The Daily Drift

Through the early morning fog I see ...

Some of our readers today have been in:

Cheras, Malaysia

Kalisz. Poland

Subang Jaya, Malaysia

Warsaw, Poland

Butterworth, Malaysia

Szczecin, Poland

Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Olsztyn, Poland

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Gdynia, Poland

Kajang, Malaysia

Krakow, Poland

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Gdansk, Poland

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Wroclaw, Poland

Ipoh, Malaysia

Lodz, Poland

And just in case you're thinking all our readers today were from either Malaysia or Poland here are some other places around the world that stopped by for a visit:

Caracas, Venezuela

Nakhon, Thailand

Lima, Peru

Ad Damman, Saudi Arabia

Bangkok, Thailand

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Waterloo, Canada

Islamabad, Pakistan

Ankara, Turkey

Smolenka, Russia

Cape Town, South Africa

Surabaya, Indonesia

Cebu City, Philippines

Lahore, Pakistan

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

Kiev, Ukraine

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Today in History

1656		The General Provincial Court in session at Patuxent, Maryland, impanels the first all-woman jury in the Colonies to hear evidence against Judith Catchpole, who is accused of murdering her child. The jury acquits her after hearing her defense of never having been pregnant.
1711		The Tuscarora Indian War begins with a massacre of settlers in North Carolina, following white encroachment that included the enslaving of Indian children.
1776		American Captain Nathan Hale is hanged as a spy by the British in New York City; his last words are reputed to have been, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country."
1789		Russian forces under Aleksandr Suvorov drive the Turkish army under Yusuf Pasha from the Rymnik River, upsetting the Turkish invasion of Russia.
1862		President Lincoln issues a proclamation calling for all slaves within the rebel states to be freed on January 1, a political move that helps keep the British from intervening on the side of the South.
1864		Union General Philip Sheridan defeats Confederate General Jubal Early's troops at the Battle of Fisher's Hill in Virginia.
1869		The Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team, arrive in San Francisco after a rollicking, barnstorming tour of the West.
1893		Bicycle makers Charles and Frank Duryea show off the first American automobile produced for sale to the public by taking it on a maiden run through the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts.
1906		Race riots in Atlanta, Georgia leave 21 people dead.
1914		The German cruiser Emden shells Madras, India, destroying 346,000 gallons of fuel and killing only five civilians.
1915		Xavier University, the first African-American Catholic college, opens in New Orleans, Louisiana.
1918		General Allenby leads the British army against the Turks, taking Haifa and Nazareth, Palestine.
1919		President Woodrow Wilson abandons his national tour to support the League of Nations when he suffers a case of nervous exhaustion.
1929		Communist and Nazi factions clash in Berlin.
1945		President Truman accepts U.S. Secretary of War Stimson's recommendation to designate the war World War II.
1947		A Douglas C-54 Skymaster makes the first automatic pilot flight over the Atlantic.
1961		President John Kennedy signs a congressional act establishing the Peace Corps.
1969		Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants becomes the first baseball player since Babe Ruth to hit 600 home runs.
1970		President Richard M. Nixon signs a bill giving the District of Columbia representation in the U.S. Congress.

Mabon - Autumn Equinox

Mabon: Autumn Equinox - September 21st-23rd
Gwyl canol Hydref or Mabon: (pronounced May-bon. Also known as Harvest Home, Harvest Tide, Fall Equinox, Autumn Equinox etc.), September 21-24.
Actual Date and Time of Autumnal Equinox: 10:04 23nd Sept 2011
Technically, an equinox is an astronomical point and, due to the fact that the earth wobbles on its axis slightly , the date may vary by a few days depending on the year. The autumnal equinox occurs when the sun crosses the equator on its apparent journey southward, and we experience a day and a night that are of equal duration. Up until Mabon, the hours of daylight have been greater than the hours from dusk to dawn. But from now on, the reverse holds true.
Mabon marks the middle of harvest, it is a time of equal day and equal night, and for the moment nature is in balance. It is a time to reap what you have sown, of giving thanks for the harvest and the bounty the Earth provides. For finishing up old projects and plans and planting the seeds for new enterprises or a change in lifestyle. Mabon is a time of celebration and balance.
This is the time to look back not just on the past year, but also your life, and to plan for the future. In the rhythm of the year, Mabon is a time of rest and celebration, after the hard work of gathering the crops. Warm autumn days are followed by chill nights, as the Old Sun God returns to the embrace of the Goddess.
The passing of Mabon is inevitable and The Sun God should be mourned. We too, must remember that all things must come to an end. So the Sun God journeys into the lands of winter and into the Goddess' loving arms, but endings are a good time to celebrate our successes, thank our selves and those who helped us, and take part in the balance of life!

