Many people believe the Nessie, Loch Ness Monster is an evolved Plesiosaur. These dinosaurs were carnivorous aquatic reptiles with long necks and the body in the shape of a turtle without a shell. These dinosaurs were first found in England, so it is possible that one or more survived through the ages; however, the plesiosaur’s neck wasn’t designed to bend upward to the degree that they could left their heads above the water as most Nessie pictures show. Even if they could, gravity would have tipped their body forward which would keep most of their neck in the water. It is possible for their head to reach the surface, but not in the typical “Nessie pose”. Nessie has also been thought to be some sort of long necked seal, an eel, an unknown amphibian species, or some sort of invertebrate. It could also be a plesiosaur that has evolved from their fossilized ancestors.

Loch Ness is the largest body of fresh water in Britain. It’s 754 feet deep, 22.5 miles long, and 1-1.5 miles wide. It is said that the loch never freezes, which could account for how the dinosaur survived through the ages. Below 100 feet, the temperature of the water never varies from 44 degrees Fahrenheit due to a thermocline. There is a large cavern system deep in the lake where Nessie is thought to hide.

The Loch Ness Monster has been a popular myth since at least 1933, but there have been reported sitings since as early as 565 by Saint Columbia, who wrote that a beast rose from the loch and attacked a man swimming out to retrieve a boat.

Over the past 4 years, people have debated the monster’s existence on a picture I took of a statue at Eccles Dinosaur part of a Plesiosaur on my photo gallery at The Lens Flare. On this page, I ask the question, could this dinosaur be the ancestor of the Loch Ness Monster? People have misinterpreted my question as “Is this the real Nessie?” and hundreds of people have commented.

The picture recently reached 100,000 views and is the first image on The Lens Flare to do so largely due to the fact that it often shows up on the first page of Google’s image search for phrases like “Loch Ness Monster” and other variations, and the number of visits to this picture per week has dramatically increased since the show “The Water Horse” hit the big screen putting Nessie back in the spotlight. I invite you to take part in the conversation of Nessie on my picture The Loch Ness Monster’s Great Great Granddad.

One of my goals is to have a million visitors combined for all of my websites in a year.  In 2007, 412,425 people visited my websites, with the majority of them going to The Lens Flare, my photography and art community.  I’ve been working on a new version of that site for several months and have just released a beta version to the members of that community.  In about two weeks, I plan on making the beta version live.  The new site is so much better, I’m hoping that it will attract a million visitors in 2008. 

The Canadian dollar is now worth more than the US dollar.

Today, Nov. 27, 2007, the US dollar is trading at about 99 cents of the Canadian Dollar.  In November of 2003, the US dollar was worth approximately $1.57 Canadian dollars.

Is it any wonder though when you look at our national debt? The national debt was pretty much flat for 40 years until 1983. From 1983 to now, the debt has been increasing except for 2000 and 2001, and over the past 5 years, the debt has increased from roughly 6 trillion to over 9 trillion. Somehow, we’ve managed to spend an extra 50% of our total debt in 5 years.

Every time I go to the grocery store, I’m surprised by how many items cost more from week to week. 2 liter bottles of cola were regularly 89 cents not too long ago, and now they’re $1.29. Oreo cookies were regularly $2.50 a bag a few months ago, and now they’re $3.69. When every item at the grocery store that costs under a dollar is increased by 10 or 15 cents, it adds up very quickly.

Supposedly our inflation rate isn’t out of the norm and has been floating between 1-3% for the past 7 years, but the value of our dollar is dropping fast, and we’re compounding the problem by spending way too much money. Our government can’t afford to spend another 50% of our debt over the next 5 years.

We need to make some hard choices soon or we’re all going to be in a world of hurt. If we continue on this way, we’re going to end up with another great depression or worse, a bankrupt country. We have a war going on in Iraq, which doesn’t look like it’s going to end any time soon. If we pull out now, we’re going to be in a worse situation because Iraq will fall apart. I’m not sure it’s the wisest thing in the world though to take the financial burden of starting a new country when we have so many problems in our own country to deal with.

Now we have politicians saying that we should have universal health care. How on Earth can we justify the expense when we’re 9 trillion dollars in debt and have a dollar that’s worth 63% of its value 4 years ago?

How can we justify any new expenses? Building a wall to stop immigrants? Are we serious? Let’s pay off our debt first otherwise we may not have a country to put a wall around.

The US has the strongest military in the world, but wars can be won without firing a single shot. All they have to do is buy us, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

The US people need to come together. We need to think more about “we” instead of “I”. Rather than farming work out to India or China, we should hire people from the US. The more people we can get off of welfare and out of poverty, the better our economy will become and the less our government will be burdened with the expense of supporting people. The more we buy products made in the US, the better off our economy will be. If we can’t buy US Products or hire US citizens, then at least we should support friendly countries. I don’t know how many times lately that I’ve heard about cheap Chinese products causing health problems such as lead paint on Thomas the Tank Engine trains. There has been recall after recall of toys and other Chinese products because in all honesty, they aren’t our friends, and they don’t care if we get sick or die from their unsafe products.

The other side of the coin is that we need to get out of debt as individuals. We need to make the hard decision of cutting back and paying off those credit cards and other high interest loans. I heard recently that the average American spends 20 dollars for every 19 he or she earns. With spending habits like that, is it any wonder that our government is in the same boat?

We can’t keep going on like this, and we can’t rely on our government any longer to bail us out of financial burdens. If we’re on welfare, we need to do everything we can to get off of welfare. If we have a dispute, we need to resolve it ourselves before wasting time and money in the courts. There are a million ways we all can make a difference, and if we don’t now, it’s all going to come crashing down around us in the not too distant future.

Sources:

Inflation Rates: http://www.inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/CurrentInflation.asp
National Debt: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html
USD to CAD Value Trend: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=USDCAD=X&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

One of my goals is to attract a million people in a year to my websites collectively.  From January 1 to September 30 of 2007, there have been 312k visitors to my various websites (averaged out to 416k in a year).  The Lens Flare, my art and photography community, has received the majority of visitors for good reason.  There are over 30,000 images on there.  However, my fantasy & science fiction site, Desert Realm, still gets a fair amount of traffic even though I haven’t done much with that site recently.  I’ve recently added 2 blogs to the mix.  This blog and my tech blog, Ask Some Geeks, is starting to get a little traffic, which should increase as more postings are written.

One of my goals is to have a million visitors to my websites in a year so it’s probably a good idea to log where I’m at now.

My flagship site is The Lens Flare, an art and photography community, which has close to a thousand members and currently 30k pictures on the site.

Over the last 365 days, there have been 323,978 human visitors (I say human because there are a lot of automated programs such as Googlebot that download the site’s content so that they can add it to their search engines).  Collectively, the visitors have looked at 2,387,041 pages.  Over the last 30 days, there have been 35,644 visitors (which average out to about 427k visitors over a year’s time).

So at the current pace, I’m about half there.