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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.


Monday, November 24, 2014

The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, this means you ...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 200 countries around the world daily.   
 
Mystery Solved ... !
Today is  - D. B. Cooper Day

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Today in History

1542   The English defeat the Scots at the Battle of Solway Moss in England.  
1859   Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. The first printing of 1,250 copies sells out in a single day.  
1863   In the Battle Above the Clouds, Union Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's forces take Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga, Tennessee.  
1864   Kit Carson and his 1st Cavalry, New Mexico Volunteers, attack a camp of Kiowa Indians in the First Battle of Adobe Walls.  
1874   Joseph Glidden receives a patent for barbed wire.  
1902   The first Congress of Professional Photographers convenes in Paris.  
1912   Austria denounces Serbian gains in the Balkans; Russia and France back Serbia while Italy and Germany back Austria.  
1927   Federal officials battle 1,200 inmates after prisoners in Folsom Prison revolt.
1938   Mexico seizes oil land adjacent to Texas.  
1939   In Czechoslovakia, the Gestapo execute 120 students who are accused of anti-Nazi plotting.  
1944   American B-29s flying from Saipan bomb Tokyo.  
1949   The Iron and Steel Act nationalizes the steel industry in Britain.  
1950   UN troops begin an assault into the rest of North Korea, hoping to end the Korean War by Christmas.  
1961   The United Nations adopts bans on nuclear arms over American protests.  
1963   Jack Ruby fatally shoots the accused assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, in the garage of the Dallas Police Department.
1977   Greece announces the discovery of the tomb of King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.  
1979   The United States admits that thousands of troops in Vietnam were exposed to the toxic Agent Orange.  
1992   US Congress passes the Brady Bill requiring a 5-day waiting period for handgun sales; the bill is named for Pres. Ronald Reagan's press secretary who was left partially paralyzed by a bullet during an assassination attempt on Reagan.  
1995   Ireland votes 50.28% to 49.72% to end its 70-year-old ban on divorce.  
2012   A fire at a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, kills over 110 people.

Editorial Comment

We here at Carolina Naturally work tirelessly to bring you news, items of interest and to shed light on the darkness and on things that n'er-do-wells wish to remain hidden. As a result of this we are continuously harangued and harassed by those same said n'er-do-wells.
Now that the wingnuts have had their last hurrah with the theft of the recent elections the harassment -as expected - has leaped ten fold, but we ignore it all the same.
We say '"their last hurrah" because that is what it is ... and it lasted all of 12 hours or so, give or take. The lunatic fringe's delusional fantasy of  'a 100 year majority' went down in flames even before they have taken their stolen majority into session. When their 'majority' does seat in session after the first of the year everything they are dreaming of doing is already dead on arrival ... the Liberals will not allow anything that does not benefit the poor and middle class to pass Congress and the President will veto any legislation that still has questions about it's help for the poor and middle class that does get through and the repugicans do not have the votes to override a veto ... all the 'helpful' legislation the repugicans have designed to appear to benefit the poor and middle class but in reality only benefit the wealthy (as par for the course with repugicans) will never make it to the president for a veto.
While we are driving the lunatic fringe even further over the ledge here in the Good Ol' USA, we have had a explosion in readership from all over the world and especially from places where the truth is frowned upon by small minds in government and religious cults (and in some places those are one and the same). It seems that the old adage about the 'truth always wins' is not so far-fetched a concept as some are wont it to be. It may take a long and convoluted trip, but the truth does win in the end ... and the sooner those attempting to deny the truth accept this the better the world shall be.
Carolina Naturally's success may be attributed to our steadfast upholding of the truth but we write the posts to be read at an eighth grade level and we believe that is one of the main contributing factors to our burgeoning foreign readership - non-English and non-American English (i.e., Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, etc.) speaking people seem to find it easier to read than if we wrote the posts at a post graduate level.
And no we will not lower the grade level we write the posts at to allow the vast majority of wingnuts to read the posts (we have enough of them reading Carolina Naturally as it is), besides we cannot write on a first grade level as it is we have to curtail our normal use of the English language, verbiage and syntax to keep it at an eighth grade level.

