In order to find a Jewish dictionary online is not as easy as you might have first thought. This is because although there are many dictionaries to look for, some are much easier to use than others.

Let me give you an example:

You find a Hebrew word which you want translated. However do not have a context and also do not know exactly what it means in the other language. First you have to go to the dictionary itself, and then you have to type it in in some way. Once you receive the results, you can never be sure if this is the meaning that you are looking for or not. And if it is not, then how do you know how to progress from there.

That is why you should really be so careful.

A guide of how to find a great Jewish Dictionary is to try and find a name which is a big name in dictionaries or more generally books. Then you can be reasonably sure that the recommendation that they are making is a lot more credible.

Another problem with Jewish dictionaries is that ideally you should know how to read Hebrew. If this is not the case then you will have a problem. This is why I would recommend you if you do not already to try and learn how to read Hebrew.

On another note, learning to read Hebrew is a great skill to have because it means that you if you are ever stuck in Israel and can’t find your way out then you will be able to. But seriously, it means that you can read the Bible and all of the scriptures in their original language.

It is very costly to recycle plastic because of the elaborate sorting process that has to take place. There are many different types of plastic out there. They can’t all be lumped together or you will have products that are new but not of good quality. One way to take care of this is to sort them out by the resin code. They have been placed on all plastic materials since 1988. You will probably have to remove the lids as the material they are made of is often not plastic or cannot be recycled.

The easiest types of plastics for recycling are plastic water bottles and soft drinks, medicine containers, and similar household items.  These plastics are assigned the number one.  It can typically be found on the bottom of the container inside the universal symbol for recycling. Once these items have been recycled in the plant, they often are used for filling in coats and sleeping bags.

Plastics marked with a two are also easy to recycle.  These plastics tend to be a little heavier than the number one plastics.  You will find these plastics in items like milk jugs, laundry detergent containers, and motor oil bottles.  Some toys, synthetic lumber and plastic rope can also be made with number two plastic.  Like the number one ranked plastics, most recycling centers are happy to accept this type of material.

One of the largest contributors of plastic waste comes from shopping. Most retail stores and grocery stores now use plastic bags instead of paper. Yet if you just through these bags away they can really add up quickly. Many people save them at home and use them for small trash cans and to carry supplies in. Some of these stores also have plastic bag recycle bins in the front. You can take what you have collected back the next time you shop.

When you know that type of plastic that can be recycled, you are on your way to making a difference in the amount of waste that unnecessarily ends up in the landfills.When in doubt as to what you can recycle, you can contact your local recycling center for more information.  They will be delighted to help you start your personal recycling program. If you don’t know where your recycling center is then contact your local health department or Chamber of Commerce. If your community doesn’t participate in such recycling efforts then make a motion to get it started.

One area where more information could be made available to more people is recycling plastic. Many people don’t recycle plastic simply because they don’t think about it. If you are already recycling glass and paper then simply add a place to store plastic for recycling as well. You can pick up our free recycling guide at http://www.RecycleKnowHow.com and find information about other types of recycling.

The process of recycling glass is quite involved. It has to be evaluated for quality before it can be used. Any traces of bacteria or remains such as debris and food contents are removed from the glass. The glass also has to be sorted based on the color so it can be very time consuming.  Glass of various colors needs to be separated by color as each color has different uses. Green glass is used to bottle wine and some beer bottles, while brown glass is used to bottle beer.

When glass goes to a glass recycling plant it is crushed into small pieces so that it can be remelted to make more bottles and jars, at this point the recycled glass is called cullet. Once that is done there are molds that the mixture is poured into to form new of glass products.

Not all glass is recyclable, because they have impurities in them. Some examples of impure glass are light bulbs, window panes and glass cookware. Window panes are manufactured by mixing the glass with ceramics to make the glass strong. Make sure you check with your local recycling plant to see what they will accept and if they do the sorting or you have to sort the glass by color yourself.

