Whitney Houston (1963-2012) – USA Anthem

I’ve been remembering this very emotional video and performance by Whitney Houston in the Superbowl back in 1991. Every time I hear it, I’m amazed and find myself enjoying such a wonderful voice.

I also have another version. After the attacks in 2001, I posted this page to honor America from whatever place I was working at. It looks old, but it’s still really good.

Read More

U.S. is the Biggest Wine Drinking Country in the World

Vino anyone? It seems we have been drinking up — and often — as the U.S. has become the world’s biggest consumer of wine.

Statistics released at by Vinexpo and International Wine and Spirit Research (ISWR) showed the United States consumed the equivalent of 3.7 billion bottles of wine in 2011. Americans surpassed the traditional wine-guzzling nations: France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Germany. China, which is one of the fastest growing markets, knocked England out of fifth place.

Read More

Four-atom-wide wire may herald tiny computers

This image from a computational simulation run of the newly created wires shows electron density as electrons flow from left to right. The wires are 20 times smaller than the smallest wires now available and measure just four atoms wide by one phosphorus atom tall.

A wire that is just four atoms wide and one atom tall, yet works just as well as the ordinary copper wires running behind your wall, was recently created by an international team of scientists.

The breakthrough brings closer to reality a future where computers smaller than a pinhead are faster and more powerful than some of today’s supercomputers, according to the researchers.

Such so-called quantum computers will require wires to get information in and out of the quantum bits, or qubits, that perform calculations, explained Gerhard Klimeck, an electrical and chemical engineer at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

“These wires are our approach to how we might drive quantum computing bits”

Read More

Dog Rescues Kittens Left For Dead On Roadside

In a heroic story beyond reason, a yellow lab named Reagan made a discovery on an Iowa roadside that saved two precious lives.

Two kittens had been sealed into a bag of Meow Mix, left on a roadside and run over by traffic on a rural Iowa highway about three months ago, WHOTV.com reports.

It was Reagan the dog who dragged the bag home and whined until his owner opened it. Reagan’s owner discovered two kittens barely hanging onto life, while the rest of the litter hadn’t survived, prompting a call to the Raccoon Valley Animal Sanctuary.

“There was a litter of four or five of them and you couldn’t tell if there were two or three [in the bag]…they had been run over by a vehicle. It was not a pretty sight,” Linda Blakely of the animal shelter told WHOTV.com.

The Raccoon Valley Animal Sanctuary is now housing the two kittens — Skipper and Tipper — who weren’t originally expected to live through the ordeal. The two were bottled-fed every two hours and are now back to their normal lively selves, the news outlet reports.

Thanks to Reagan, both kittens are now up for adoption through the Raccoon Valley Animal Sanctuary.

Read More

Cliffhanger: Can a mama lion save her cub?

Mish Whalen writes:

A lioness looks around helplessly after her cub fell down a ravine and couldn’t make it back up the cliff.

Other members of the pride attempt to rescue the cub but stop trying when they realize it is too steep.

Only the mother lion is willing to take the risk.

Just as the exhausted cub seems about to fall, his mother circles beneath him and he is snatched up in her jaws. She then begins the difficult journey back to the top.

These dramatic frames were taken by wildlife photographer Jean-Francois Largot at Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve in August.

Safe and sound, the lioness gives the cub a big welcome-back lick.

Read More