After Immigration Speech repugicans Admit That Obama’s Got Them By The Balls

Obama laughing
Behind the scenes, repugicans are not feeling too good about Obama’s executive action on immigration. They say they feel like Obama has them by the balls, according to MSNBC political correspondent Kasie Hunt.
Let us detail why repugicans feel like President Obama has them by the balls.
First, what the President did was legal.
Second, what the President did has long precedent behind it.
Third, repugicans don’t care about facts or legality, so they planned on simply defunding Obama’s executive actions while still funding the government but they found out today that they can’t do that. It turns out they are not in charge of funding for immigration actions.
Fourth: repugicans have told everyone that Obama should be impeached for doing something legal. Some of them even said he should be in prison. So now they sort of have to do something or they look pretty weak. But they can’t really do anything and maintain a semblance of pretense about being a party that can govern.
But hey, they built this problem. Please proceed, repugicans.

President Obama Teaches A Heckler About Respect During Las Vegas Speech

obama heckled during las vegas speech
President Obama showed that he still has his touch when dealing with hecklers. During his speech in Las Vegas, Obama listened to a heckler complain that his executive actions didn’t apply to all illegal immigrants. When the heckler kept interrupting him, the president delivered a lesson about respecting others.
Video:
Obama responded to a student who interrupted him with the claim that the law doesn’t go far enough by saying,
Not everybody will qualify under this provision. That’s the truth. That’s why we’re still going to have to pass a bill. So listen…I heard you you and what I’m saying is we’re still going to have to pass a bill. This is the first step. It’s not the only step. We’re still going to have to do more work.
So, I’ve heard you. I’ve heard you young man. I’ve heard you. And I understand. I’ve heard you. But what I’m saying is this is just a first step. So young man, I’m talking to a lot of people here. I’ve been respectful to you. I want you to be respectful to me.
The president didn’t get angry. He didn’t order security to remove the student from the building. Obama took a moment to deliver a lesson about listening to the point of view of others, and being respectful to them even if you disagree.
In our increasingly polarized society where political media has increasingly passed off two people screaming at each from across the table as debate, the president’s lesson is something that we would all be wise to remember. One of the reasons that our political system has broken down is that Republicans have treated this president with a lack of respect from day one. Few moments have been as disrespectful in American politics as when Rep. Joe Wilson screamed you lie at President Obama during his State Of The Union address.
Democrats responded to the repugican behavior towards the president by disrespecting repugicans. Respect means that two people can disagree without being enemies. Respect is missing in our current politics, and President Obama took a moment to deliver an important lesson in the value of respect that everyone could learn from.

Local Stations Around The Country Ignored Network Blackout And Televised Obama Speech

Local television stations around the country ignored the corporate networks’ attempt to blackout President Obama’s immigration speech by broadcasting the president’s remarks live on their own.
According to The Hill,
local stations televise obama immigration speechMany local television stations across the country carried President Obama’s primetime immigration address live Thursday even as major networks said they would stick with regular programming.

Reports on social media showed that Obama’s speech aired live on all or most local television stations in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Raleigh and Washington, D.C., among other cities.

Major networks including ABC, CBS and FOX confirmed that Obama’s speech would not be aired on their networks, while cable news and Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo would.
The local stations did their duty and placed informing the public ahead of November sweeps. The president’s speech was only fourteen minutes long. It would not have been a major disruption to the primetime lineup. The decision by the networks was especially hypocritical when viewed in the context that these same networks routinely delay their programming by 30-60 minutes when NFL or live sporting event telecasts run long.
It is heartening to see that some station managers still understand their duty to inform the public. The broadcast networks abandoned their responsibility to cover the news. The answer to why the American voter is uninformed can be found in the corporate owned media’s decision to de-emphasize information in their programming. Some stations still understand their civic duty, but the corporate assault on the public’s right to know will continue until the American people speak out.

The Crazy It Burns: Rand Paul Compares Obama’s Executive Actions to Internment Camps