Some manufacturers work with with glass recycling companies. They buy the glass containers for their products from them after they have been molded into certain types of containers. This is less expensive for the company than buying glass to make them on their own. It also shows consumers that they are dedicated to recycling and to cutting down waste in the environment.

The process of recycling glass for construction has been effective as well. It is ground down and referred to as glassphalt. So far the reviews of this type of material have been very good. It is likely that it will start to show up in more types of construction projects in the near future.

It is becoming common now for consumers that purchase carbonated drinks to pay an extra five cents for each container. Being required to pay a little extra for soda pop encourages people to bring their bottles to the recycling company where they will get some of their deposit back as a refund. By looking on the bottom of the beverage bottle you can see if you will get a refund for your soda bottles, because the states abbreviations are printed on the bottles.

When recycling glass for a curbside or private glass recycling company you need to recycle in containers that are provided by the companies. When you recycle glass there is always a chance the glass will get broken, so the special containers are for your safety and the safety for the glass recycling handlers.

For more information about recycling visit http://www.RecycleKnowHow.com and pick up our free recycling plan.

I’ll give you a simple personal example of how my family takes energy use for granted. Our multiple digital clocks run in our houses 24 hours a day – we’ve got one on the microwave, one on the conventional oven, one on the CD player, one on the stereo and one in each of our three bedrooms, all of them drawing passive energy and we don’t even give it a thought. We don’t seem to mind wasting resources and assume it as one of the advantages of living in a modern society. It may be a little shocking for some people to learn exactly what the level of carbon emissions they produce each year is, as well as the added costs they are incurring simply by being blase about the little things.

If You Don’t Know It, You Can’t Change It

The previous heading sums up a whole range of human instincts and precisely describes one of the roadblocks in front of those trying to educate people on the importance of reducing our carbon footprint. It only takes a gentle reminder that there are consequences for the actions taken on a daily basis that people begin to realise that there is a need to change.

It’s only when you find out that the yearly average carbon dioxide production for running a car stands at two and a half tonnes that it hits home that there may be a problem. It also allows you to then set a goal to lower your number for the next year. This now gives you a goal that is possible to quantify and track, giving you a proper aim. There will be no way of definitively knowing the damage you are doing with your carbon footprint without some means of calculation. Trying to produce less in the future would be next to impossible to gauge.

The fact that there is also a corresponding cost benefit to reducing your carbon footprint size should have people flocking to the cause.You save money! The word will continue to leak out while, hopefully, carbon dioxide doesn’t.

We live in a throw-away society

We’re wasteful. Not just on an individual level, but on a global scale as well. Our lifestyle is simply unsustainable in terms of the world’s resources we consume.

The subject of unnecessary waste in our society came sharply into focus for my wife and me over the last couple of years due to numerous trips to take garbage to the county dump.

When we were renovating our cabin we regularly took construction scrap to the dump (along with our wet garbage). We began to notice a considerable number of perfectly good items that had been thrown out. After seeing this for some time (and rescuing numerous perfectly good items along the way), we started to ask, “What can we do about it?”

We started changing our lifestyle to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Although we may think we can’t make a difference individually, small steps taken on an individual level can and do make a difference. We must each do our own small part to minimize the waste and excess consumption in our society. Change is possible… indeed, it’s absolutely necessary.

One of the most challenging aspects of taking steps in this direction is the constant bombardment from the media… the non-stop stream of powerful advertising attempting to convince us that we need the latest and greatest gadgets, toys, electronics, cars, and on and on. It’s an extremely powerful and effective influence.

And it seems that, unfortunately, a lot of people are too lazy and/or simply don’t think about the fact that something that they are throwing away could be used and appreciated by someone else. Nor do they think about the landfill being taken up by perfectly good and useful items.