Non Sequitur

Wong-headed Politics

Unproductive, unloved Congress slinks out of town

The most disliked, unproductive Congress in decades planned to leave Washington this week until after the November election, departing without agreements on virtually every big issue it deals with: taxes, defense, spending, farms, even post office policy.

The Ballot Cops

Thirty years ago, the repugican national cabal violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered to cease its “ballot security” efforts. Now an organization called True the Vote wants to pick up where the rnc left off, by building a nationwide army to root out voter fraud—or, to put it accurately, to suppress voter turnout.

The Truth Be Told

Australian minister: the repugican cabal taken over by "cranks and crazies"

So I'm guessing he's not a fan of the Tea Party. Foreign ministers don't often inject themselves into the politics of other countries but how else does a sane, rational person explain the modern repugican cabal? The lunatics are running the asylum and there's no way to candy coat it.
What foreign leader would honestly want to work with someone like Rick Santorum or Sarah Palin? It's embarrassing that either have ever even been considered serious candidates. The US used to care about its reputation around the world and both parties used to look to the future. The modern repugican cabal does look crazy so I'm glad someone in power outside of the US said it so bluntly.

Whether the repugicans like it or not, the US needs good relations around the world. For both US business expansion and national security, the US has to be on good terms with traditional allies. Sending the village idiots out to talk about either of these issues is never going to be productive.

The Guardian has more remarks from Australia's deputy prime minister and treasurer, Wayne Swan.

"Let's be blunt and acknowledge the biggest threat to the world's biggest economy are the cranks and crazies that have taken over the repugican party," Swan said in a speech to a conference in Sydney.

The repugican party's position on the US budget had led a year ago to the deadlock in negotiations, Swan said, to prevent the looming "fiscal cliff" – nearly $600bn in planned spending cuts and tax hikes that will bite early next year.

Congress had been debating whether to increase the US borrowing ceiling but the repugicans would not budge.

"Despite President Obama's goodwill and strong efforts, the national interest was held hostage by the rise of the extreme Tea Party wing of the repugican party," he said.

What's terrifying is that Mitt Romney is the best they have to offer, as Kevin Drum wrote about yesterday.

Romney fails the character test on his taxes, and everything else

From Harry Reid's statement:

“When will the American people see the returns he filed before he was running for president?,” Mr. Reid said. “Governor Romney is showing us what he does when the public is looking. The true test of his character would be to show what he did when everyone was not looking at his taxes.”

I like how Reid refers to this as a question of character.

"Character" is often a term used by politicians to demagogue or dog whistle, but to some degree, character is important for anyone in public office. If a politician is a drunk or an adulterer or whatever, and it doesn't affect his job, I am not going to necessarily like them, but I will likely give them a pass. We're all human, and I suspect if each of us knew everything that everyone else did in their moments of weakness, it would be an eye opening experience indeed ...

But there does reach a point where mistakes, personal flaws, etc. force you to question the very core of a person's being. If someone had an affair ... that's not great, but ok. If the same person had an affair while his wife was dying from cancer, that suggests a kind of core evil / darkness lurking in that person's soul that I think makes him unfit for office.

Returning to Romney, it's not just that he tells a certain quantity of lies or that he made his money as a corporate raider. It's the fact that his core character seems polluted by a kind of depravity that would make him a terrible president. This core depravity is what links his homophobic pranks, his treatment of family pets, his methods for making money, his serial lying and these income tax shenanigans. It's a character issue, and the Demcrats should be talking more about it.

Lots of Romney news, and none of it is pretty (for him)

Eliot Spitzer says Romney has already lost. The battle now is for control of the Senate.
The NYT says Romney has a "daunting path" between now and November.

Here's repugican Tommy Thompson, who's running for Senate from Wisconsin against Democratic House member Tammy Baldwin, blaming Romney for his suddenly falling behind in the polls.

Romney co-chair Tim Pawlenty has quit the campaign in order to take a high-paying job on K Street.

Romney is criticizing President Obama for saying something today that Mitt Romney has already said, verbatim.

The Romney campaign raised some eyebrows by giving out $200,000 in bonuses to their top staff, because they've done such a great job getting Romney to second place, also called "last."

The uber-repugican coven for 'growth' calls Romney a "mixed bag" of good and bad.  Hardly a ringing endorsement this late in the campaign.

More from Jon Stewart on the 47% video and how Faux News tried to "fix" things:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

*****

Now polls show "Mitt Romney's path to victory is narrowing"

WSJ: Mitt Romney's path to victory is narrowing, new polling data suggest, presenting challenges for the repugican nominee at a moment when he is trying to rebound from a week of bad headlines by refocusing on federal spending.
President Barack Obama has opened an eight percentage-point lead in Iowa and maintains a five-point edge in Colorado and Wisconsin, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist Poll surveys of the three presidential battlegrounds released Thursday.

