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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.


Thursday, August 5, 2010

The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift
Today's horoscope says:
If you feel as if you've wandered into a maze, that's no big surprise, considering the mess of crazy, mixed signals and communication knots you have to deal with.
Rebuff these overcomplicated forces by making sure you're well informed, direct and unfailingly polite -- even to those who are simply adding to the chaos.
You're an irresistible force when you set out to make solid plans.
Everyone wants to be on your team, for good reason!

Today is:
Today is Thursday, August 5, the 217th day of 2010.
There are 148 days left in the year.

Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:
National Underwear Day

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Her Honor

The addition of Elena Kagan marks the first time that three female justices will serve together. 
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Culinary DeLites

Culinary DeLites
Say goodbye to mushy, flavorless veggies with this comprehensive guide.  
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'Greatest film never released' is back

Thirteen years ago, the star-studded "Colin Fitz Lives!" was lauded by critics, then disappeared — until now. Trailer 
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Things You Must Check Before Disposing Of Old Computers

When you buy a new computer, what do you do with the old one? Whatever you do, there are a few things you must check before giving away, trashing, or recycling a computer.

Backing up information and securely deleting private data is one major concern. You may also be able to reuse parts or the entire computer. This article provides a quick overview of your options when it comes to disposing of old computers.

Bad Cops

Bad Cops





Caroline Giuliani, Rudy's Daughter, Arrested for Shoplifting

The daughter of Rudy Giuliani, the former federal prosecutor and one time presidential candidate, was arrested today when she allegedly tried to shoplift cosmetics, according to police.

Caroline Giuliani, 20, was taken into custody at a branch of the Sephora skincare and makeup store near the home on the tony East Side of Manhattan she shares with her mother, Donna Hanover, a former newscaster who divorced from Giuliani in 2002.

She was allegedly caught by a store security camera shoplifting five cosmetics items worth more than $100, according to police sources.

Giuliani is currently being held by police. Charges have yet to be filed, but police sources told ABC News that she is expected to be charged with petit larceny and released. She will be required to appear before a judge at a later date, sources said.

Giuliani's daughter is a student at Harvard University. She famously made waves in 2007 when she listed herself as a member of Barack Obama's Facebook group, "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)," while her father was gunning for the Republican presidential nomination.

Her father initially made his reputation as a prosecutor who was tough on crime. He rode that reputation to become mayor of New York City.

Caroline Giuliani has been estranged from her father since he split from Hanover for his current wife.

Rudy Giuliani also had a falling out with his son, Andrew, now 24-years-old, after the divorce. But in a 2009 interview with GQ, Andrew revealed he reconciled with his father, saying, "I support him in whatever he chooses to do."

The former mayor's daughter is far from the first bold-faced name to be accused of shoplifting.

Winona Ryder memorably racked up four felony charges for shoplifting from a Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue in 2001. She was convicted of grand theft and vandalism, sentenced to three years' probation and 480 hours of community service, forced to pay more than $10,000 in fines and restitution, and ordered to undergo psychological and drug counseling. The very public arrest, trial and aftermath put her career on hold for four years.

In 1993, then 17-year-old tennis star Jennifer Capriati was issued a citation after attempting to walk out of a Flordia shopping mall wearing a ring she didn't purchase. She told the store's owners she was trying on rings and simply forgot to take one off; they chose not to press charges.

But it's not just fancy face creams and designer duds that tempt the rich and famous to exercise a five finger discount. In February 2008, model and actress Bai Ling was arrested for pocketing batteries and tabloid magazines at Los Angeles International Airport. The items had a total value of $16.

Ling later told E! news that she was in an "emotionally crazy" downward spiral the day of her arrest and blamed the shoplifting mishap on being upset over breaking up with her boyfriend. After that, the Los Angeles DA reduced the charges Ling to an infraction, saying she had no criminal intent.

Protect yourself against identity theft

You don't need pricey credit-monitoring services if you stay aware and follow these tips.  
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How to spend half of your lifetime income

For most people, these expenses will consume over 50% of all the money they'll ever earn.  
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Non Sequitur

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To sell or seal?

