"Frankenstorm"

October 28, 2012.  Joe Lizura wishing the best for New Jersey and New York.  Well it was bound to happen sooner or later, a possible direct hit by an enormous and powerful storm to the most densely populated region of the U.S..  They've had a lot of notice, let's hope everyone is following directions and being safe, including my family in New Jersey. 

Here is the latest on Hurricane Sandy. 

[UPDATED: 2:30 p.m. ET]

"Superstorm." "The Perfect Storm." "Frankenstorm."

Whatever you want to call it, the East Coast is bracing for Hurricane Sandy, a "rare hybrid storm" that is expected to bring a life-threatening storm surge to the mid-Atlantic coast, Long Island Sound and New York harbor, forecasters say, with winds expected to be at or near hurricane force when it makes landfall sometime on Monday.

According to the National Hurricane Center, the Category 1 hurricane was centered about 260 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and 395 miles south of New York City early Sunday, carrying maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and moving northeast at 10 mph.

[Slideshow: Latest photos from Hurricane Sandy]

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the immediate, mandatory evacuation for low-lying coastal areas, including Coney Island, the Rockaways, Brighton Beach, Red Hook and some parts of lower Manhattan.

"If you don't evacuate, you're not just putting your own life at risk," Mayor Bloomberg said at a news conference Sunday. "You're endangering first responders who may have to rescue you."

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's message was a bit more blunt. "Don't be stupid," Christie said Sunday afternoon.

Earlier, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the suspension of all MTA service--including subways, buses, Long Island Railroad and Metro North--beginning at 7 p.m. Sunday. New York City Public Schools will be closed on Monday, the mayor said. City offices and the New York Stock Exchange, however, will be open for business.

Sandy is expected to continue on a parallel path along the mid-Atlantic coast later Sunday before making a sharp turn toward the northwest on Monday--with the Jersey Shore and New York City in its projected path.

But the path is not necessarily the problem.
"Don't get fixated on a particular track," the Associated Press said. "Wherever it hits, the rare behemoth storm inexorably gathering in the eastern U.S. will afflict a third of the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow."

(Weather.com)

A tropical storm warning has been issued between Cape Fear to Duck, N.C., while hurricane watches and high-wind warnings are in effect from the Carolinas to New England. The hurricane-force winds extend 175 miles from the epicenter of the storm, while tropical storm-force winds extend 520 miles--making Sandy one of the biggest storms to ever hit the East Coast.

"We're looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people," Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Associated Press.

"The size of this alone, affecting a heavily populated area, is going to be history making," Jeff Masters wrote on the Weather Underground blog.

"I can be as cynical as anyone," Christie said on Saturday. "But when the storm comes, if it's as bad as they're predicting, you're going to wish you weren't as cynical as you otherwise might have been."
Meanwhile, emergency evacuations were being mulled by state officials in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and even Maine.

"This is not a coastal threat alone," said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said during a media briefing early Sunday. "This is a very large area."

Forecasters also fear the combination of storm surge, high tide and heavy rain--between 3 and 12 inches in some areas--could be life-threatening for coastal residents.

According to the National Hurricane Center summary, coastal water levels could rise anywhere between 1 and 12 feet from North Carolina to Cape Cod, depending on the timing of the "peak surge." A surge of 6 to 11 feet is forecast for Long Island Sound and Raritan Bay, including New York Harbor.

The storm surge in New York Harbor during Hurricane Irene in September 2011, forecasters noted, was four feet.

I'm wishing the best for my family! 

Joe Lizura
www.joelizura.com
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Thank Goodness For Near Misses - Joe Lizura

Yikes!  Thank goodness for this being a near miss, yet another astroid is going to be zipping between the Earth and the Moon.  I can't possibly be the only one who worries that one of these days it won't be a "near miss".  The worst part about it, is the fact that before we got all the fancy telescopes, we never knew that the astroids were coming this close, but now that we can spot them fairly easily it make me a little uneasy!  Here is the link and the story, now party on. . .

http://news.yahoo.com/house-size-asteroid-comes-closer-earth-moon-friday-151703970.html

House-Size Asteroid Comes Closer to Earth Than the Moon Friday: Watch Live

  

• Enlarge Photo Astrophysicist Giancula Masi of …
• Enlarge Photo On Oct. 12, 2012, at 05:17 UT, …
• Enlarge Photo This plot shows the orbit of Near-Earth …

A newfound asteroid the size of a house will fly closer to Earth than the moon on Friday (Oct. 12), but poses no danger of impacting our planet, NASA says.