The new poll results are significant in part because the Romney campaign views the three states as steppingstones to an Electoral College majority, given Mr. Romney's slippage in polls of two of the largest battlegrounds, Ohio and Virginia.

Romney disclosing his 2011 tax returns admits not qualified to be president

Mind you, this raises his tax disclosure to a grand whopping total of two returns.

He required ten from Paul Ryan.  He's giving us two.

The highlights: Romney's tax rate was 14.1%.  He only got that "high" a rate after jiggering the numbers for the past 9 months.  The Romney campaign admits that Romney jiggered his 2011 taxes in order to make them look better for the election:

The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor’s statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

So basically, Romney got the financial equivalent of a fake tan.  And even then, his tax rate was an absurdly low 14.1%.

ThinkProgress notes that had Romney taken all of his charitable deductions, he'd have paid a tax rate of around 9%. And they note that, per Romney's own words, he now isn't qualified to be president.

I don’t pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president. I’d think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.

Gosh, quite the "gaffe," Mitt Romney admitting that he's not qualified to be president.

9%.  If I could only remember the word someone once used for people who weasel out of paying their fair share of taxes...

I'm sure it'll come to me....

What's to stop Romney from amending his tax return after the election?

A reader writes:

Don't forget, like anyone else, Romney can file an amended 2011 return after the election and get back that 9% rate he surely believes he's entitled to. 14.1% my ass.

Meaning Romney can still get that 9% to 10% tax rate he gave us this time around for appearances.

The NYT agrees:

It is possible, however, that Mr. Romney could still deduct the unclaimed amount of his charitable donations in future tax years, experts said.

Host of now-famous Romney fundraiser under investigation in NY

Romney's host for the "47%" fundraiser, Marc Leder, is under investigation by the New York Attorney General for questionable tax practices with his private equity firm, Sun Capital Partners.
The investigation is still open, so he may very well be cleared. The tax practice that his firm allegedly uses is nothing new, and it's been widely used by many in that industry. Of course, many other firms are also under investigation in New York for the same practice.

Romney's friend, like Romney himself, may very well be within the law, but that's not really the point. After watching the elites become ridiculously rich in recent years, we've also watched the middle class struggle and the number of poor increase. For the Romney class, the tax code is there for the picking. They have the cash to throw smart bodies (lawyers, accountants) at the issue and find a way to pay less and less as they earn more and more.

There's a big difference between being within the law and doing the right thing.

Is paying 15% (or 14% in Romney's case - that's assuming he's paid anything at all these past ten years, we don't know since he won't release his taxes) really fair when working families are paying more?

The problem with people like Romney, Leder and the rest of the financial elite on the right is that they view themselves as victims. Yes, the people who have profited the most from the radical tax cuts are still not satisfied, and have convinced themselves that nothing is ever enough.

Being an egotistical, selfish jerk is one thing, but putting people like this in power to turn back the clock to the days of the Industrial Revolution is another. Who wants a president that stands to personally gain millions in tax breaks even after he's already gamed the system to pay less than most working people?

Enough is never enough for this crowd.

Guilty or innocent, we need to stop having a system that primarily works for the richest of the rich. In a Romney administration, it's going to be just that, on steroids.

According to court documents filed as part of his 2009 divorce, Leder created a system for turning hundreds of millions of dollars in ordinary income into investments that would be taxed at a much lower rate.

The strategy, known as “a management fee waiver,” may have lowered his tax bill by millions of dollars over time, according to the documents.

Leder’s private equity firm, Sun Capital Partners, is one of more than a dozen private-equity firms being investigated by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to see whether they used management fee waivers to avoid taxes, according to people familiar with the matter.

Romney flip-flops again on health care, after proudly telling Latinos he's "grandfather of Obamacare"

"No le presten atención

al hombre tras la cortina."

Predictable.


It's been less than 24 hours since Mitt Romney told Latino voters at an Univision forum that he was the proud "grandfather of Obamacare."

Even though Romney admitted that taking pride in the President's signature achievement on health care would get him into hot water with the conservatives who run the GOP.

Well, today Mitt Romney, who famously flip-flopped on health care reform four times in under 24 hours just a few weeks ago, has now backtracked on last night's pride rally, and is again demonizing health care reform as the worst thing in the world.

Worse than the guy who was its grandfather?

Mitt Romney last night, pandering to Latinos with his new orange day-laborer "tan":

The Republican even embraced the Obama administration’s claim that his Massachusetts health care reform plan made him “the grandfather of Obamacare.”

“I don’t think he meant that as a compliment but I’ll take it,” Romney said, adding that such a depiction was likely not “helpful” during the GOP primary.

Romney, responding to a question about whether he’d repeal Obama’s health care law, went on to tout his signature achievement in Boston with language that has irritated conservatives in the past.

