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.
At the Battle of Ascalon 1,000 Crusaders,
led by Godfrey of Bouillon, route an Egyptian relief column heading for
Jerusalem, which had already fallen to the Crusaders.
1687
At the Battle of Mohacs, Hungary, Charles of Lorraine defeats the Turks.
1762
The British capture Cuba from Spain after a two month siege.
1791
Black slaves on the island of Santo Domingo rise up against their white masters.
1812
British commander the Duke of Wellington occupies Madrid, Spain, forcing out Joseph Bonaparte.
1863
Confederate raider William Quantrill leads a massacre of 150 men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas.
1864
After a week of heavy raiding, the Confederate cruiser Tallahassee claims six Union ships captured.
1896
Gold is discovered near Dawson City, Yukon
Territory, Canada. After word reaches the United States in June of
1897, thousands of Americans head to the Klondike to seek their
fortunes.
1898
The Spanish American War officially ends after three months and 22 days of hostilities.
1908
Henry Ford's first Model T rolls off the assembly line.
1922
The home of Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C. is dedicated as a memorial.
1935
President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Security Bill.
1941
French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain announces full French collaboration with Nazi Germany.
1961
The erection of the Berlin Wall begins, preventing access between East and West Germany.
1969
American installations at Quan-Loi, Vietnam, come under Viet Cong attack.
1972
As U.S. troops leave Vietnam, B-52's make their largest strike of the war.
1977
Steven Biko, leader of the black consciousness movement in South Africa, is arrested.
1977
Space shuttle Enterprise makes its first free flight and landing.
1978
Tel al-Zaatar massacre at Palestinian refuge camp during Lebanese Civil War.
1979
Massive book burnings by press censors begin in Iran.
1981
Computer giant IBM introduces its first personal computer.
1985
Highest in-flight death toll as 520 die when Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into Mount Takamagahara.
1992
The North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) is concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico,
creating the world's wealthiest trade bloc.
2000
Russian Navy submarine K-141 Kursk explodes and sinks with all hands during military exercises in the Bering Sea.
2005
An LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam)
sniper mortally wounds Sri Lanka's foreign minister, Lakshman
Kadirgamar, at the minister's home.
It
is little secret that Republicans and their libertarian backers detest
the idea of paying taxes, and over the past forty years one of their
champions has been the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In
fact, ALEC wrote a model resolution for repugicans to push through
Congress urging a permanent extension of Bush-era tax cuts they claimed
“spurred economic growth, allowed the spirit of entrepreneurship to
flourish, and all while creating new jobs and opportunities for millions
of Americans.” The blatant lie that the shrub’s tax cuts for the rich
created new jobs aside, the resolution revealed that ALEC is in the
business of helping their corporate sponsors avoid paying taxes and it
is little wonder why ALEC is being targeted for an investigation for
illegally financing extravagant trips for state legislators and
misleading the Internal Revenue Service about their illicit activities.
Two
watchdog groups are asking the Internal Revenue Service and several
state ethics committees to investigate ALEC for funneling corporate
money through an ALEC slush fund to allow wealthy corporations to take a
federal tax deduction for furnishing lawmakers and their families with
luxurious trips at fancy resorts. One such meeting is the upcoming ALEC
conference this week to celebrate the anti-democracy group’s 40th
year of assisting the richest corporations to write and pass
legislation beneficial to their privatization efforts and profits. The
watchdogs’ complaints also charge that ALEC conceals the sources of “slush funds”
from public view and obscures the amount of spending from the IRS by
claiming that it holds the corporate funds in “trust,” all the while
writing lawmakers’ checks to cover their trips.
The so-called
“scholarship fund” ALEC uses to fund the lavish trips also raises
serious questions about the corporate group’s compliance with state gift
and disclosure laws that in turn brings into question the lawmakers’
ethics in accepting ALEC’s travel gifts and precipitated the watchdog’s
letters to state ethics committees. In question is whether repugican
state legislators taking the fancy trips (bribes) disclosed the gifts on
their state financial disclosures, or if they noted they originated
from corporate donors seeking favorable votes on ALEC template
legislation.
The complaints laid out by Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy contend
that ALEC’s corporate sponsors contributed to the “scholarship fund”
and then wrote off their donations because ALEC is a 501(c)(3)
tax-exempt non-profit similar to “social welfare” groups the IRS
targeted last year. ALEC then writes checks out of the “scholarship
fund” to pay for Republican lawmakers and their families’ trips to
resorts. Both groups also called on the IRS to investigate ALEC for
filing fraudulent tax returns that massively under-reported and grossly
misrepresented its “scholarship scheme.” It does not take a genius to
figure out that the corporate money takes a detour into the slush fund
before being doled out to Republican legislators who return the favor by
supporting ALEC’s templates written by the corporations paying for the
trips.
