Jack of All Trades: US Military Self-guided Bullet

REBLOG=>Jack Omnitrade

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The U.S. military had made great progress in developing a self-steering bullet. The .50-caliber bullets are fitted with optical sensors at the tip to follow moving targets. The bullet’s system is name EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance) and is develop by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The "smart bullets" passed their most successful round of live-fire tests to date, the CNN reported on 29 April 2015.

Videos supplied by DARPA show the bullets making sharp turns in mid-air as they pursue their targets. "This live-fire demonstration from a standard rifle showed that EXACTO is able to hit moving and evading targets with extreme accuracy at sniper ranges unachievable with traditional rounds. Fitting EXACTO's guidance capabilities into a small .50-caliber size is a major breakthrough and opens the door to what could be possible in future guided projectiles across all calibers," said Jerome Dunn, DARPA program manager. Exacto can help shooters compensate for high winds. Give shooters greater range and accuracy makes American troops safer.

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Guerrilla Gamblers' Comments

There is no free lunch. Good things usually cut both ways. There is no doubt that the accuracy makes American troops safer but there will be no difference if the enemy had the same ammo. Good but dangerous products are like double edge swords. In due time psychopath killers will get hold of this bullets. With the 9/11 incident, I would not be exaggerating to put forth the idea of a coordinated attack. All Bin Laden’s successor or ISIS needs to do is to put a few guns on the key people and a nation would be in turmoil. Let’s say a gun is aimed at Barack Obama (president), Joe Biden (vice president) and Ashton Carter (defence secretary) at the same time. There is a price for everything and there will leakage somewhere. So, I won’t boast about this invention.

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My Comments

"With great power comes great responsibility", Ben Parker told Spiderman. In just one instance that Spiderman failed to act, the loss was his beloved uncle. Even now there would be spies after the blueprint of this weapon. Entrepreneurs and players in the military field will do their own research and development to produce this wonder bullet to make a buck. Now the President needs more bodyguards who are willing to take the bullet for him. I am not paranoid - 9/11 was real.

Time Is a Thief: College Savings Plummets

REBLOG=>Amenda Steel

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Fate had an indiscriminate and random way to liberating money from your wallet. A car break-down that cost 20% of your disposable income or a roof leak of similar extent will put you on a tight budget for the month and depreciate your savings. Bad luck or unexpected expenses is usually quoted for failure to save. Sharing the blame would be the escalating cost of living. These common reasons the man on the streets frequently hears but backing them up with research will give it better credibility.

Last year an average of $13,408 was set aside for college by parents but it was reduced to $10,040 this year. Savings for all purposes, including retirement and emergencies, also plunged to $98,867 from $115,604 last year. Sallie Mae, a corporation that offers financial products to help families save and plan for college, engaged market research company Ipsos to conduct a research to account for a 25% drop in saving for college.

Ipsos interviewed 1,988 parents of children under 18 for the survey between Jan. 14 and Jan. 28. "The biggest reason for the decrease in savings are the increase in the cost of living and having unexpected expenses come up," said Michael Gross, head of the higher education practice at Ipsos. About half the parents are saving for college. For families with incomes between $35,000 and $100,000 the rate fell to 46 percent this year from 51 percent last year.

The outlook on investing in higher education for children is still good. 90% parents believe that college is an investment in their children's future. 84% believe their children will earn more with higher education. 78% think that a college degree is more important now than in the past. General savings accounts remain as the most widely used vehicle to save for college funds. It was used by 48% of the savers. 23% used checking accounts and 27% used 529 plan.

The 529 plan is tax-advantaged instrument for saving for the future higher education expenses of a designated beneficiary. It was named after the act (Internal Revenue Code 26 U.S.C. § 529) that legislated it. The 539 plan is popular high-income savers. 49% used it. It only manage to draw 20% of middle-income and 17% low-income savers. 40% of those who do not save for higher education were unaware of the existence of 529 plans.

Parents who don't save overestimate the amount of financial aid their children will receive. Scholarships and grants typically cover about one-third of the total average cost of college, according to a corollary Sallie Mae study. About two-thirds of those who don't save believed their child would get scholarship help to cover college costs.