The space rock, called asteroid 2012 TC4, is about 56 feet wide (17 meters) and will come within 59,000 miles (95,000 kilometers) of Earth at its closest point when it zips harmlessly by on Friday. That's about one-fourth the distance to the moon.

But you don't have to wait to see live views of the interloping space rock: There are two live webcasts of the asteroid today (Oct. 11). The Virtual Telescope Project and Slooh Space Camera, two groups that offer live telescope views of space via the Internet, will be providing the asteroid imagery.

The Virtual Telescope Project in Italy run by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi will provide a live telescope view of asteroid 2014 TC4 starting at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) via the project's WebTV. You can access the webcast here: http://www.astrowebtv.org.

Masi has already recorded several videos of asteroid 2012 TC4, and will provide live commentary during the webcast. He said the public is often attracted to asteroid flybys because of their connection with asteroid impacts on Earth. But there is scientific value behind them as well.

"Asteroids are very intriguing bodies, strongly connected with the origin of our solar system," Masi told SPACE.com in an email. "When an asteroid approaches our planet, we have good chances to study them better, especially small ones."

The Slooh Space Camera views of asteroid 2012 TC4 will be webcast later today at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT) and will be available here: http://www.slooh.com.

"One of our missions at Slooh is to provide the public with free, live coverage of amazing celestial events," said Slooh President Patrick Paolucci in a statement. "We will be tracking asteroid 2012 TC4 live from our observatory located on the Canary Islands - off the coast of West Africa."

Paolucci will provide commentary during the webcast and will be joined with Slooh's outreach coordinator Paul Cox and astronomer Bob Berman, a columnist for Astronomy Magazine. The webcast can be watched via computer or mobile device, Slooh officials said.
It may even be possible for seasoned amateur astronomers to see asteroid 2012 TC4 using a small telescope.

According to the website Spaceweather.com, which monitors night sky events, the asteroid "will be close enough to photograph through backyard telescopes as it brightens to approximately 14th magnitude." Magnitude is a scale used by astronomers to measure the brightness of objects in the night sky. The lower the magnitude number, the brighter the object.

NASA has reportedly been observing the asteroid 2012 TC4 with radar to better determine its orbit since its discovery on Oct. 4.

Asteroid 2012 TC4 is one of two asteroids to pass Earth inside the moon's orbit this week. On Sunday (Oct. 7), an even larger space rock — the 100-foot-wide (32-meter) asteroid 2012 TV —passed Earth at a range of 158,000 miles (255,000 km), or about 0.7 times the distance from Earth to the moon. The moon is on average about 238,000 miles (383,000 km) from Earth.

NASA and astronomers regularly monitor the skies for near-Earth asteroids because of the potential threat a large asteroid strike could pose to our planet. NASA's Asteroid Watch program is based at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"We get passes between Earth-moon fairly frequently actually, although usually smaller space rocks," Asteroid Watch scientists wrote this week on Twitter while discussing asteroid 2012 TV.

If you snap a photo of asteroid 2012 TC4 crossing the night sky on Friday, Oct. 12, and would like to share it with SPACE.com, send images, comments and location info to managing editor Tariq Malik at: tmalik@space.com.

Sooooo . . . don't know about you, but I'm going to follow the old adage that "what you don't see can't hurt you" and probably not watch live.  Ha!  Take that solar system!

Joe lizura
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What people are thinking in 2012

October 11, 2012.  I woke up and ran across this article and I'm not passing any judgement, but it's just interesting to read about what people are thinking, and this article certainly fits the bill for "interesting".  Check it out, here is the link and the article is below:
http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-9-000-old-earth-really-looked-183713845.html

U.S. House Rep. Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican, doesn't believe in evolution, the Big Bang theory, or the teachings of embryology. In fact, in a Sept. 27 talk at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Ga., the member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who is also a medical doctor, called those areas of science "lies straight from the pit of hell."