Romney campaign today, via an email I just received:

Today, the Romney campaign will hold a press conference call to discuss... that Obamacare is a costly disaster for American families and businesses. The call will feature Governor Bobby Jindal.

So the campaign is now admitting that Mitt Romney is the "proud grandfather" of a "costly disaster."

How does that work exactly?

Rubio, starring in Romney Medicare ad, said Medicare "weakened us as a people"

Rubio is another far-right nut.  But it goes to Romney's character, and his unending history of flip-flopping, and lying, that he's now using Marco Rubio to "defend" Medicare when just last year Rubio said that programs like Medicare "weakened us as a people."
(Also, Rubio endorses Ryan's plan that "cuts" the exact same amount from Medicare as President Obama's health care reform law.  In fact, it's not a cut at all - health care reform simply cuts a better deal, paying hospitals and pharmaceutical companies less for the same level of services.)

Would that be the 47% of us who don't pay taxes, see ourselves as victims, and don't care about our lives?

Rubio's one of those Republicans who sees communists around every corner.  Perhaps it's because his family famously fled Cuba to get away from Castro.

Back to Rubio today defending Medicare by endorsing Mitt Romney's plan to end Medicare (Rubio also famously endorsed Paul Ryan's plan to phase out Medicare).  As Rubio explained at an event just last year, your family and neighbors are supposed to take care of you when you get sick, not the government. From Rubio last year:

These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job.

So the next time you have a heart attack, or cancer strikes, phone the family next door.  I'm sure they'll be happy to pay for your $5000 trip to the emergency room.

Or just ring up the Rubios.

Actually, skip that.  It seems the Rubios are proudly on Medicare.  While criticizing the rest of our "weakened" families who use Medicare.  From the new ad:

SEN. MARCO RUBIO: “That’s not politics. It’s math. Anyone who wants to leave Medicare like it is, is for letting it go bankrupt. My mother’s eighty-one and depends on Medicare.”

Anybody else confused?

Did you know ...

The answer is, yes - is Romney tanking gop's hopes for a senate take-over?

These 9 scientific breakthroughs that happened totally by accident

What Bill Moyers has to say on the one percent supreme court

That California tries to lead the way on health law

Here's a map of gas prices in the country

That the black market goes green: theft of solar panels on the rise

All the while, also on the rise: lynchings of empty chairs

Glengarry Glen Mitt

The Poor Do Have Jobs

Millions of poor Americans who don't pay federal income taxes actually do have jobs.
They just don't earn enough to pay taxes

 More

Also:

The Graph That Should Accompany Every Article About Millennials and Economics

Unemployment for adults between 20 and 24 is 14%, compared to the national average of 8.1%. But even those with jobs are facing something without modern precedent: Steadily falling annual earnings (graph via Progressive Policy Institute).
Real earnings for young grads with a college degree have now declined for six straight years. "Real average earnings for young grads have fallen by over 15% since 2000, or by about $10,000 in constant 2011 dollars," PPI reports.

U.S. penny bought for $1M

Coin collecting may be a hobby that doesn't get much fanfare in everyday life, but when a U.S. penny sells for $1 million, some may think the pastime may make "cents'" after all.

More

Amish guilty of hate crimes in Ohio hair attacks

By Thomas J. Sheeran

The leader of an Amish breakaway group and his followers were convicted Thursday of hate crimes in beard- and hair-cutting attacks against members of their own faith following a dispute over religious differences.
A federal jury found Samuel Mullet Sr. guilty of orchestrating the cuttings of Amish men's beards and women's hair last fall in attacks that terrorized the normally peaceful religious settlements in eastern Ohio.
His followers were found guilty of carrying out the attacks. Mullet and four of his children were among 16 people who prosecutors say planned and carried out the five separate attacks that amounted to hate crimes because they were motivated by religious disputes. Prosecutors say the defendants targeted hair because it carries spiritual significance in their faith.

All the defendants, who were charged with hate crimes, are members of Mullet's settlement that he founded near the West Virginia panhandle. Mullet wasn't accused of cutting anyone's hair. But prosecutors said he planned and encouraged his sons and the others, mocked the victims in jailhouse phone calls and was given a paper bag stuffed with the hair of one victim.

