf Hess 1895 - Adolf Hitler's Deputy in the Nazi Party
Charles Richter 1900 - Seismologist, creator of the Richter magnitude scale used to quantify earthquakes, Bernard Malamud 1914 - Author of novels and short stories, Carol Burnett 1933 - Actress, comedian 1478 - Pazzi conspirators attacked Lorenzo and killed Giuliano de'Medici. 1514 - Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn. 1607 - The British established an American colony at Cape Henry, Virginia. It was the first permanent English establishment in the Western Hemisphere. 1865 - John Wilkes Booth was killed by the U.S. Federal Cavalry. 1941 - An organ was played at a baseball stadium for the first time in Chicago, IL. 1954 - Grace Kelly was on the cover of "LIFE" magazine. 1986 - The world’s worst nuclear disaster to date occurred at Chernobyl, in Kiev. Thirty-one people died in the incident and thousands more were exposed to radioactive material. 1998 - Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera was bludgeoned to death two days after a report he'd compiled on atrocities during Guatemala's 36-year civil war was made public.
I
had the wonderful opportunity of being involved in a production of
Godspell back when I was in high school. The thought of being on
stage absolutely terrified me so I was not part of the cast. I found
my comfort zone working behind the scenes. I had no idea how much my
experience in the drama department and specifically the production of
Godspell, would impact my life.
What
seemed like a life consuming commitment at the time was over and gone
forever in a blink of an eye. It was a time of new challenges,
struggles and accomplishments. Many of the experiences would serve as
stepping stones to understanding how to handle future challenging
circumstances. They would include the value of surrounding myself
with good people, accepting, facing and overcoming challenges, and
the reinforcement of foundational beliefs.
At
the time, I was simply enjoying the excitement of being entrusted
with a new level of responsibility. I was in charge of every piece
of equipment or furnishing (props) on the stage. The schedule, much
like the director, was very demanding. The question became, was the
end result worth such intensity and personal sacrifice? Did I
believe in what I was doing? Was it worth my time and effort? I knew
the answer was yes but it didn't really sink in until we stood and
looked at each other after the curtain fell for the last time. I
would carry those memories and many of life lessons with me for the
rest of my life.
Friendships
formed, and in some cases, still remain to this day. The importance
of being surrounded by good God-fearing people, who were not only
caring and dependable but ethical and honorable, has resonated
throughout my life. The Golden Rule has always been part of my life,
my beliefs, but learning what truly makes the rule so golden, seems
to find its way back to this experience. Challenges are indeed
challenging, among many other descriptive words. As long as you are
breathing, you can expect to be challenged. How you react and treat
others, despite the difficult times, not only affects you but every
single person around you.......
On pizza regulations, Trump slices differently than his own FDA commissioner: "As the owner of 18 Domino’s stores in Texas, I do not cut corners, whether on pizzas or complying with the law. Unfortunately, on May 7 the law will become especially burdensome and unhelpful to my customers. That day, President Trump’s FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb will implement a nationwide, Obama-era menu-labeling rule requiring restaurants with 20 or more locations to post in-store menu boards listing the calories of every item sold. ...First, the rule fails to account for how my customers actually order pizza in the real world out here in West Texas. Unlike other food establishments that have static menu options, pizza is highly variable: Domino’s offers consumers 34 million different combinations of pizza. Can you imagine yourself in a small store in Midland or Odessa, Texas, plastered with menu boards, trying to calculate all of these possible combinations? ...Second, the costs of the rule to my employees and me could be excessive, with the greatest beneficiaries of these costs being trial lawyers. This is because Gottlieb’s rule exposes my employees and me to civil and criminal penalties of up to one year in prison and/or a $100,000 fine for inadvertent violations. That means if one of us accidentally tops a pizza with too much pepperoni or cheese, or is a little heavy-handed with the tomato sauce on a given day, we could be headed to prison..." Read all!
Banal stories about everyday heroism don’t fly in Hollywood, so literally everything about the Sully movie, aside from the plane landing, is 100% fiction. Director Clint Eastwood needed a villain to make the movie work, so the filmmakers invented an evil traffic board who desperately wants to nail Sully for negligence. They claim Sully might’ve been drunk, that one of his engines actually had power, and that flight simulations showed he should’ve easily made it to the airport.
