(Editor’s Note: This REPRINT from HuffPost represents a deviation from the normal weird; this certainly does not qualify as weird in my book. It is simply one of the most brilliant ideas I’ve heard in quite some time and want to do my part in moving it along. Happy 2010! — Lin)

Move Your Money: A New Year’s Resolution

by Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson

Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger.

Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.

The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks — JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo — all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.

Meanwhile, America’s Main Street community banks — the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of — are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.

We talked about the outrage of big, bailed-out banks turning around and spending millions of dollars on lobbying to gut or kill financial reform — including “too big to fail” legislation and regulation of the derivatives that played such a huge part in the meltdown. And as we contrasted that with the efforts of local banks to show that you can both be profitable and have a positive impact on the community, an idea took hold: why don’t we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? And what, we asked ourselves, would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing? Our money has been used to make the system worse — what if we used it to make the system better?

Everyone around the table quickly got excited (granted we are an excitable group), and began tossing out suggestions for how to get this idea circulating.

Eugene, the filmmaker among us, remarked that the contrast between the big banks and the community banks we were talking about was very much like the story in the classic Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life, where community banker George Bailey helps the people of Bedford Falls escape the grip of the rapacious and predatory banker Mr. Potter.

It was a lightbulb moment. And, unlike the vast majority of dinner conversations, the excitement over this idea didn’t end with dessert. It actually led to something — thanks in great part to Eugene and his remarkable team, who got to work and, in record time, created a brilliant, powerful, and inspiring video playing off the It’s a Wonderful Life concept. Watch it below:

Within a few days, the rest of the pieces fell into place, including an agreement with top financial analysts Chris Whalen and Dennis Santiago, who gave us access to their IRA (Institutional Risk Analytics) database. Using this tool, everyone will be able to plug in their zip code and quickly get a list of the small, solvent Main Street banks operating in their community.

The idea is simple: If enough people who have money in one of the big four banks move it into smaller, more local, more traditional community banks, then collectively we, the people, will have taken a big step toward re-rigging the financial system so it becomes again the productive, stable engine for growth it’s meant to be. It’s neither Left nor Right — it’s populism at its best. Consider it a withdrawal tax on the big banks for the negative service they provide by consistently ignoring the public interest. It’s time for Americans to move their money out of these reckless behemoths. And you don’t have to worry, there is zero risk: deposit insurance is just as good at small banks — and unlike the big banks they don’t provide the toxic dividend of derivatives trading in a heads-they-win, tails-we-lose fashion.

Think of the message it will send to Wall Street — and to the White House. That we have had enough of the high-flying, no-limits-casino banking culture that continues to dominate Wall Street and Capitol Hill. That we won’t wait on Washington to act, because we know that Washington has, in fact, been a part of the problem from the start. We simply can’t count on Congress to fix things. We have to do it ourselves — and the big banks are the core of the problem. We need to return to the stable, reliable, people-oriented approach of America’s community banks.

So watch Eugene’s amazing video, then go to www.moveyourmoney.info to learn more about how easy it is to move your money. And pass the idea on to your friends (help make this video — and this idea — go viral!).

JP Morgan/Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America may be “too big to fail” — but they are not too big to feel the impact of hundreds of thousands of people taking action to change a broken financial and political system. Let them gamble with their own money, not yours. Let’s turn big banks into smaller banks. We’ll all be better off — and safer — as a result.

Make it your New Year’s resolution to move your money. We can’t think of a better way to start 2010.

SOURCE: Huffington Post

Party planners take note. For the first time in almost twenty years, there’s going to be a Blue Moon on New Year’s Eve.

“I remember the last time this happened,” says professor Philip Hiscock of the Dept. of Folklore at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. “December 1990 ended with a Blue Moon, and many New Year’s Eve parties were themed by the event. It was a lot of fun.”

Don’t expect the Moon to actually turn blue, though. “The ‘Blue Moon’ is a creature of folklore,” he explains. “It’s the second full Moon in a calendar month.”