Rand Paul thought it would be clever to compare President Obama taking executive action on immigration to FDR putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps.
Rand PaulNow that Rand Paul (r-KY) has announced that he is the biggest defender of minority rights in the Senate (against all facts to the contrary including his own hiring of a neo-confederate pro-secessionist), he thought it would be clever to compare President Obama taking executive action on immigration to FDR putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps.
Watch here, courtesy of American Bridge:
Speaking in Lexington Kentucky the day after Obama’s announcement, Paul said (transcript courtesy of TPM), “I care that too much power gets in one place. Why? Because there are instances in our history where we allow power to gravitate toward one person and that one person then makes decisions that really are egregious. Think of what happened in World War II where they made the decision. The president issued an executive order. He said to Japanese people ‘we’re going to put you in a camp. We’re going to take away all your rights and liberties and we’re going to intern you in a camp. We shouldn’t allow that much power to gravitate to one individual. We need to separate the power.”
This is a huge, Beckian fallacy.
Let’s reverse it. “I care that too much power gets in one place. There are instances in our history were we allow power to gravitate to one person and that one person makes decisions, like hiring secessionists who advocates for the secession of the South as chairman of the “implicitly racist group” League of the South and supports the assassination of President Lincoln, that are really egregious. Think of what happened in World War II, when Hitler hated on certain segments of the population. He said, you’re jewish so you need to go to this camp, which is the same as saying you’re black so you need to be a slave. Like being against the Civil Rights Movement. We’re going to take away all of your liberties and lock you up in slave camps and put you in gas ovens. We shouldn’t allow that much power to gravitate to one individual.”
Paul’s hiring of the racist Hunter was troubling to even the Daily Caller (the place where they yell at the President in the middle of his speech). Media Matters noted at the time:
Matt Lewis wrote a post after the publication of the Free Beacon story criticizing Paul’s association with Hunter, writing: “It’s one thing to have an aide with baggage (even very bad baggage), but the larger problem here is that this also speaks to credibility and honesty — to Paul’s fundamental character.” Lewis did not mention that Hunter has written for his site.
I observed a pattern at the time:
Rand Paul’s Senate campaign employee Tim Profitt stomped on a liberal woman’s head at a Paul rally. That could have been an anomaly, but then we also have his own son being arrested for aggressive physical force against a female flight attendant. Add in this new associate who is fringey and you have a pattern.
But none of that makes Paul guilty of being just like someone who put people in internment camps. Just comparing someone’s actions to internment camps doesn’t mean they have any relationship whatsoever to internment camps. It would be ridiculous to accuse Paul of being like Hitler, and it is also ridiculous to accuse Obama of putting anyone in an internment camp.
In actuality, President Obama did the opposite of putting people in an interment camp, and this is what makes Paul’s comments so troubling. Is it that he doesn’t understand what being an internment camp really is, or he doesn’t understand the realities regarding Congress not providing enough funding to deport everyone, or he doesn’t understand the need to act with compassion but also respect for the law?
Speaking of abuse of power, it was Rand Paul who told a group of teabaggers, “I think the first executive order that I would issue would be to repeal all previous executive orders.” Oh, so that’s totally not a dictator move. He’s just going to erase everyone else’s input from the beginning of our country. That’s over 10,00 executive orders that Rand Paul thinks should be just wiped out. As in, he is planning to put tons of power in his own hands should he get elected. He thinks he should have more power collectively than these other presidents each had. This is what makes Rand Paul an empty suit. Some of the things he says make sense, until you look under the hood and see how craven and unprincipled his stands really are.
This isn’t freedom or liberty speaking, it’s ignorance. This is what ignorance sounds like. Play it again. Yup. Just another teenager trying to sound smart. But this one is going to run for President.