But Broun also advanced his own theory of life on Earth.

"You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth," he said. "I don't believe that the Earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."

[7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

Broun's creationist viewpoint stands in opposition to what scientific research reveals about the age of the planet. In fact, Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago — and humanity is rather lucky not to be seeing the planet on its 9,000th birthday. Earth was formed by the colliding and coming together of massive space objects called planetesimals, said Richard Carlson, a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution who has studied some of Earth's oldest rocks. The force of the impacts would have melted rock, leaving Earth molten for hundreds of thousands of years, Carlson told LiveScience. 

"Nine thousand years after the last giant impact — there likely were several big impacts during the growth of the planet — the surface of Earth, to a considerable depth, likely was molten rock," he said.

Creationist beliefs
Broun is far from the only believer in a literal, or Biblical, creation. According to a Gallup poll conducted in June, 46 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, a creationist belief. Only 15 percent said they believed in evolution without God's hand, while 32 percent said they believed in evolution guided by God.

That survey did not ask adults how old they believed Earth to be, but estimates based on literal interpretation of the Bible normally range from 6,000 to 8,000 years. (It's not clear why Broun believes in a 9,000-year-old Earth.)

The most popular 6,000-year-old figure comes from James Ussher, a 16th-century Irish clergyman. Ussher, whose position as Archbishop of Armagh made him head of the church in Ireland, published two works in the 1650s using genealogies from the Bible to date the creation of the world to Oct. 23, 4004 B.C.

 [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

Other estimates differ based on the use of different Bible translations and whether biblical scholars take the Bible's six-day creation period literally or assume the "days" to be longer periods of time.

What the science says
Scientists, on the other hand, have reached a surprisingly precise answer as to the age when Earth and the rest of the solar system began to solidify: between 4.567 and 4.568 billion years — the equivalent of knowing a person's birthday within two days, Carlson said.
This age range is calculated using isotopes, or variants of chemical elements. For the purposes of dating the solar system, researchers use lead and uranium isotopes. They measure the ratios of different types of isotopes from Earth and from meteorites. Because these objects all formed from the same pool of cosmic dust and gas during the birth of the solar system, the measurements enable researchers to determine how long ago the objects separated from that common pool.

As it turns out, these numbers mesh quite nicely with the ages of the oldest rocks known on Earth, which would have formed after the planet stabilized and cooled. The best estimate for the age of the oldest rocks on Earth, found near Hudson Bay in Quebec, is 4.4 billion years, according to Carlson. (The date is somewhat controversial, with some scientists believing 3.8 billion years is a closer date for those rocks.) Meanwhile, the oldest mineral grains found on Earth, zircons from Western Australia, date back 4.36 billion years.

The cooling and solidifying of the planet likely happened quickly on a geologic time scale, on the order of hundreds of thousands to a million years, Carlson said. But Adam and Eve wouldn't have found Earth hospitable for a very long time. Even at 2.5 billion years of age, the planet had a flip-flopping atmosphere that periodically looked like something you'd see on one of Saturn's moons today.

The first evidence for life on Earth may be Australian stromatolites, fossilized bacterial mats that date back 3.5 billion years. More certain fossils peg life's arrival to 2.7 billion years ago. Modern humans, by contrast, didn't show up until 200,000 years ago.

~ Again, I'm not passing any judgements on anybody's thoughts, I just find it interesting to read them.

Joe Lizura, San Diego, CA

Oh No! Danny Devito and Rhea Perlman Split!

Los Angeles, CA, October 8, 2012.  The day for Joe Lizura is not quite as bright as it was a few hours ago, because I just found out that two of my favorite actors of all time are calling it quits - not from acting, but from each other.  Danny Davito and Rhea Perlman are divorcing.  I must say that if two people were honestly ever made for each other it would be these two and very few people could argue that.  Their love of laughter, love of creating entertainment and their love of their children made them the perfect pair.