Sully fights tirelessly to convince them he did all he could do and eventually, the board concludes the pilot did, in fact, do the right thing. In real life, none of that happened.
The traffic board almost immediately sided with Sully, as did everyone in the country who honored him." Warner Bros.
Green Mess: Thousands Of Turbines To Close | Climate Dispatch
"As older turbines see subsidies expire, thousands are expected to be taken offline due to lack of profitability. Green nightmare: Wind park operators eye shipping thousands of tons of wind turbine litter to third world countries – and leaving their concrete rubbish in the ground.
...This is yet another blow to Germany’s Energiewende (transition to green energies). A few days ago, I reported here how the German solar industry had seen a monumental jobs’ bloodbath and investments have been slashed to a tiny fraction of what they once were.
Over the years, Germany has made approvals for new wind parks more difficult as the country reels from an unstable power grid and growing protests against the blighted landscapes and health hazards. ...Wind turbine dump in Africa?
So what happens to the old turbines that will get taken offline?
...So naturally, there’s a huge incentive for German wind park operators to dump the old contraptions onto third-world countries, and to let them deal later with the garbage.
Sweeping garbage under the rug...
Already wind park operators are circumventing this huge expense by only removing the top two meters of the concrete and steel base, and then hiding the rest with a layer of soil, the Baseler writes. In the end, most of the concrete base will remain as garbage buried in the ground, and the above-ground turbine litter will likely get shipped to third-world countries..." Read all!
European human rights chiefs order the British press NOT to reveal when terrorists are Muslims in crackdown on freedom of speech
Report out from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance
Blames increase in hate crimes and racism in UK on the 'worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in newspapers'
Claims Islamophobia rises when media reports when terrorists are Muslim
"European human rights chiefs have told the British press it must not report when terrorists are Muslim. The recommendations came as part of a list of 23 meddling demands to Theresa May’s government on how to run the media in an alarming threat to freedom speech. The report, drawn up by the Council of Europe's human rights watchdog, blamed the recent increase in hate crimes and racism in the UK on the 'worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians', although the research was done before the EU referendum campaign had even begun..." Read on!
DHS vows caravan will be arrested, prosecuted if it enters U.S. - Washington Times:
"“If you enter the United States illegally, let me be clear: You have broken the law. And we will enforce the law through prosecution of illegal border crossers,” she said.
She made the announcement hours after President Trump said he had ordered her to refuse entry to the caravan.
“It is a disgrace. We are the only Country in the World so naive!” Mr. Trump said on Twitter."
“There is that natural tension that exists between the press and the people we were covering, but it was never like this,” Acosta says. “We were never called ‘fake news.’ We were never called ‘the enemy of the people,’ and that just created a totally different climate and environment that we are all trying to make sense of and trying to figure out: How do we cover the news in that kind of toxic environment?”
Does Jim Acosta actually not know that he works for CNN, whose former chief executive Eason Jordan penned an essay in 2003 for the New York Times titled “The News We Kept To Ourselves,” where he admitted that his network created fake news out of Iraq simply to have the “Live From Baghdad” imprimatur on the Chyron?
More recently, as far as being called “the enemy of the people,” does Acosta not know or care that employees in multiple divisions of Time-Warner-CNN-HBO have a yen for doxxing anonymous Americans?
Also in that same column, as T. Becket Adams of the Washington Examinertweets, the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker, “The woman who screamed ‘DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR GAFFES HAVE OVERSHADOWED YOUR FOREIGN TRIP???’ at Romney during his visit to a Polish war memorial says she now has to — get this — QUADRUPLE check her work because of the ‘fake news environment.’
These are dark times indeed.” Heh.™ Choose the form of your destructor, to coin an Insta-phrase. (Classical allusion in headline.) by Ed Driscoll
Scientists analysed data on plastic from 79 sampling sites along 57 rivers
Their results showed that 10 rivers account for the majority of plastic
Eight of these are in Asia, including the Yangtze and Indus rivers
Targeting these rivers could halve the amount of plastic waste, experts predict
Up to 95 per cent of plastic polluting the world's oceans pours in from just ten rivers, according to new research. The top 10 rivers - eight of which are in Asia - accounted for so much plastic because of the mismanagement of waste. About five trillion pounds is floating in the sea, and targeting the major sources - such as the Yangtze and the Ganges - could almost halve it, scientists claim..." Read all!