The First Amendment Protects All Religions – Including Satanism

You don't have to approve of a religion to understand and accept that every religion is on equal footing in the United States…
First-Amendment-Religious-Freedom-610x400
“You ask, ‘What is our goal?’ To wage war to restore America to our judeo-christian heritage with all of our might and strength that dog will give us. You ask, ‘What is our aim?’ One word only: victory, in spite of all intimidation and terror.” – David Lane, religio-wingnut agitator, in a WND Essay, 2013
Bryan Fischer, who recently said that government is meant to be a minister of dog, and that picking a president is choosing a minister of dog, is back to his First Amendment tricks, claiming that it only applies to christians, and that that was all the Founders ever intended it to do.
This time it is not muslims he is targeting, but satanists: as he wrote at Renew America the other day, If First Amendment isn’t just about christianity, we have to allow satanism.
Obviously, if the government was meant to be a minister of dog, the Constitution, which establishes that government, would say so. It does not. Likewise, the Constitution would specify that the President is a minister of dog. Again, it does not.
Nor does the First Amendment speak only of christianity. Rather, it is meant to include all religions under its protection. And this is what has Fischer all riled up:
The Orange County School Board in Florida is getting ready to ban dog.
The board had allowed an evangelical cal to passively distribute bibles on its campuses. Passive distribution means simply that nobody is handing them out. They are placed on a table and students can come by and pick one up if they want. If they don’t want one, they don’t have to go get one.
But once members of the satanic temple publicly declared their intentions to distribute material on the “philosophy and practice of satanism,” the board re-evaluated its stand and decided not only to ban satan from its campuses but dog too. No longer will bible distribution be allowed on its campuses.
This incident serves as a prime example of how the gross distortion of the First Amendment is destroying religious liberty and turning christian literature into the educational equivalent of pornography, something that is considered so toxic it must be kept from the eyes of inquisitive students.
This is one of the most egregious examples of catastrophically poor reasoning skills I have ever run across. The school board does not have to suppress bible distributions. It can allow satanist literature as well. It is the school board’s choice to do what it did. Fischer surely knows this. The only defense he has then is to claim that the First Amendment applies only to christians, and claiming that thinking otherwise is a “gross distortion”:
I have written on numerous occasions that the purpose of the First Amendment, was only to protect the free exercise of the christian delusion and to prevent the selection and designation of one christian denomination as the official cult of the United States.
Like in March 2011, or in August of this year, when he said, “islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of islam.”
But the First Amendment doesn’t say what Fischer claims it says. Fischer is fond of bringing up Justice Joseph Story, and he does it here, too, writing that,
Story said the purpose of the Founders in crafting the First Amendment was not to “countenance much less to advance mohammedanism, judaism or infidelity…but to exclude all rivalry among christian sects” (meaning denominations).
Fischer says this quote is checkmate to our liberal dreams of religious freedom, but he doesn’t give you everything Story says. We rectified that lapse in our response to Fischer, but here we will limit ourselves to Story’s final line:
“[T]he catholic and the protestant, the calvinist and the arminian, the jew and the infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship.”
Fischer says he is merely speaking for the Founding Fathers, but the Founding Fathers disagree with him – quite vehemently in some cases:
Jefferson said in his autobiography about the preamble to his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which is a forerunner, or precursor to the First Amendment,
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “jesus christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of jesus christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the jew and the gentile, the christian and mohammedan, the hindoo and infidel of every denomination.
Hmmm. That’s what Story said. So it’s pretty clear the First Amendment applies to jews, gentiles, christians, muslims, and hindus.
Speaking of hindus, you might remember when Fischer claimed that the hindu festival of lights let demons into the Obama White House. Yes, those would be the same “hindoos” Jefferson was saying have rights of freedom of religion equal to any christian.
Oh, and let’s take a look at Jefferson’s “infidels of every denomination.”
This last pretty much covers any and all religions that remain, I would say. Fischer is big on the meaning of words, so let us look at the meaning of “every.” According to Oxford, this Old English word is “used with singular nouns to refer to all the members of a group of things or people.”
That means all infidels. An infidel is defined by Oxford as “somebody who does not believe in what the speaker considers to be the true religion.” In Jefferson’s world, by popular usage this would include everybody who isn’t a christian.
This means religious freedom applies to everybody.
Fischer doesn’t like these people – infidels – either, any of them, attacking ethnic religion, that is, the traditional beliefs of a culture, any more than he likes satanism. We have seen what behavior the actual practice of Jeffersonian religious freedom provokes in the bible belt.
“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Unless Fischer knows of some colonial christian denomination that worshiped no gods, and another that worshiped 20, Jefferson wasn’t talking about christianity.
And then there is George Washington’s letter to the jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790:
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.
Unfortunately for Fischer’s argument, the Constitution does not even mention dog, or the bible, or the ten commandments, or christianity. Neither does the First Amendment. As fantasies go, this is a wild one, but one that is frequently repeated despite zero evidence.
We could all just point and laugh if it wasn’t that repugicans keep electing crazies who agree with Fischer, like Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court, who in May, claimed the First Amendment applies only to christians, on account of, “buddha didn’t create us, mohammed didn’t create us, it was the dog of the Holy Scriptures.”
The repugicans have long desired to overturn the First Amendment by establishing christianity as the state religion. They just can’t get over the idea that anyone could have established a secular government to protect us from lunatics like them.
And Fischer claims dog gave liberals deranged minds! (You know, we read and stuff.) We warned you after the midterms, remember, not to expect the crazy to end. It clearly hasn’t. And it won’t.

