Lucas to Build Low-Income Housing for Neighborhood

George Lucas has a pretty big stretch of land behind his house in Marin County California and a couple of years ago he thought it would be a great idea to build a film studio there. Unfortunately, his neighbors thought otherwise. So, when he presented his plans for the studio to the county, his neighbors argued against his vision saying that the area is zoned for residential use and a film studio simply wouldn't be acceptable. After all, just about everybody in the neighborhood has a million-dollar home and a film studio belongs in Hollywood, not out in the prestigious suburbs where his wealthy neighbors live.

Well, apparently George didn't appreciate being thwarted about his pet project, so it looks like he simmered for a couple of years until he came up with a dandy new idea: Build something else his neighbors would surely love! Instead of building his wonderful new film studio, and since the land is zoned for residential use, why not put up a neat new complex to house some of Marin Counties needy families.

The project, which was submitted to the Marin County Planning Commission last Wednesday, would span about 52 acres and cost around $200 million. The community will begin just a few meters away from George's own Skywalker Ranch property, and consist of two complexes. The first complex will have 120 two- and three-bedroom homes where local low-income families will live. The second complex will consist of a nice four-story tall apartment building for pensioners, with 104 one- and two-bedroom apartments.

Since George will be funding the project all by himself, his lawyers say he can select whoever he wants to live there. Of course, his representatives are insisting the project isn't any sort of retaliation against his million-dollar homeowner neighbors. "We've got enough millionaires here," he says. "What we need is some houses for regular working people."

There appears to be huge support from the local low-income community, so his wealthy neighbors probably will have a hard time blocking the proposal. What a great plan for the neighborhood! Property values are sure to soar! Just ask the neighbors.

Project Loon to Provide Web Access to Everybody

Google has come up with a loony idea that might actually work. It seems that although the Internet might seem to be an all invasive part of just about everybody's life, we're in the minority. About two-thirds of the rest of the world doesn't have any Internet access at all. 

Google wants to change that. So, what they've come up with is called Project Loon. Yes, you read that right: Project LOON. They call it Project Loon because, being Google you know, they know it's a crazy idea but since Google has more money than they know what to do with, why not try changing the world anyway.

Project Loon is a network of 50-foot high balloons that travel about 13 miles up in the sky on the edge of space. When all the balloons are in place, and if everything works right, they'll eventually beam down Internet access to every single corner of the earth. The balloons have to be that high because not only are the winds there pretty much predictable, but they'll be out of everybody's way, circling around the earth about twice as high as commercial planes go so nobody should slam into any of them.

Each balloon will be able to provide Internet connectivity to a ground area about 25 miles in diameter, so it's going to take a lot of them whizzing around the planet. But, put enough of them up in the sky and you've got continual Internet coverage for everybody.

To make everything work, the electronics they've devised electronically connects all the balloons together so they provide a continuous Internet connection, like cell towers do right now on land. When one balloon moves away from a location, another balloon moves into its place so the link continues working. One balloon may provide connectivity in one place and when it moves away to another location, it provides a connection there while another balloon moves into the original space.

All the tests are coming out positive and more balloons are being launched all the time. Yes, of course the balloons come down. About every 100 days or so. So when one is taken "out of service," the gas inside is released to bring it back down in a controlled descent. If one drops a little too quickly, it will deploy a parachute to slow its descent. I guess there will be lots of Google employees driving around using their Google Maps and GPS devices to pick these things up and take them back for refurbishing at Google retrieval stations, right? 

Project Loon began in June 2013 on New Zealand's South Island with 30 balloons being launched in a pilot test. Google says they intend to continue expanding the project and hope to establish a continuous ring of uninterrupted service at latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere within a year or so. After that, the rest of the world is waiting. 

Whoever figured all this out has to be a genius.

US Navy to Replace Fighter Jets with Drones

Better go find that DVD copy of Top Gun and put it away for the grand kids to see, that is if you want them to know what a Navy fighter jet looks like taking off from or landing on an aircraft carrier. The US Navy is getting ready to mothball fighter jets, replacing them with unmanned aerial systems and drones, according to US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. 

