Joke Of The Day: Modern Day Survival

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Aug 142015
 
Rubber Chicken Last summer my husband took me camping for the first time. At every opportunity, he passed along outdoor-survival lore.

One day we got lost hiking in the deep woods. He tried the usual tactics to determine direction – moss on the trees (there was no moss), direction of the sun (it was an overcast day). Just as I was beginning to panic, he spotted a small cabin off in the distance. He pulled out his binoculars, studied the cabin, turned and led us right back to our camp.

“That was terrific,” I said. “How did you do it?”

“Simple,” he replied. “In this part of the country all TV satellite dishes point south.”

 

 

Trumps Tax Plan

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Aug 132015
 

Trumps Tax Plan
Is this Trump’s tax plan? If it is, it sure beats what we have now.

In an interview Tuesday, Donald Trump teased the details of his yet-to-be revealed plan to reform the U.S. tax code, telling CNN, “I know exactly what I want to do, I just don’t want to announce it yet.”

Trump told CNN host Chris Cuomo, “Our tax code is too complicated, and we can simplify it so easily.”

“How?” Cuomo asked the billionaire real-estate mogul.

“By using intelligence, by having common sense,” Trump replied. “I want to put H&R Block out of business.”

Trump went on to explain to Cuomo that he has a tax-reform plan but is not “prepared to tell you right now on your fantastic show.”

While Trump has yet to unveil his plan, largely ignored by media is that in his 2011 book, “Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again,” he laid out a plan to completely transform the tax code with a uniform proposal for all Americans to pay lower taxes.

Trump’s revenue prescription, which he labeled his 1-5-10-15 income-tax plan in the book four years ago, could form the basis for his campaign’s platform on the issue.

In the book, Trump wrote that his plan is so simple, it could eliminate the need for accountants and tax preparers, which he referenced in his comment Tuesday about putting H&R Block out of business.

He wrote in 2011: “Imagine your paycheck was 40 percent higher than it currently is. What could you do with 40 percent more wealth? How many jobs and opportunities for others could you create?

Grover Norquist’s “End the IRS Before It Ends Us: How to Restore a Low Tax, High Growth, Wealthy America” shows how to make the nation thrive.

“The longer you really think about it the madder you will get,” he wrote, “especially when you consider the waste, fraud, and abuse the federal government traffics in as it inflicts its self-defeating policies on hard-working Americans.”

Here’s Trump’s proposed income-tax plan:

  • Those making up to $30,000 will pay 1 percent.
  • Income from $30,000 to $100,000 is assessed a flat 5 percent tax.
  • $100,000 to $1 million income will be taxed at 10 percent.
  • $1 million or above will be taxed 15 percent.

“It’s clear and fair,” wrote Trump. “Best of all, it can be filled out on the back of a postcard and will save Americans big bucks on accountants and massive amounts of time wasted attempting to decipher the tax code.”

Read more…

 

Man Hasn’t Watered His Plant Since 1972

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Aug 132015
 

Man Hasn't Watered His Plant Since 1972

David Latimer first planted his bottle garden in 1960 and last watered it in 1972 before tightly sealing it shut ‘as an experiment’. The hardy Spiderworts plant inside has grown to fill the 10-gallon container by surviving entirely on recycled air, nutrients and water.

This is the definition of low-maintenance!

Man Hasn't Watered His Plant Since 1972 2

How The Bottle Garden Grows

Bottle gardens work because their sealed space creates an entirely self-sufficient ecosystem in which plants can survive by using photosynthesis to recycle nutrients.

The only external input needed to keep the plant going is light, since this provides it with the energy it needs to create its own food and continue to grow.

Light shining on the leaves of the plant is absorbed by proteins containing chlorophylls (a green pigment).
Some of that light energy is stored in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that stores energy. The rest is used to remove electrons from the water being absorbed from the soil through the plant’s roots.

These electrons then become ‘free’ – and are used in chemical reactions that convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, releasing oxygen.

This photosynthesis process is the opposite of the cellular respiration that occurs in other organisms, including humans, where carbohydrates containing energy react with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, water, and release chemical energy.
But the eco-system also uses cellular respiration to break down decaying material shed by the plant. In this part of the process, bacteria inside the soil of the bottle garden absorbs the plant’s waste oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide which the growing plant can reuse.

And, of course, at night, when there is no sunlight to drive photosynthesis, the plant will also use cellular respiration to keep itself alive by breaking down the stored nutrients.

Because the bottle garden is a closed environment, that means its water cycle is also a self-contained process.
The water in the bottle gets taken up by plants’ roots, is released into the air during transpiration, condenses down into the potting mixture, where the cycle begins again.

Source…

 

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