Courage is Not the Absense of fear but rather the judgement that something else if more important

HI EVERYONE MY NAME IS BRANDON. I AM A SPORTS FAN OF ALL KINDS. I AM CURRENTLY EMPLOYEED BY DONALSONVILLE FIRE DEPARTMENT AND A LOCAL FURNITURE STORE WHERE I LIVE IN SOUTH GEORGIA. I HAVE BEEN A CERTIFIED FIREFIGHTER SINCE I WAS 19 YEARS OLD. I LOVE TO HELP PEOPLE IN ANY WAY I CAN. I AM 20 YEARS OLD NOW AND HAVE ACCOMPLISHED MORE THAN I THOUGHT POSSIBLE IN THE LAST 2 YEARS OF MY LIFE. I AM GOING TO COLLEGE TO RECIEVE MY ASSOCIATES DEGREE IN FIRE SCIENCE, AND HOPEFULLY AFTER THAT I WILL GET MY BACHELORS. I AM VERY MUCH IN LOVE WITH THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS. SHE IS A YEAR YOUNGER THAN ME AND WANTS THE SAME THINGS OUT OF LIFE THAT I DO I HOPE YOU ENJOY MY PAGE AND ALL THE INTERSTING STUFF I ADD TO IT. ENJOY!

With Different Denominators the Process is Just a Little Different

All fractions consist of two parts, a top part, which is called the numerator and the bottom part, which is called the denominator. Thus we have:

Numerator

Denominator

If both fractions to be added have the same denominator the process is simple - simply add the two numerators and use the same denominator that both share as follows:

1/3 + 1/3 = 2/3

When the denominators are different, we have to make an adjustment, as we can only add two or more fractions if all have the same denominator. If we want to add 2/3 plus 1/2 we have to first find a common denominator that both can use. A common denominator is a number that can be evenly divided by the denominators of both fractions. Sixty is a number that can be evenly divided by both denominators, however, it is better to find the smallest number that can be evenly divided by each. This is called the least common denominator. In this case, 6 is a number that can be evenly divided by both 3 and 2. Since there is no smaller number that can be divided evenly by both 3 and 2, 6 is the least common denominator.

The rule here is to divide the least common denominator by each denominator and then multiply that denominator's numerator by the result. For instance, with 6 as the new common denominator, we divide 6 by the 3 in 2/3 and get 2 as the result. Then multiply the numerator of 2 in 2/3 by the result, 2 to get 4/6 as the new fraction. Doing the same with 1/2 we divide 6 by the denominator 2 to get a result of 3 and then multiply the 1 in 1/2 by the result of 3 to get 3/6 as the new fraction.

We now have two fractions with the same denominator of 6, so we add them as follows:

4/6 + 3/6 = 7/6

Now, the question is, other than writing articles for HubPages.com, of what practical use is this this process of adding fractions?

Well, cooking is one area where this can come in handy, especially when you want to increase a recipe. If you are having company over for dinner and the recipe for the dish you want to serve will prepare enough to feed four people but you will be serving six people, you will have to increase the ingredients by a half. Thus, where the recipe calls for 2/3 cup of water you will have to add 2/3 plus 1/3 to calculate the amount of water needed for a six serving batch. Similarly, where the recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of salt you will have to add 1/4 teaspoon to the 1/2 teaspoon to that to get the amount needed for six people.

News from the Past

Google is rapidly becoming the world's library. While everyone is focusing on their massive book project, Google continues to roll out specialized search vehicles for scholars, teachers, for images, news archives, etc. Even though you can go to Google.com and search the web in general for many of these things, the more focused services allow you to concentrate your searches on specific types of information sources.

Brick and mortar libraries usually allow one to search their collection by Title, Author or Keyword, but they are also physically organized with fiction in one area, non-fiction in another, current periodicals in another, etc. The larger the library the greater the collection and the more specialized the physical divisions. One of the enjoyable advantages of a brick and mortar library is the ability to simply wander through the stacks in a particular section and discover new things by simply pulling and leafing through books at random. Google and others who are digitizing and publishing the world's knowledge on the web are in the process of creating the same browsing process on the web with one big difference - the web never closes.

Google News allows the user to search news sources for news articles available from media sites on the web. Instead of doing a random search on a topic you can restrict the search to current news media content on the topic. Recently Google added an Archives Search feature to its news site that allows one to to find articles published in newspapers and magazines as long ago as 200 years or more.

While the Google News search runs ads on the results and content pages, the results and content pages for the Archive Search portion of Google News does not run any Google Ads, although the owners of the content sites can run their own ads on these content pages. Another feature of the Archive Search is that a large number of the content pages charge for access to the articles. However, it is the content owner, not Google, which is levying the charge. The fees are generally less than $5 for an article and and most sites offer subscriptions to people who plan to use their site on a regular basis. Like the Google Books project, when a searcher clicks on an article, a page comes up with an abstract of the article which gives the researcher an idea of the content. The searcher can then pay to gain access to the article to read and download it or look for something else.

Anyone who is familiar with the sites for major media will have noticed that most of them require registration, which is usually free, and most provide contents of recent editions free. However, the free content is usually limited to the last 30 days or so and fees are charged for the articles from their archives. It is these archive sections of the media sites that the Google News Archive search takes people to. For very old materials, there are companies which have scanned the old copies of both existing and no longer existing publications. Many of these companies began by providing microfilm copies of old newspapers to libraries and then migrated to the web when it came along. By partnering with Google, these companies have expanded their business to include the mass market as well as serving their primary market which consists of libraries, scholars and other researchers.