The groups also sent letters
to ethics oversight agencies in various states advising authorities to
carefully review the ALEC “scholarship” scheme to determine if it
complies with state gift and disclosure laws, as well as investigating
whether or not the Republican legislators declared the gifts on their
state disclosures. To determine which repugicans are attending this
week’s 40th anniversary soirée, the groups are sending letters
to each state’s ALEC elected chair asking for a list of legislators’
who received corporate gifts to travel to the conference as well as
which corporations are paying for the trips. They also asked each ALEC
chair to provide a “full public accounting” of “scholarship” recipients and funders for the past five years to discover how many corporations paid for repugicans’ trips and then deducted
the money as contributions to a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit. It is
apparent that ALEC is using the non-profit designation to conceal their
sponsors as well as launder corporate donations to ALEC’s scholarship
fund en route to legislators; a thorough IRS investigation will reveal
the truth.
According to Common Cause’s vice president for policy
and litigation, Arn Pearson, cooperation by ALEC coupled with IRS and
state ethics committee investigations will show the public that ALEC’s
promise of transparency was a lie. “Our elected officials really
should not accept expense-paid trips and lodging from special interests,
but if they choose to do so, the voters are entitled to know who is
paying, and how much.” ALEC knows precisely which corporations
gave gifts to legislators and deducted them as charitable donations, as
well as which legislators received the free trips in exchange for
cooperating in the template passing scheme. The executive director of
Center for Media and Democracy said that “we now know which
corporations funded trips to posh resorts for hundreds of lawmakers to
vote behind closed doors with lobbyists on proposals to change state
laws,” and that it is “disgraceful for ALEC to use its tax-exempt
status to act as a conduit for gifts to facilitate influence peddling
that advances the lobbying agenda of special interests to the detriment
of ordinary Americans. This is corruption.”
Some of the topics
ALEC will press repugicans to pass are the benefits of fracking to the
oil industry, how to block GMO labeling, tactics to undermine renewable
energy initiatives, maintain reliance on coal and fossil fuels, block
minimum wage hikes, privatize schools and public toll roads, and how to
eliminate occupational licensing requirements to allow any layperson to
take teachers’ jobs for minimum wage. Attendees will also learn how to
break unions by following the ALEC tactics Wisconsin governor Scott
Walker put in place last year, as well as schemes to deny global climate
change such as promoting “the many benefits of increased atmospheric CO2”
ALEC funders the Koch brothers champion. All of the topics for
discussion benefit ALEC’s corporate donors by giving them access and
opportunity to write template legislation for and with repugicans so
they can take them back to their home state legislatures and pass them
into law.
For the past forty years ALEC has been the primary
actor in handing corporations legislative power in Congress and state
legislatures as well as advancing the crusade to privatize public
entities from schools to roads and highways. They are also solely
responsible for the rash of stand your ground laws, voter suppression
laws, and union busting schemes around the nation at the behest of their
corporate donors. However, they may get their comeuppance if their
money laundering scheme is investigated and prosecuted that will touch
corporate donors for deducting gifts to politicians and legislators who
took free trips in exchange for favorable votes on issues to enrich the
corporations shelling out the gifts.
ALEC has been on a crusade to increase profits for corporations and CEOs with corporation-voted bills to rewrite
the tax code that not only eliminates most taxes for the rich, but also
starves state and federal governments of revenue. With their successful
crusades in the states, ALEC was emboldened to devise a way for their
corporate donors to deduct political contributions to repugican
legislators for their services through a slush fund and fraudulently
filed tax returns that massively underreported and grossly
misrepresented its “scholarship scheme” in violation of their 501(c)(3)
tax exempt status.
According to an investigative report,
ALEC’S member companies funneled at least $4 million to lawmakers since
2006 through the “scholarship” fund, and it is incumbent on the IRS and
state ethics committees to uncover the malfeasance and prosecute the
violators to the fullest extent of the law. It is important for
Americans to remember that one of the worst criminals in American
history eluded prosecution for years, and it was the Internal Revenue
Service that finally put Al Capone in prison for the rest of his life
for simple income tax evasion. Capone was a bad man guilty of hurting
and killing many people, but he was a saint compared to the damage
inflicted by the American Legislative Exchange Council on the American
people and democracy, and one hopes the IRS can take down ALEC and their
corporate donors for tax evasion as well.
The monster in question is the unhinged,
fact-free Tea Party juggernaut and its irrational and unceasing
opposition to Obamacare. The GOP civil war over defunding Obamacare is
breaking out into the open at town hall meetings across the country.
After 40 failed votes to repeal Obamacare, several Republicans are threatening anew to block government funding unless the health reform law gets defunded. This threat is nothing new; Republicans have repeatedly demanded
that every appropriations bill include a provision to repeal Obamacare
since the law was passed. Tea Party lawmakers in 2011 emphasized how
dire the situation was, calling for a “blood oath” to “choke Obamacare.”
