Underwater Stones Puzzle Archeologists

“Forty feet below the surface of Lake Michigan in Grand Traverse Bay, a mysterious pattern of stones can be seen rising from an otherwise sandy half-mile of lake floor. Likely the stones are a natural feature. But the possibility they are not has piqued the interest of archeologists, native tribes and state officials since underwater archeologist Mark Holley found the site in 2007 during a survey of the lake bottom.

The site recently has become something of an Internet sensation, thanks to a blogger who noticed an archeological paper on the topic and described the stones as “underwater Stonehenge.” Though the stones could signal an ancient shoreline or a glacial formation, their striking geometric alignment raises the possibility of human involvement. The submerged site was tundra when humans of the hunter-gatherer era roamed it 6,000 to 9,000 years ago. Could the stones have come from a massive fishing weir laid across a long-gone river? Could they mark a ceremonial site? Adding to the intrigue, one dishwasher-size rock seems to bear an etching of a mastodon.”

More in the The Chicago Tribune.

Anger Problems

The proliferation of blogs and emails may be partially responsible for the increase in anger of recent years. We can learn a lot about the emotions that motivate many blogs and emails, as well as reactions to them, from, believe it or not, a few observations of animals.

Anger, for instance, is the fight part of the primitive fight/flight/freeze response common to all mammals. It functions primarily to protect self and juvenile offspring from harm. Activation of the fight/flight/freeze response requires a dual perception of threat and vulnerability. Animals respond to lesser threats with greater anger, fear, or submission (freeze) when they are wounded, starving, sick, or recently traumatized.

The activation of fight over flight/freeze is determined by the annihilation potential of the threat. A raccoon will ferociously fight a rat to defend her newborn pups but not a cougar. Thus more anger is observed in powerful animals, which tend to be predatory. Powerful animals use anger to defend and acquire territory and resources, thereby reducing threats to the survival of self and juvenile offspring.

Social animals have to make choices about where to go, who gets to eat what and mate with whom, and when all these things happen. They must develop some kind of executive function to make necessary choices as a group. Most social animals, including humans, answer this challenge by organizing into a hierarchy, in which individuals achieve rank. Ascending up the hierarchy increases status, along with access to resources, with most of both bestowed on a chief executive, i.e., alpha males or matriarchs.

More in Psychology Today.

*****

It's possible ... there is an awful lot of anger out there - especially from one segment. Though I suspect there are a few other factors in the rise of anger.

Award for prisoner's mattress all wet

A judge has slashed the $295,000 award a jury gave to a Wisconsin prisoner who claimed his rights were violated by being forced to sleep on a moldy, stinky mattress.

A federal jury awarded Reggie Townsend that amount in punitive damages in September.
It found that New Lisbon Correctional Institution Sgt. Jerry Allen ignored Townsend's complaints about the mattress being wet because he had to sleep near a shower.

Judge Barbara Crabb found the amount excessive.
She ordered Townsend to accept $29,500 or go to trial over the amount.

Townsend, 29, of Milwaukee, is serving a 23-year sentence for reckless homicide.

*****

You've got to be kidding! He is in prison, not the Hilton. Deal with it! He should not get a cent!

Talk about living in denial ...

The fantasy:

What the wing-nuts are saying and doing:

Wing-nut group pledges to fight repugican senators who support stimulus

A whacked-out wing-nut political action committee is pledging to support primary challenges to any repugican senator who backs the economic stimulus package -- the latest public show of obstructionism and divisiveness from the lunatic fringe over the massive measure before Congress.

Three repugican senators voted for the $838 billion compromise version of the package that the Senate approved today.

"The American people don't want this trillion-dollar political payoff that will just line the pockets of non-governmental organizations who supported [President Barack] Obama in the election," said Scott Wheeler, the demented leader of The National Republican Trust PAC, a wing-nut organization that calls for less government spending and lower taxes and a return to the stone age socially as well as politically.