Right: The full moon of Dec. 2, 2009, over Turan, Italy. Photographer Stefano De Rosa notes that the blue colors are cast by Christmas lights surrounding the pictured church.

Most months have only one full Moon. The 29.5-day cadence of the lunar cycle matches up almost perfectly with the 28- to 31-day length of calendar months. Indeed, the word “month” comes from “Moon.” Occasionally, however, the one-to-one correspondence breaks down when two full Moons squeeze into a single month. Dec. 2009 is such a month. The first full Moon appeared on Dec. 2nd; the second, a “Blue Moon,” will come on Dec. 31st.

This definition of Blue Moon is relatively new.

If you told a person in Shakespeare’s day that something happens “once in a Blue Moon” they would attach no astronomical meaning to the statement. Blue Moon simply meant rare or absurd, like making a date for the Twelfth of Never. “But meaning is a slippery substance,” says Hiscock. “The phrase ‘Blue Moon’ has been around for more than 400 years, and during that time its meaning has shifted.”

The modern definition sprang up in the 1940s. In those days, the Farmer’s Almanac of Maine offered a definition of Blue Moon so convoluted that even professional astronomers struggled to understand it. It involved factors such as the ecclesiastical dates of Easter and Lent, and the timing of seasons according to the dynamical mean sun. Aiming to explain blue moons to the layman, Sky & Telescope published an article in 1946 entitled “Once in a Blue Moon.” The author James Hugh Pruett cited the 1937 Maine almanac and opined that the “second [full moon] in a month, so I interpret it, is called Blue Moon.

That was not correct, but at least it could be understood. And thus the modern Blue Moon was born.

Blue Moon has other connotations, too. In music, it’s often a symbol of melancholy. According to one Elvis tune, it means “without a love of my own.” On the bright side, he croons in another song, a simple kiss can turn a Blue Moon pure gold.

The modern astronomical Blue Moon occurs in some month every 2.5 years, on average. A Blue Moon falling precisely on Dec. 31st, however, is much more unusual. The last time it happened was in 1990, and the next time won’t be until 2028.

So cue up that old Elvis record and “enjoy the extra moonlight on New Year’s Eve,” says Hiscock. “It only happens once in a Blue Moon.”

SOURCE: NASA

Wake Forest University’s Institute of Regenerative Medicine, which has successfully grown human bladders in the lab using only a few extracted cells sprayed onto a chemical frame that mimics the body’s tissues, has so far been unsuccessful at regenerating penises because of the organ’s complexity.

However, it announced in a November journal article a success with rabbit penises. Four of the 12 rabbits with lab-grown phalluses successfully impregnated females, and in an unexpected finding, the new penises appear not to lessen sexual desire, in that all 12 of the rabbits began mating within one minute of meeting females.

SOURCE: Yahoo! News

A 55-year-old British man whose bowel was ruptured in a nearly catastrophic traffic accident has been fitted with a bionic sphincter that opens and closes with a remote controller.

Ged Galvin had originally endured 13 surgeries in a 13-week hospital stay and had grown frustrated with using a colostomy bag until surgeon Norman Williams of the Royal London Hospital proposed the imaginative operation.

Dr. Williams, who was interviewed along with Galvin for a November feature in London’s Daily Mail, wrapped a muscle transplanted from Galvin’s leg around the sphincter and attached electrodes to tighten or loosen the muscle’s grip.

SOURCE: Yahoo! News

SELMA, Ind. – Police say a fifth-grader handed out about $300 to others on the bus ride to his eastern Indiana school. Problem is, they say, the cash was among some $10,000 he took from his grandparents’ safe.

Delaware County Sheriff George Sheridan says the boy was riding the bus to Selma Elementary School when he handed out the money on the last school day before Christmas vacation began.

Children who received the ones, fives and twenties told teachers and the principal, and the sheriff’s department was called.

Officers found the boy carrying the rest of the cash, which was returned to his grandparents. Police weren’t certain what he intended to do with the money or how he got it from the safe.