Now, these empty threats are coming back
to haunt Republicans who fear they will lose their seats if they take
the government hostage. Several new town hall videos show lawmakers
grappling with furious demands from constituents to shut down the
government like the GOP said was needed to defund Obamacare.
Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL)
When
confronted by one angry constituent, Schock dismissed his pro-shutdown
colleagues for “beating their chests” on cable news without thinking
about the real-life consequences. “How many weeks would you go without
paying Social Security, and how many weeks would you go without paying
the troops?” he asked. “And having a young lady walk into my office,
whose husband is over in Afghanistan, who can’t pay her mortgage because
I’m shutting the government down because I don’t like the health care
law? [...] I’m just suggesting that when you get into a fight,
politically, you gotta make sure you’re willing to kill the hostage you
got. And I am not convinced yet that that’s a hostage we should take
headed into this fight.” Watch it HERE.
Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC)
Pittenger
flatly answered “no” when a constituent asked him if he would join the
effort to defund Obamacare. Pittenger argued that the vote would be
pointless because the Democrat-controlled Senate would never pass the
bill. His constituents yelled back that they wanted to “make a stand to
get conservatives back on board.” He later released a statement explaining that he would take “responsible steps to defund or replace Obamacare.” Watch it HERE.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
At a town hall on Monday, Fortenberry warned
of “very significant consequences” should Republicans go forward with
their plan, and said “There has to be a better way.” In response, one
audience member declared, “We elected Republicans to fight for more
conservative policies.”
Many other prominent Republicans have refused to support the shutdown plan. On Sunday,
former vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said “there
are more effective ways” to get rid of Obamacare. Sen. Richard Burr
(R-NC) scoffed, “It’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” while Sen. Tom Cole (R-OK) called it “a temper tantrum.” Republican governors have also warned that their state economies would suffer enormously if the party takes the government hostage.
BOTTOM LINE: As a new poll out today underscores,
the GOP’s obsession with repealing — or even trying to shut down the
government in order to defund — Obamacare is a political loser. This
isn’t 2010 and the GOP’s repeated efforts to deny the security of
quality, affordable health care to millions of Americans are dragging
the party down.
LUSH DIMBULB: Now, it’s risky for me to get into this, because it could be
misunderstood, but the Lush Dimbulb TV show was the Daily Show before
the Daily Show. This radio program has always been something that, prior
to it, really didn’t exist in major national media. I attempted to
explain this now and then in the early days. When a mainstream
journalist would interview me back in the days when I thought being
interviewed was an opportunity to inform them and educate them, which it
isn’t and wasn’t, but I would tell them what I do. They were not
interested in hearing what I had to say. All they wanted to do was take
shots at, make fun of or disagree with what my answer to them was. But
the thing I said to them was that I do something that you don’t find
elsewhere in the media. I combine the serious discussion of issues with
irreverent satirical comedy, with credibility on both sides.
And
then I would say, “Can you imagine if Letterman came out one night and
actually did a serious monologue for five minutes?” People watching that
show would not know what to do. They wouldn’t know how to react. That
is not why they’re watching. They don’t tune to Letterman for anything
serious. Ditto Ted Koppel and Nightline. If he opened Nightline with a
10-minute joke routine, a la Carson or Leno, people wouldn’t know what
to do. That’s not why they’re watching. By the same token, if the
Tonight Show started and Johnny Carson came out and did 10 minutes of
drop dead serious politics, people wouldn’t know what to do.
I’d
tell these journalists in the early days of the program, “This is what I
do. I do both those things with credibility. The fact that I do satire
and irreverent humor does not take away from the credibility that I have
with my audience when I discuss things seriously.” But because of that,
in the early days, the media still used the fact that there was a lot
of comedy on this program to poke holes. “Well, Dimbulb, he’s just an
entertainer. I mean, I don’t know why the repugican cabal pays so much
attention to Limbaugh.” I mean, you still hear that today. “He’s just an
entertainer,” meaning you can’t take him seriously. And then something
will happen and the next week I will be the titular head of the repugican cabal.
Back here on planet Earth, Lush Dimbulb is on the verge of being dropped by Cumulus Media. His old television program bears no resemblance to anything remotely close to The Daily Show.
Here is a clip from Limbaugh’s old TV show:
Lush Dimbulb is a little late to the game. Glenn Brick has been comparing himself to Stewart and trying to take credit for his ratings since 2009.
If Lush Dimbulb could be funny like Jon Stewart, he might still be on television. The reality that Lush wants to avoid is that he single handedly killed wingnut hate talk radio (the only thing he has ever done correct in his worthless life).