"Republican senators are on notice," he said. "If they support the stimulus package, we will make sure every voter in their state knows how they tried to further bankrupt voters in an already bad economy."

*****

The reality:

Obama Has Upper Hand in Stimulus Fight

The American public gives President Obama a strong 67% approval rating for the way in which he is handling the government's efforts to pass an economic stimulus bill.

See the Gallup Poll here.

As of this moment ...

576 Brave men and women will not be returning from Afghanistan
ALIVE!

Taiwan's Wu pleads guilty

Taiwan's former first lady admitted to laundering $2.2 million and forging documents Tuesday - the latest in a judicial process that has seen her husband stage a jailhouse hunger strike, her daughter lash out at media, and her son plead guilty to similar charges.
Wu Shu-chen told a three-judge panel that she sent abroad $2.2 million she received from a contractor in connection with a government construction project and that she forged documents related to a special presidential fund.
However, she did not admit to charges of embezzling money from the fund and other charges of taking bribes in connection with a land deal and the government construction project.
She did not say whether the money was a bribe - as prosecutors allege - or a political donation as she has repeatedly suggested.
The case against Wu is part of a complex web of charges that has also ensnared her husband, former President Chen Shui-bian, as well as her son, daughter-in-law and brother.

Alcohol Abuse

It wasn't quite the Boston Tea Party.
The proof was a little higher.

Kentucky bourbon industry officials stood shoulder-to-shoulder today and poured spirits on the state Capitol's front steps to protest a proposed 6-percent sales tax on all booze.
"They've always been taxing us to death over the years," said Jimmy Russell, master distiller at Lawrenceburg, Ky.-based Wild Turkey, moments after pouring out an entire bottle of bourbon into a pile of melting snow.

Beer and bourbon trucks circled the Capitol all morning.
A few hundred people holding signs and wearing stickers gathered in the Rotunda to shout their opposition.
But lawmakers on the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee weren't swayed.
They're staring down a projected $456 million revenue shortfall for the next fiscal year.
They approved the tax measure, which includes doubling the state's cigarette tax from 30 to 60 cents a pack.

*****

Raising taxes on alcohol and cigarettes ... And there is a problem with this? How? Why?

Phantom Corsair

This magnificent machine is a 1938 Phantom Corsair. It was a prototype designed by Rust Heinz, of the Heinz ketchup family, and coachbuilder Maurice Schwartz. You can see it roll in the 1938 film The Young In Heart.
"Is This The Motor Car Of Tomorrow?" from Popular Science, November 1940

No sign of dolphins in NJ rivers

A helicopter search of two New Jersey rivers today failed to turn up a glimpse of the dolphins that had been living there since last summer, perhaps an indication the mammals have safely swum away.
The U.S. Coast Guard's Atlantic City station and scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration surveyed the Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers in Monmouth County for any sign of the bottlenose dolphins.
They didn't find any.
Teri Frady, a NOAA spokeswoman, says the lack of dolphin sightings could mean the last five have escaped from the river.
"Clearly, the fact that there were no live animals in the rivers and that there were no carcasses spotted is a good sign," she said.
The owner of a restaurant on the banks of the Shrewsbury says he and some of his employees saw the dolphins swim out into Sandy Hook Bay last month.

Three of the original 16 dolphins spotted in the river last June have died.
The fate of the others is unknown.
The dolphins had been at the center of a tug-of-war between federal wildlife officials - who said they would leave the dolphins alone unless they appeared to be in imminent danger - and animal rescuers, who wanted them either removed or coaxed out of the river and back out to sea.
Local rescuers worried that waiting too long could invite a replay of a scenario that resulted in the deaths of four dolphins that lingered in the river in 1993.
Ice eventually closed in on them, and they drowned.

The restaurant owner who said he saw the dolphins swim out to the bay said they did so right before the Shrewsbury froze over.
NOAA scientists say they believe the dolphins originally swam into the rivers to pursue fish they feed on.

