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The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Saturday, December 20, 2008

A piece of Mars


Atoms are just atoms, but the story about a particular conglomeration of atoms makes it desirable to people who enjoy the story. Case in point: this not-particularly pretty hunk of rock, which most people would walk by without a second glance if they happened to see it on the ground. It just so happens that this rock is a piece of the planet Mars.

There are only a handful of Mars meteorites in the world and based on the total weight, Mars rocks are thousand times rarer than the rarest of gemstones. The only possible explanation for their existence here on earth is a huge meteorite impact on the surface of Mars, so big that chunks of the Martian surface rock blasted out of the impact area, reached escape velocity and left the Martian orbit. After millions of years drifting in space, just a few of these space travelers were captured by the earth's gravitational field and plummeted to our planets surface as meteorites. A Shergottite is cooled volcanic magma called basalt, proving the existence of vulcanism on Mars in the planets past geological history. This great specimen measures 54 x 23 mm and weights 3.3 grams.

Early Recording Predates Edison by Two Decades


Two decades before Edison, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded sound waves on soot blackened paper with no facility to listen to the recording. It seems Scott considered the technology as a sort of new written language that had more in common with stenography than listening to music. 148 years later, Lawrence Berkeley researchers have played back the track by scanning the original recording and interpreting the sound waves with an "optical stylus."

NYTimes article with a MP3 of the oldest known recording

News Bulletin ...

Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation

Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution ("VR"), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell's activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how he can tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus."

Read the rest here.

Monumental Tree Root

And remember folks this is just a tree root not the tree!

From Barbara Israel Garden Antiques:

A Spanish Sweet Chestnut tree root from the reign of William and Mary, ca. 1700, from the southeast of England, near Wells. Diameter of root base 11 ft., estimated weight, 5 tons.

Rare 'Unicorn' Dinosaur Skull


When most people think of a horned ceratopsian dinosaur, only the common three-horned Triceratops comes to mind. This could be because triceratops is such a frequently-encountered and wide-ranging dinosaur, or because its long history of discovery gives it better press in children's dinosaur books.

But this would be a real disservice to the exciting, but less common, cousins in the centrosaurinae (short frilled) branch of the ceratopsian family.
One rare member of that subfamily is the Sioux 'buffalo lizard' or Einiosaurus, intriguing enough to merit inclusion in the 1997 USA 'World of Dinosaurs' postage stamp issue.

Einiosaurus has a very unusual morphology, with a tall and laterally-compressed skull and a frill with a somewhat inward curve that gives it a distinctly vertical appearance.

Exploring Niger


This 8,000 year-old giraffe rock carving in DaBous, Niger is considered one of the finest petroglyphs in the world. The giraffe has a leash on its nose implying some level of taming the animals. It was found relatively recently on the top of a granite hill by local Touaregs and dates to the Kiffian era of 7,000 - 9,000 years ago.

See the rest of the photos in the Green Sahara series at The Big Picture.

Our readers

Some of our readers today hail from:

Herford, Germany; Abbottabad, Pakistan; Lima, Peru

Blair, Nebraska; Kent, Washington; Metairie, Louisiana

Wait a minute.
Abbottabad, Pakistan - that's in the Northwest Frontier region where one by the name of bin Laden is supposedly hiding ... do you think, nah ... then again?!

'Drill, baby, drill' - the process has begun

Remember "drill, baby drill"?

In its last weeks in office, the shrub's administration is starting to make it happen by quietly starting the process of exploration and drilling off the coast of Virginia.

The move means that President Barack Obama and brand new interior secretary nominee Ken Salazar -- a Democratic senator from Colorado -- will have to jump feet-first into the decades-old debate over offshore oil drilling. It's an issue where the two disagreed at one point.

Wait. Virginia?

The state is ground zero for the drilling debate because of possible reserves off the coast and what energy experts see as a friendlier government than elsewhere.

The U.S. Interior Department has completed the first step, closing a public comment period on the proposal to lease 2.9 million acres of ocean to natural gas and oil companies. The pie-shaped area begins 50 miles off Virginia's coast, straight out from Virginia Beach on the south and across from Virginia's boundary on the Delmarva peninsula to the north.

"The East Coast really has not been looked at for 30 years," said Randall Luthi, who heads up the drilling plan as director of Interior's Minerals Management Service.

"Our best guess is that area could contain about 130 million barrels of oil and 1.14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas," he said.

Such an oil find would be small compared with the estimated 40 billion barrels in the Gulf Coast. The natural gas is more substantial. But both are symbolic of a rare window of opportunity for the energy industry.

A two-fold ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling ended in just the past two months.

*****

They are still trying to keep on fucking us, folks!

This has got to stop - and with enough force and suddenness to give them all the most severe case of whip-lash that it is possible to get!

Meet the man eager to get to the bottom of the ghost mysteries

While visiting a friend in hospital, a woman suddenly finds herself transported to a beautiful garden where she is surrounded by friendly people and the sound of happy laughter, in an apparent near-death experience.