SOURCE: Yahoo! News

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — A Nevada couple letting their SUV’s navigation system guide them through the high desert of Eastern Oregon got stuck in snow for three days when the GPS unit sent them down a remote forest road.

On Sunday, atmospheric conditions apparently changed enough for their GPS-enabled cell phone to get a weak signal and relay coordinates to a dispatcher, Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger said.

“GPS almost did ‘em in and GPS saved ‘em,” Evinger said. “It will give you options to pick the shortest route. You certainly get the shortest route. But it may not be a safe route.”

Evinger said a Lake County deputy found the couple in the Winema-Fremont National Forest outside the small town of Silver Lake on Sunday afternoon and pulled their four-wheel-drive Toyota Sequoia out of the snow with a winch.

John Rhoads, 65, and his wife, Starry Bush-Rhoads, 67, made it home safely to Reno, Nev., Evinger said.

The couple was well-equipped for winter travel, carrying food, water and warm clothes, the sheriff said.

“Their statement was, being prepared saved their life,” he said.

The couple had been in Portland and followed their GPS as it directed them south on U.S. Highway 97 to Oregon Highway 31, which goes through Silver Lake and Lakeview before connecting with U.S. Highway 395 to Reno, Evinger said.

In the town of Silver Lake, the unit told them to turn right on Forest Service Road 28, and they followed that and some spur roads nearly 35 miles before getting stuck in about 1½ feet of snow near Thompson Reservoir, the sheriff said.

“For some reason they finally got a weak signal after 2½ days,” Evinger said. “They called in. They alternated between two different cell phone numbers.”

A GPS-enabled phone is able to send its coordinates to 911, and eventually one of the couple’s phones sent its location to the dispatcher’s console, the sheriff said.

SOURCE: KOMO News

Pet ownership is booming in a nation where dogs and cats are featured as part of meals and animal abuse remains widespread. But none carries the cachet of the Tibetan Mastiff, one of the largest dog breeds, which can weigh 180 pounds.

Last month, a Nanjing breeder paid $234,000 for his purebred pooch, reported the Yangtze Evening Times. In September, a young woman in Xian paid $600,000 for her pet, according to the Xian Evening News. Both led airport welcomes with long convoys of pricey automobiles.

“It’s like gambling, as people think they can earn large sums from expensive dogs, but the reality is that it’s very hard to breed a top quality purebred Tibetan Mastiff,” Beijing breeder Zhao Yanjun says.

Others buy to show off their status. “Like men around the world, Chinese like to own big dogs as it shows ‘I am successful, I want to dominate more women and big dogs,’ ” Zhao says.

In the USA, $5,000 is the upper limit for a show quality puppy, says Martha Feltenstein, president of the American Tibetan Mastiff Association. In China, prices have leapt this year amid a nationwide “Tibetan Mastiff fever” that shows little sign of cooling.

The dog has changed breeder Zhao’s fortunes.

The former chicken farmer, 48, bought his first Tibetan Mastiff in 1990 and earns up to $440,000 a year at his Oriental Treasure breeding center near Beijing.

“They are beautiful, loyal, fierce and run like a lion,” he says of the breed, which has a bear-like head and shaggy mane.

Despite enticing offers, Zhao promises never to sell Son of Bush, out of loyalty to his favorite, Bush, who died last year at 11.

“I will never be a high official, but I had fun shouting ‘Bush, over here!’ ” jokes Zhao, who also named and raised Putin, Sharon and several others named for world leaders.

Obama, worth almost $300,000, was born to a dog Zhao sold to Chinese actor Wang Fei. Zhao says Wang charges up to $30,000 per breeding session with Obama.

SOURCE: USA Today

VAIL, Colo. – A living nativity scene in near the Colorado ski resort of Vail almost had to go without two crucial actors when two donkeys escaped.

The nativity scene is an annual tradition for Eagle River Presbyterian Church in the Vail Valley. Pastor Rob Wilson says two borrowed donkeys were being held in a fenced-in pen for the event Wednesday night, but the animals pushed their way through it.

