AP Photos and video still frames taken from Sep-Aug 2006 inside Lebanon after bombing.

“Running The Numbers: An American Self Portrait,” by Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan is a brilliant photographer who I recently stumbled across Online. Below are two photos from “American Consumerism.” One of cellphone chargers, the other of Cellphones. Below those two photos is Cans Seurat, 2007, art depicting 106,000 aluminum cans, the amount used in the United States every thirty seconds. Visit his site to see these two great exhibits, “Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait by Chris Jordan 2006-20007,” which depicts art created by large round numbers of consumable products which show exactly how much waste we create every second in the United States; and “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption, by Chris Jordan 2003-2005.”

The art of “Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait by Chris Jordan 2006-20007 (click here to see),” is created out of the following listed items, with additional info about that item’s consumption to make the artist’s point:

Depicts 30,000 reams of office paper, or 15 million sheets, equal to the amount of office paper used in the US every five minutes.

Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.

Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

Depicts 170,000 disposable Energizer batteries, equal to fifteen minutes of Energizer battery production.

Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007.

Depicts 8 million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs.

Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.

Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.

Depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour.

Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

Depicts 65,000 cigarettes, equal to the number of American teenagers under age eighteen who become addicted to cigarettes every month.

Depicts 213,000 Vicodin pills, equal to the number of emergency room visits yearly in the US related to misuse or abuse of prescription pain killers.

Depicts 29,569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004.

Depicts 24,000 logos from the GMC Yukon Denali, equal to six weeks of sales of that model SUV in 2004.

Depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005.

Cans Seurat, 2007
60×92″

Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds:

Can detail from above, up close:

Halloween at our House.

Nathan was an RN for his first Halloween. Mom made him some Thomas the Train Scrubs and a “Tiny Tots Health Care” photo ID badge, to go with a toy stethoscope; it was very cute. Maybe he will grow up to be a nurse like his mommy.

Here is the jack-o-lantern that Nathan and Mommy carved:

2007 New England Patriots go undefeated, greatest NFL team of all time.

On Sunday, November 4, 2007, at 4:15pm EST, everyone in America should be watching a football game in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The 2007 New England Patriots are 8-0. The Indianapolis Colts are 7-0, and they are the only team in the NFL with any hope of defeating the Patriots this year. When the two teams play in Indianapolis this week, it will the first time in NFL history that two undefeated teams with at least 7 victories have played each other. The Patriots are going to decimate the Colts this week and go on to become the first undefeated NFL team since the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

’07 New England Patriots points scored each week this year: 52, 49, 48, 34, 34, 38, 38, 38

Points per game: 41.1 points through week 8

Average margin of victory: 25.5 points through week 8 (no win by less than 17 points)

7 of 8 victories by 3 touchdowns or more.

The 2007 New England Patriots are without a doubt the greatest NFL team ever assembled, coached by one of the greatest NFL coaches of all time. We should all just sit back and enjoy the dominance, as we will not see such greatness and dominance in the NFL again for a very long time.

footnote: The Patriots Quarterback, Tom Brady, (who already has 2 Super Bowl MVP awards.) is on pace to throw 62 touchdown passes this season. That is 13 more than Payton Manning had two seasons ago, when he broke Dan Marino’s mark of 48. Brady is completing 74.2 percent of his passes, which could shatter Ken Anderson’s completion record of 70.55 set in 1982. Brady’s current quarterback rating of 136.2 tops Manning’s 121.1 season record set in 2004.

For all of the talk about Randy Moss being bad in the locker room, he is still quite possibly the most gifted NFL receiver of all time. You’ll recall, Randy Moss played for the 15-1 Minnesota Vikings, a team that set the NFL record for most points in a season. He played with Daunte Culpepper the year he threw 39 touchdown passes. Now he plays with Brady, who might be the greatest Quarterback of all time. He and the Patriots are going to have a very productive year to say the least.
History will Remember Brady to Moss as the greatest Quarterback and Wide Receiver tandem ever paired together on one team.

From John Czarnecki at http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/7418962 :”Now whether Belichick and his staff may have benefited from similar tactics during New England’s three Super Bowl runs is certainly open to debate, but what the team may have done in past seasons has no bearing on what he and his players are accomplishing this season.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who needed to protect the integrity of his sport, handed down the stiffest penalties in league history on the Patriots and Belichick: $750,000 in fines and the loss of a first-round draft pick.

And there’s a reason why.

The league’s popularity is intertwined with gambling from $5 office pools to the billion dollar Las Vegas sports books. If millions of fans thought the games were crooked, they probably wouldn’t bet or ultimately watch the action on television.”

Everyone should get a flu shot.

I went and got my flu shot today,

thanks to flucliniclocator.com.

The various strains of influenza virus, which spread throughout our population each year, are far more deadly than most people realize, and even cases which do not end in death often cause great losses in productivity and wages every year. According to one source, “Influenza was responsible for the most devastating plague in human history — the “Spanish” flu that swept around the world in 1918 killing 675,000 people in the U.S. and an estimated 20–50 million people worldwide. (A disease that attacks a large fraction of the population in every region of the world is called a pandemic.) (It is uncertain where the flu first appeared, but it certainly wasn’t in Spain.)”

From what I have been reading, it is a good idea for as many people in the population as possible to get one each year to better protect the group as a whole from the most deadly strains of the virus. The American Lung Association runs an online flu shot clinic locator, visit the site and find the nearest flu innoculation site for you, today.

Baby’s first Halloween.

Today Jennifer said she noticed that the closer we get to Halloween, the more the baby’s poo is starting to smell like the insides of a pumpkin, she then added, well, maybe that means it will start smelling like candycanes the closer we get to Christmas!

A nice picture of Fallow deer.

Air Force completes investigation into “loose nukes” it flew over US.

I just read a good article explaining how the Air Force says it’s soldiers ended up flying a B-52 mounted with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles (each more powerful than 10 Hiroshimas according to the article’s author) from North Dakota to Louisiana on August 29, 2007. Click on these sentences to read it for yourself; very interesting, very sad, and very scary.

Thomas Jefferson Comments on Andrew Meyer’s arrest from the grave:

“When the government fears the people there is LIBERTY;
when the people fear the government there is TYRANNY.”

-Thomas Jefferson

Click here to see the Youtube video of University of Florida student Journalist, Andrew Meyer, being handcuffed and tasered for asking a question of US Senator John Kerry after a structured Q and A session in Gainesville, FL last week.

Only Privately held copy of Magna Carta to be auctioned off in New York.

UK paper, The Independent, reports today that the only privately held original copy of the Magna Carta, dated to 1297, is to be auctioned in New York this December. Auction experts conservatively estimate the document will sell for at least 15 Million British Pounds. –That’s $30,268,481.9700 US Dollars. (over 30 million dollars.), by the 26 Sep. 2007 exchange rate.

The article points out that 1297 is the year that the final versions of King John’s ground breaking charter were ratified and that all but one of the other 16 surviving original versions of the manuscript are held by public trusts in England -with one original copy also existing in Australia.

“Magna Carta” is latin for “Great Charter,” it is also known as “Magna Carta Libertatum,” “Great Charter of Freedoms,” because, as Wikipedia puts it, it is commonly regarded as having had,”…the most significant early influence on the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today. Magna Carta influenced many common law and other documents, such as the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, and is considered one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy.”