Variety Speak

Anamaniacs

Pawnshops going uptown

According to the Wall Street Journal ...

People pulling up to pawnshops today are driving Cadillacs and Bmws

...Lee Amberg, owner of AA Classic Windy City Jewelry & Loan in affluent Evanston, Illinois, said he's been seeing Cartier watches, two-carat diamonds, David Yurman jewelry and pieces from Tiffany's.
One client, he said, brought in a fur coat from Saks Fifth Avenue that retailed at $9,000. She told him she needed a loan to help buy private-school uniforms for her child.

Read more in the - Wall Street Journal

In another sure sign the economy's tanking - the 'well-to-do' are pawning their baubles. My oh, my what is the world coming to, when the wealthy have to live like everybody else!?!
Just think that mother had to buy all those private school uniforms rather than let her spawn attend classes with the unwashed masses - we can't have her precious rubbing elbows with the 'help' now can we?

Top 10 things Americans want

But Congress refuses to listen

10. Marijuana Decriminalization
9. Universal Health Care
8. Stricter Campaign Finance Laws
7. Equal Aid to Palestinians and Israelis
6. Reducing Military Spending.
5. Increased Social Spending
4. Acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol.
3. A Diplomatic Solution with Iran
2. Troops out of Iraq
1. Impeach that Bush bastard.

Full Details

Group moves people into foreclosed houses

Activists illegally place homeless in empty homes, say squatters help protect properties.

Max Rameau delivers his sales pitch like a pro. “All tile floor!” he says during a recent showing. “And the living room, wow! It has great blinds.”

But in nearly every other respect, he is unlike any real estate agent you've ever met. He is unshaven, drives a beat-up car and wears grungy cut-off sweat pants. He also breaks into the homes he shows. And his clients don't have a dime for a down payment.

Rameau is an activist who has been executing a bailout plan of his own around Miami's empty streets: He is helping homeless people illegally move into foreclosed homes.

“We're matching homeless people with peopleless homes,” he said with a grin.

Rameau and a group of like-minded advocates formed Take Back the Land, which also helps the new “tenants” with secondhand furniture, cleaning supplies and yard upkeep. So far, he has moved six families into foreclosed homes and has nine on a waiting list.

“I think everyone deserves a home,” said Rameau, who said he takes no money from his work with the homeless. “Homeless people across the country are squatting in empty homes. The question is: Is this going to be done out of desperation or with direction?”

Rameau, who makes his living as a computer consultant, said he is doing the owners a favor, saving the properties from drug dealers, vandals and thieves.

He said he is not scared of getting arrested.

“There's a real need here, and there's a disconnect between the need and the law,” he said. “Being arrested is just one of the potential factors in doing this.”

Miami spokeswoman Kelly Penton said city officials did not know Rameau was moving homeless into empty buildings – but they are also not stopping him.

“There are no actions on the city's part to stop this,” she said in an e-mail. “It is important to note that if people trespass into private property, it is up to the property owner to take action to remove those individuals.”

Tiny microhabitat for the study marine organisms

MIT researchers have built a tiny microhabitat to study the food chain of marine microbes. The microbial ecosystem is about the size of a piece of chewing gum, or microscope slide.

From the MIT News Office:

The MIT study is one of the first detailed explorations of how sea creatures so small -- 500,000 can fit on the head of a pin -- find food in an ocean-size environment...

Depending on the organism being studied, nutrients or prey are injected with a syringe-based pump into the device's microfluidic channel, which is 45 mm long, 3 mm wide and 50 micrometers deep. "While relying on different swimming strategies, all three organisms exhibited behaviors which permitted efficient and rapid exploitation of resource patches," (professor Roman) Stocker said. It took bacteria less than 30 seconds, for example, to congregate within a patch of organic nutrients.

This new laboratory tool creates a microhabitat where tiny sea creatures live, swim, assimilate chemicals and eat each other. It provides the first methodological, sub-millimeter scale examination of a food web that includes single-celled phytoplankton, bacteria and protozoan predators in action.

Tiny ecosystem

The 2008 Stats

Carolina Naturally is ...
averaging about 400 readers a day
averaging around 12,000 readers a month
read in 158 countries

Not all that bad for a little ol'blog that is only a year and a half old and only advertised for the last few months. But has garnered a number of awards for 'best find' and 'hidden gem' as well as a few 'best of' awards in 2008. (Wish we had won all the ones we were up for, but you can't have everything ... it's the ones you didn't even know you were up for that are the most satisfying when you receive them, though).

Pleasant Surprise

I just got this in the mail and what a pleasant surprise!
Thanks for noticing.

Flavonoids improve performance

Chocolate, Wine And Tea Improve Brain Performance

All that chocolate might actually help finish the bumper Christmas crossword over the seasonal period. According to Oxford researchers working with colleagues in Norway, chocolate, wine and tea enhance cognitive performance.

The team from Oxford’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and Norway examined the relation between cognitive performance and the intake of three common foodstuffs that contain flavonoids (chocolate, wine, and tea) in 2,031 older people (aged between 70 and 74).