According to Secretary Mabus, these new unmanned flying weapons will be the wave of the future. Meanwhile, the F-35 Lightning II jet fighter plane, a product of the infamous Joint Strike Fighter program, will apparently be the last crewed strike fighter aircraft that the Navy will ever buy or fly.

It's no wonder. The F-35 has been plagued with problems from day one. It's now 7 years behind schedule and is the most expensive acquisition ever in military history. It's $167 BILLION over budget and will probably cost the country over a trillion dollars before it's finally put out to pasture.

Secretary Mabus, apparently seeing the writing on the wall, says unmanned aircraft can perform missions quite adequately on land, at sea, as well as in the air. Plus, they'll cost a heck of a lot less too. And, by removing the human factor from flying the machines, he says the Navy won't have to worry about factoring in the pilot's safety, which currently extends the time and cost of every project they are now working on. 

And they'll have a lot more room to experiment with more risk, plus be able to improve systems much faster over time, and be able to get them to the fleet at a much faster pace than ever before.

Secretary Mabus says he's planning to create a new naval office for "Unmanned Systems” and plans to appoint a deputy assistant director soon to head things up.

Still, a swaggering Tom Cruise being replaced by a handful of drones being launched off the deck of an aircraft carrier just isn't going to have quite the same visceral impact.

TSA Screeners Fired for Groping Passengers

A couple of TSA screeners have been fired for having a little too much fun with one of their screening machines at the Denver airport. It seems these screening machines are smart enough to scan a passenger and determine if they're concealing something by scanning the person and spotting those telltale bulges (or the lack thereof) we're all aware of that exist between the sexes.

So, the TSA fellow in our story decided it would be hilarious that when he spotted a nice looking male passenger coming in through the gate, he'd motion over to his cohort, the female screener, to tell the machine the passenger was female and not male.

The machine would then scan the passenger thinking he (she) was female and register an anomaly when it spotted a suspicious bulge in the passenger's groin area.

The machine's alarm would then go off indicating that he (she) might be concealing something illegal, like a bomb or firearm, and the male passenger would be pulled out of line to be checked more closely. 

The TSA fellow would then pat down the poor guy supposedly looking for the illegal something by touching the passenger's groin and buttocks areas, explaining that this was standard procedure. He was lying, of course, because doing this is actually a rather serious violation of TSA policy.

The TSA figured out what the screeners were doing after being told about it by someone anonymously back in February, and now both screeners have been fired. However, no charges are apparently going to be filed against them because none of the victims of the searches has come forth with a complaint, and the TSA has been unable to identify the passenger who was groped back in the February incident.

Ah, the hilarity in what these ingenious pranksters can think of! Now, I guess, the jokes on them!

CEO Stuns Employees with Gigantic Raise

Dan Price started up a credit card processing business called Gravity Payments about ten years ago when he was 19 and it's grown very well over the last few years. The firm is now expected to turn a profit this year of a little over two million dollars, so he's got to be pretty proud of himself, his business and his employees.

Dan started Gravity in his dormitory room at Seattle Pacific University using money borrowed from his older brother. The idea struck him a couple of years earlier when he was playing in a rock band at a local coffee shop. The shop's owner was having trouble paying the exorbitant fees charged by the company that processed their credit card payments. He looked into the matter and realized he could form a company that did the process cheaper, more efficiently and even provide better customer service at the same time.

Now that the company's become so successful, Dan's proud of his employees and he decided to do something special for the 120 people working under him. He's giving everybody a really big raise. And not just a few bucks here and there. He's decided to set a minimum salary for his workers of $70,000 a year, regardless of how much they're making now.

Dan says he came up with the idea when he read an article on employees and how happy they actually were. The article said that people who earn less than $70,000 a year always seem to need a little extra money to be truly happy. 

So he decided that his employees deserved to be happy and so, over the next three years, he's raising the salaries of everybody, even the lowest paid clerk, salesman and customer service rep to a minimum of $70,000. The raises will affect about 70 employees with 30 of them doubling their pay since the average salary at Gravity right now is $48,000 a year.

He made the announcement at an employee meeting the other day and just about everybody "freaked out," according to one. After the clapping and whooping died out, there were a few moments of what he said were "stunned silence."

