Lemmings and Global Warming

As the Lemmings go so too the deniers...

From Reuters:

NORWAY: November 6, 2008

OSLO - Lemming numbers are dwindling in Norway because of climate change, ending a historic cycle of population booms and busts that inspired a myth of mass suicides by the rodents, scientists said on Wednesday.

Fewer lemmings -- small brown, black or yellowish mammals -- in the mountains of south Norway meant predators such as the Arctic fox were forced to eat other prey including grouse and ptarmigan birds.

"The lemming population is falling and the peaks are disappearing," said Nils Stenseth of Oslo University, one of the authors of the report published in the journal Nature and written with colleagues in Norway and France.

He told Reuters it was the first study to link lemming numbers and disruptions to snowfall caused by global warming. The study of lemmings since 1970 showed the last population boom was in 1994, ending a pattern of spikes every 3-5 years.

Female lemmings can have litters of up to 12 young three times a year and the population can rocket if they are able to live sheltered from predators in early spring in gaps between powdery snow and the ground where they eat moss and other plants.

But warmer temperatures in recent years meant snow was wetter, often turning hard and icy. That made it more difficult for rodents to hide and reach food. (((Bad news for those who invested in toxic lemming real-estate investments.)))

"A relatively small effect on one particular species is having a broad effect on the system," Stenseth said. In years with a lemming population boom, predators such as Arctic foxes or snowy owls used to get a valuable boost....

Planet Ark : Lemmings In Norway Hit By Global Warming – Study.

James Brown's Money

Attorneys pushing a long-awaited settlement over how to parcel out James Brown's estate and trust want the trustees removed, claiming they've done little to protect the singer's legacy and money.

Court-appointed trustees Adele Pope and Robert Buchanan, who are attorneys in South Carolina, should be replaced by someone with the legal and accounting expertise needed to deal with the complex estate, Louis Levensen, an attorney for some of Brown's adult children, said Monday.

Levensen and other attorneys involved in the dispute over Brown's estate claim it has taken too long to resolve, and want the current trustees out.

*****

See what money does!

Olbermann gets four, too

Barack Obama, the presidential candidate Keith Olbermann championed this fall, just won a four-year term.

So, too, has Olbermann.

MSNBC announced Monday that Olbermann, its headlining prime-time star, has signed on to continue hosting "Countdown" each weeknight at 8 o'clock EST.

MSNBC essentially tore up an existing contract Olbermann had, adding a year and a half and more money.

Somebody at MSNBC has a brain!

Here be a bit o'history for ye!

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the
water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things
used to be.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.

Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.

Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water".

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.

Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs".

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed.

Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt.
Hence the saying, "Dirt poor".

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway.
Hence the saying a "thresh hold".

(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. Theywould eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while.

Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old".

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.
When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and literally "chew the fat".

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom ofthe loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.

Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would
have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a "dead ringer".

Now, whoever said History was boring! ! !

There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama

Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys sing about our Irish president elect Barack O'bama on Irish TV. And yes, the world has gone nuts over Barack Obama.
And if you want to sing along:

No one as Irish as Barack OBama

O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara
There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama

You don't believe me, I hear you say
But Barack's as Irish, as was JFK
His granddaddy's daddy came from Moneygall
A small Irish village, well known to you all

Toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a lama
There's no one as Irish As Barack O'Bama

He's as Irish as bacon and cabbage and stew
He's Hawaiian he's Kenyan American too
He’s in the white house, He took his chance
Now let’s see Barack do Riverdance

Toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a lama
There's no one as Irish As Barack O'Bama

From Kerry and Cork to old Donegal
Let’s hear it for Barack from old Moneygall
From the lakes if Killarney to old Connemara
There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama

O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara
There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama
From the old Blarney Stone to the great hill of Tara
There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama

2008 the white house is green, their cheering in Mayo and in Skibereen.
The Irish in Kenya, and in Yokahama,
Are cheering for President Barack O’Bama

O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara
There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama

The Hockey Moms gone, and so is McCain
They are cheering in Texas and in Borrisokane,

In Moneygall town, the greatest of drama, for our Famous president Barack O'Bama

Toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a lama
There's no one as Irish As Barack O'Bama

The great Stephen Neill, a great man of God,
He proved that Barack was from the Auld Sod
They came by bus and they came by car, to celebrate Barack in Ollie Hayes’s Bar

O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara
There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama

Scientists Turn Tequila into Diamonds

Whoever thought that science was a dry subject might change their mind after learning about a new discovery in which tequila is turned into diamonds. A team of Mexican scientists found that the heated vapor from 80-proof (40% alcohol) tequila blanco, when deposited on a silicon or stainless steel substrate, can form diamond films.