Martha Holler, a Sallie Mae representative said the act of creating a plan for college savings seems to boost the odds of success. The 2015 Saving for College survey found families with a plan saved 46 percent more than families without a plan. Parents began to save when their oldest child was 6.5 years old. This the time where the initial expenses of infancy and the toddler years are over, Reuters reported on 29 April 2015.

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My Comments

Like the Greeks, parents who skipped saving a few times are attributing it to Lady Luck. In no time Lady Luck will cause more turbulence. For a modern day analysis, saving will affect the economy because it is a component of Gross National Product. Reduce saving can hurt investment. Okay there is no need to go through elementary macroeconomics.

America's 9 Best Entry-level Jobs

Job hunters need to be mindful that there is always compromise between job security, career development or high pay in the job process. High paying jobs are usually at high risk for being automated or offers little growth potential over the next few years. Based on a study from WalletHub, the top 9 entry-level jobs scores well in all the three categories mentioned. CBS News had compiled their findings on 28 April 2015 to guide college students and high school seniors to consider which field to major in.

Job	Starting Pay	Median Pay	Qualification	Growth
9. Financial analyst	$51,848	$76,950	bachelor's degree in business, finance or related	-
8. Information security analyst	$55,310	$86,170	-	37%
7. Web designer	$53,041	$62,500	know programming and graphic design	20%
6. Software engineers	$62,522	$90,374	bachelor's degree in computer science	-
5. Environmental engineer	$57,266	$86,340	bachelor's degree in environmental engineering or related	15%
4 Attorney	$83,907	$133,470	law degree and pass a state's written bar exam	10%
3 Network Engineer	$61,744	$91,982	degrees in computer science or related	12%
2. Web applications designer	$54,586	$59,000	know developer languages such as PHP and HTML	12%
1. Training specialist	$47,621	$55,930	college degree and strong communication skills	15%

The starting annual salary and the median pay for all workers in the field are based on the latest information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The salary for software engineers were based on information on the employment site Glassdoor.com. Figures for network engineer and web applications designer were derived from the employment site Payscale.com. The job growth rate is projected from 2012 to 2022 by the BLS. A growth of 10 percent or higher is deemed as normal. A growth rate of 15 percent and above is consider rapid growth.

The information security analyst had the greatest potential growth of 37 percent. Their job entails a simple maintenance routine but once the system gets hacked, they will have to work round the clock to restore the system, pronto. I believe being a hacker is the best qualification for this job but there is no such thing as a certified hacker at the present moment. This may be the reason WalletHub did not list down the qualification for this job. The reason growth is not projected for financial analyst is unclear.

Growth rate for software engineers were not projected as this profession is a bit unusual. While the jobs in this field are plentiful, careers in the field may be short-lived. According to Bloomberg News, most software developers have left the profession by the time they're 40. The industry tend to favor younger engineers because of the impression that they will be more up-to-date with the latest trends.

Although the training specialist had a low income, it top because of job openings and growth potential. About one-quarter of Web designers were self-employed in 2012 but it is forecasted that employment in this field will grow by 20 percent. I believe the forecaster is expecting these self-employed individuals would grow and had the need for expansion.

Seeking Enlightenment: Economic Crisis due to Childless Millennials

REBLOG=>Sophia Logica

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A rapidly aging society and a younger generation that is not willing to have kids is the formula for an economic Armageddon, CBS News 28 April 2015. Japan confronts this fate and their population is predicted to drop by one-third through 2060. Childbirth trend among Millennials is raising questions on the possibility America heading the same direction. According to a report from the Urban Institute, birth rate among American women in their 20s fell 15 percent in 2012 from 2007. This marked an abrupt change from three decades of relatively stable birthrates. The birth rate of women in the 20s is 948 births per 1,000 women.

Nan Marie Astone, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and one of the paper's authors, believes the recession prompted women in their 20s to opt against having children. The paper cited previous economic crises, such as the Depression in the 1930s, also coincided with low points for fertility in 20-somethings. The median age for a women's first birth is now 26 years old, compared with 21.4 years old in 1970, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Would millennial women start families once they feel more stable economically, as previous generations have done after periods of financial insecurity?