Even with a cement cap in place, reserves under the blown-out well could be worth billions. 
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Nazi-naming parents denied custody

Court cites domestic violence in home
Campbell Family
In this Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008 file photo, Heath Campbell, left, with his wife, Deborah, and son Adolf Hitler Campbell, 3, pose in Easton, Pa. (AP Photo/Rich Schultz, File)

A New Jersey couple who gave their children Nazi-inspired names should not regain custody of them, a state appeals court ruled Thursday, citing the parents' own disabilities and the risk of serious injury to their children.
***
Wait until the wingnuts 'weigh in' on this decision. You can bet the imbeciles over at Faux News are drooling right now.

Teabagger charade has collapsed

Eric Boehlert:
Optimistic organizers, who boasted that their website had attracted 2 million hits during the run-up to the big rally, predicted a crowd of 3,000-4,000 people for the Philadelphia event. And they had every reason to be confident. After all, right-wing celebrity Andrew Breitbart, fresh off his Shirley Sherrod star turn, was scheduled to speak at the event, which was held on a gorgeous summer day in downtown Philadelphia on Independence Mall, where throngs of tourists would already be milling around. So it made sense, as Talking Points Memo reported, that organizers had 1,500 bottles of water on ice to hand out for the throngs who descended on the rally to cheer the Tea Party message.

But how many people actually showed up last Saturday for the national Tea Party rally? One local report put the number at 300. That's right, 300, or less than one-tenth of the expected turnout. In fact, it's possible more people showed up in Philadelphia last week to commemorate the opening of the new Apple computer store than showed up at the nationally promoted Tea Party rally featuring Andrew Breitbart.

Memo to the media: The Tea Party movement has collapsed.

And its collapse means it's time for the press to rethink the way it covers the political equivalent of the Pet Rock, a fad that appears to be in its waning days of popularity.

Digg being manipulated by wingnut group

A group of hackneyed wingnut members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.

They try this bullshit on every social forum there is out there. Digg.com is just the latest at which they have been caught - they are always caught - because they are stupid and infantile (and that is being generous).

Lunatic Fringe

Lunatic Fringe
When dealing with wingnuts ... Remember the rule: 
If they accuse someone of something, then they're already guilty of it.

Liars and Fools

Hate radio squawker and convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy lies: Obama "doesn't like the United States," is a "communist" and is "not one of us".
Wrong on two counts, Gordon. However you are correct on the last point, he sure isn't 'one of us' as you squeal - he's not a stark raving mad lunatic wingnut ... he's a human being.

After judge's decision against Arizona immigration law, hate radio loudmouth lout Lush Dimbulb predicts that "Muslim terrorists" will "have a field day in Arizona".
Doubt it. It's to far from anything to be a destination for anyone. Much less Muslim tourists.

The Washington Post's Tom Shales lies that ABC's This Week host Christiane Amanpour is a Taliban sympathizer.
That would be anyone at Faux News and on Hate radio that are Taliban sympathizers.

Lush Dimbulb lies: Muslims "are planting the flag of victory" with mosque within walking distance of Ground Zero.
At least they are willing to build something - no one else is making any attempt to do so - were is that 'memorial' we were supposed to have, eh?

Hate radio wingnut squawker Mark Levin lies: the Constitution is "in its last breath throes," and "we are living in a soft tyranny".
Nope, that was during the 'it's just a goddamn piece of paper' days of the shrub and the cabal. Oh, and for you idiots out there (and yes I mean you wingnuts) the Constitution is NOT written on paper in the first place.

Lush Dimbulb lies: Many liberals "believe we got what was coming to us on 9/11".
Oh, blow it out your ass, you sack of shit. And quit yelling into the mirror while you're at it.

Washington Examiner's Bob Owens lies wingnut violence will be necessary, hopes we "feel threatened".