One bishop told jurors his chest-length beard was chopped to within 1½ inches of his chin when four or five men dragged him out of his farmhouse in a late-night home invasion.
Prosecutors told jurors that Mullet thought he was above the law and free to discipline those who went against him based on his religious beliefs. Before his arrest last November, he defended what he believes is his right to punish people who break church laws.
"You have your laws on the road and the town — if somebody doesn't obey them, you punish them. But I'm not allowed to punish the church people?" Mullet told The Associated Press last October.
The hair-cuttings, he said, were a response to continuous criticism he'd received from other Amish religious leaders about him being too strict, including shunning people in his own group.
The members involved in the hair cuttings face prison terms of 10 years or more. The charges against Mullet and the others included conspiracy, evidence tampering and obstruction of justice.
Defense attorneys acknowledged that the hair-cuttings took place and that crimes were committed but contend that prosecutors were overreaching by calling them hate crimes.
All the victims, prosecutors said, were people who had a dispute with Mullet over his religious practices and his authoritarian rule.
Witnesses testified that Mullet had complete control over the settlement that he founded two decades ago and described how his religious teachings and methods of punishments deviated from Amish traditions.
One woman described how he took part in the sexual "counseling" of married women and others said he encouraged men to sleep in chicken coops as punishment.
Mullet's attorney, Ed Bryan, maintained that the government had not shown that Mullet was at the center of the attacks. The defendants who cut the hair and beards acted on their own and were inspired by one another, not their bishop, Bryan said.
Some of the defense attorneys claimed that the hair-cuttings were motivated by family feuds or that the defendants were trying to help others who were straying from their Amish beliefs.
In one of the attacks, an Amish woman testified that her own sons and a daughter who lived in Mullet's community cut her hair and her husband's beard in a surprise assault.

Breaking Bad in real life ...

Chemistry teacher busted for cooking meth, selling at school where he teaches 

East Texas chemistry teacher William Duncan, like Breaking Bad protagonist Walter White, applied his love of chemistry to a promising side job as a methamphetamine cook. He was busted for selling home-brewed crystal in the parking lot of the same junior high school where he taught science. He has not been fired. The school has placed him on administrative release, pending investigation. Police do not believe that any of his buyers were students at the school.

Coverage: Texas Monthly, Uproxx, Gawker, KLTV.

In related news, police in Alabama are still looking for another meth maker, and this one's actually named Walter White.

Unhappy KFC customer went on deranged rampage after being refused a bargain bucket

A KFC restaurant was driven into and two vehicles, including a police car, were repeatedly rammed when staff refused to serve a bargain bucket to an irate ‘drive-though’ customer because they were closed. Hugh Brown, 50, flipped out and went on the rampage with his car when staff at KFC in Oakley Road, Corby refused to serve him. He was jailed for seven years for a “psychotic and deranged” outburst which one of officers described as the worst he had witnessed in 19 years. Northampton Crown Court heard Brown drove his car through the front window of KFC, threatened staff before driving off. When he realized he was being followed by an off-duty police officer, he rammed his car, and when police arrived on the scene, he repeatedly drove into it. Brown snapped when staff refused to serve him 20 minutes after they had closed. And when asked why he had lost his temper, Brown said: “I only did it because they wouldn’t give me a bargain bucket.”

Adrian Harris, prosecuting, said the KFC branch closed at 11pm on March 22 and four members of staff were cleaning up when Brown arrived at the drive-through at 11.20pm, asking to be served. He said: “With the lights off, it was obviously shut. The defendant got out of the car and walked up to the window. He was very angry. He wanted to eat and his anger was apparently because they were closed.” Brown, of Llewellyn Walk, Corby shouted abuse at the staff, made threats and then got into his Peugeot 406. Mr Harris said: “He appeared to drive off, but the defendant did not drive away. He drove straight at the large window at the front and drove through the window in the style of a ram-raid. The only things that stopped him driving fully inside were the tables, bolted to the floor. The defendant revved again and got out of his car. He grabbed a huge metal pole that was part of the window frame, climbed through the smashed window, walked up to the counter and threatened a member of staff, who said he wanted to fight outside. The defendant damaged a TV monitor using the pole, then threw is across the counter towards the staff like a javelin. He said ‘I’ll be back in five minutes with a group’.”

YouTube link. Longer video.

He drove off but was spotted by off-duty PC John Cummins who thought a ram raid was in progress, called 911 and decided to follow him. However, Brown soon realized he was being followed. Mr Harris said: “The defendant drove straight into PC Cummin’s car, then reversed away and drove into it again. PC Cummins had retreated to about 12 feet away to a nearby alleyway. Fortunately, there was a concrete bollard between him and the defendant because the defendant drove at him quickly with high revs and his tires smoking. The defendant then smashed twice more into his car.” Mr Harris said a marked police car, containing PCs Ruth Hay and Neil Ochalek, arrived and saw Brown in his car, He said: “PC Hay stopped about five meters away from him. he looked at them and laughed. The defendant drove at them and shunted them backwards.” As PC Ochalek got out of the car, Brown rammed it again. Mr Harris said: “PC Hay was terrified and thought at the time he was trying to kill her. She pressed her emergency button as the defendant was looking at her and laughing. He laughed throughout and to her, he looked ‘psychotic and deranged’.” When the air bag in the police car deployed, PC Hay was trapped in the car while Brown twice more rammed his vehicle into the police car with her still inside. After the fourth collision, she was able to open the door and ran off, but Brown again drove into the police car.