Mexico mass grave may be Aztec resistance fighters

Archaeologists digging in a ruined pyramid in downtown Mexico City said they found a mass grave that may hold the skeletal remains of the Aztec holdouts who fought conquistador Hernan Cortes.
The unusual burial holds the carefully arrayed skeletons of at least 49 adult Indians who were buried in the remains of a pyramid razed by the Spaniards during the 1521 conquest of the Aztec capital.
The pyramid complex, in the city's Tlatelolco square, was the site of the last Indian resistance to the Spaniards during the months-long battle for the city.

Archaeologist Salvador Guilliem, the leader of the excavation for Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, said the Indians might have been killed during Cortes' war or during one of the uprisings that continued after the conquest.
Guilliem said many burials have been found at the site with the remains of Indians who died during epidemics that swept the Aztec capital in the years after the conquest and killed off much of the Indian population.
But those burials were mostly hurried, haphazard affairs in which remains were jumbled together in pits regardless of age or gender.

The burial reported today is different.
The dead had many of the characteristics of warriors: All were young men, most were tall and several showed broken bones that had mended.
The men also were carefully buried Christian-style, lying on their backs with arms crossed over their chests, though many appear to have been wrapped up in large maguey cactus leaves, rather than placed in European coffins.
The mass grave contained evidence of an Aztec-like ritual in which offerings such as incense and animals were set alight in an incense burner, but Spanish elements including buttons and a bit of glass also were present.

Susan Gillespie, an archaeologist at the University of Florida, said the grave was unusual, both because it was unlikely the Spanish would have bothered with such careful burial of Aztec warriors, and because the Indians themselves would have been more likely to cremate any honored dead.
But Gillespie, who was not involved in the excavation, also noted that little is known about the period immediately following the fall of the city, when Cortes razed most pyramids and temples, then abandoned the largely destroyed metropolis.
He lived on the city's outskirts before returning to rebuild a Spanish-style city on the ruins.
It may have been in that interim period after Cortes left that the Aztecs returned to bury their dead, Guilliem said.
Gillespie agreed the burials could be those of disease victims or rebellious Indians from later years, rather than warriors who fell in the 1521 battle, and said more research was needed, such as a skeletal analysis to show cause of death.
Another possibility, she said, was that the men could have been held by the Spanish for some time and killed later.
That was the fate that befell the leader of the Aztec resistance, emperor Cuauhtemoc.

Mayor has police escort him to the restroom

Snellville, Georgia politics have reached a low point.

Jerry Oberholtzer, the mayor of the Atlanta suburb, has been asking for police escorts to the restroom in City Hall after a verbal altercation with city council member Robert Jenkins a few months ago. Oberholtzer says he no longer feels comfortable around Jenkins.

Jenkins says the mayor has no reason to worry for his physical safety and should only "fear me as a political opponent." The mayor has even had police Chief Roy Whitehead escort him to the restroom.

Jenkins and Oberholtzer have butted heads for years. Last week, the mayor sent pictures of what he said are code violations at one of Jenkins' properties to police. Authorities issued a warning to the councilman to clean up by March 1st or face jail time.

*****

Give me a break, will you ...

Seeking Medical Assistance

Injured deer stumbles into Ohio vet clinic

Workers at an Rossford, Ohio pet shop are used to worried pet owners bringing their animals in to be treated in the store's clinic.

But an unaccompanied visit Saturday by a deer to the PetSmart in Rossfield was a first for the store.

Manager Trudi Urie says the wounded doe was hanging out behind the store and then ran through an open door into a stockroom.

Staff members made sure the animal couldn't enter the shop area and called police and a veterinarian.

Agustin Cuesta had the deer brought into the clinic and closed a wound on its hind leg with dissolvable stitches as assistants held it down.

He says he couldn't tell how the animal got hurt.