The
concept behind The Daily Show will never be a part of his legacy, but
calling Sandra Fluke a slut and triggering a massive boycott against his
advertisers always will be.
First,
Cumulus Media announced they were planning on dropping his hate radio show,
and now Faux News is moving Sean Handjob out of his plum 9 PM time slot
after Swill O’Really.
Megyn Kelly has landed the 9 PM slot, top sources reveal. The shock
announcement is set for later this month. ‘It’s all about Megyn,’ an
insider explains. ‘She is the new face of cable news. She has it all!’”
Faux
News execs believe that Kelly will inherit the mantle of top rated host
from Swill O’Really once he retires. The news that Kelly was moving to
primetime originally had everyone focused on Greta Van Stupid’s poor
performing, by Faux News standards, 10 PM show. Nobody expected Handjob
to get the boot from nine, but looking back, we all should have seen
this coming.
Handjob suffered a 35% ratings drop earlier in the year, and he got very defensive about the subject in a recent interview with Playboy:
PLAYBOY: Let’s move on. Fox News’s ratings are down, and your show in particular has taken a hit this year.
HANDJOB: No, actually, our ratings are back up.
PLAYBOY: Your ratings were down 35 percent in February.
HANDJOB: Well, from the year before, which was an election year.
PLAYBOY: Rachel Maddow has beaten you in your time slot.
HANDJOB: Never! Not once!
PLAYBOY: She has in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic.
HANDJOB: But overall, we’re at double her ratings. You’ve got to be careful how you make these comparisons.
Before Chris Hayes came along and sunk the Rachel Maddow ratings ship, the MSNBC host was
beating Handjob in the demo. More importantly, Handjob could never hold
O’Really’s 8 PM audience. Handjob could be counted on to lose at
least 30%-40% of Bill-O’s lead in audience every night. On bad nights,
the drop is even more severe. Frankly, Faux News execs believe
that they can keep more of the O’Really audience with Kelly at 9 PM.
Sean
Handjob is signed to a long term deal with Faux News. This means that he
will still be on the network somewhere. The question is where will
Handjob go? Will Faux News move Greta off of 10 PM, and slide Handjob in
there? (I suspect not, because it looks like Faux would like to shift
away from the divisive repugican cabal talking point trolling that is Handjob’s
specialty.)
This is totally out of left field, but Faux News could
pair Handjob and Van Stupid at 10, or they could give Sean the Ed
Schultz treatment and move him to weekends.
Any way you look at it, this is a huge demotion for Sean Handjob.
The 9 PM slot after Swill O’Really is the best spot on the entire network. On top of this, Cumulus Media is threatening to send Handjob’s hate radio show packing at the end of the year. Handjob is definitely on a downhill slide, and it really couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.
While repugicans like to say the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) has
been a “jobs destroyer,” reality just doesn’t seem to support their
rhetoric.The most recent evidence of this comes in the way of a comment made
by Alan Krueger, the chairman of the President’s Council of Economic
Advisers who stated that, “Since the Affordable Care Act passed, 90
percent of job growth has been in full-time positions.”
Which Politifact rated as “True.”
According to the research Politifact pulled from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (the agency responsible for tracking jobs) of the nearly 6
million jobs we’ve created from March 2010-July 2013, 87% of them have
been full-time positions. That translates to nearly 5 million full-time
jobs and barely 700k part-time jobs.
Now, there is a flip-side to this article that’s not all good news
for “Obamacare” supporters. Politifact also found that a repugican
claim that many of the jobs for 2013 have been part-time is true as
well. Though, that represents a 7-month window out of over 40, so one
would have to be reaching to say that 2013′s numbers are an indication
of our overall job creation.
Especially when you consider that even when you factor in 2013′s jobs
numbers, 87% of the jobs we’ve created have still been full-time
positions.
And don’t tell me that the spike in part-time employment this year is
linked to the further rollout of “Obamacare.” The Affordable Care Act
was signed into law over 3 years ago, with these employers knowing what
was coming—yet 87% of jobs have still been full-time.
None of these companies really expected the law to be repealed (and
even the House repugicans who’ve voted 40 times to try and do just that
knew it would remain the law of the land) so it wouldn’t make any sense
to try and argue that part-time positions are rising due to the
“anticipation” of the impact of “Obamacare.”
Because these people already knew the law was in place. If they
weren’t going to hire full-time positions as a result of the law, then
the last three years wouldn’t show that 87% of jobs we’ve created were
full-time positions.
And let’s not forget, the first half of this year we saw our greatest job growth for that span of time since 1999.
These facts are of course nothing repugicans want to hear. Because
like most of the jobs statistics over the last 3+ years, the numbers
simply don’t support the rhetoric coming from repugicans and the wingnut media.
Then again, that’s what happens when your political ideology is based on what you want to be real as opposed to actual reality.