New York City Police Officer Shoots And Kills Unarmed Black Man For Using Stairs In Building

akai gurley
A New York City police officer fatally shot an unarmed black man Thursday evening after the man and his girlfriend opted to take the stairs instead of the elevator in the woman’s apartment building. The couple encountered two police officers in the dimly lit stairwell as they approached the woman’s floor. One of the officers already had his gun drawn while in the stairwell and shot the man, 28-year-old Akai Gurley, once in the chest as the couple came upon the officers. The officer who killed Gurley has been identified as Peter Liang, a rookie officer who was on a probationary assignment patrolling a housing project.
Michelle Butler, Gurley’s girlfriend, recounted the tragic event to the New York Daily News.
“They didn’t identify themselves,” said Butler, 27, who began dating Gurley in January 2011. “No nothing. They didn’t give no explanation. They just pulled a gun and shot him in the chest.”
The terrified couple ran down to the fifth floor before Gurley collapsed in a pool of blood. Butler, who was standing alongside her boyfriend when he was hit, recalled their frantic final moments together as she begged Gurley to keep fighting.
“Yo, you OK? Talk to me!” she recalled shouting. “He wasn’t saying nothing. That was the last thing I said to him.”
Butler said the officers never came down to check on the mortally wounded man, and medical help was only sent after she banged on a neighbor’s door for help.
NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton held a press conference Friday morning to discuss the shooting incident. He stated that it was “an unfortunate tragedy” and said that it appeared to be “an accidental discharge” of the officer’s weapon. Bratton also pointed out that the building had seen two robberies and four assaults recently, perhaps providing cover to the officer regarding why his weapon was drawn as he entered the stairwell.
DNAinfo, a news website covering New York and Chicago neighborhoods, provided the following tweets from the press conference.
Based on the evidence and the police commissioner’s statements, Gurley was killed for no other reason than being a black man walking up some stairs in a building that had recently witnessed crimes. A nervous police officer had his gun out and as soon as he encountered Gurley, the officer shot first without hesitation. Due to this natural inclination to be prepared to shoot at a moment’s notice, a totally innocent man is dead.
While this may just be an unfortunate “circumstance of events,” it further validates the feeling among the black community that people of color are unfairly treated and targeted by law enforcement. In a September article, Mother Jones provided data from the CDC showing that over the past 40 years, blacks have been four times more likely to be shot and killed by law enforcement than whites. While that disparity shrank last decade, Mother Jones also revealed that over the same time period, the FBI’s stats still showed a 4-to-1 disparity in the rate of justifiable homicides between the two races.

Dad hurls chair at judge after light sentence handed to driver who killed his daughter

A judge failed to throw to book at a driver who killed a child, so the child's father threw a chair at her. From RTL Nieuws, translated automatically:
The father of a two year old girl who was killed last year in Meijel has thrown a chair to the court out of frustration.
The incident took place when the court in Roermond the cause of the accident, a 33-year-old Polish man, sentenced to community service of 120 hours. Check out the images rotated by the regional station L1.
The chair came just before the right to the ground. The father was put out of the courtroom by the police.
The accident, including the grandfather (67) and grandmother (64) of the child were killed, occurred last May in a gentle curve to the Heldense Dijk Meijel.
The court considered it proven that the man had his car out of control, went swinging and eventually ended up on a bike and rode the victims death. Unproven find the court that he has a lot of driving too fast.
The prosecutor, who had two weeks ago demanded fifteen months, has appealed. That protects the police investigation gives the impression that the man has certainly driven 120 kilometers. Spot a maximum speed of 80 kilometers per hour applies.

School board which proselytizes during meetings dares the FFRF to sue them ...

... The FFRF has obliged. 
After giving them multiple chances to stop breaking the law, the Chino Valley School District is being sued by the Freedom From Religion Foundation:
School board meetings open with a prayer, and often include bible readings and proselytizing by board members. Board President James Na injects christianity into many of his official statements, FFRF's legal complaint notes. At one typical meeting, Na "urged everyone who does not know jesus christ to go and find Him," and closed with a reading of Psalm 143.
Students often attend the meetings to receive awards, speak about issues affecting their schools, attend disciplinary hearings and do performances. Student attendance is mandatory in some instances, and a student representative is a member of the board.
Courts have consistently held that organized prayer in the public schools is unconstitutional, the complaint charges. Two federal appellate courts, the Third and Sixth Circuits, have specifically held school board prayer unconstitutional.