The door was reopened and the animal ran back into the wild.

Talk about a sweet tooth

Teen charged with billing school for $37K of candy

Police say an Ohio teenager tried to pull off a sweet deal by ordering more than $37,000 of candy online and charging the bill to his former high school.

Police say the 18-year-old used a Middletown High School purchasing number to place orders for thousands of lollipops and candy bars from Michigan-based The Goodies Factory. It wasn't clear how he accessed the number.

The candy company became suspicious, contacted the school and was told by detectives to send an empty box.

Police say he had the order shipped to his home and was arrested after the fake delivery.

The teen faces two counts of felony telecommunications fraud. He was being held in Middletown City Jail on more than $30,000 bond.

Oh, for the love of lemons

Man calls 911 after eatery runs out of lemonade

Authorities in Boynton Beach, Florida said a man, 66, was arrested after calling 911 on Saturday to complain that a fast food restaurant ran out of lemonade.

After a drive-through employee failed to respond to the man's threat of contacting the police, the irate diner called 911, a police report alleges.

He spent about 5 minutes talking to the 911 operator about his complaint.

Boynton Beach police said the man was charged with abuse of 911 communication.

*****

Lemonade isn't that good no matter who or how you make it, people.

Police chase escaped zebras through streets

These fugitives were wearing stripes even before they were caught.

Police in the southern Germany city of Augsburg said they had to chase four circus zebras through the streets after they escaped from their handlers.

Police spokesman Robert Goeppel said one of the escapees gave itself up to by passers-by as it wandered the city streets. The other three were eventually corralled in a paddock on the outskirts of town.

Goeppel said there were no injuries, either to humans or zebras, during Monday's chase. He said it was the first time "anything like this has happened here."

Muzak files for bankruptcy protection

From the "Hallelujah, maybe now we can have real music" Department:

Muzak Holdings LLC, the Fort Mill, S.C. provider of background music to businesses, today announced it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection so it can restructure its debt.

The company had $105 million in secured bank debt that was due today, part of $440 million worth of debt due between February and March. Last month, Muzak said it had received a 22-day extension on the $105 million debt. The company said today that it and Muzak's major creditor constituencies are committed to completing restructuring negotiations.

“Muzak is a solid business with an outstanding customer base, but we are burdened with substantial debt obligations established over a decade ago,” Chief Executive Officer Stephen Villa said in a statement. “We intend to move through this process as quickly as possible and we firmly believe that this course of action will better position Muzak for long-term success.”

Muzak has 1,250 employees, including 550 in Fort Mill. It designs and installs professional sound systems for businesses, and provides other services, such as promotional music for corporate branding.

Catch the Wind

Donovan (live)

Let's hope it's not the career bad guys

California May Be Forced to Release Up to a Third of All Prisoners

Federal judges on Monday tentatively ordered California to release tens of thousands of inmates, up to a third of all prisoners, in the next three years to stop dangerous overcrowding.

As many as 57,000 could be let go if the current population were cut by the maximum percentage considered by a three-judge panel. Judges said the move could be done without threatening public safety — and might improve a public safety hazard.

The state immediately said it would appeal the final ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trend-setting California, the Golden State, has an immense prison system responsible for nearly 170,000 inmates, and their care has become a major political and budget issue as officials weigh multibillion costs of improved facilities against death and illness behind bars.

Full Story in Reuters

Science News

Solar cells inspired by moth eyes

Philips Research Laboratories engineers have taken inspiration from moth eyes to develop a coating for solar cells that increases their efficiency. Nanostructures, comparable to the tapered structures on the insects' eyes, reduce the amount of light that's reflected off the photovoltaic material. From Physics World:

To maximize the amount of light entering (moths') eyes, to help them see at night, the insects’ eyes are covered in tapered nanostructures. This creates an “effective medium” where the refractive index gradually increases as light travels from air through to the insects’ optical nerve. The resulting effective index is close to one, which means that very little light is reflected out of the eye.