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My Comments

Values have a part to play in our actions today. The previous generation believe in the family and even extended families especially for Italians. People today are like a little nucleus of their own. There was happily ever after of yesterday. Today is happily never after. Broken families and high divorce rate are a common thing.

Pest in Midst: Dinosaur with Multiple Species Traits

REBLOG=>XingCai Tang

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Scientists have discovered remnants of a strange dinosaur with an unusual combination of traits in southern Chile. It was named Chilesaurus diegosuarezi to honor the country where it was unearthed and the 7-year-old who spotted the first fossils. "The skeletal anatomy of Chilesaurus gathers characteristics of different dinosaur groups, like a floor is composed of mosaics of different shapes and colors. No other dinosaurs exhibit such a combination or mixture of features," said paleontologist Fernando Novas of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires. The modern-day version of such misfit is the platypus, an egg-laying, duck-billed mammal from Australia, Reuters reported on 27 April 2015.

Chilesaurus it is a member of the same dinosaur species as Tyrannosaurus rex. Its skull and neck bear a resemblance to those of primeval long-necked dinosaurs, and its vertebrae those of primitive meat-eating theropods which are the largest land meat-eaters in Earth's history. Strangely enough Chilesaurus ate only plants, given a beak and leaf-shaped teeth and two blunt fingers on each hand. It is a two-legged created with a bird-like pelvis. Unlike the three-talon feet of most theropods, Chilesaurus had a wide feet with four toes. Four nearly complete skeletons frames were found to establish these typical misfit traits. It was relatively small, reaching up to 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) long, although most specimens found were more the size of a turkey. It lived in a region crisscrossed by rivers approximately 145 million years ago.

University of Birmingham paleontologist Martín Ezcurra said, "The most interesting (aspect) about Chilesaurus is the story that it tells about how evolution works, 'Convergent evolution' is a process in which two unrelated species or groups acquire similar characteristics from living in similar environments or having a similar behavior," He used the example of having the wings of a bat and a bird. For 'mosaic convergent evolution,' it involves different parts of the body resembling those of other unrelated species.

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My Comments

The more fossil we unearth, the harder it would be for experts to explain evolution. Very soon the theory of evolution will just fall apart. It would be easier to explain explain that the Chilesaurus came from a big bang than to fit it into evolution theory. After we finally believe the earth cam from a big bang.

Google’s Mobile Friendly Test

My Casino Gambling Tip is now a mobile friendly website. My next task would be to get XingCai Gambling Tales to be mobile friendly too. I had outlined the step involved to get it mobile friendly in my previous blog and will use the same procedure. The wave of mobile suffers had got Google to cater to them or lose page ranking. This would be a concern for webmasters until they fix the problem.

While Google had written to webmasters with some links to make a mobile friendly website, they provided no link to test the mobile-friendliness of the site. Using W3C tidy up could provide some additional help on the meta tags. After much surfing, I found certification from Google themselves. Visit this link and type in your website’s URL.

John Key New Zealand Premier Hair Pulling Fetish

New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key ask for forgiveness from a waitress at his local cafe for repeatedly tugging on her ponytail. The waitress named Rosie criticized his behavior in a blog post. It began during last year's election season and carried on for a number of months and on several occasions. Eventually the cafe's manager made it clear to Key that his actions were uninvited, the CNN reported on 22 April 2015.

Key, told reporters that his behavior was in the context of "a bit of banter," but said that he had apologized when it was clear she was offended. "But if you look at it now, no. When I realized she took offense by that I just sort of immediately went back, gave her some wine, apologized and said I was terribly sorry," the leader added. Rosie’s blog wrote that she didn't directly make her objections clear verbally, her body language "screamed 'I don't like that.'" The blog also stated that the prime minister offered two bottles of his own JK 2012 Pinot Noir wine by way of apology.

Sue McCabe, chief executive of the National Council of Women of New Zealand, accepted that Key was joking and did not mean to offend, but criticized the premier in an open letter of the organization. "The fact that our Prime Minister has joined the list of people outed for sexism highlights how much sexism is a part of our culture. And it starts at the top. Up and down this country, day after day, people are touched without giving their consent. At one end of the scale, it is an unwelcome pull on a ponytail. At the other end, it's our shocking levels of violence against women."