Customers bag their own groceries at checkout counters at WinCo Foods
Retail analysts say that the world’s biggest retailer has reason to
fear a small grocery chain that’s based in Idaho and boasts a business
model that allows it to undercut Walmart on prices. So about that eye-catching Walmart quote. Those are the words of Burt
Flickinger III, a widely respected supermarket retailing industry
expert who works for the Strategic Resource Group. Flickinger was quoted in a recent Idaho Statesman story about WinCo, a chain of roughly 100 supermarkets in the western U.S., based in Boise.
“WinCo arguably may be the best retailer in the Western U.S.,”
Flickinger says while touring a WinCo store. “WinCo is really
unstoppable at this point,” he goes on. “They’re Walmart’s worst
nightmare.”
Flickinger isn’t the only industry insider discussing WinCo and
Walmart in the same breath. “While many supermarkets strive to keep
within a few percentage points of Walmart Stores’ prices, WinCo Foods
often undersells the massive discount chain,” the industry publication Supermarket News explained last spring.
How does WinCo manage to undercut Walmart on prices? And why should
the world’s largest retailer have any reason to fear a small regional
grocer chain that most Americans have never heard of?
First off, the reason you probably haven’t heard of WinCo is partly
because at this point its stores are limited to a handful of states in
the West. But WinCo is a little-known player also because the company is
a privately held enterprise that seems to take its privacy seriously,
preferring a low-key, low-profile approach—which is extremely rare in a
world of retailers boisterously begging for shoppers’ attention.
Simply put, WinCo “communicates low prices by delivering low prices,” Jon Hauptman, a partner at Willard Bishop, a retail consulting firm, told Supermarket News.
“WinCo doesn’t do much to communicate price and value. It convinces
shoppers of value based on the shopping experience, rather than relying
on smoke and mirrors to convince them.”
As for how WinCo can deliver such low prices, the Statesman
story details the company’s history and business model. It all began,
interestingly enough, when two Idaho businessmen opened a warehouse-type
discount store with a name that could have been pulled from a movie
slyly spoofing Walmart. Waremart, it was called. The company became
employee-owned in 1985, and changed its name to WinCo (short for
“Winning Company”) in 1999.
Prices are kept low through a variety of strategies, the main one
being that it often cuts out distributors and other middle men and buys
many goods directly from farms and factories. WinCo also trims costs by
not accepting credit cards and by asking customers to bag their own
groceries. Similarly to warehouse membership stores like Sam’s Club and
Costco, and also to successful discount grocers with small stores like Trader Joe’s and Aldi,
WinCo stores are organized and minimalist, without many frills, and
without the tremendous variety of merchandise that’s become standard at
most supermarkets. “Everything is neat and clean, but basic,” Hauptman
told Supermarket News. “Though the stores are very large, with a lot of categories, they lack depth or breadth of variety.”
While all of these factors help WinCo compete with Walmart on price,
what really might scare the world’s largest retailer is how WinCo treats
its employees. In sharp contrast to Walmart, which regularly comes
under fire for practices like understaffing stores to keep costs down and hiring tons of temporary workers
as a means to avoid paying full-time worker benefits, WinCo has a
reputation for doing right by employees. It provides health benefits to
all staffers who work at least 24 hours per week. The company also has a
pension, with employees getting an amount equal to 20% of their annual
salary put in a plan that’s paid for by WinCo; a company spokesperson
told the Idaho Statesman that more than 400 nonexecutive
workers (cashiers, produce clerks, and such) currently have pensions
worth over $1 million apiece.
Generally speaking, shoppers tolerate Walmart’s empty shelves and subpar customer service
because the prices are so good. The fact that another retailer—even a
small regional one—is able to compete and sometimes beat Walmart on
prices, while also operating well-organized stores staffed by workers
who enjoy their jobs, like their employer, and genuinely want the
company to be successful? Well, that’s got to alarm the world’s biggest
retailer, if not keep executives up at night.
While WinCo does keep its business quiet, we do know one thing: The company is in the process of expanding to new states, with two locations opening in north Texas
next year, for example. Flickinger anticipates rapid growth in the near
future, with WinCo doubling in size every five to seven years going
forward.
Chemists at Oregon State University have identified a compound
that could significantly reduce the cost and potentially enable the mass
commercial production of silicon nanostructures – materials that have
huge potential in everything from electronics […]
Widely-circulated news reports in June claimed that a new
eyeball licking fad among Japanese schoolchildren was spreading disease.
It was too good, or too weird, to be true.
Pennsylvania man beats wife with meat
William Neugebauer of western Pennsylvania is charged with hitting his wife with a package of frozen ground beef,
then running away like a scared little bitch when the cops were called.
The 51 year old man was drunk. His wife Wendy Neugebauer sustained
injuries on her rib cage. She told police this was where her husband
beat her with the meat.
