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LOVE LETTERS
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How did he come up with the idea? Morrison said it was easy as pie – literally. In the 1940s, he and his future wife brought cake and pie tins with them to the beach. The couple enjoyed flinging the pans back and forth, letting them glide in the California wind.
A former military pilot, Morrison applied his knowledge of aerodynamics to tinker with the tins, improving their control. Finally, in 1948, the Los Angeles building inspector began producing and selling his own discs.
Frisbee was not the original name. When Wham-O Manufacturing bought the idea from Morrison in 1957, they called it the Pluto Platter. Later, "Wham-O adopted the name 'Frisbee' because that’s what college students in New England were calling the Pluto Platters," reports the AP. "The name came from the Frisbie Pie Co., a local bakery whose empty tins were tossed like the soon-to-be Frisbee."
Frisbee went on to sell 200 million discs, inspire the sports ultimate Frisbee and Frisbee golf, and attract countless knockoffs around the world.
Morrison was from Monroe, Utah and died at 90 years old.
Four of the 10 customers who wandered into an unstaffed supermarket took groceries, and all left cash or an IOU on the cashier's counter, Safeway spokesman Craig M. Muckle said Thursday after store officials reviewed video from a security camera.
When the assistant manager of Safeway's Tenleytown supermarket in Northwest Washington realized he was the only one to show up for work on the morning of the wildest winter storm in memory, he followed company policy and went home, Muckle said. The employee won't face disciplinary action for "an honest mistake. He thought he'd secured the door."
Safeway officials initially cast doubt on eyewitness reports that customers had helped themselves to goods during the three hours that the store was unlocked and unmanned, but a review of the tape showed that four people each took a handful of products and made an effort to pay for them.
It's not the first time shoppers have left cash at unsupervised Safeways. Shoppers at two of the chain's California stores left money at the registers after getting a few essentials on Christmas Eve and day.
"For safety reasons, we don't want just one employee in the store, and he knew that," Muckle said.
Safeway officials initially cast doubt on eyewitness reports that customers had helped themselves to goods during the three hours that the store was unlocked and unmanned, but a review of the tape showed that four people each took a handful of products and made an effort to pay for them.
It's not the first time shoppers have left cash at unsupervised Safeways. Shoppers at two of the chain's California stores left money at the registers after getting a few essentials on Christmas Eve and day.
Those who took some stuff obviously had their heart in the right place," said Muckle, who said those who left the IOUs included phone numbers or other contact information and will soon hear from store management about arranging for payment.
Muckle said the store reopened Thursday and, like all area supermarkets, would need a few days to "get back up to speed" and restock depleted shelves.
Memo to those shoppers:
To those customers who took groceries from the ghost Safeway at the height of Wednesday's blizzard: The store has your IOUs and will be in touch real soon.
The Virginia Department of Transportation has spent its $79 million snow-removal budget and an additional $25 million in a reserve maintenance fund to keep thousands of state trucks and contractors on the road. Those accounts were depleted this month after storms dumped up to 3 feet of snow in some locations.
VDOT spokesman Jeffrey Caldwell said Thursday the department is now tapping its $1.6 billion maintenance fund to continue snow-removal efforts unabated.
"We're not cutting back our operations at all or trying to save money," Caldwell said. "We're just continuing to move forward with full forces."
The department has been focusing on storm-battered northern Virginia and the northern Shenandoah Valley, the hardest hit locations in the latest round of storms. More state trucks and contractors were deployed to the region on Thursday.
With VDOT tapping its maintenance fund, cuts not related to safety issues such as grass cutting and fence repairing could be made in the months ahead, Caldwell said. Safety-related maintenance such as pothole repairs would not be affected.
Virginia has already applied for $50 million in emergency federal assistance to cover storm costs in December. It is just now compiling costs associated with the latest round of storms, and that sum could exceed the $50 million already sought, said Bob Spieldenner of the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.
"The reality is, we'll get less than that," he added.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster assistance would primarily go to VDOT, which has contracted nearly 4,000 pieces of equipment to help battle the winter storms.
Gov. Bob McDonnell said he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this week about the status of the $50 million and was told the request was "moving along favorably."
Spieldenner said the latest storms' costs include overtime for Virginia State Police, National Guard troops and forestry crews that cleared down trees.
SEATTLE, WA (NBC) Disturbing video-tape shows the graphic beating of a teenage girl in Seattle's Metro bus tunnel, while uniformed security guards simply look on.