Sleep Changes

sleepHow our brains and bodies change as we fall asleep

Combining behavioral and physiologic measures depicts gradual process, may help diagnose sleep disorders Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have developed a system to accurately track the dynamic process of falling […]

Own It

bad-boss-relationship
Trouble with your boss? Own it.

Don’t get along with your boss? Your job performance may actually improve if the two of you can come to grips with the poor relationship. A new study led by […]

New Zealand: The Country That Doesn’t Exist

You’ve probably heard of New Zealand. You may have watched Xena: Warrior Princess, which is set there. But, like Xena, New Zealand is just pretend. It’s not real, which is why it commonly doesn’t appear on maps.
World Maps Without New Zealand is a Tumblr blog devoted to maps that show all of the nations and large islands around the world . . . except New Zealand. For some reason artists and, occasionally, actual mapmakers, leave it off.

Half-naked Winnie-the-Pooh no longer candidate for being public face of children's playground

Councillors in Poland have blocked a plan to have Winnie-the-Pooh used as the public face of a children's playground because the British bear is of "dubious sexuality" and "inappropriately dressed" for children because he is "half naked". Officials in the small town of Tuszyn, in central Poland, were meeting to decide upon a new patron for a children’s playground when Winnie-the-Pooh was brought up. But the suggestion was quickly rounded on by more conservative members. Councillor Ryszard Cichy, 46, said: "The problem with that bear is it doesn’t have a complete wardrobe.
"It is half naked which is wholly inappropriate for children." He then suggested a Polish fictional bear, saying: "Ours is dressed from head to toe, unlike Pooh who is only dressed from the waist up." The meeting, which was recorded by one of the Councillors, then turned on Winnie-the-Pooh’s sexuality. One official was heard saying: "It doesn’t wear underpants because it doesn’t have a sex. It’s a hermaphrodite."
Councillor Hanna Jachimska then began criticizing the Winnie-the-Pooh author Alan Alexander Milne. She said: "This is very disturbing but can you imagine! The author was over 60 and cut his [Pooh's] testicles off with a razor blade because he had a problem with his identity." The Councillors have yet to make a formal decision about which bear will be the patron of the children’s playground. But Winnie-the-Pooh is not a candidate, they said.

Grandmother called nutcase during clash with police still traumatized

A grandmother in Australia who was labelled a 'nutcase' and told 'she had no rights' by police during a roadside confrontation says she is still traumatized by the incident. Linda Milazzo refused to stop at a police roadblock in South Yarra, Victoria, in May 2012. Instead, the 63-year-old drove through the roadside operation, clipping an officer as she passed. Three police officers pursued her vehicle and a screaming match broke out when she refused to turn her engine off and get out of her car.
The run-in was recorded on an officer's vest-mounted camera, later presented as evidence at the County Court. In the video, a police officer demands Mrs Milazzo, who had recently suffered a heart attack, step out of the car, but she refuses, claiming she is having another cardiac arrest, to which the officer replies: 'You don't look like you're having a heart attack'. Threatening Mrs Milazzo with an attempted murder charge, an officer continues: 'You have just attempted to run over a policeman.

'You just attempted to run down a policeman'. An officer then turns to a colleague, labelling Mrs Milazzo a 'f*cking nutcase', followed by laughter. Mrs Milazzo received a $1,000 fine and was disqualified from driving for six months, but it was the actions of police that concerned her most. "I'd like to see them go and do some courses on how to deal with people," she said.
Two years on, Mrs Milazzo said police conduct must change. "I want them to learn from it. I want them to learn that this is not acceptable behaviour." Embarrassed by the video, Victoria's senior police say they will investigate the incident, with the officers involved facing possible disciplinary action. "We don't condone that sort of behaviour and we continually instruct our officers and guide our officers about being as polite as possible and courteous to the public when they're executing their duties," said Deputy Police Commissioner Graham Ashton.

