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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.


Thursday, February 26, 2009

Drunken Sailor

One of the staples of every Renaissance performer's repertoire.

Irish Rovers

Saving Lascaux from fungus


This photo shows part of Lascaux famed cave drawings in southwest France.

Geologists, biologists and other scientists convened Thursday in Paris to discuss how to stop the spread of fungus stains — aggravated by global warming — that threaten France's prehistoric Lascaux cave drawings.

Black stains have spread across the cave's prehistoric murals of bulls, felines and other images, and scientists have been hard-pressed to halt the fungal creep.

Marc Gaulthier, who heads the Lascaux Caves International Scientific Committee, said the challenges facing the group are vast and global warming now poses an added problem.

"All of Lascaux's problems have always been linked to the cave's climatization, meaning the equilibrium of air inside the cave," Gaulthier told reporters at a news conference before the symposium. Now, rising temperatures have complicated matters by stopping air from circulating inside the caverns, he said.

"It's stagnating, immobile, frozen" inside the cave, he said.

This makes sending teams of scientists into the affected caverns risky, as their mere presence raises humidity levels and temperatures that could contribute to the growth of the different fungi, algae and bacteria that have attacked the cave over the years, he said.

Other factors behind the stains include the presence of naturally occurring microorganisms and the chemical makeup of the rock that forms the cavern walls, Gaulthier and other scientists at the news conference said.

For the moment, the cave is completely sealed in hopes that "it will heal itself," Gaulthier said.

Two possible solutions to be examined at the conference include the installation of a system to regulate the cave's temperature and the use of biocides, which kill the bacteria and have been used in the cave before, with mixed results.

Scientists from as far away as the United States, New Zealand and Japan were scheduled to attend the two-day symposium. The conclusions could also help preserve caves in Japan and Spain.

In 1963, Lascaux, a top tourist destination, was closed to the public after the appearance of green algae and other damage scientists linked to the visitors. A replica of the main Lascaux cavern was built nearby and has become a big tourist draw.

Carbon-dating suggests the murals were created between 15,000 and 17,500 years ago. Discovered in 1940, the cavern is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

As of this moment ...

4251 Brave men and women will not be returning from Iraq
ALIVE!

Rocky Top


Osborne Brothers

This song was written on a bet by a rock and roll songwriting duo who were bet they could not write a 'country' song ... Well ...

Stanford Financial Group's chief investment officer arrested by FBI

FBI agents have arrested the chief investment officer of troubled Stanford Financial Group, accusing Laura Pendergest-Holt of obstructing a Securities and Exchange Commission fraud investigation.

The SEC has been investigating allegations of an $8 billion investment fraud involving Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford's financial group.

Pendergest-Holt was arrested Thursday in Houston. The FBI said she was taken to the federal detention center and will appear in court Friday morning.

The government alleges in a federal complaint that Pendergest-Holt obstructed the investigation with some of her answers to SEC investigators' questions.

*****

About, Bloody time, too!


Family faces foreclosure while caring for sick child

Remember the repugicans who put us here while reading this!

*****

Pay for health insurance or pay the mortgage. That's what it's come down to for one Charlotte family with a sick daughter.

Kayleigh Anne Freeman was born 12 weeks early.

"She's been through the ringer, I'll tell you that," said her father, Adam.

Doctors said Kayleigh, who weighed just 1 pound at birth, wouldn't survive.

"She was one of the smallest babies to ever undergo heart surgery, open heart surgery," Adam said.

But Kayleigh is still fighting for her place in this world. At 8 months old, she weighs a mere 7 pounds.

"In the last week she's grown 200 grams," Adam said.

Kayleigh has never seen beyond the walls of the pediatric intensive care unit at Levine Children's Hospital.

"We just started holding her again. It had been two months since we held her," said Aimee, Kayleigh's mother.

Now, Kayleigh may never see the room her parents prepared for her.

"Our foreclosure date is set for March 30. We don't see how we're going to get around it," Aimee said.