Our dump experience spawned the idea of a series of short video vignettes that would highlight this sad situation. Yes, it’s a serious topic, but we wanted to have a little fun with it in order to highlight the number of perfectly good items that were being thrown into the dump every week. Thus was born “Adventures with Fitzgerald the Dump Truck”. The episodes can be seen on the Rustic Lodge Lifestyle home page.

What can you do?

Are you concerned about rampant consumerism and the corresponding waste? If so consider taking some of the following steps:

Turn off

Break free of the insidious power of commercials by limiting your exposure to them… and if you have children, this is even more important. Setting a good example is paramount in teaching the next generation that it is not necessary to have the newest, most recent model of everything!

Teach them that happiness does not come from a store! We don’t expose ourselves to the constant barrage of commercial messages. We rarely watch TV, we listen to commercial-free radio, and have limited the number of subscriptions to magazines that come to the house.

Consequently we are blissfully unaware of so much of the product marketing and thus are not even tempted to rush out to buy this or that “must have” gizmo. We don’t have a TV at our country lodge, so when the grandchildren visit, they are not even tempted to watch… it just isn’t part of the “lodge experience”.

Take a long hard look

What are you throwing away? Get in the habit of looking critically at all of your household waste. Is it really garbage? Can it be put to good use by someone else? Can you compost your wet garbage? Are you recycling everything that is possible to recycle? We have two or three charities that call us regularly to ask if we have any donations they can pick up. Some of them let us know we can call them any time for an additional pickup of clothing and household items. Check for charities that offer this service in your area.

Taking this simple step would see items such as toys (we’ve seen full boxes of perfectly good stuffed toys at the dump - some brand new with the tags still on), other toys, bikes, chairs, lamps, tables and other furniture, and much more, put to good use.

Episode one of the “Fitzgerald” series highlights many of the items that we rescued from the dump. Other episodes show many perfectly good items that had been thrown away, but which we personally didn’t take.

Challenge each other

Families can get together and set up challenges to minimize waste. At the office, organize a waste awareness day. Get your boss involved… or if you are the boss, you set the tone. Even neighborhoods can activate to increase awareness.

These are just a few suggestions to start the creative juices flowing. Each one of us must start taking individual responsibility to reduce the resource footprint on our fragile planet. Reducing our personal waste by limiting unnecessary consumerism, and through reuse and recycling are important actions for all of us.

One of the reasons why solar power is so topical is because it is a renewable energy source.  This means that, unlike energy which is dug or drilled out of the ground, it is not going to run out. 

Another important solar energy fact is that it is a clean energy source.This means that it does not increase levels of unsafe greenhouse gases and it does not produce any other emissions which are currently considered to be dangerous to our ecosystem.

Solar energy facts concerning its versatility are a bit vaguer.  This is due to the current problems with efficiency and storage.  If you are considering converting to solar power completely you may want a solar powered car.  This is possible, but you will probably find that you are going to have a difference in performance levels between your traditionally fuelled car and your solar powered.  So it is true that you can have a solar powered car, but there will be sacrifices.

So if you wanted to go green and have everything solar powered, would it be possible?  Well, one important solar energy fact is that manufacturers are cashing in on the idea and they are pricing solar energy powered products much higher than traditionally powered similar products.

So is solar energy cheaper to run?  This is a maze of information and extracting the solar energy facts of this one is not easy.  Once solar energy systems are installed they are cheaper to run.The sun will shine free of charge and every time she shows her face you will be gaining power to either use, store or sell.  In some areas you can sell your excess solar power back to your local energy supplier.  This all sounds very good, but there are a lot of upfront costs which you will have to recoup before you are making a profit, so don’t get too excited too quickly.  The only way to truly establish if you could run solar powered without breaking the bank is to get one of the solar powered companies to come and do a home assessment.  During this they will advise you of the work which would be required to convert your home to solar power.  This should include the cost parts and the amount of energy you are likely to be able to produce.  Most companies will be able to review your current energy use and be able to tell you if you will be short and need to top up with traditional sources of energy or if you will be selling back to the local supplier.