DNA evidence reopens 50-year-old missing baby case
In 1964, a baby was stolen from a Chicago hospital. The FBI later
determined that a baby, found in New Jersey, was the missing boy and
gave him back to his parents. Now, DNA evidence shows that the man
raised as Paul Fronczak isn't actually the same person
as the kidnapped baby called Paul Fronczak. It's a heartbreaking story
for Fronczak and his family, with some important lessons about the
history and future of forensics.
Great debunked scientific theories of yesteryear
Sheep do not grow on trees. Your dirty laundry cannot give birth to a
mouse. Plowing the soil will not ensure plenty of rain. Check out Matt
Simon's great list of these and other truthy ideas that once had mainstream traction and vaguely plausible scientific explanations.
"Older than dirt" not really that old in the grand scheme of things
The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Actual dirt — that is to say, like the stuff in your backyard, not rocks that were once dirt — probably dates to about 2 million years ago. Dirt is young! (Relatively speaking.)
Twitter forms political action committee, registers lobbyist in Washington
Today, Twitter became an official member of Washington’s "influence economy," with a PAC and the appointment of its first registered lobbyist
in the nation's capital. "The seven-year old private company said it
wants to put a bigger priority on its interaction with members of
Congress as it grapples with major policy and political issues related
to free speech on the Internet, government surveillance of
communications, and copyright and patent law reform."
In 1776, whether you
were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your
loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the
same. At that time, American and British accents hadn't yet diverged.
What's surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all
wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much
closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen's English.
It
is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past
two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only
subtly.
Traditional English, whether spoken in the British Isles
or the American colonies, was largely "rhotic." Rhotic speakers
pronounce the "R" sound in such words as "hard" and "winter," while
non-rhotic speakers do not. Today, however, non-rhotic speech is common
throughout most of Britain. For example, most modern Brits would tell
you it's been a "hahd wintuh."
It was around the time of the American Revolution that non-rhotic
speech came into use among the upper class in southern England, in and
around London. According to John Algeo in "The Cambridge History of the
English Language" (Cambridge University Press, 2001), this shift
occurred because people of low birth rank who had become wealthy during
the Industrial Revolution were seeking ways to distinguish themselves
from other commoners; they cultivated the prestigious non-rhotic
pronunciation in order to demonstrate their new upper-class status.
"London
pronunciation became the prerogative of a new breed of specialists —
orthoepists and teachers of elocution. The orthoepists decided upon
correct pronunciations, compiled pronouncing dictionaries and, in
private and expensive tutoring sessions, drilled enterprising citizens
in fashionable articulation," Algeo wrote.
When
did ice cream trucks begin serenading us with their siren song of
relief from the summer heat? Dave Shumka writes that the music long
predates actual ice cream trucks:
So how did the chime box become the go-to music device?
According to ethnomusicologist Daniel Tannehill Neely, 19th century ice
cream parlours had music boxes, mechanical cylinders with pins sticking
out to pluck the tines of a steel comb as they rotated. Early
foot-powered ice cream carts used racks of bells and shouting salesmen
to attract customers, but when trucks came along, vendors needed
something louder to be heard over the engine. Inspired by their
nostalgia for the old ice cream parlors, they went back to the familiar
music box technology.
In 1927, the first known chime box was
custom built, and it played a traditional Polish song called “Stodola
Pumpa.” It became its vendor’s trademark. Ice cream trucks didn’t become
ubiquitous until after the Second World War, and that’s when the Nelson
Company began manufacturing chime boxes, though they weren’t terribly
energy-efficient. In 1957, Nichols Electronics improved the electronics
of the design, and introduced the digital version in 1985.
All
that to say, when you hear an ice cream truck playing “Little Brown
Jug,” you’re hearing an updated version of a 30-year-old digital unit
that replicated the sound of a 55-year-old electronic unit, based on a
65-year-old mechanical unit, which was based on the music box, which was
invented more than 200 years ago. And they’ve been using the same song
for 70 years, and that song was written 75 years before that. A lot of
technology went into making it sound so archaic, like the sonic
equivalent of Instagram.
Identical twins are a rare biological glitch that may help
advance science! People with identical DNA give researchers a chance to
test a variety of things, from new medicine to genetic disorders. Trace
details a new, truly out-of-this-world study.
Add it to the list of things that are bad for you: milk!
Turns out this staple of western diets is something humans aren't really
designed to consume. And all those health claims on TV? Not really
true! Trace explains how we've been duped.
Nearly 30 human skeletons, dated
back to the second millennia before our era, which were found in the La
Sepultura cave, in the state of Tamaulipas, could be related with the
first settlers of the American continent, according to the genetic study
headed by experts of the National Institute of Anthropology and History
(INAH).