Fomenting terrorism is OK when the wingnuts do it. Or at least they think so.  Oh, and no, we do not 'feel threatened', by the way.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgofrjHGk-xxXgbJaAxw0xj96GNQ5l84FjUZUcFoCl-iEK-TnllDdOSRZJHjVVYwEMbKx22XWUzR49j0HtuxMXDkKYJay2c93JpncW8gD0GiOiSEF5q0JJvgHKl4dQhGnSjKTtETu1Psj6F/s200/wingnut1.gif

Drugs Used For Torture


'Narco-analysis' was published in 1943, pouring from the pen of J. Steven Horsley. On its heels came the pitch-black idea of drug-supplemented torture and interrogation.

We're talking pure wickedness here; instead of just harming the body interrogators began attacking the mind. Want examples? Here's a dirty dozen of the most depraved 'torture brews' known to man.

Dilbert

Dilbert Aug 05, 2010...

Return to Honor

An Air Force commander forced out in a Vietnam scandal is vindicated — 30 years after his death.
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Foo Cover-Up?

Once-secret files claim the prime minister banned a report over fear of public panic.  
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We Didn't Start The Fire

 
Billy Joel

Living large in tiny houses in Japan

Japanese designers use spaces as small as a parking spot to build eye-catching homes.  
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Triple Sun Over China

Just your average smoggy day in Chin … wait a minute! What’s that? A triple sun?
On July 26th, the Chinese city of Leshan witnessed a phenomenon that’s puzzling experts and led one Chinese paper to ask this morning if it was a UFO: What appeared to be three suns in the sky at once. Assuming this didn’t come from a close encounter of the third kind or a three wolf moon passing through a double rainbow, what could it have been?

New Helicopter Promises to the World's Fastest


Sikorsky Aircraft’s prototype X2 helicopter became the world’s fastest helicopter when it reached a speed of 225 knots — 9 more than the previous record set in the 1980s by a Westland Lynx. From the company’s press release:
The X2 Technology demonstrator combines an integrated suite of technologies intended to advance the state-of-the-art, counter-rotating coaxial rotor helicopter. It is designed to demonstrate that a helicopter can cruise comfortably at 250 knots while retaining such desirable attributes as excellent low-speed handling, efficient hovering, and a seamless and simple transition to high speed.

China's missile

China's "carrier-killer" may spell the end of America's invincibility on the high seas. 
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Kettles and the erratic glacier

"Plunging and swirling water of a river drills holes in the rock. Pot-holes are also drilled by the streams which drop through wells from the top to the bottom of a glacier. Falling hundreds of fee, the streams acquire great force and are able to excavate pits of astonishing size. At Cohoes, N.Y. are several which measure from 10 to 30 feet in diameter, and these held ponds and swamps after the glacier which made them had disappeared..."
"If we dig through the subsoil to the bed-rock, we shall often find the latter scratched in the same way, or even deeply grooved and carved into fluting's and the folding. The glacier, shod with stones at its base, drags these over the bed-rock, and thus both the moving fragments and the floor over which they move are polished and graven..."
 
Text and photos from the Flickr photostream of the Oregon State University Archives.

Ziggy

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Road kill used to make sporrans for kilts

A taxidermist is using wild animals knocked down and killed on roads to make sporrans. Kate Macpherson, of Beauly, Inverness-shire, has collected badgers, foxes, deer and stoats from verges.

She said she only used animals that would otherwise have lain rotting by the side of a road.


Mrs Macpherson said she was inspired by the the badger skin sporran worn by her father's Army regiment. The mother-of-three's friends and neighbours tip her off on the location of road kills. She said: "If I didn't pick up these animals they would be rotting in a ditch.

"I'm creating something useful from them rather than allowing their beauty to be wasted." She added: "But they're not for everybody I admit. People seem to either love them or hate them." Mrs Macpherson, who trained in taxidermy when she was 22, has licences to handle protected animals, but has faced complaints from animal welfare groups.


Indian elephant temple blessings 'to stop' due to health risk

Forest officials in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have asked temple custodians to stop their elephants from blessing Hindu pilgrims. Their concern is that the practice could be damaging the more than 50 elephants kept in Hindu temples. The elephants are routinely forced to touch the heads of pilgrims with their trunks as a form of blessing.