I wish them luck and hope they remain friends forever.  Here is a link to the story from eonline.

http://www.eonline.com/news/352179/danny-devito-and-rhea-perlman-split

Here is the actual story

One of Hollywood's seemingly inseparable couples is calling it quits.
Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman have announced they have separated after more than 30 years of marriage, the Always Sunny in Philadelphia star's rep tells E! News.
The twosome first got to know each other when both were coming up in the TV world, and were already a couple when Perlman landed one of her first notable roles as Zena, the girlfriend of DeVito's character Louis DePalma on http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077089/Taxi, before she shot to fame as sarcastic waitress Carla Tortelli on Cheers.
Danny DeVito acts drunk on morning TV again
The diminutive pair tied the knot back on Jan. 28, 1982, after living together for 11 years. They have three children, 29-year-old Lucy, 27-year-old Grace and 25-year-old Jacob.
A rep for Perlman was unavailable for comment.

So it's a little bit of a sad day for me.  Hope the two find peace.

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Surprising Six-Figure Jobs

October 8, 2012.  Everybody is looking for a great way to earn a living, and here's an article that shows how enterprising people can be.  The article is originally from CNN and here is the link and the story:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/surprising-six-figure-jobs.html

Clearing trees. Performing magic tricks. Pet sitting. Repairing other people's credit. These people are earning $100,000 or more.

Reads minds, does magic tricks

Courtesy: Wayne Hoffman

Name: Wayne Hoffman
Pay: $135,000
Age: 30

It all started as a hobby, when I got a magic set for Christmas as a kid. At college, I studied psychology. And that's when I started getting interested in mentalism, which is geared toward mind-reading.

Times were rough at first and I had to bust my butt to get jobs, but now I have to turn away business, and I can take off time whenever I want.

Companies hire me to do entertainment for them, I'm also hired to work at trade shows, where companies set up a booth and I incorporate their sales message into my magic. I do college campus tours twice a year. I perform at theaters, and I do cruise ships, where I get flown out to an exotic location and perform magic on the ship -- I've been to Tahiti, Bora Bora, Hawaii, Venice and Japan.

On the low end, I make $4,000 and it can go anywhere up to $30,000 for one show. I never thought I would be making this kind of money.

[Hoffman said his annual income ranges anywhere from $100,000 to $325,000 a year depending on the number of jobs he books].

Sells recycled ink cartridges

Courtesy: Lauren ElwardName: Lauren Elward
Pay: $165,500
Age: 33

I was an English teacher, and the copy machine at school was always breaking so I would make copies at home.

I had 125 kids a day. I can't count how many times I was running out to Staples getting more ink cartridges -- and it was all coming out of my pocket.

I looked online and there are companies out there [that recycle cartridges], but it wasn't a flooded market. So [my husband and I] invested about $1,000 and found some inexpensive guy from Europe to make a website for us.

We developed a relationship with a company that takes cartridges that have already been used, and recycles them, so they ship them out to our customers.

Our cartridges range from $10 to $30 -- if you were in the store you'd be paying $25 to $50 -- and toner [from our website, CastleInk.com] for the big copy machines can be hundreds of dollars cheaper.

I'm making quadruple what I made teaching. At one point, we were getting so many sales a day we couldn't believe how much money we were making.

People were like, 'where are you getting this money to redo your whole backyard?' It's definitely nice to have, especially for a cushion for the kids. I'm putting a lot into savings for them.

Voice actor for TV commercials

Courtesy: Jonathan LockwoodName: Jonathan Lockwood
Pay: $127,000
Age: 46

I got into radio when I was very young, at 17. I was a deejay, and recording commercials [for local businesses] was part of my job.

As I moved from station to station, I found there wasn't a lot of money. So I started doing TV commercials. And when I was 32, I finally left my last radio station to work out of my home studio [recording TV commercials].

I do a lot of commercials for national furniture retailers. I announce the big sales. I just did an infomercial for eDiets where I introduce people who had success on eDiets. I do car dealers and laser vision correction doctors. I did a voice-over for an animated medical documentary. I'm doing the on-hold system for [a bank], so while people are on hold, they're listening to me talking about the various things the bank is offering.

I probably send out a total of 25 invoices a month. To do a 30-second commercial in a local market could be $100 to $250 per commercial, depending on the size, and [bigger jobs] can be $500 per spot.