By the time Kayleigh goes home, the Freemans will have been forced to move. Both were successful real estate agents before home sales began to dry up.

They have to pay their own health insurance, which costs $1,000 a month. And it's either pay the insurance or pay the mortgage.

"We don't want to have to worry about if a doctor will see or do a surgery, or every time they come in to do an X-ray or change a diaper, how much is that going to cost us?" Aimee said.

With the medical bills, the stress at the hospital and foreclosure coming, the Freemans are overwhelmed.

"We don't really know in 30 days where we are going to go or how we're going to pay for it," Aimee said.

But they're trying to stay grounded, remembering what's truly important.

"Even though we are going through such a tough financial situation -- we're losing the house, we barely can pay the insurance, we lost one car already -- that's not the point," Adam said. "The point is we were given something that we can handle. God doesn't give you anything you can't handle."

The Freemans say Kayleigh could go home in a month if she continues to improve. Then, she will need a nurse at home to monitor her for at least one year.

To learn more about the Freemans and how you can help, visit www.kayleighannefreeman.blogspot.com.

Robert the Bruce's home found?

From LiveScience:

The remains of the palace of King Robert the Bruce (actually it is spelled Brus to we Scots - especially we Stuarts), widely considered one of Scotland’s greatest kings and warriors, could be among the artifacts and material dug up recently at a building site in Scotland, according to a British newspaper report.

Born to Scottish nobles in 1274, Robert the Bruce reigned as King of the Scots from 1306 until his death in 1329. He led Scotland in the Wars of Scottish Independence against England, which resulted in Scotland retaining its sovereignty and in which the Scottish hero William Wallace (subject of the 1995 film "Braveheart") also fought.

Bruce's descendants founded the Stewart dynasty and include all later Scottish monarchs.

The stone foundations to a building believed to be Bruce's palace were uncovered when a building company began digging in a field for a housing project, The Guardian newspaper reported on Sunday.

The foundation and various artifacts, found in an area to the west of Glasgow called the Pillanflatt, which means "pavilion of the great hero," match descriptions in ancient documents about the location of the king's home, according to historians.

"The 1362 charter states that Robert the Bruce resided between Kings Park of Cardross and the lands of Pillanflatt, bounding the lands of Dalquhurn," historian Stuart Smith, who has studied the Bruce family for 35 years, told the newspaper.

Sections of masonry, plasterwork and mortar have been sent to the Scottish Lime Centre, where tests confirmed that the stone dates from the 14th century and is of a type used in the construction of a cathedral or chapel.

The area of the palace is thought to include the king's manor house, which had a 100-foot grand hall, a queen's quarter and a chapel.

"We knew that Pillanflatt was where the king lived," Duncan Thomson, chairman of the Strathleven Artizans, a group set up to promote the area's links with Robert the Bruce, told the paper. "Before we found the foundations, we had to guess where the king's house was."

Once the authenticity of the site is confirmed, the group behind the discovery plans to petition Historic Scotland to designate the area as a site of special historic interest. If this happens, the site would join a list of famous Scottish monuments that includes Edinburgh Palace (a statue of Robert the Bruce sits at the entrance) and Holyrood Palace, the official residence of Scottish monarchs since the 15th century and now the Scottish residence of Queen Elizabeth II.

Science News

Oldest English Words Revealed

A game of Scrabble might not have been all that different in Stone Age times.

Using a computer simulation, a British researcher says he's examined the rate of change of words in languages to reveal the oldest English-sounding words, which would have been used by Stone Age humans 20,000 years ago.More here.

Among the Stone Age words that presumably would've sounded then much like they do now in the English language: I, we, two and three.

More here.

Moon and Venus converge tomorrow night

It has been a superb winter for viewing the queen of the planets, Venus. February marks the pinnacle of its evening visibility as it stands like a sequined showgirl nearly halfway up in the western sky at sunset.

You can't miss it. Just look west after sunset. In fact, you can see it during the day if you know where to look. Find it just after sunset one evening, then scan around the same spot just before sunset the next day.