Archaeologists
working in "La Sepultura" cave in Tamaulipas state, Mexico. About 30
human skeletons found in the cave --which can date from the second
millennium before our era-- could be linked with the first settlers of
the American continent, according to a genetic study carried out by
experts from the National Institute of Anthropology and History [Credit:
INAH]
Based on the osteometric studies,
ancient DNA and radiocarbon tests, applied to the osseous remains
recovered at the municipality of Tula in the Eastern Sierra Madre,
archaeologists can “demonstrate that in this area they have found
evidence of one of the most ancient genetic lineages in America”. These
remains are therefore associated with the men that crossed the Bering
Strait 12 or 10 million years before.
The radiocarbon dating of the
osseous remains (teeth) and a fragment of a grass mat found in the same
cave, place them among the years 1397 through 1195 BC and 1313 and 914
BC.
Jesus Ernesto Velasco added that
earlier DNA studies, made in the Paleo-DNA Laboratory of Lakehead
University, in Ontario, Canada, made on a mummified specimen from the
Escondida or Encantada cave, rescued in 2008 by the archaeologist
Gustavo Ramirez, has allowed the identification of the genetic profile
of these settlements.
The physical anthropologist said
that the analysis will bring certainty to the origin of the prehistoric
groups in the Mexican Northwest and its dispersion throughout time.
Archaeology in caves
In order to explore the vast region
of the Eastern Sierra Madre and Tamaulipas, where there is a great
quantity of prehistoric caves and cave paintings, an interdisciplinary
team was formed with the participation of specialists of the IIA from
UNAM, the University of Cordoba, Spain and the INAH Center in
Tamaulipas.
By October 2011 they had rescued the
osseous remains of between 26 and 30 individuals. This same year they
initiated the examination of other cavities located in the Tula
municipality, among these the cave of the Dead in the Naola Sierra,
where they found more osseous remains along with ceramic and lithic.
The bones in the cave of the Dead
were dated between 850 and 794 BC, “but the ceramic objects had a later
dating: 200 through 600 AD, which is why we believe the cave was later
used by other settlers”, detailed archaeologist Vanueth Perez.
Finally, to this date, they have
located other cavities in the mountains of Tamaulipas with great
potential, such as the Tepozan caves with the presence of cave
paintings; in del Guano and el Fraile they have also found cave
paintings in rocky terrains and funerary remains, among others.
Sandy stretches of gray, brown or even white are the world's norm. Even
rocky beaches or those with sheer cliffs barring passage for everyone
save the bravest adventurers are not rare.
But there are other beaches on Earth that look like they belong on
another planet or almost feel like they are on another planet. These unique beaches are some of the best treats nature has to offer.
Today’s
picture we have is the archipelago of St Kilda, which lies about
40miles of the coast of North Uist in the Atlantic Ocean. St Kilda is an
archipelago made up of 4 islands, Hirta(the biggest) and Dùn, Soay and
Boreray. The islands are run administratively as part of the Comhairle
nan Eilean Siar.
The Islands are known to been inhabited since the Late Middle ages however, there are several architectural
features from the historic and prehistoric periods of history. The
village on Hirta was rebuilt in the 19th century and the way of life
there was a hard one. In 1930 the islands were evacuated due to
dwindling population and supplies. Now the only year round inhabitants
are defense personnel; a variety of conservation workers, volunteers and
scientists.
I find the following story sums up what it was like to live on the island:
"In the late 19th century, the islanders could communicate with the
rest of the world only by lighting a bonfire on the cliffs and hoping a
passing ship might see it, or by using the "St Kilda mailboat". The
mailboat was the invention of John Sands, who visited in 1877. During
his stay, a shipwreck left nine Austrian sailors marooned there, and by
February supplies were running low. Sands attached a message to a
lifebuoy salvaged from ship and threw it into the sea. Nine days later
it was picked up in Birsay, Orkney, and a rescue was arranged. The St
Kildans, building on this idea, would fashion a piece of wood into the
shape of a boat, attach it to a bladder made of sheepskin, and place in
it a small bottle or tin containing a message. Launched when the wind
came from the north-west, two-thirds of the messages were later found on
the west coast of Scotland or, less conveniently, in Norway."
St Kilda is now inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was the
first of its kind in Scotland. This is due to its natural beauty, and
its terrestrial natural features; such as its wildlife, especially the
sheep. The Islands are owned by the National Trust for Scotland and
visitors are asked to inform the trust of visits.
Chernobyl's legacy recorded in trees
Radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident suppressed
tree growth and appears to have a lasting negative legacy, a study
suggests.
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have solved a
40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of
gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy. The Large
and Small […]
While NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity looks for life-friendly
ancient environments on the planet’s surface, a new probe is being
prepared for launch to figure out why Mars lost its protective
atmosphere.