Dan says he'll pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from about $1 million to $70,000 and then taking a big chunk out of the company's anticipated $2.2 million profit this year. There's no question everybody at Gravity is happy with the idea. Wait a go, Dan. Wait a go!

Human Head Transplant Coming Soon

There are a bunch of elite surgeons scattered all around the world that have been working on a medical first - a complete human head transplant. No, I'm not talking about a movie, this is the real thing.

There's a guy in Russia with an incurable disease, Werdnig-Hoffman. It's a form of spinal atrophy, and there isn't any cure for it. Valery Spiridonov is 30 years old and apparently quite willing to let them see if they can save his life by transplanting his head onto the body of another person, presumably dead from some sort of head injury, while the rest of the donor is in pretty much healthy condition.

Meanwhile, the team of surgeons have been itching to try out a new procedure they've been working on, and an Italian surgeon by the name of Sergio Canavero is going to take on the task of chopping off Mr. Spiridonov's head and playing a 21st Century Dr. Jekyll, putting it onto the body of somebody else. Yes, they say it's really going to happen. Nobody, of course, is sure the final result will be successful, but at least one person, Mr. Apiridonov, has high hopes that it will.

The operation is supposed to take a total of 36 hours or so and the operating room will be really crowded with about 150 medical staff giving their support. The plan is to take Mr. Spiridonov’s head along with the new body and cool them both down to a pretty chilly point to slow down the rate of cell decomposition. After that, doctors are supposed to hook up each of the major blood vessels in the neck to machines. That's supposed to keep everything flowing just right while they're transferring the head part.

Then they plan to sever the spinal cord and attach Mr. Spiridonov's head to the new body. Dr. Canavero says he'll use a water-soluble glue to connect the cells together and then connect the muscles, nerves and blood vessels.

Assuming everything goes as planned, the doctors say it will take up to a year for Mr. Spiridonov’s spinal cord to fuse completely with the new body. Of course, nobody knows what the brain is going to think about all this and the different electrical and chemical signals will probably be a problem, but Mr. Spiridonov and Dr. Canavero say they're ready for the procedure anyway.

Staff for the procedure will be hired starting in June and the operation may be scheduled as early as next year. I wonder if it will be televised?

Updates About the Miracles of Coffee 

It seems that all-of-a-sudden over the last few months there has been an enormous amount of news about the benefits of drinking coffee. The latest says that researchers have found it lowers your risk of getting liver cancer. Of course we all know it wakes you up in the morning and makes you feel more alert, but coffee also appears to help fight toxins in the body and reduce inflammation in the liver along with lots of other areas as well.

Coffee contains around a thousand antioxidants, and when you roast the coffee beans a few hundred more develop. That's more than green tea or cocoa, both of which are supposed to be the greatest superstars of antioxidants. Antioxidants fight inflammation, not only in the liver but they're also a great help with heart disease, arthritis, dementia and many cancers. Plus, there are a bunch of nutrients in coffee, including niacin, magnesium, potassium, manganese, riboflavin and pantothenic acid just to name a few.

Several studies report that coffee decreases Type 2 diabetes and reduces the risk of breast, prostate, endometrial, colon and rectal cancer.

Coffee not only wakes your brain up in the morning, it also helps your memory and concentration, actually making you at least seem to be a little smarter. 

Coffee also enhances your exercise performance by battling fatigue. It staves off depression by activating neurotransmitters in your brain that reduce your perception of pain. It helps you burn away far, and there's even a study that says coffee decreases your chances of getting gout!

For all its good points, there are some negatives. For some people coffee causes irritability and nervousness, and we all know it can cause insomnia and keep you awake at night. Switching to decaf can moderate these symptoms, but you may not get all of the above benefits since caffeine plays a part in some of them. 

How much coffee you can drink safely depends on the individual. For some, one or two cups is the limit; for others four or more each day is no problem. If you're looking for the benefits though, stay away from the sugary fat-filled varieties and stick with basic black or maybe with some added skim milk. Otherwise, you'll negate a lot of the advantages and put yourself at risk with additional health problems instead of the extraordinary benefits of this miraculous and unique beverage.