Read the rest at LiveScience.

And I Quote ... Well sort of

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

~ Horace Walpole
To those of us who feel and think, the world is a tragic comedy!

~ Nacktman

And I Quote

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

~ Albert Einstein

Health News

In today's health news:

Caffeine May Offer Some Skin Cancer Protection

Past studies have suggested that caffeine might offer some protection from skin cancer, and new research may explain why.

"We have found what we believe to be the mechanism by which caffeine is associated with decreased skin cancer," said lead researcher Dr. Paul Nghiem, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Read the rest here.

TSA demands biometric IDs for period reenacter mule-drivers

From the "You have got to be kidding" Department:

Under TSA rules, various transportation workers need to pass background checks to receive biometric 'Transportation Worker Identification Credentials (TWIC)' IDs; this measure is allegedly necessary to thwart terrorism.

This standard is being applied to employees of Hugh Moore Historical Park who operate mule-drawn canal boats at blistering speeds of up to two miles per hour while wearing period costumes.
"We have one boat. It's pulled by two mules. On a good day they might go 2 miles per hour," said Sarah B. Hays, the park's director of operations.

The park's two-mile canal does not pass any military bases, nuclear power plants or other sensitive facilities. And, park officials say, the mules could be considered weapons of mass destruction only if they were aimed at something resembling food.

TSA: Mule skinners need background checks, too

More evidence of the waste that is the TSA and Homeland Security as a whole. When will we get rid of these idiotic bozos?

Yes, always


Pinky and The Brain

Modern Slavery in Florida

In this article, the author investigates modern slavery among immigrant workers in Florida.

For two and a half years, beginning in April 2005, Mariano Lucas Domingo, along with several other men, was held as a slave at that address. At first, the deal must have seemed reasonable. Lucas, a Guatemalan in his thirties, had slipped across the border to make money to send home for the care of an ailing parent. He expected to earn about $200 a week in the fields. Cesar Navarrete, then a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, agreed to provide room and board at his family’s home on South Seventh Street and extend credit to cover the periods when there were no tomatoes to pick.

Lucas’s “room” turned out to be the back of a box truck in the junk-strewn yard, shared with two or three other workers. It lacked running water and a toilet, so occupants urinated and defecated in a corner. For that, Navarrete docked Lucas’s pay by $20 a week. According to court papers, he also charged Lucas for two meager meals a day: eggs, beans, rice, tortillas, and, occasionally, some sort of meat. Cold showers from a garden hose in the backyard were $5 each. Everything had a price. Lucas was soon $300 in debt. After a month of ten-hour workdays, he figured he should have paid that debt off.

But when Lucas—slightly built and standing less than five and a half feet tall—inquired about the balance, Navarrete threatened to beat him should he ever try to leave. Instead of providing an accounting, Navarrete took Lucas’s paychecks, cashed them, and randomly doled out pocket money, $20 some weeks, other weeks $50. Over the years, Navarrete and members of his extended family deprived Lucas of $55,000.

Taking a day off was not an option. If Lucas became ill or was too exhausted to work, he was kicked in the head, beaten, and locked in the back of the truck. Other members of Navarrete’s dozen-man crew were slashed with knives, tied to posts, and shackled in chains. On November 18, 2007, Lucas was again locked inside the truck. As dawn broke, he noticed a faint light shining through a hole in the roof. Jumping up, he secured a hand hold and punched himself through. He was free.

Our Readers

Some of our readers today have been in:

Cairo, Al Qahirah, Egypt
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Lima, Lima, Peru
Bangkok, Krung Thep, Thailand
London, England, United Kingdom
Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
Olomouc, Olomucky Kraj, Czech Republic
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Manchester, England, United Kingdom
Amsterdam, Noor-Holland, Netherlands
Beijing, Beijing, China
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Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

as well as Senegal, Wales, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Saudi Arabia and Scotland

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

Maintain your flawless manners, but don't forget to treat yourself right.

You got it!