Brown then decamped and threatened to take on the officers but ran off and once other police arrived, he was found hiding on a garage roof. It took pepper spray and more officers to finally subdue him, as he threatened: “I’ve got Hep C, I’ll spit on you.” Mr Harris added: “PC Hay was petrified and truly in fear for her life. PC Cummins was left shaking and was still shaking when he wrote his statement. He believed the defendant was bent on destruction and in his 19 years as a policeman said he has seen nothing like it.” Brown pleaded guilty to affray, damaging property, dangerous driving and attempted grievous bodily harm with intent. Judge Lynn Tayton QC jailed him for seven years and banned him from driving until September 2018. She said: “Throughout this incident, you were described as laughing and in a strange state. You used a car as a weapon and intended to cause more harm that actually resulted, This matter is aggravated because it was an offense committed against a police officer in a car. You are very lucky nobody was very seriously injured.” Maxine Krone, mitigating, said Brown was taking 13 types of medication at the time for an anxiety disorder. When faced with the option of fight or flight, he had decided to fight, she added.

Lunch on a skyscraper

The history of a famous photograph

This is the original glass-plate negative of the iconic photo of construction workers eating lunch on a girder during the construction of Rockefeller Center's RCA building in 1932.
Today, those of us who remember using analog cameras remember taking photographs on film — literally a plastic (or, earlier, paper or celluloid) strip covered with a film of light-sensitive chemicals. But once upon a time, when you took a photograph, you took it on a piece of glass. The glass could be as small as 3 inches by 5 inches, or as big as 11" x 17". Originally, each piece of glass had to be dipped into an emulsion of chemicals on site, and the photograph taken before the chemicals had dried — a time on the order of minutes. That meant that, wherever photographers went, they had to carry an entire darkroom with them.
George Eastman is credited with inventing film in 1884, but the type of glass negative you see above was an important in-between step, linking the cumbersome wet-plate process and the infinitely more convenient world of film. Instead of a bath of chemicals, it used a gelatin — with chemicals suspended inside like the bits of pear in a jell-o salad. Gelatin glass plates didn't need a portable darkroom. And they could capture an incredible level of detail. According to the Dayton History Center, you can read the writing on tiny signs in the background of some of these shots.
The downside: Taking a photo with these plates required exposure times that would seem incredibly long to us today. For instance, a basic film photographer just working with a point and shoot camera might use a film speed of 400 ISO. According to an artist working with glass plate photography today, that process produces an equivalent "film speed" of about 1/2 an ISO — two whole seconds to get an exposure on a nice, sunny day outdoors. That doesn't sound long, but it can be an eternity if you're trying to capture a spontaneous moment, like one guy lighting another's cigarette.
This is part of why we know that the famous photo of construction workers on a girder was actually a staged shot. That ... and the fact that there are other much-more-clearly staged shots from the same sequence of photos. At the New York Times Lens blog, you can see those photographs, and learn more about the history of an iconic New York scene.

John Keats an opium addict?

The claim is made in a new biography, to be published on Monday, by Prof Nicholas Roe, chair of the Keats Foundation and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Roe admits his finding will be contentious. "This has never been said before: Keats as an opium addict is new."...

Roe maintains that Keats, a trained physician, gained access to laudanum in the autumn of 1818 while administering the drug to his brother.  Tom was dying of TB, the disease he gave to Keats and of which the poet died three years later. Opium was the only painkiller that could alleviate the young man's pain.

After his brother's death, Keats began taking the drug regularly "to keep up his spirits", as Brown said later. Brown warned him of the "danger of such a habit". This, said Roe, "suggests Keats was indeed an 'habitual' user of opium and had been dosing himself for a considerable time."...

"When Keats writes in Ode to a Nightingale of having 'emptied some dull opiate to the drains' he means – very precisely – downing a decanter of laudanum," he said.

"Like Coleridge's Kubla Khan and like Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Ode to a Nightingale is one of the greatest re-creations of a drug-inspired dream-vision in English literature – a poem that frankly admits his own opium habit."

Ode on Indolence, added Roe: "grew out of a reverie induced by taking laudanum to ease the pain of a black eye, got while playing cricket on Hampstead Heath in March 1819".

More at The Guardian.  

Are Humans Really Evil?

Would you sit and send electric shocks to someone who sounded hurt and begged you to stop? Read more

Man knocked unconscious by falling mattress

A student was knocked unconscious when a mattress fell from a building in the middle of New York’s financial district. Jesse Scott Owen, 18,  was hit by a futon mattress near Wall Street on Lower Manhattan.