A church member who stopped by the church Wednesday morning noticed the donkeys were gone. He and a sheriff’s deputy followed footprints in the snow and eventually caught up with them.

The donkeys had wandered near some railroad tracks but were OK.

SOURCE: Philly.com

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Forget the plastic icicles, brightly colored balls and tinsel.

Some Christmas trees for sale in the Anchorage area are adorned with something truly different this holiday season – live Pacific Chorus frogs.

While the small frogs are very cute, measuring an inch or two with lovely moss-colored green sides and black spots, state officials are asking residents to practice some tough love. If you find a Christmas tree frog, kill it.

So far, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, has received reports of two amphibious hitchhikers. One of them was hiding out on a holiday tree from Washington state that was sold this week at an Anchorage nursery. The frog ended up in the biology department at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

“They identified it as a Pacific Chorus frog,” said Tracey Gotthardt, a zoologist with the university’s Alaska Natural Heritage Program. The frogs are found from British Columbia to southern Baja California, but are not native to Alaska.

“No one is in panic mode over this but we are taking it seriously,” said Jennifer Yuhas, spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

That’s because the cute frogs – whose joyful chorus is often used for movie soundtracks – could be carrying some ugly viruses and funguses, including chytrid fungus that is devastating amphibians around the world.

“Our immediate concern is that if a frog does hop out of a tree and they decide to keep it as a pet over the winter, they must keep it forever. We don’t want them being released into the wild,” Gotthardt said.

Yuhas said it’s not that Alaskans are heartless, but it’s a matter of protecting our own.

“I know they are awful cute but pets or small children are known to put things in their mouths,” she said.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is suggesting two methods of dispatch: death by a dab of Orajel applied to the head (the tooth desensitizer apparently knocks them out for good), or, putting the little critter in a plastic bag and placing it in the freezer.

With temperatures hovering around zero Friday morning, Doug Warner, a spokesman for the state Division of Agriculture, had another suggestion for disposing of the frogs.

“Put it in a jar and put it out on the front porch and that way you won’t have to put it in with your Christmas cookies,” he said.

Tammy Davis, leader of Fish and Game’s Invasive Species Program, said the Alaska Natural Heritage Program will accept live frogs as well. People finding frogs should call 877-INVASIVE.

The important thing is that people don’t keep the Christmas frogs, she said.

“That is the whole thing about invasive species,” Davis said. “We didn’t think zebra mussels would live in the Great Lakes.”

Warner said the frog invasion highlights a potentially serious problem in Alaska. While the state requires that trees be inspected for any pests prior to shipment, it is Scrooge-like when dedicating resources to make sure the trees arrive pest-free.

Unlike some states, Alaska also doesn’t require that imported trees be mechanically shaken and it doesn’t have a shaker of its own.

Davis said she’s got doubts about tree-shaking, anyway.

“To my knowledge these trees are bound. Even shaking it, if there is some little critter out there in the branches it is not going to be shaken out,” she said. “I have a hard time believing someone is shaking every Christmas tree.”

Yuhas also questioned the tree-shaking method for preventing invasive species from finding a new home in Alaska.

“I don’t know much about the standards of tree shaking,” Yuhas said. “How hard do they shake a tree. Can a frog hang on to a branch?”

SOURCE: SPHERE.com

GREELEY, Colo. – Court records said a woman suspected of using a prepaid mobile phone to make up to 48 false calls for help to 911 was a volunteer firefighter. The woman, 44, was a volunteer firefighter in Hudson, according to court records released Monday.

An affidavit said the woman allegedly told investigators that after she made phony suicide and ambulance calls to 911, she listened to authorities’ reactions on her department-issued police radio.

She also told investigators that she is depressed and thinks of suicide, according to the affidavits.

She was arrested Friday on suspicion of attempting to influence a public servant, false reporting and resisting arrest.

SOURCE: Yahoo! News