But officials say the practice could be putting the animals at risk of tuberculosis. They say the constant exposure to as many as 500pilgrims a day may be putting the elephants at risk of contracting diseases, including tuberculosis.


In recent years, four temple elephants have died after contracting tuberculosis. A spokesman for the department in charge of temples says it will comply with the request. But one right-wing Hindu group responded by saying there should be more discussion before a decision was made.

Some animal rights groups have been lobbying for a long time for a total ban on temple elephants. They say elephants are very social and intelligent animals and should not be forcibly isolated.

Giant marlin attack

As a fish weighing close to 550 pounds charges a boat, a photographer gets the shot of a lifetime.
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Marsupials Not From Down Under After All

All living marsupials - such as wallabies, kangaroos and opossums - all originated in South America, a new genetic study suggests. The animals most famous for populating Australia actually started out on another continent altogether.

But marsupials, a group of mammals known for toting their young in belly pouches on the females, are still common in South America, too. The recent study used new genetic data about some of these species to trace the family tree.

Burma Creates World's Largest Tiger Sanctuary

myanmar-tiger-reserve.jpg
Photo via Flickr
There's some surprising news today out of Burma. The country, which is controlled by a brutal military regime, has nonetheless decided to created the largest tiger sanctuary in the world. With only 3,000 left in the wild, tigers are among the most endangered animals on the planet. This new reserve in Burma will span 8,500 square miles, and will protect at least 100 tigers -- that is, if the military junta running Burma can be trusted to maintain it. Here are the details.

Big Cats on The Nip

Lions, tigers, and leopards are kitty cats, too! Big Cat Rescue shows us how they react to catnip.

Fossilized butterfly

Image credit: LepTree.
Prodryas persephone is an extinct butterfly... It was the first fossil butterfly to be found in North America... The single known specimen of P. persephone is a compression fossil, discovered by the "homesteader turned naturalist" Charlotte Hill, in shale deposits of Late Eocene age of the Florissant Formation near Florissant, Colorado.

The butterfly has a wing length of 24.5 mm (1.0 in), and the specimen is complete, although the trailing edge of one hind wing was originally covered... The wing venation is exquisitely preserved, and even the patterns of color on the wings are clearly visible. Individual wing scales can be discerned in parts of the forewing.
It staggers the mind to think how fine the silt must have been to preserve detail to the degree of individual scales on the wings. The closest modern famiily related to it would probably be the Admirals.

Freaks Of The Deep


A 'roll call' by the Census of Marine Life scientists surveyed 25 key regions around the world and identified Australian and Japanese waters as the most biodiverse on Earth.

Each ocean zone contains an estimated 33,000 known forms of life, ranging from algae and single-celled protozoa to whales and sea birds. But for every marine species of all kinds known to science, experts estimate that at least four are yet to be discovered.

Newly-Discovered Octopuses Use Venom to Kill at Sub-Zero Temperatures


Is your home octopus-proof? Maybe you should check. And trying to freeze them out won’t help because some octopuses discovered in Antarctica are the first known to have venom that works in freezing temperatures:
Antarctic octopuses eat a wide variety of animals, from clams to fish. They catch their prey with their tentacles and use their venom to kill them, much like snakes.
The venoms are being studied as potential sources of pain-killers, Fry said, because they work on the nervous system. So far, analysis of the venom has revealed two toxins that are new to science.
The scientists still don’t know what biochemical tricks the octopuses use to keep their venom working at freezing temperatures

Wizard of Id

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Brewery shuts down over smell

A brewery is being blamed for a Pennsylvania town's bad case of beer breath.

Money stuffed diapers

A Quebec woman was released on bail in upstate New York after U.S. border guards found $212,000 hidden among adult diapers

Farm Security Administration photos, 1939-1943

The Faro Caudill family eating dinner in their dugout. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Garden adjacent to the dugout home of Jack Whinery, homesteader. Pie Town, New Mexico, September 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
Grand Grocery Company. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1942. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by John Vachon. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
Rural school children. San Augustine County, Texas, April 1943. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by John Vachon. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
 These are selections from a gallery of 70 photos hosted at the Denver Post.