One solar energy fact you can be sure of is that solar energy is here to stay.  We just don’t know what percentage of our energy usage will be solar and how quickly this change over will happen.

The sun produces large amounts of heat that are transmitted down to the earth’s surface.  When the sun’s rays reach the earth the intensity of the heat directly from the sun is not as hot because some of the heat is rerouted before it reaches the earth’s atmosphere.  When the sun is hot and it is summer time we think that it couldn’t get very much hotter as the mid day sun makes your run for shade, but it can get hotter if it wasn’t rerouted.

Solar power can be hot enough to power machinery and that is exactly what was discovered over one hundred years ago when a man working on some equipment wondered if steam from the heat of the day could be used to power machinery. He was correct and thus began a new form of production, heat and electricity.  Today solar power is being used all across the world.  The solar power is being concentrated into a solar source where the heat is used in a variety of ways.  We still rely on our way of heating and powering our homes but in the future it may all be powered by the sun.  It is cost effective to use home solar power as the only expense you have is in your solar source.

In order to use a solar power system you will need to have something that can attract the sun and allow the heat to be concentrated where it can stay warm for a long period of time.  This is fairly easy when you consider all the knowledge and resources that we already have access to.  When you use solar power for heating and power electricity you cannot go wrong.

Solar power is entrusted in space shuttles as they know that this will help produce the most efficient energy with the least amount of complications.  The solar panels are faced toward the sun at all times in order to be able to power the shuttle efficiently. There are fewer problems from solar power than with other methods.  Even though there are days that there are clouds in the sky and rain, snow or other weather, it is still possible to produce enough heat in your solar source to create enough energy to last until the sun can come back down.  Solar power is in our future we need to be ready for it.  Right now solar power is only being used by those who are more aware and worried about our earth’s atmosphere when it is a concern that we should all be worried about.

We can learn a lot from the past and the way that solar power was used.  Every minute of the sunlight was used doing everything that needed done because after the sun went down there was no more light.  I don’t think we could do that now.  Solar power panels have so many benefits for us that we don’t realize all of them and how it is more efficient to use the solar power than other ways.

First, solar panels are installed over a flat surface like the roof of your home (just be sure to consult get a home coverage quote before doing anything). Once activated, it absorbs the sun’s rays since the panels are made of semi-conducting materials such as silicone.

Electrons are then knocked off loose from their atoms so it can produce electricity. This process by which light is converted into electricity is better known as the photovoltaic effect.

From there, you now have direct current electricity and when this enters an inverter, it is converted into 120 volt AC which is the electricity needed to power the home.  Of course this is connected to the utility panel in the house so the lights and the appliances will work when these are switched on.

If you are not using that much electricity from the solar energy generated, it is stored in a battery so will be able to supply the house with power during a power outage or at night. Should the battery be full, the excess electricity is then exported to the utility grid if your system happens to be connected to it. When your solar energy runs out, utility supplied electricity kicks in.

The flow of electricity of solar energy is measured using a utility meter which spins backward and forward. It will go backward when you are producing more energy than you need and forward when you need additional power from the utility company. These two are only offset when you pay for the additional energy from the utility company. Any surplus is sod back to what is known as net metering.

A smaller version of this is used to power a water heater inside the home. Using the same principles, homeowners get to convert sunlight into heat to get warm water.

As you can see, transforming sunlight into solar energy is very easy. But why do countries like Germany and Japan use it more often than the US? The answer is because it is much cheaper for them to use this form of alternative energy compared to oil.

Also, although the US initiated this during the 1973 oil crisis, it is not as popular as it was back then because the government neither increased the budget in research for alternative forms of energy nor gave incentives so people will be encourage into doing that again.

Most state regulations also prohibit individuals from installing their own devices even if this is used to give you warm water (It can also affect your insurance rates so look at quick insurance quotes). Chances are, you won’t even find anyone to do it so you will probably have to do it yourself. Just remember that if there is a problem with the plumbing, your insurance will not cover it. Should the state allow you to install such a system, you will not be entitled to the rebate.