If you want copies of old newspaper and magazine articles that you find on a Google News Archive search but don't want to pay for them, there are some ways to access them for free. There are some media companies, Time Magazine for instance, which provide access to all of their content for free. For these, one simply clicks on the article and gets immediate access to read and/or download a copy. For others that charge, one can often obtain free access via a local public library or college library. Libraries often subscribe to these content services so that their patrons can access the content at no charge through the library's subscription (this is legal). In order to do this, one has to have an affiliation with the library. Since I teach at the local community college and, being a resident of the county in which I live, also have the right to apply for a free library card from the local library, I have access to this content from any computer in the world simply by using my college or library ID numbers to enter the college or Tucson Library site and then access their subscription services. Many college and public libraries also allow free access, on a space available basis, to anyone who comes in to the library itself during their hours of business. So, with a little effort, one can find an article using a Google News Archive search, note the article name, date, name of newspaper or magazine that first published it and the name of the service that provides the digital copy. With that information you can then either log into the site of a library to which you have membership rights or physically travel to a nearby library and hope that they both subscribe to the service that you need and that their subscription includes the newspaper or magazine in which the article you want was published. Even if you do have to pay for the article, the fee is considerably less than the time and money that people just a few years ago would have had to spend to travel to a library, in another city, state or country, to access these materials.

Newspaper and, to some extent, magazine articles are part of the raw material of history. Here is how people viewed and interpreted events at the time they were occurring and before the events were fully played out and people had time to reflect upon and interpret them. At the time many news articles were written, at the start of a war or some other major event, people did not know what would happen and thus, viewed these events differently than we, who have the benefit of hindsight, view them now.

Enjoy

After reading Jimmythejock's Hubs about his mother-in-law and the mother-in-law jokes he posted, I couldn't resist passing this joke on when I received it.

A young man excitedly tells his mother he's fallen

in love and that he is going to get married. He says,

"Just for fun, Ma, I'm going to bring over three women and you try

and guess which one I'm going to marry."

The mother agrees.

The next day, he brings three beautiful women into the house and sits them down

on the couch and they chat for a while.

He then says, "Okay Ma, guess which one I'm going to marry?"

She immediately replies, "The one on the right."

"That's amazing, Ma. You're right. How did you know?"

The mother replies, "I don't like her "

Global Warming 17--The Current Status of the Debate

There is implicit good news in the mostly bad news in the latest big global warming report: From now on, politicians will find it harder to do little or nothing to fight this problem. The release of the report on February 2 by the IPCC, ranks as a landmark development. Using unusually blunt language for a scientific document, the report describes global warming as "unequivocal" and says it is "very likely" caused by humans. The results, according to the report, will likely include more frequent heat waves and stronger droughts and storms, while sea levels will continue to rise for more than a thousand years. The silver lining is that such plain-spoken warnings should make it difficult for anyone to argue that greenhouse gases should not be reduced. Capitol Hill already had been aflutter with prospective global warming bills; the report makes it more likely that one will land on Geoorge W. Bush's desk by year's end. Bush will face a choice: sign the bill despite the presumed opposition of the oil and coal interests he has championed, or veto it and leave fellow Republicans open to attack on what's shaping up as a top-tier issue in the 2008 elections.

As for the bad news in the report, it confirms that the battle to prevent global warming has been lost. Now the race to survive it has begun. Because we waited so long to act, the best humanity can do now is slow global warming down to where we can hope to endure it with relatively manageable damages. How bad things eventually get will depend on how much greenhouse emissions are cut, and how quickly. But the momentum of the climate system--the fact that carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for decades, and oceans store heat for centuries--guarantees that global warming will get worse before it gets better (unless someone invents a miracle technology to strip existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.)

Even if humanity stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, the IPCC notes, global temperatures would still rise 1.1 degrees Farenheit by the year 2100. An immediate stop is impossible; it would mean shutting off every electric power plant, automobile, furnace and other device anywhere in the world that runs on oil, coal or natural gas, as well as halting tropical rainforest destruction. Thus ther IPCC calculates a range of possible future temperature increases that vary by how quickly emissions are or are not reduced. At the very least, says the report, temperatures will rise 2.0 degrees Farenheit by 2100, assuming a rapid shift away from fossil fuels. More likely is an increase of 3.2 to 7.2 degrees.

These numbers imply that there is very little time for humanity to avoid passing a climate threshold known as the two-degree target. Endorsed by the European Union and many top scientists as the maximum amount of warming above pre-industrial-era levels that humanity can tolerate before damages become unmanageable, the target can be confusing to Americans because it refers to two degrees Celsius. The equivalent in Farenheit is 3.6 degrees. At first glance, that sounds roomy enough. After all, the IPCC estimates that "likely" future temperature rise will range between 3.2 and 7.2 degrees Farenheit; thus if we decarbonize our economies fast enough to hit the low end of that range, the threshold could be avoided. The problem is, humanity's past greenhouse emissions have already caused the temperature to rise 1.1 degrees Farenheit over the last century. That means we will pass the threshold if we raise the temperature by only 2.5 degrees--barely more than the losest amount the IPCC considers feasible. And even in that case, we will still face considerable sea-level rise and more killer heat waves droughts and hurricanes.

There are no good answers to global warming, only degrees of bad. But speedy action might let us avoid the the most catastrophic scenarios. Scientists say we must cut emissions 80 percent by 2050, which is what the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, sponsored by Bernie Sanders, Barbara Boxer and others, mandates. Habitual foot-draggers, Exxon Mobil and the Bush administration look almost comical as they reposition themselves for the battle to come. Bush uttered the words "global climate change" in a State of the Union adress for the first time last month; Exxon Mobil announced it would stop funding some climate-change deniers. But neither the White House nor the oil giant accepts mandatory limits on greenhouse emissions. They simply recognize theat Congress is going to pass a bill this year, and they know that in Washington if you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu. Defenders of the status quo will want a bill that sounds good but does little except defuse pressure for real change. And that would by the worst outcome of all.