help 4-H help kids get into Science, Engineering and Technology... (Entered: 2010/01/29 14:33:54)

I'm looking for contacts to pass this on to or ideas of how to proceed...

My name is Ben Burnett I am a 4-H alumni from Iowa. I am an R&D Software engineer and am constantly watching for government RFP to find funding for projects I'm working on. I recently came across a DARPA effort to: "DARPA is interested in proposals with innovative new ideas to encourage students to major in CS-STEM (Computer Science - Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and pursue careers as engineers and scientists."

I thought that maybe using this to help expand the current 4-H SET (http://4-h.org/programs_mission_mandates/set.html) program would be useful. If you are interested, you could find more information here:

• https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=2a67e7531df7c0e5f98c67897c8b2aef&tab=core&_cview=1
• http://www07.grants.gov/search/search.do?&mode=VIEW&flag2006=false&oppId=51079

Why we should not "reform" health care (Entered: 2009/09/15 09:42:13)

1. Although efforts have been made to reform the healthcare industry since 1912, we should not be too hasty in enacting change.

2. The federal government has no business interfering in peoples healthcare decisions, unless a woman is trying to terminate a pregnancy, or the patient's last name is Schiavo.

3. The government is incapable of running anything efficiently, and if allowed to offer a healthcare option, will run it so efficiently that it will put private insurers out of business.

4. We are a Christian nation, and we don't believe in helping the least among us. Some people just don't deserve healthcare. Getting sick is God's punishment for doing something wrong.

5. The current system, with 47,000,000 uninsured, a million medical bankruptcies annually, and 18,000 deaths annually due to lack of insurance, is working just fine. In fact, we have the best health care system in the world!

6. Even though many older couples are forced to divorce in order to avoid catastrophic financial losses due to medical expenses, it's the homosexuals who are destroying families.

7 A conversation with your doctor about end-of-life issues is an opportunity for your doctor to convince you to kill yourself.

8. We can afford to spend more on our military than all other nations combined, but we can't afford universal health care.

9. Single-payer, government-run healthcare is good enough for our men and women in uniform, but to offer the same to the general public would be socialism.

10. Pooling our resources to provide roads, schools, clean water, military, police, and fire protection for each other is not socialism. Pooling our resources to provide each other health care is socialism.

11. Socialism is bad. Very bad. Bad!

12. Health care is an issue best handled by individual states; like slavery.

13. We can afford to subsidize Israel , Iraq , and Afghanistan , all of whom have universal healthcare, but we can't afford it ourselves.

14. Money and corporate profits are more important than peoples' health. Sure, reforming the insurance companies would save thousands of lives, but shareholders' portfolios might be damaged.

15. Freeing people from holding on to their dead-end jobs for the insurance and allowing them to become entrepreneurs would bankrupt our country.

16. Someone like physicist Stephen Hawking would have been allowed to die under the British healthcare system. Oh, he's British? And alive? Never mind.

17. We already have universal health care: it's called the Emergency Room. Uninsured people can go there for all their health needs (checkups, cancer pre-screening, chemotherapy, etc.), and it only costs the taxpayers a few thousand dollars per visit.

18. The Obama healthcare initiative is part of the liberal-communist-Nazi-socialist-Islamofascist-gay-atheist-zombie-transsexual-cannibal-sociopath-evolutionist agenda to take away your freedom! If this plan is passed, abortions will be mandatory, schoolchildren will be raped by their teachers, and Negroes will murder your Grandma with her pillow!

Work around for LinkedIn Group Managers to send messages to new members (Entered: 2009/03/25 15:43:12)

As a work around for the "e-mailing new members" problem, I have a solution that I use, it is a bit more time consuming, but it works....

from the "requests to join" page before you approve the users, highlight the list of users, then copy and paste into notepad, this strips all html and other formatting characters, save the file as a *.txt file. open excel then open the txt file, use "|" as the column delimiter, then "finish" once imported you should have a column of e-mails. I then use the excel function "=trim(B5)" and copy this down the entire list of users..... then copy the column of e-mails into my e-mail program (g-mail) and then send my welcome message to new members. I do this in a separate g-mail account for each group. gmail saves a list of all addresses e-mailed, so this has the side benefit of creating and keeping a mail list as well (doesn't sync back to anything to update when users leave though).

I Hope this helps everyone. --Ben

Cool portable fire pits! (Entered: 2008/10/31 14:30:31)

http://johntunger.typepad.com/artbuzz/2007/07/the-beach-burne.html

Chili and Chocolate? (Entered: 2008/04/02 17:24:16)

We do a chili cookoff/bonfire every year in Oct, I'm always trying to come up with a new chili twist, Lately I've also been interested in mixing chocolate with Chili, the aztecs started it, it must be good right? (ChiliChocolate) I've started a new page to try to find a good recipe and explore these options so that I can bring a new treat to chili cookoffs with me (see my past Chili Concoctions)

autopost test (Entered: 2007/11/15 15:30:53)

what do we do with pre-internet address lists and social networks? (Entered: 2007/10/12 11:44:52)

Can anyone help me with this problem? Also I have some technical ideas of a way to search and find people in an automated way on the open internet, but don't have the time to implement. If anyone is interested, or if anyone knows where I could find the data definition specs of an outlook *.pst file that would be great.

Thanks,
--Ben Burnett

Ben Burnett
R&D Software Engineer: wired, wireless, ad hoc, mesh networking,
network monitoring and data visualization
ATC (Architecture Technology Corporation) http://www.atcorp.com/
bburnett@atcorp.com (952) 829-5864 x167
--------Views expressed are mine and not those of ATC--------
Personal:
ben@burnett.ws http://www.burnett.ws/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/benburnett , http://www.plaxo.com/
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/BenBurnett

Just started a Technorati profile (Entered: 2007/09/27 11:43:51)

Technorati Profile

We are expecting again! (Entered: 2007/09/27 11:27:00)

Hello all, Allison and I are expecting again, we haven't informed everyone or made an official announcement, ( I suppose this counts now), but we are expecting another baby near the beginning of May 2008. After losing the last pregnancy everyone is of course taking this one very cautious. We got an ultrasound yesterday and all is well so far and looking fine.

We'll try to keep people posted and maybe even post some ultrasound pics of the fuzzy blob at the moment....

-Ben

Any FarmHouse Fraternity Alumni out there? (Entered: 2007/09/27 11:15:16)

Since 1905, FarmHouse has been a builder of men. "The object of our fraternity is to promote good fellowship, to encourage studiousness, and to inspire its members in seeking the best in their chosen lines of study as well as in life...." FH has 30 active chapters with at least 6000 Alumni. http://www.farmhouse.org/

"FarmHouse Fraternity Alums for Networking" [ http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/FarmHouse-Networking/ ] is a discussion group for all Alumni of FarmHouse Fraternity who wish to network with each other. The group is meant to help FH alum reconnect and discuss networking and partnership ideas.

In addition This group has a corresponding group on LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com) and can also be used to discuss and learn how to use Linkedin to help members professionally and to help them do better business.

Whether you are a current FHer or have been an alum for 20-60 years, FarmHouse Fraternity Alums for Networking should help you and provide all the information you'll need to know in order to use Linkedin like a professional online business networker.

Join FarmHouse Fraternity Alumni on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/28421/5764A8562860).

A similar yahoo group for FH-ISU alumni can be found here as well: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FH-ISU-alums/