Unhappy cyclist arrested after being rejected at Taco Bell drive-through for not being in a car

A drunken cyclist in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, whose drive-through order at Taco Bell was rejected because he wasn't in a car refused to leave the restaurant then tussled with police.
Gabriel Harris, 33, was charged with resisting an officer with violence in the late-night incident and was out of the Volusia County Branch Jail on $1,000 bail. Taco Bell workers called police at 3:10am on Sunday after Harris and a woman, both intoxicated, would not leave the restaurant.
Police found Harris on a bicycle by the menu speaker. Aron Tobler, the employee, said he refused service to Harris and Sarah Haliburton because “they placed an order on bicycles” in the drive through window. Haliburton was not charged. Police said Harris got to the restaurant after it closed at 3am.
As police were asking Harris to leave, they spotted a red Swiss Army knife on Harris' belt loop and tried to reach for it. Harris grabbed the officer's wrist and Harris was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed. Harris suffered a scraped forehead, police said.

Man became violent when asked to share his eggnog

An Upper East Tennessee man who was allegedly driven to violence by an unwelcome request to share his eggnog on Sunday evening is to appear in Hawkins County Sessions Court charged with two counts of domestic assault. Dennis Joseph Saxe, 45, of Mount Carmel, has been held in the Hawkins County Jail without bond since his arrest on Monday morning. At around 6:23pm Police Department Officer Luke Jarnigan was dispatched to Saxe's residence which he shares with his girlfriend Christina Wyant.
Wyant told Jarnigan that Saxe became violent when her teenage daughter asked for a glass of his eggnog. "Mr. Saxe got mad and punched a hole in the wall, screaming at (the daughter) for wanting some eggnog," Jarnigan said. "Christina stated she told Saxe to stop, and that it was just eggnog. (The daughter) stated she went into the living room and told Saxe that if he did not want her to have the eggnog, she wouldn't get any."
Saxe then allegedly ran up to the daughter, "got in her face," and started screaming at her. Wyant reportedly tried to get Saxe to stop, at which time Saxe allegedly pushed her down onto a couch. When Wyant got back up, Saxe allegedly began choking her. "Christina stated that at some point they all ended up on the floor, and Christina was yelling for Saxe to stop because he had his arms around (the daughter)," Jarnigan said. "Saxe stood up to punch Christina, and (the daughter's boyfriend) pushed Saxe onto the couch."
The daughter then called 911, and Saxe left the residence. MCPD Officer Cody Bussell arrested Saxe on Jarnigan's warrant for two counts of domestic assault after Saxe returned to his home. Jarnigan said there was no indication that anyone in the household was under the influence at the time of the alleged assaults, nor was the incident preceded by any other arguments or altercations. "Based on the witness accounts, she (Wyant's daughter) asked for a glass of eggnog, and he (Saxe) went off," Jarnigan said. "He didn't want to share his eggnog." >

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The Irish: The Forgotten White Slaves

They came as slaves: human cargo transported on British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. Some were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.
We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.
But are we talking about African slavery? King James VI and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.
The Irish slave trade began when James VI sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies.
By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade.
Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia.
Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (£50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than £5 Sterling). If a planter whipped, branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.
The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce.
Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish mothers, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their children and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls (many as young as 12) with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.
This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more, in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is also little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry.
In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded this chapter of Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong. Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.
But, why is it so seldom discussed? Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims not merit more than a mention from an unknown writer?
Or is their story to be the one that their English masters intended: To completely disappear as if it never happened.
None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.

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Early Neanderthal Site Endangered

The Baker’s Hole site in Kent is known for its 250,000-year-old Neanderthal remains. Francis Wenban-Smith of the University of Southampton is working to survey it and examine paleo-environmental remains before the site is lost to erosion, animal burrows, and plant roots. “These biological remains can tell us a lot about the environment early Neanderthals lived in. We can tell if the climate was warm or cold, whether the area was wooded or marshland, and other factors that help us to see the context in which they lived. They can also help date the site accurately,” he said. The new information will help to create a management plan that could ensure the site’s survival. To read about research into Neanderthal diet and technology, see "Neanderthal Medicine Chest."

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Spreading Bacteria

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Hand dryers can spread bacteria in public toilets

Modern hand dryers are much worse than paper towels when it comes to spreading germs, according to new University of Leeds research. Scientists from the University of Leeds have found […]

Jupiter's moon Europa, as you've never seen it before

PIA19048_ipNASA has issued a new image of Jupiter's moon, Europa.
Scientists have produced a new version of what is perhaps NASA's best view of Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Europa. The mosaic of color images was obtained in the late 1990s by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. This is the first time that NASA is publishing a version of the scene produced using modern image processing techniques.
More at nasa.gov about this stunning new view of one of the most fascinating elements in our solar system.

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