Inspired by these biostructures, Gomez Rivas and colleagues have mimicked the effect by growing nanowires of different lengths - creating a metamaterial with optical properties that change gradually as a function of distance.

"Moth eyes inspire more efficient solar cell"

Health News

Hallucinations that are tied to eye disease

In recent days, both the Daily Mail and Wired.com looked at Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a disease characterized by bizarre and vivid visual hallucinations. Interestingly, people who suffer from CBS aren't mentally ill but have visual impairments such as macular degeneration. Even weirder is that the hallucinations often involve characters or things that are much smaller in size than reality.

From the Daily Mail:

Following his wife's death six years ago, David Stannard has become accustomed to spending quiet evenings alone at his home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

So it came as a surprise to the 73-year-old when he looked up from his television one evening to discover he was sharing his living room with two RAF pilots and a schoolboy.

'The pilots were standing next to the TV, watching it as if they were in the wings of a theatre,' he says.

An estimated 100,000 people in Britain have Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS), which leads to hallucinations. These can include visions of miniature people

'The little boy was in a grey, Fifties-style school uniform. He just stood there in the hearth looking puzzled. He was 18 inches high at most.'

"Visions of 'little people'"

Meanwhile, Wired.com interviewed famed neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose eye disease resulted in his own hallucinations. From Wired.com:

Why do hallucinations occur in people who lose their sight?

Oliver Sacks: When a part of the brain that is used to a sensory input, whether it is visual or auditory, isn't getting it, then it tends to become hyperactive and to generate activity on its own. In the case of musical hallucinations, with [people who go deaf], the brain delves into its memories of music, and so people hallucinate pieces of music, sometimes just a few bars.

The visual ones [in people who go blind] are different. People never recognize the figures or places they see. They're not like bits of memory. They're sort of strange inventions in a way, which the visual brain comes up with.

Q&A: Neurologist Oliver Sacks

For What It's Worth

Buffalo Springfield

Achieving Manhood

Writer Ernest Hemingway believed that to prove their manhood, males had to do four things in their lifetime: have a son, write a book, fight a bull and plant a tree.

Well, using those criteria I achieved manhood went I was fifteen.
(I know that is a little late, but hey I wanted to be a kid before I was a father.)
Had my first son at fifteen.
Wrote my first book at twelve.
Fought my first bull at eleven.
(There was an ornery old black bull that used to chase us down by the fishing hole and between running up trees to get out of his way and jumping fences to avoid him we - my friends and I - used to bash him over the head with sticks when he got too close.)
Planted my first tree at two.

Can I be a kid now?

Really Great Dictator

Pinky and The Brain

Quote of the Day

"The Republicans set the economy on fire
and now they're blocking the fire trucks."

~ Paul Begala,

And I Quote

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

~ John Lennon

Hooked on Facts

(Warning: repugicans [and other wing-nuts] should avoid reading this segment because it deals with facts - something that is totally foreign to them and therefore it is unknown what detrimental effects the truth will have own them and their warped psyches.)

Today we introduce a new segment where we present a few random facts (this is an upgrade of the old 'random facts' posts of the past).

So without further Adieu ...

Here are the facts:

1. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan.
2. Only 55% of Americans know that the Sun is a star.
3. When pitched, the average Major League baseball rotates 15 times before being hit.
4. Blue eyes are the most sensitive to light, dark brown eyes are the least sensitive.
5. A blue whale's heart is the size of a Volkswagon Beetle.
6. The male platypus has poisonous spurs on its legs.

'Real Dinosaur' in the museum

This is so cool!

Kids meet a 'real live' dinosaur in the hall of a museum.

Our Readers

Carolina Naturally readers today have been in:

India, England, Scotland, Canada, Poland, Australia, Ireland, Malaysia, Brazil, Liechtenstein, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and the United States

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

Look around.

OK.