Let me see if I can get this straight...

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, and different"?

• Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

• If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

• Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track, you're a maverick.

• Graduate from Harvard Law School you are unstable.

• Attend five different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

• If you spend three years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of Hardvard Law Review, create a voter registration drve that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend eight years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human services committee, spend four years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring or co-sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

• If your total resume is: local weather girl, four years on the city council and six years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the govenor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's secod highest ranking executive.

• If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years, while raising two beautiful daughters, all within Protestant Chrches, you're not a real Christian.

• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

• If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, uncluding the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

• If, while govenor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

• If our husband is nicknamed "First Dude". with atleast one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a memeber of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Well that clears it up.

I wrote this after looking at a gallery here on ebaumsworld of the Large Hadron Collider and becoming curious as to what it does and why they would build it.  This led me on a journey along the internet to read about black holes.  I figured if I was wondering about this thing, then surely the other viewers would be also...so here I am.  Telling you the basics of what you'd want to know about a black hole!  ;)

A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon.  This is in part why we call these a black hole. 

How are black holes even made?  A black hole is born when an object becomes unable to withstand the compressing forces of its own gravity.  Many objects (including our Earth and Sun) will never become black holes themselves.  Their gravity is not sufficient to overpower the atomic and nuclear forces of their interiors, which resist compression.  but in more massive objects, gravity ultimately wins.  Stellar-mass black holes are born with a bang.  They form when a very massive star (at least 25 times heavier than our Sun) runs out of nuclear fuel.  The star then explodes as a supernova.  What reamins is a black hole, usually only a few times heavier then our Sun since the explosion has blown much of the stellar material away.

How big is a black hole?  All matter in a black hole is squeezed into a region of infinitely small volume, called the cetral singularity.  The event horizon is an imaginary sphere that measures how close to the singularity you can safely get.  Once you have passed the event horizon, it becomes impossible to escape:  you will be drawn in by the black hole's gravitational pull and squashed into singularity.  The size of the event horizon (called the Scwarschild radius, after the German physicist who discovered it while fighting in the first World War) is proportional to the mass of the black hole.  Astronomers have found black holes with even horizons ranging from six miles to the size of our solar system.  but i prinicple, black holes can exist with even smaller or larger horizons.  By comparison, the Schwarzschild radius of the earth is about the size of a marble.  this is how much you would have to compress the Earth to turn it into a black hole.  A black hole doesn't have to be very massive, but it does need to be very compact!

Since the creation of the Large Hadron Collider, the thoughts of a black hole forming on our beloved planet has been a concern by many.  Some scientists fear that this could create Micro black holes.  These would not be life threatening as they would most likely decay at an extremely fast rate.  Though they would emit possibly dangerous levels of Hawking radiation.  Even if micro black holes could be created, it would require a ring accelerator about 1000 light years in diamater!  I don't see us building one of those anytime soon (Earth doesn't even have a diamater of .0001 of a light year).

Here's a list of pictures of black holes in outer space (these are all safe links, don't worry):

• http://tinyurl.com/3no5jq
• http://tinyurl.com/3prfeg
• http://tinyurl.com/4udhr9
• http://tinyurl.com/49jxw4
• http://tinyurl.com/4j9wlf
• http://tinyurl.com/49qamt
• http://tinyurl.com/3pwuwa

Check out my gallery here also if you want to see some more pictures.

Sure this may not be the most definitive work on black holes, but it kind of gives you the basics.  Enough to know if you were just curious about them a little.

This site has a lot of good information on black holes.

This blog section is starting to be overran with idiots...you know, the oes that normally comment on the featured videos.  :O

I got a new rifle today.  It's a Walther G22 (.22LR).  I must admit it's a strange looking rifle, almost like one out of the future (sorta).  It shoots pretty nice plus it has a scope and laser.  The laser is built in so that's cool.  It costs $560.

Check it out here:

http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=13152&storeId=10002&productId=58960&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=43805&isFirearm=Y

Why am I saying this on here?  No reason, just wanted to use the blog for something.