Graham Morrison spotted a young bear crawling on a jet ski near the base of his fishing guide business in southwestern Alaska:
Morrison
said that the young bear climbed onto the watercraft in order to get
closer to its mother, who was sitting in the water dining on her catch.
At one point, it climbed to the end of the craft and growled at her, in
an apparent effort to convince her to give up some of the meal. Then,
the young bear fell in before attempting to climb back up on the craft.
Morrison said that the Sea Doo -- docked at a family boat dock about a
mile from the King Salmon airport -- was unharmed during the bear
encounter.
Stunning images of dragonflies and flies frozen in time as they appear
to by crystallized by the morning dew. The tiny droplets of water magnify
the dragonflies' beauty and reveal the details and bright red, orange,
green and blue colours of the flying insects.
Macro photography
requires a decent light-source - and in this case it is the jewel-like
droplets which capture the light so essential for these works of art.
The first detailed observations of swimming chimpanzees and orangutans
suggest that they, like humans, tend to swim using a form of
breaststroke. The findings imply that we may owe our swimming style to
our evolutionary past. Apart from humans, great apes usually avoid deep
water for fear of unseen predators that might be lurking there, but
anecdotal evidence shows that they will go for a dip if they feel safe
enough. Cooper the chimpanzee and Suryia the orangutan are extreme
examples of this. These two captive apes, raised respectively in
Missouri and South Carolina, have thrown off any instinctive fear and
taught themselves to swim in a swimming pool.
Footage taken by Renato Bender at the University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg, South Africa, shows that both of the apes instinctively
opted for a version of breaststroke to keep afloat – that is, they moved
their limbs out sideways from their bodies, roughly parallel to the
water's surface. Suryia's limbs moved mostly alternately but Cooper
often kicked with both hind limbs simultaneously, more like human
breaststroke, says Bender. This behavior is unusual because almost all
other four-limbed mammals use doggy paddle, with their limbs moving
vertically through the water directly beneath their body.
The footage also shows the apes were comfortable beneath the surface.
Suryia opened his eyes underwater and could navigate visually, but
Cooper preferred to keep his eyes covered, and used his hands and feet
to feel for interesting objects. "You should expect deviation from doggy
paddle in animals that, during their evolution, have had little contact
with water and therefore almost completely lost the instinct to swim,"
says Bender.
But why should apes, including humans, prefer breaststroke when we do
take the plunge? Bender thinks it may come down to our tree-swinging past.
Our shoulders and those of other apes have joints that can move in all
directions instead of in just one plane, like the shoulders of most
other mammals. That might make breaststroke the natural choice, says
Bender.
It is a careful analysis of swimming style, says Anne Russon at York
University in Toronto, Canada, and fits well with recent evidence that
great apes show a range of water-based behaviors.
She thinks the evolutionary scenario sketched out by Bender could
explain why the chimps and orang-utans adopt a form of breaststroke
broadly similar to the stroke humans use – although tree-dwelling does
not necessarily encourage primates to "forget" how to swim.
"Monkeys I see often in Borneo are both excellent swimmers and are
highly arboreal," she says.
A herd of around 15 elephants have stopped several trains on the
Howrah-Delhi route near Matari railway station in Jharkhand, eastern
India after an elephant was killed when it was hit by the Kolkata-New Delhi Duronto Express.
(Graphic photo). They have also attacked villages and demolished parts
of a school and several houses.Villagers have been keeping night-long
vigils, but haven't been to drive away the herd.
A railway official said the train was at full throttle when the herd
tried to cross the track between Matari and Gomo railway stations. One
of the elephants fell into a gorge, the impact breaking its spine. The
other members of the herd, hearing its cries, attacked the train and
damaged its coaches. A passenger traveling on the train, Ashish Singh
said: "I heard a sound similar to some explosion. All of us were
extremely afraid as we thought that Maoists had detonated some sort of a
bomb. Everyone in the compartment kept quiet for some time.
"We only realized what had happened after he heard the elephant wailing." A
disaster management team arrived at the spot around an hour later to
rescue the stranded train and passengers. They burst several fire
crackers and drove the herd into nearby forests. The disaster management
personnel managed to take the stranded Duronto train to Gomo station
from where it moved for onward journey after engineers approval. Dhanbad
DFO Satish Chandra Rai said a team of doctors led by R C Gupta
conducted the post-mortem on the dead elephant and it was buried in the
same area.
Wildlife activist D S Srivastava said elephants have a strong sense of family bonding and often resort to revenge attacks. He
said: "Elephants often try to return to the site of such accidents as
they believe that their mate has only been injured and could be rescued
by them. Even when an elephant dies a natural death, their friends cover
the body with bushes and small tree branches." Srivastava added that
the herd will try to return to this site again and again.
Chernobyl's legacy recorded in trees