Participants filled in information about their habitual food intake and underwent a battery of cognitive tests.Those who consumed chocolate, wine, or tea had significantly better mean test scores and lower prevalence of poor cognitive performance than those who did not. The team reported their findings in the Journal of Nutrition.

The role of micronutrients in age-related cognitive decline is being increasingly studied. Fruits and beverages such as tea, red wine, cocoa, and coffee are major dietary sources of polyphenols, micronutrients found in plant-derived foods. The largest subclass of dietary polyphenols is flavonoids, and it has been reported in the past that those who consume lots of flavonoids have a lower incidence of dementia.

Science Daily

Derinkuyu, the mysterious underground city of Turkey

In 1963, an inhabitant of Derinkuyu (in the region of Capadocia, central Anatolia, Turkey), demolishing a wall of his house-cave, discovered that behind the wall was a mysterious room that never had been seen; this room lead to another one, and this one to another one and another one. Thus by chance the underground city of Derinkuyu was rediscovered, whose first level was probably excavated by the Hittites around year 1400 a.C.

The archaeologists began to study this fascinating abandoned underground city.

At present 20 underground levels are explored. The upper eight levels only can be visited; the others partially are obstructed or reserved to the archaeologists and anthropologists who study Derinkuyu.

Read the rest here.

The Six Nations of 2010

See it is not only the wing-nuts here that are delusional ... it is wing-nuts everywhere. Delusions are their whole and entire existence.

The Six Nations of 2010 [Image: Professor Igor Panarin's six-fold vision of a disintegrated United States; I love how it will precisely follow today's existing state lines – and that Kentucky will join the European Union].

In what sounds to be very obviously an act of wishful projection, a former KGB intelligence analyst turned public intellectual named Igor Panarin has explained to the Wall Street Journal that the United States only has about 18 months left to live. In the summer of 2010, it will "disintegrate" into six politically separate realms – and, conveniently for a thinker who clearly leans to the right, the borders of these realms will coincide with a new racial segregation. The fantasy of living amidst people who don't look like you will come to an end.
Best of all, from Panarin's perspective, Alaska – Sarah Palin included, looking out with alarm from her office window – will "revert" to Russian control.

Read the rest here.

Of course giving Sarah Palin back to the Russians would not be should a bad thing, now would it.

Very Bad Idea

The state of Oregon to pursue mileage tax

This is a very, very bad idea for so many reasons…

“As Oregonians drive less and demand more fuel-efficient vehicles, it is increasingly important that the state find a new way, other than the gas tax, to finance our transportation system.”

According to the policies he has outlined online, Kulongoski proposes to continue the work of the special task force that came up with and tested the idea of a mileage tax to replace the gas tax. […]

A GPS-based system kept track of the in-state mileage driven by the volunteers. When they bought fuel, a device in their vehicles was read, and they paid 1.2 cents a mile and got a refund of the state gas tax of 24 cents a gallon.

Albany Democrat Herald

More than there should be

716,760 people are dead because of the shrub and the two wars he started if you use the lowest credible estimates.
Other credible estimates put it higher.
Since the total is not fully known until long after the war is over and wartime numbers tend to be low there are credible sources placing the number at 1.5 million dead now.
1.5 million many turn out to be low as well after all is said and done.
Even if the 716,760 number is correct - that is 716,760 more than there should be.

Our readers in Real Time

Right now readers with taste are enjoying Carolina Naturally in:

The USA, Turkey, Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, Poland, Romania, Kuwait, Russia, New Zealand, Chile, Spain, Sweden, the Czech Republic and China.

Underground explosion rocks Savannah's downtown

Crews were waiting for an area to cool off under the streets of downtown Savannah before they could start determining what caused an electrical explosion Monday that blew off manhole covers and knocked out power for hours to many stores, restaurants and homes.

By late Monday, almost all streets had reopened, as did stores and restaurants evacuated after the blast, said police spokesman Gene Harley.
Also, crews had restored power to all the homes and all but a few businesses that had gone dark, said a Georgia Power spokeswoman.

No injuries were reported and there was only minimal property damage, officials said.

Police evacuated the historic downtown district after getting calls about the explosion around 8:49 a.m., Harley said.

"I didn't see it happen, but I heard an explosion and then black smoke started billowing out of the ground from the manhole covers," said city spokesman Bret Bell, who was about a block away at City Hall.

The fire department sprayed foam to cool down the affected areas, but the blast site was still too hot late Monday for crews to access the underground electrical cable network to determine the cause, said Georgia Power spokeswoman Swann Seiler.

In August, an underground electrical fire just blocks away also spewed smoke through manhole covers and cut off power downtown.
That problem, Seiler said, was caused by a fault in the underground network system.Georgia Power is in the second year of a $50 million five-year upgrade in the underground power network downtown, Seiler said.
"I think this will probably trigger some sort of larger public discussion," Bell said.
"I think the public will want to know exactly what Georgia Power is doing."

The affected area included River Street, the site of many of Savannah's tourist attractions, shops and restaurants.
"We are very fortunate that, in this high traffic area, with three manhole covers coming up, there were no injuries and relatively no property damage," Seiler said.

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says

You can make good profits in the coming year, even if times are tough.

Now, that's what I like to hear!