Now, if that don't beat all!

Read the rest here.

Proud to be an American again

Proud to be an American again

By Bill Press

It's impossible to exaggerate the special significance of this election.

In so many ways, the election of Obama is nothing short of revolutionary.
It represents a 180-degree change of direction for American policy and politics.

At least for the next eight years -- do Republicans seriously believe they can dislodge
Obama with Sarah Palin? -- we won't have to fight the White House any longer.
The White House will actually be fighting for us.

We will soon have a president who supports all the issues we have worked so hard to achieve: civil rights; women's rights; gay rights; workers' rights; universal health care; protecting the environment; and making our schools, again, the best in the world.

And, of course, we'll welcome a president who believes in protecting our basic freedoms and respecting the important limits on executive power enshrined
in the Constitution.

Not to mention the joy of having a president who doesn't mangle the English language.

Read the rest here.

Not only that, but Americans that were booed and jeered in Europe for the last eight years and up to the morning of November 4th are being cheered when they walk into a room today.

Shrub DISAPPROVAL at 76%

From CNN:

The all-time low on the public's mood may have something to do with the poll's finding that President Bush is the most unpopular president since approval ratings were first sought more than six decades ago. Seventy-six percent of those questioned in the poll disapprove of how he is handling his job.

That's an all-time high in CNN polling and in Gallup polling dating back to World War II.

"No other president's disapproval rating has gone higher than 70 percent. Bush has managed to do that three times so far this year," Holland said. "That means that Bush is now more unpopular than Richard Nixon was when he resigned from office during Watergate with a 66 percent disapproval rating."

As another astute Blogger puts it ...

This bit of news should be placed in the "Tell us something we don't know" file.

Fuzzy memories may not be fuzzy after all

For years, it's been thought that long-term memory holds much less detail about things we remember than short-term memory. However, new research from MIT suggests that longterm memories may not be that fuzzy, but are just harder to find.

From Scientific American:

If our memories aren’t all that fuzzy, then why do we often forget the details of things we want to remember? One explanation is that, although the brain contains detailed representations of lots of different events and objects, we can’t always find that information when we want it. As this study reveals, if we’re shown an object, we can often be very accurate and precise at being able to say whether we’ve seen it before. If we’re in a toy store and trying to remember what it was that our son wanted for his birthday, however, we need to be able to voluntarily search our memory for the right answer—without being prompted by a visual reminder. It seems that it is this voluntary searching mechanism that’s prone to interference and forgetfulness.

Why Do We Forget Things?

It's our Birthday!

Throughout the world on November 10th, U.S. Marines celebrate the birth of their Corps.

233 years ago, following an act of congress, the United States Marines began recruiting in Philadelphia at Tun Tavern, a combination bar and brothel.

And, to this day, it is said that good Marines are never far from either.

Happy Birthday ... Chesty Puller ... Wherever You Are!

Our readers

Carolina Naturally readers from the United States can be found in:

Dumfries; Ithaca; Lapeer; Livermore; Naugatuck; Tewksbury; Wahiawa; Walla Walla

and get this ... Sunrise and Sunset!

Now how is that for 'round the clock readership!?!

Reminder to Vote

Don't forget to vote for Carolina Naturally in the 2008 Weblog Awards.
We have been nominated for Best New Blog and Best Hidden Gem.

Did You Know ...

Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels - and it means "beautiful thinking".

There's a storm heading for Washington

It appears that Obama and his Chief-of-Staff Emanuel are going to take Washington by storm ... literally.

In Hebrew, Rahm (רעם)* means “thunder” and Barack (ברק) means “lightning”!

They found an old earring

Israeli archeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old gold earring beneath a parking lot next to the walls of Jerusalem's old city, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday.

The discovery dates back during the Roman period (first century B.C.E.), said Doron Ben-Ami, director of excavation at the site.
The piece was found in a Byzantine structure built several centuries after the jeweled earring was made, showing it was likely passed down through generations, he said.

The find is luxurious: A large pearl inlaid in gold with two drop pieces, each with an emerald and pearl set in gold."It must have belonged to someone of the elite in Jerusalem," Ben-Ami said. "Such a precious item, it couldn't be one of just ordinary people."

Shimon Gibson, an American archaeologist who was not involved in the dig, said the find was truly amazing, less because of its Roman origins than for its precious nature.
"Jewelry is hardly preserved in archaeological context in Jerusalem," he said, because precious metals were often sold or melted down during the many historic takeovers of the city.
"It adds to the visual history of Jerusalem," Gibson added, saying it brings attention to the life of women in antiquity.

Though Gibson dates the piece slightly later than the antiquities authority, to sometime between the second and fourth centuries C.E., he said its quality and beauty were impressive.