A poltergeist takes up residence in a suburban home terrifying the family who move in there, while a man foresees the mortal danger facing his young son just in time to avert a terrible accident.

It all sounds like the stuff of Hollywood psychological horror films – the kind of thing most of us would probably scoff at if we were told it was happening next door.

But these stories do not come from the imagination of a fiction writer, they are real cases which are being investigated at Edinburgh University.
Where French clinical psychologist Thomas Rabeyron, 27, is undertaking a year's research attempting to trace the roots of paranormal experiences.

Read the rest in the Evening News from Edinburgh.

Indigenous groups keep ancient sports alive in Mexico

Athletes filed onto the field carrying a mystifying array of sporting tools: tree trunks, gourds, dried palm fronds and balls made of woven cornstalk.

These weren't your typical ballplayers.

Once a year, supporters of the ancient sports of Mexico stage an exhibition of games like pash pash, corozo, garabato and kuachancaca.

This past November they gathered in Villahermosa, the hot, humid lowland capital of the Mexican state of Tabasco.

Which was the homeland of the Olmec civilization that predated the Maya civilization to show off their sports.

Read the rest here.


Did Zodiac killer spend final days in South Sound?

A California man is trying to convince the FBI that his stepfather, who died in the Olympia area about two-and-a-half years ago, was the San Francisco Bay Area's notorious Zodiac killer.

Dennis Kaufman, 41, of Pollock Pines, Calif., said his stepfather, Jack Tarrance, died in Thurston County in August 2006 at the age of 78.

Read the rest here.

Zodiac killer's crimes

The following are among the slayings that the Zodiac killer is suspected of ...

On Dec. 20, 1968, Betty Lou Jensen, 16, and David Faraday, 17, were found shot to death on Lake Herman Road, near Vallejo, Calif., outside Faraday's mother's station wagon.

On July 5, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot repeatedly while in Ferrin's vehicle parked at the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course in Vallejo by a man who shone a light on the car before opening fire on the occupants. Ferrin was killed. Mageau survived, despite being shot three times. Minutes after the shooting, an anonymous man placed a call from a pay phone to the Vallejo Police Department "to report a double murder." The man also claimed credit for the Jensen and Faraday homicides.

In letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other Bay Area newspapers in late July 1969, the Zodiac killer claimed responsibility for the Jensen and Faraday murders, as well at the shooting that killed Ferrin and wounded Mageau, giving details known only to police. Ciphers sent to the newspapers were decoded and read in part: "I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal of all to kill."

On Sept. 27, 1969, Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Shepherd were stabbed repeatedly by a man dressed in black and wearing a black hood while picnicking at California's Lake Berryessa. Shepherd died, and Hartnell survived. He reportedly is a lawyer now in Southern California.

On Oct. 11, 1969, San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine was shot and killed in his car by a passenger in the back seat on Washington Street in San Francisco. On Oct. 14, Zodiac sent the San Francisco Chronicle a letter claiming responsibility for the murder. The letter contained a bloody piece of Stine's shirt.

In one of his last letters to the San Francisco Chronicle, Zodiac claimed responsibility for 37 murders.

Science News

A Single Boulder May Prove that Antarctica and North America Were Once Connected

Photo of John Goodge and a colleague collecting specimens in the Transantarctic Mountains.
John Goodge and a colleague collecting specimens in the Transantarctic Mountains.

A lone granite boulder found against all odds high atop a glacier in Antarctica may provide additional key evidence to support a theory that parts of the southernmost continent once were connected to North America hundreds of millions of years ago.

Writing in the July 11 edition of the journal Science, an international team of U.S. and Australian investigators describe their findings, which were made in the Transantarctic Mountains, and their significance to the problem of piecing together what an ancient supercontinent, called Rodinia, looked like. The U.S. investigators were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Previous lines of scientific evidence led researchers to theorise that about 600-800 million years ago a portion of Rodinia broke away from what is now the southwestern United States and eventually drifted southward to become eastern Antarctica and Australia.

The team’s find, they argue, provides physical evidence that confirms the so-called southwestern United States and East Antarctica (SWEAT) hypothesis.

Find out more at the National Science Federation

Did you know ...


Freshwater accounts for only 2.5% of the Earth’s water, and most of it is frozen in glaciers and ice caps

Psychology News


"People learning about Milgram's work often wonder whether results would be any different today," said Burger, a professor at Santa Clara University. "Many point to the lessons of the Holocaust and argue that there is greater societal awareness of the dangers of blind obedience. But what I found is the same situational factors that affected obedience in Milgram's experiments still operate today."

Out of Control


Terence McKenna: "I think if it's out of control then our side is winning."

Science News


Two thousand year old Greek computer

Stop Senator No!

By William Greider

If the Democratic Party intends to get serious about governing, it can start by disabling the Republican filibuster that gives the minority party in the Senate a virtual veto over anything it wants to kill. The chatter in Washington assumes that since Democrats failed to gain a sixty-seat majority, there's nothing they can do. But that's not true. Democrats can change the rules and remove a malignant obstacle from the path of our new president. Given the emergency conditions facing the nation, why should Mitch McConnell and his right-wing colleagues get to decide what the Senate may vote on?