A witness says the mattress flew off the roof terrace of a nearby building and fell over 30 stories before hitting Mr Owen on the head. Mr Owen, said his sense of humor helped him overcome the neck and back pain he suffered from the futon mattress, which knocked him out cold on Broad St. at about 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday.

“This was the most absurd thing that ever happened to me,” he said. Owen, who moved to the city three weeks ago from Florida to attend King’s College in lower Manhattan, said he was on his way to a lecture when he suddenly lost consciousness.

“I woke up and people were putting me on the mattress,” he said. “I asked where the mattress came from and they said, ‘You were knocked out by it.’” The mattress may have fallen in windy weather from the rooftop spa of the Setai Wall Street at 40 Broad St. After the incident, passersby tended to Owen until emergency workers arrived.

Awesome Pictures

The Military's New Cybernetic Hivemind

The military has finally succeeded in melding the brains of its soldiers into a cybernetic hivemind. After four years of research, DARPA has created a system that combines camera, computer, and the human brain to detect threats in the combat zone.
Extreme Tech blog explains the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS):

There are two discrete parts to the system: The 120-megapixel camera, which is tripod-mounted and looks over the battlefield (pictured below); and the computer system, where a soldier sits in front of a computer monitor with an EEG strapped to his head (pictured above). Images from the camera are fed into the computer system, which runs cognitive visual processing algorithms to detect possible threats (enemy combatants, sniper nests, IEDs). These possible threats are then shown to a soldier whose brain then works out if they’re real threats — or a false alarm (a tree branch, a shadow thrown by an overheard bird). [...]
In short, CT2WS taps the human brain’s unsurpassed ability to recognize objects. In testing, the 120-megapixel camera, combined with the computer vision algorithms, generated 810 false alarms per hour; with a human operator strapped into the EEG, that drops down to just five false alarms per hour. The human brain is surprisingly fast, too: According to DARPA, CT2WS display 10 images per second to the human operator — and yet that doesn’t seem to affect accuracy. The total overall accuracy of the system is 91% — but that will improve as DARPA moves beyond the prototype stage.

Sebastian Anthony of Extreme Tech has more: here.

Robot Tuna Will Protect America

Relax, America! Your watery borders will be safe soon as the military has funded the constructions of our newest guardians: robot tunas.

Homeland Security has funded the construction of a robotic tuna to help protect our nation. The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is funding the development of the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) designed to resemble a tuna. It called the BIOSwimmer. Inspired by the tuna, the BIOSwimmer is designed for high maneuverability in harsh environments.
The BIOSwimmer is being developed by Boston Engineering Corporation's Advanced Systems Group (ASG) in Waltham, Massachusetts. It can inspect the interior voids of ships such as flooded bilges and tanks, and other hard to reach external areas. The DHS tuna bot will also inspect and protect harbors and piers and carry out important security missions.

As long as they don't pick a fight with dolphins with lasers, we'll be safe! More

The Munson typewriter, a thing of beauty from 1890

The Martin Howard Typewriter Collection has a new treasure to show off: a Munson typewriter, with horizontal rods that control a hammer that strikes the page from behind:

The Munson typewriter is a remarkable piece of engineering, with a complex and original mechanical design packed into a small frame. Its inner workings are largely exposed, so the machine comes to life with moving rods and levers when being used.
The Munson does not have type-bars but uses a horizontal type-cylinder (about the size of ones finger) that slides from side-to-side and rotates to have the correct character move into place. Then a hammer strikes the paper from behind, pushing the paper against the ribbon and type-cylinder. Type-cylinders with different fonts were available.
With two shift keys, uppercase and figures, only three rows of keys are required.
The Munson was introduced in 1890 and did quite well on the market; however, today it is hard to find. The Munson became the Chicago in 1898 when the enterprise was bought and the typewriters were manufactured by The Chicago Writing Machine Co.

Munson 1

Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2012

This is M51, the "Whirlpool Galaxy." The image is by Martin Pugh who won the Royal Observatory Greenwich's Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2012.

Kennedy's Proposed US-Soviet Moon Mission

On September 20, 1963, President Kennedy publicly proposed canceling Apollo in favor of a joint lunar program with the Soviet Union. Read more

Drought's Effect on Groundwater as Seen From Space

When most people think of drought, they probably think of dead and dry vegetation - you know, things that are above ground. But data from the twin NASA satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) show that the drought is also underground (plus it's very interesting to see how they could "see" groundwater from space):

The maps do not attempt to represent human consumption of water; but rather, they show changes in water storage related to weather, climate, and seasonal patterns.
“GRACE gives you variations in the total water stored on and in the land,” says NASA scientist Matt Rodell in a recent feature story on the Earth Observatory. GRACE does not measure the water directly, but instead detects changes in Earth’s gravity. When the satellites encounter a change in the distribution of Earth’s mass—such as a blanket of fresh snow on California’s Sierra Nevada—they are pulled toward the mountains a tiny bit more than normal. By tracking trends in how the satellite orbits change, researchers can calculate how gravity is changing on Earth. So when groundwater supplies dwindled in the United States in 2011 and 2012, that region of the planet had a little less mass and gravitational pull. The satellite orbits moved a bit in response, allowing GRACE to reveal the change in groundwater storage.