The trouble started above ground around 7 p.m. on January 28.
According to police reports, a group of teenagers approached a 15-year-old girl they knew inside Macy's.
The encounter turned antagonistic and moved on to the downtown Nordstrom.
The group of 10 teenagers allegedly surrounded the girl and gave her a bad time about what she was wearing.
According to police, one in the group threatened her by stating, "Bitch, I'll kill you."
The security camera video picks up the scene as the group of teenagers are seen heading into the Metro tunnel at the Westlake Station, apparently following the girl who had been threatened.
One of the girls in the group, a 15-year-old who attends McClure Middle School in Seattle, approaches and within a few seconds, without warning, she pushes the victim off the platform and into the bus lanes.
The video shows the two girls hitting each other for a few seconds.
Then, the scene gets vicious.
The young attacker punches the victim in the head and face 10 times.
"It looks like a very egregious assault, which in fact it was," said Sgt. John Urquhart of the King County Sheriff's Office, which is investigating the case along with Metro Transit Police. "The two were acquaintances, and there probably is some teenage stuff going on before the attack but it certainly doesn't warrant an assault like this by any stretch of the imagination."
The video clearly shows that all of this is taking place right in front of three security guards.
For those of you whose primary political interest is stopping the growth of government or even shrinking it, you have to contend with national leaders who say they agree with you but who refuse to deal with immigration. They say immigration is a "social" issue that isn't related to government spending and deficit issues. They couldn't be more wrong. . . .
Let's start with this tidbit from government data provided by the Center for Immigration Studies (Table 13: "Immigrant Households with Children Under 18":
"Roughly ONE-HALF of all immigrant households with kids are accessing the welfare system, especially food and Medicaid welfare."
In this case, "immigrant" includes both authorized and illegal foreign citizens allowed by the federal government to settle in our country. Since 2000, that number each year has averaged around 1.3 million a year -- plus another 1 million births to those immigrant households.
With one-half of those households being poor enough to use the federal, state and local welfare systems, is there anybody blind enough to think that adding 2.3 million people a year to immigrant households is not driving huge increases in government?
That is 23 million disproportionately poor and welfare-using people a decade!
NumbersUSA doesn't take a specific stand on whether government should be bigger or smaller. But we do think it is strange that our government has this humongous program that imports massive amounts of poverty into the country each year. And the welfare use is just the tip of the iceberg. If about half of these households are poor enough to qualify for some form of welfare, that means they can't come close to paying the taxes required to provide for all the extra physical and social infrastructure to take care of the presence of these 23 million new residents each decade.
Even stranger is that this gargantuan driver of bigger and bigger government was promoted and continues to be supported by the Republican National Committee and by the Republican leadership of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Republican leaders every day castigate Pres. Obama for trying to bloat government, but Republican leaders resolutely refuse to even suggest that the government reduce its importation of welfare-using immigrants.
Why?
The reason should be clear: Republican leaders may say they want to shrink Big Government, but not if it gets in the way of pleasing their cheap-labor corporate donors and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Two key drivers of the growth in welfare usage and bigger government are the chain migration and visa lottery categories of our immigration system.
Those two categories would be eliminated by the Gingrey bill and the Goodlatte bill (a couple of Republicans who are sincere in their concerns about the size of government and the burden on taxpayers).
Click on their names above to see if your U.S. Representative has signed on.
Not a single U.S. Senator -- Republican or Democrat -- has cared enough to even introduce a bill in that chamber.
But Republican leaders in Washington will not allow these immigration reductions or any other to be pushed to the top of their agenda. The word from the leaders is that Republicans are to ignore immigration altogether this year. The intent of the Republican leaders is to ensure that 23 million people continue to be added to the heavily welfare-using immigrant households each decade. That is one form of bigger government that the Republican leaders love.
Wilder places part of the blame for recent election losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts squarely on one of his successors as governor: the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tim Kaine. He calls on Kaine to step down as head of the DNC, saying it is "the wrong job for him."One problem is that they do not have sufficient experience at governing at the executive branch level. The deeper problem is that they are not listening to the people.
Hearing is one thing; listening is another.
Some are even questioning whether Obama has forgotten how he got elected and the promises he made to the people who elected him.
Don't take my word for any of this. Look at the clear message the American people have been sending at the polls these past few months.