Using solar cells is just one way to make the most out of solar energy. Your other option is passive solar energy which helps avoid heat loss so those inside will not feel too cold or too hot throughout the day. This is used by a lot of homeowners living in the southwest since they do not need that much insulation compared to homeowners who live in other parts of the US.

Well there are plenty of senior elder black american actors.

The top two are probably Sidney Poitier and Morgan Freeman.

Sidney Poitier was born in 1927 . He was the first black actor to win an Oscar for best actor and was also eminent during the race issues of the 1960’s.Nowadays he is the Bahamian ambassador to Japan and was awarded the KBE by the English Queen.

Morgan Freeman was born in 1937 and went on to win an Oscar for best supporting actor in Million Dollar baby.He has a very distinctive voice which enables him to do voice overs, for instance in War of the Worlds and March of the Penguins.Freeman has endorsed the Obama campaign.

Younger black actors?

Well there is Cuba Gooding Jnr, who was born in 1968 which makes him 7 years younger than Obama.Like Freeman he has an Oscar for best supporting actor ( Jerry McGuire).

Denzel Washington was born in 1954 and he won an Oscar for best actor in 2001 for his role in Training Day.

So this covers possible actors for Obama, but what about McCain?

If he was still alive Charlton Heston springs to mind. Born in 1923 he would be 13 years older than McCain but brings impeccable credentials and a history of playing heroic roles. Originally a democrat he lost faith in that party and became a republican in th 1980’s.

From the top actors around now who do we have?

Kevin Costner, born 1955, might be a little young to play McCain and he is an Obama supporter. However he has a history of supporting worthy causes and could probably carry the role well.

Tom Cruise, was born in 1962. He has had huge success in the movie world but his allegiances to Scientology would probably rule him out.

Sean Penn, born 1960, also has a history of supporting radical issues and has been an opponent critic of George W Bush.

Kevin Spacey, born 1959, might be able to pull of the role. He has acted in a variety of roles and to la large extent has not be stereotyped by any one role. Unfortunately he is a dedicated democrat so this might well be a challenge for him.

So where does that leave Oliver Stone and his plans? Perhaps we can say that it is too early and maybe if and when Obama finishes his second term he will have aged and weathered enough to allow some of our older actors to take on his role?

And when the captains and the kings have departed what will endure from the presidential race? Hope and faith in the future and maybe, just maybe , this president will not get embroiled in a Hollywoodesque term of office.

Written: November 5th on the 1st day of the future for Obama.

Northumberland, United Kingdom

Like the armor of their peers in Western Europe, Samurai Armor evolved from the materials readily available at the time of development and was augmented over the centuries. As a matter of fact, the first suits of Samurai armor were made from turtle shells, fashioned into wearable clothes. Samurai armor was made from a mixture of materials that included leather and ornate bronze pieces. This was in contrast to steel armor, the type that was popular in both ancient and western societies.

Samurai armor was reserved for soldiers who were in higher ranks and/or more important, and they also rode into battles on chariots, unlike other soldiers who would have to literally run into battle. This was actually a good thing, as suits of Samurai Armor were extremely heavy and prolonged marching or battle would have greatly fatigued even the most conditioned soldier in battle.

In a similar manner to Roman and Spartan armor of the time, Samurai armor was ornately decorated as a representation of the wearer’s importance. Included in the actual pieces of Samurai armor were protective gear, facemasks, and helmets that were worn by the Samurai.

Considered to be collector pieces in todays market, Ancient Samurai suits of armor can be quite expensive. These kinds of suits are displayed at many museums in the world. This includes the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the National Museum in Liverpool, Great Britain. However, reproductions of Samurai Armor can be purchased online for less than $5000 for those who are interested in collecting such pieces, but lack the deep pockets of many serious collectors.