[What I like most is] that I'm in shorts and t-shirts every day in my home, that going to work every day involves stepping into one of my bedrooms, that it doesn't take very long. It would really surprise me if I'm working more than 18 or 20 hours a week.

Listen to Jonathan's voice here: http://www.voices.com/people/jonathanlockwood

Runs a tree-clearing business

Courtesy: Josh SkolnickName: Josh Skolnick
Pay: $250,000
Age: 29

When I was 10 or 11 years old I had my own little business pushing a lawn mower for people, and I continued with landscaping through middle school and high school. [By 2005, I had my own] mulch business. I had about 385 residential clients.

[One day], someone called and said they had a dead elm near their pool that no one would come cut down and remove. So I went out and [hired a contractor for the day to] cut down the tree. While I was out there, all the neighbors saw what I was doing and started asking me to cut down their trees, too.

After that, I started a tree service and sold my mulching business soon after.

Since starting [Monster Tree Service] in 2008, we've had over 10,000 customers. The first year in business we did well over $1 million in sales, and once we were three years in, we launched a franchise business.

I didn't go to college. But at 29 years old, I look at friends who just graduated medical school or are getting law degrees, still living at home with their parents, and I've got houses and millions of dollars worth of equipment.

Run luxury hotels for dogs

Courtesy: Steven and Jason ParkerName: Steven and Jason Parker
Pay: $150,000-plus (each)
Age: 28 and 25

Steven: When we were kids we would always ask our parents for a dog for our birthdays and holidays. When I was 14 and Jason was 12, we said 'what if we start a dog-sitting business to show our parents we're responsible enough to take care of a dog?'

We [took care of 50 dogs] and went back to our parents, and they said 'it's not that we don't believe you have the responsibility, it's that we don't like dogs.'

But we loved what we were doing anyway. So we opened [a luxury dog hotel] in 2005 and it was an immediate success.

Jason: [To set ourselves apart, we have] cage-free rooms and suites, outdoor window views, and plasma TVs playing "Animal Planet."

Steven: In 2010, we started franchising, and we [just] sold our sixth franchise. We plan to open 100 stores within the next three to five years.

It's the American dream. We're first-generation Americans and came from humble beginnings, and we're just getting started. We want to be the Donald Trump of the pet care industry.

We like to have fun, too. Jason bought a Maserati. We took our mother to Hawaii for her wedding anniversary and to her hometown in Italy.

Cleans up credit reports

Courtesy: Kevin and Sherry FosterName: Kevin Foster
Pay: $103,000
Age: 53

About five years ago, I went to go purchase a car, and the salesman said [no one would finance my loan]. Then he told me I had a 460 credit score. He said I needed to find someone to help me get my credit cleaned up. I called a [credit repair] company and enrolled.

It turned out there was another guy who lived in my same town with a very similar Social Security number, so his bad credit had gotten merged onto my credit report. [Once the credit repair company was done], my score went from a 460 to a 780.

[Three years later], I started going to national conferences that are like boot camps for credit repair and I learned how to legally and ethically launch my own company [TRW Credit Services].

I live in a small town and know every car dealership, every bank, so I started making phone calls to every person I knew at these places and told them my story. I said, 'send me all your bad customers and I'll clean them up.'

My total out of pocket was under $1,000 to launch my business out of a spare bedroom in our house.

~ What a wonderful story!  It's a great example of how people can be successful when they enjoy what they are doing.

Joe Lizura

www.joelizura.com

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Facebook Hits The One Billion Mark!

Los Angeles, October 4, 2012.  This is the most amazing story - facebook has reached one billion users per month, and what's more, they add up to 219 billion photos!  Here is the story from ABC News this morning:

A big milestone for the world's largest social network. Facebook says it now has more than one billion users each month. The announcement was made this morning in a status posting by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "If you are reading this thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you," he said with a hint of humor. "Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life." Facebook says its one billion users have been responsible for 1.13 trillion "likes," 219 billion photos and 17 billion location check-ins.

Those are astonishing numbers, to think that 1/6 of the world's population are now interconnected on a social site and 219 billion photos have been uploaded - now that's something to marvel at.

Joe Lizura
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http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3190462/