More

Earth's Prized Corals Discovered

A new survey of coral populations in the Western Indian Ocean reveals that Northern Mozambique Channel is home to the second most diverse population of corals on the planet.  
Read more

Dried riverbed reveals stolen architecture, unexploded artillery shells

When Sweden invaded Poland in the 17th century, the Swedes made off with pieces of marble lintels, columns, and other architectural details from the Polish royal palace.

Hundreds of years later, Nazis invaded Poland, carrying with them deadly, modern weaponry and a system of violent repression aimed at the country's Jewish population.
Now, thanks to a severe summer drought, evidence of both these invasions is turning up in Warsaw, beached on the dried riverbed of the Vistula.

Low rainfall over the past few months has brought the Vistula, Poland's longest river, to its lowest level since regular records began 200 years ago.Navigation along the river has already been affected and officials say if water levels do not recover soon, power stations in Warsaw that use river water for cooling may be forced to close down.
Unexploded World War Two ordnance was found on the river bed in one part of the city at the weekend. Kowalski said on the stretch of river bed he had been studying, a few pieces of Jewish matzevah, or gravestones, had been discovered.

Read more about what lies at the bottom of the Vistula at Yahoo News

Arctic sea ice breaks earlier record low

The new ice season is just starting, but the results of the 2012 ice melting season ought to be a major concern for everyone. Dismissing climate change as a liberal conspiracy is not going to cut it any longer.

"We are now in uncharted territory," Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a statement announcing the record low of 1.32 million square miles -- nearly half the average extent from 1979 to 2010. The extent has been tracked by satellite since 1979.

"While we’ve long known that as the planet warms up, changes would be seen first and be most pronounced in the Arctic," he added, "few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur."

Many experts expect the Arctic to be free of sea ice in summer at some point between 2015 and 2050.

Science News from a British perspective

Lemurs' nose grunts are caller ID

Lemurs may be able to recognize other monkey species from the nasal grunts they make, say Italian scientists. BBC Nature

• 'Song' shapes cricket personality
• Lemur videos, news and facts
• Learn more about acoustic communication in the animal kingdom
• Aye-aye 'heats up' middle finger

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Curiosity rover picks up the pace

The Curiosity rover makes good progress towards its first major science destination on Mars, taking pictures of the planet's moons on the way.

• Curiosity rover's online persona Watch
• Rover panorama: Begin exploring Mars

Oyster genome mystery unraveled

A detailed map of the genome of the Pacific oyster has been unveiled by international scientists.

• A matter of taste BBC Food

Catch This Shark?

  Throw It Back!

If caught -- dead or alive -- porbeagle sharks, also known as mackerel sharks, should be returned to the sea.

Could there be a version of the Loch Ness Monster living in a Siberian Lake?

Some think so.  

Read more

Man jumps off Bronx Zoo monorail, mauled by tiger

by Jim Fitzgerald

A visitor to the Bronx Zoo leaped from an elevated monorail train on Friday, plummeted over a fence into an exhibit and was mauled by a tiger, police and zoo officials said. The man was alone with the 400-pound beast for about 10 minutes before being rescued, zoo officials said. He suffered bites and punctures on his arms, legs, shoulders and back and broke an arm and a leg.

The attack happened at around 3 p.m. in the Wild Asia exhibit, where a train with open sides takes visitors over the Bronx River and through a forest, where they glide along the top edge of a fence, past elephants, deer and a tiger enclosure.

Passengers aren't strapped in on the ride, and the 25-year-old man apparently jumped out of his train car, with a leap powerful enough to clear the perimeter fence.

The man was attacked by an 11-year-old male tiger that has been at the zoo for three years. The zoo's staff used a fire extinguisher to chase the tiger off, and the man was instructed to roll under an electrified wire to get to safety, zoo director Jim Breheny

said. Zookeepers then called the tiger into a holding area.

The man was conscious and talking after the mauling, Breheny said.

"If not for the quick response by our staff and their ability to perform well in emergency situations, the outcome would have been very different," he said.

Police said the man was hospitalized in critical condition.

The Bronx Zoo

, one of the nation's largest, sprawls over 265 acres and contains hundreds of animals, many in habitats meant to resemble natural settings. Its exhibits include Tiger Mountain, Congo Gorilla Forest and World of Reptiles.

The tiger did nothing wrong and will not be euthanized, zoo officials said. It was back in a holding area where it usually sleeps at night.

Animal Pictures