Map shows where President Barack Obama dropped his 20,000 bombs | The Independent "...as the world gears up for a seemingly more violent four years, it is worth reflecting on President Obama's tenure According to newly released figures, President Obama had already upped the number of bombs on foreign countries. US forces dropped over 3,000 more bombs in 2016 than 2015, taking the grand total of strikes for the year to at least 26,171. This map by Statista shows you where they were: Vast majority of strikes carried out in Iraq and Syria The figures are likely to be an underestimate, since the only reliable data only comes from a handful of countries, and multiple bombs can be classed as a single “strike” under the Pentagon's definition..." Read all!
"When shouting campus protesters hold signs that read, “We condemn freedom of speech that hurts other people’s feelings,” should conservatives take this seriously?
They should. The call to regulate offensive speech has deep intellectual roots on the Left. In fact, much evidence suggests that such regulation is necessary to bring about many of Left’s political and moral goals. Conservatives can better grasp where this trend is going by turning to some of its more articulate proponents. Banning offensive speech is necessary to “protect the dignity and self-regard” of minority groups, write Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, professors of law at the University of Alabama and leading advocates for the banning of certain speech they disapprove of and describe as hate speech. "
Scientists Confirm That Uranus Actually Smells Like Farts | The Daily Sheeple: "It’s official: scientists have confirmed the Uranus actually smells like farts.
...The clouds actually smell like sulfur, think “rotten eggs” giving it that human fart quality thanks to the gas hydrogen sulfide.
...Scientists figured this out using the spectrometer on the Gemini North telescope.
They found that the planet’s clouds are made up mostly of the smelly gas hydrogen sulfide.
The discovery, reported in Nature Astronomy, should help astronomers better understand the formation not only of Uranus but of the other outer planets.
For one thing, Uranus differs from gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, whose clouds are made up mostly of ammonia ice (and are thus less smelly)..." Read on.
History for April 25 - On-This-Day.com: Oliver Cromwell 1599 - English military and political leader, Guglielmo Marconi 1874 - Italian inventor (radio telegraph system), Edward R. Murrow 1908 - American broadcast journalist Ella Fitzgerald 1918 - Vocalist, known as "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella", Al Pacino 1940 - Actor, Bjorn Ulvaeus 1945 - Musician (Abba) 1792 - The guillotine was first used to execute highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier. 1915 - During World War I, Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli in Turkey in hopes of attacking the Central Powers from below. The attack was unsuccessful. 1928 - A seeing eye dog was used for the first time. 1953 - Dr. James D. Watson and Dr. Francis H.C. Crick suggested the double helix structure of DNA. 1959 - St. Lawrence Seaway opened to shipping. The water way connects the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. 1961 - Robert Noyce was granted a patent for the integrated circuit. 1980 - In Iran, a commando mission to rescue hostages was aborted after mechanical problems disabled three of the eight helicopters involved. During the evacuation, a helicopter and a transport plan collided and exploded. Eight U.S. servicemen were killed. The mission was aimed at freeing American hostages that had been taken at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. The event took place April 24th Washington, DC, time. 1992 - Islamic forces in Afghanistan took control of most of the capital of Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.
On pizza regulations, Trump slices differently than his own FDA commissioner: 
Over the years, Germany has made approvals for new wind parks more difficult as the country reels from an unstable power grid and growing protests against the blighted landscapes and health hazards.
“There is that natural tension that exists between the press and the people we were covering, but it was never like this,” Acosta says. “We were never called ‘fake news.’ We were never called ‘the enemy of the people,’ and that just created a totally different climate and environment that we are all trying to make sense of and trying to figure out: How do we cover the news in that kind of toxic environment?”
"When shouting campus protesters hold signs that read, “We condemn freedom of speech that hurts other people’s feelings,” should conservatives take this seriously?
"It’s official: scientists have confirmed the Uranus actually smells like farts. 