"Unless changes are made at the top, by the top, when the time comes for voters to show how they really feel about Obama, his policies and the messages he sends directly or through the people around him, the president will discover that Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were not just temporary aberrations but, rather, timely expressions of voters who always show that they are ahead of the politicians," Wilder writes.
Read the full editorial here.We have seen the Twin Towers collapse hundreds of times on TV. The steel and glass skyscrapers exploding like a bag of flour, the dust and smoke pluming out across Manhattan. But never like this, from above.
Nine years after the defining moment of the 21st century, a stunning set of photographs taken by New York Police helicopters forces us to look afresh at a catastrophe we assumed we knew so well.
You know but cannot see the 2,752 men, women and children who died at the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. None is visible here.
All we see is the spectacular moment of collapse, what film directors call the wide shot, showing the towers in their urban setting, before, during and after their fall.
Even for those who were there, like me, running from the cloud and choking in the dust, it is hard to believe. But what is all too evident to everyone is that this event changed the world, with consequences that will haunt us for decades.
With the Twin Towers collapsed the world we thought we knew.
These dramatic images were taken by police photographers in helicopters and it is the first time they have been seen, having been released under a Freedom of Information request made by America's ABC News.
Burning buildings can be seen crumpling in on themselves as plumes of smoke rise up over the New York skyline that terrible September morning.
The images show how the police helicopter first began taking images from afar before moving in to reveal the devastation taking place underneath.
They also reveal the horror faced by those trapped in the burning buildings and then the walls of smoke and debris that enveloped the surrounding area as the towers came crashing down.
Released more than eight years after the deaths of 2,752 people on that day, they are powerful reminders of the attack that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The legacy of the New York attack continues today with as British forces joining with Afghan soldiers and Nato to launch the biggest attack on the Taliban - accused of harbouring Al Qaeda who organised the 9/11 attack - since the initial 2001 offensive.
Meanwhile, in New York, work is continuing to build on the rubble of what became known as Ground Zero.
Structural steel for the 1,776ft tower, which will be known as 1 World Trade Centre, has already reached 200ft above street level.
Workers are now installing 16 steel nodes on the 20th-floor of the tower which will serve as joints between the steel framing for the building's podium and the steel for the rest of the tower. The 104-storey skyscraper is due to be completed in 2013 and will be one of the tallest buildings in the U.S.
ACCOMAC -- Two weeks ago, Billie Blackwell faced a difficult decision. The mother goat was ignoring the newborn kid and a snowstorm was approaching. Should she let the baby try to survive or bring it indoors?
Blackwell did what many loving Eastern Shore pet owners did as temperatures dropped and snow fell. She brought her pet inside.
"It was making a choice between two evils," said Blackwell, nodding at Snoopy, now 14 days old, standing in her kitchen in the Henry's Point community. "We selected this one, which is going to be a problem."
Living with an indoor goat has its challenges. Blackwell has been paper-training the kid on the vinyl kitchen floor. But, as she puts it, every five ounces it eats produces at least 20 ounces in return.
Relations with the 9-year-old indoor cat, Fuzzball, have been strained.
"The goat wants to investigate the cat, but the cat doesn't want anything to do with the goat," she said.
But the living arrangement has been poignant at times.
Blackwell bottle-feeds Snoopy, who sleeps in a big cardboard box. Its muffled bleating sounds like a toy. It sits in her lap like a puppy.
With it standing on the floor, Blackwell trains it to butt heads by pushing her sock-covered foot against its forehead. Snoopy pushes back.
Blackwell, who retired from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility as a contract specialist after 35 years there, and her husband, Charlie, have raised goats for 30 years. But circumstances have never required one to live inside.
Now, despite her good intentions, she is worried about the future. Snoopy has become accustomed to the warm house and might not take well to outside living in February. But the goat is growing faster than spring's arrival.
"He can't stay in here too much longer," Blackwell said. "He's going to be taking over the land. They just get rambunctious -- they want to butt on everything. They want to chew on everything."
Now housemates for two snowstorms, Snoopy has taken to Blackwell, and has charmed the owner who took seriously her responsibility as a pet owner.
But as soon as it warms up, Snoopy might be back where the other goats live.
"The Bible says there is a time for everything," said Blackwell, who then recites several verses from Ecclesiastes 3 from memory -- there is a time to be born, a time to plant, a time to heal.
Then she adds a new one:
"There's a time to have goats, and a time not to have goats," she said.