This proposition disturbs the happy talk about the "postpartisan" politics Barack Obama has inspired. But let's get real. McConnell is making nice for the moment, having survived his re-election scare in Kentucky. But he will use the filibuster to stymie the new Democratic administration whenever it looks to him like a political opportunity for Republicans. Thanks mainly to McConnell, the 110th Congress of 2007-08 set a new record--138 cloture motions to limit debate and head off filibusters. That is double the level of ten years ago. Who really believes McConnell will voluntarily give up his starring role as Senator No?

Read the rest here.

US Troops Open Fire On Students at Shoe Rally

Speaking of shoes ...

Besides making an international celebrity out of Iraqi reporter Muntadar al-Zeidi, the now infamous shoe-throwing incident is cropping up in surprising ways across Iraq, where a population beaten and exhausted from years of war is once again finding its voice against the US military presence and the Iraqi government seen as its enablers.

The city of Fallujah was one of the hardest hit in all of Iraq, nearly destroyed earlier in the war. When students at the city’s university held an impromptu rally in support of the jailed Zeidi, US soldiers were quick on the scene. The students raised shoes and some of them threw rocks, prompting the troops to open fire in an attempt to disperse the crowd. One student was wounded, shot in the foot according to his doctor

Read the rest here.

Thank you for throwing your shoe

Check out this site thanking people for 'throwing' their shoe(s) at the shrub as a sign of their 'respect and admiration' and support for the Iraqi journalist who actually did what the rest of the world wishes they had done - and done a long time ago ...

• • • • •


thank you for throwing your shoe

President Obama's weekly address


The text of his address is below:

Remarks of the President-Elect Barack Obama
Science Team Rollout Radio Address
Friday, December 17, 2008
Chicago, Illinois

Over the past few weeks, Vice President-Elect Biden and I have announced some of the leaders who will advise us as we seek to meet America’s twenty-first century challenges, from strengthening our security, to rebuilding our economy, to preserving our planet for our children and grandchildren. Today, I am pleased to announce members of my science and technology team whose work will be critical to these efforts.

Whether it’s the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create twenty-first century jobs—today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It is time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.

Right now, in labs, classrooms and companies across America, our leading minds are hard at work chasing the next big idea, on the cusp of breakthroughs that could revolutionize our lives. But history tells us that they cannot do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.

Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.

Dr. John Holdren has agreed to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. John is a professor and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as President and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center. A physicist renowned for his work on climate and energy, he’s received numerous honors and awards for his contributions and has been one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change. I look forward to his wise counsel in the years ahead.

John will also serve as a Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology—or PCAST—as will Dr. Harold Varmus and Dr. Eric Lander. Together, they will work to remake PCAST into a vigorous external advisory council that will shape my thinking on the scientific aspects of my policy priorities.

Dr. Varmus is no stranger to this work. He is not just a path-breaking scientist, having won a Nobel Prize for his research on the causes of cancer—he also served as Director of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton Administration. I am grateful he has answered the call to serve once again.

Dr. Eric Lander is the Founding Director of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard and was one of the driving forces behind mapping the human genome—one of the greatest scientific achievements in history. I know he will be a powerful voice in my Administration as we seek to find the causes and cures of our most devastating diseases.

Finally, Dr. Jane Lubchenco has accepted my nomination as the Administrator of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is devoted to conserving our marine and coastal resources and monitoring our weather. An internationally known environmental scientist and ecologist and former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Jane has advised the President and Congress on scientific matters, and I am confident she will provide passionate and dedicated leadership at NOAA.

Working with these leaders, we will seek to draw on the power of science to both meet our challenges across the globe and revitalize our economy here at home. And I’ll be speaking more after the New Year about how my Administration will engage leaders in the technology community and harness technology and innovation to create jobs, enhance America’s competitiveness and advance our national priorities.

I am confident that if we recommit ourselves to discovery; if we support science education to create the next generation of scientists and engineers right here in America; if we have the vision to believe and invest in things unseen, then we can lead the world into a new future of peace and prosperity.

Thank you.

*****

Just a note here -I think that it was Friday the 19th not the 17th as the text shows (everyone has typos you know).

Innvocation by Warren?

This is a odd choice.
Inclusion is one thing but it does not mean including the most vile and base of the human race.
We shall see how this plays out ...

We will hope that Warren has an epiphany and actually speaks coherently and with inclusiveness - something he has never before been capable of.

Just a thought ...

Just a thought for all the got to be there every time the church doors open 'christians' out there ...

“Going to church doesn’t make you a christian anymore than going to the garage makes you a car.”

~ Dr. Laurence J. Peter

Got it.

Another timely seasonal announcement from your friends over at Reality!

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

There are so many fun things to do with your friends, this time of year.

Again, they are masters of the obvious!