The Daily Drift

You know it's going to be an off day when a bear waves at you ...

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Durban, South Africa

Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Liverpool, England

Fermont, Canada

Tbilisi, Georgia

Cape Town, South Africa

Abbottabad, Pakistan

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Taytay, Philippines

Ankara, Turkey

Islamabad, Pakistan

Havant, England

Sofia, Bulgaria

Johannesburg, South Africa

Manila, Philippines

Male, Maldives

Lille, France

Colombo, Sri Lana

Makati, Philippines

Belgrade, Serbia

Paris, France

Oranjestad, Aruba

Sampaloc, Philippines

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Today in History

1501		Arthur Tudor of England marries Katherine of Aragon.
1812		As Napoleon Bonaparte's army retreats form Moscow, temperatures drop to 20 degrees below zero.
1851		Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick is published in New York.
1882		Billy Clairborne, a survivor of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, loses his life in a shoot-out with Buckskin Frank Leslie.
1908		Albert Einstein presents his quantum theory of light.
1910		Lieutenant Eugene Ely, U.S. Navy, becomes the first man to take off in an airplane from the deck of a ship. He flew from the ship Birmingham at Hampton Roads to Norfolk.
1921		The Cherokee Indians ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review their claim to 1 million acres of land in Texas.
1922		The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) begins the first daily radio broadcasts from Marconi House.
1930		Right-wing militarists in Japan attempt to assassinate Premier Hamagushi.
1935		Manuel Luis Quezon is sworn in as the first Filipino president, as the Commonwealth of the Philippines is inaugurated.
1940		German bombers devastate Coventry in Great Britain, killing 1,000 in the worst air raid of the war.
1951		The United States and Yugoslavia sign a military aid pact.
1951		French paratroopers capture Hoa Binh, Vietnam.
1960		New Orleans integrates two all-white schools.
1960		President Dwight Eisenhower orders U.S. naval units into the Caribbean after Guatemala and Nicaragua charge Castro with starting uprisings.
1961		President Kennedy increases the number of American advisors in Vietnam from 1,000 to 16,000.
1963		Iceland gets a new island when a volcano pushes its way up out of the sea five miles off the southern coast.
1963		Greece frees hundreds who were jailed in the Communist uprising of 1944-1950.
1964		The U.S. First Cavalry Division battles with the North Vietnamese Army in the Ia Drang Valley, the first ground combat for American troops.
1968		Yale University announces its plan to go co-ed.
1969		The United States launches Apollo 12, the second mission to the Moon, from Cape Kennedy.
1984		The Space Shuttle Discovery's crew rescues a second satellite.

Non Sequitur

If “fiscal cliff” talks fail, public blames repugicans

In a new WashingtonPost/PEW poll the public says it will blame Republicans, and not President Obama and Democrats, if the upcoming “fiscal cliff” talks should fail.Wow.  Elections do have consequences.

Source: Washington Post/Pew poll, Nov. 13, 2012

For the uninitiated, here’s what the fiscal cliff is:

On August 2, 2011, Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011 as part of an agreement to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis. The Act provided for aJoint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the “super committee”) to produce legislation by late November that would decrease the deficit by $1.2 trillion over ten years. If the committee failed to do so, as it in fact had failed to do, another part of the Act directs automatic across-the-board cuts (known as “sequestrations”), split evenly between defense and domestic spending, beginning January 2, 2013.

More from PEW on the public’s attitudes towards the fiscal cliff:

As the president and congressional leaders begin negotiations to avoid the “fiscal cliff” deadline at the end of the year, there is widespread public concern about the possible financial consequences. More say the automatic spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to take effect in January would have a major effect on the U.S. economy than on their own finances. But nearly identical majorities say the effect of the changes would be mostly negative for the economy (62%) and their personal financial situation (60%).
The public is skeptical that President Obama and congressional Republicans will reach an agreement by the end of the year to avoid the fiscal cliff. About half (51%) say the two sides will not reach an agreement, while just 38% say they will. If no deal is reached, more say that congressional repugicans would be more to blame than President Obama (53% vs. 29%).

Even worse for the repugicans, they lose the poll in every demographic except “repugicans.”  Independents, men, even southerners all blame the repugicans if the fiscal cliff talks fail:

Source: Washington Post/Pew poll, Nov. 13, 2012

Source: Washington Post/Pew poll, Nov. 13, 2012

Source: Washington Post/Pew poll, Nov. 13, 2012

Keep in mind, the public hated the repugicans after the 2008 elections too. And in the first few years of the Obama administration, a number of us were concerned that the President didn’t take full advantage of such sentiment to brand the repugicans as extremists, and more generally use public ire to push the repugicans into more compromise.  Hopefully, that has now changed.

Labor heads say Obama backs them on 'fiscal cliff'

 

Labor leaders said Tuesday that President Barack Obama remains committed to preserving tax cuts for middle class families and ensuring the wealthy pay more in taxes, outlining plans for a public campaign to pressure repugican lawmakers.
The heads of several labor unions and Democratic-leaning interest groups emerged from an hour-long meeting with Obama saying they were united with the president on how to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff" and prevent more financial hardships next year.
"We are very, very committed to making sure that the middle class and workers don't end up paying the tab for a party that we didn't get to go to and the president is committed to that as well," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
Labor leaders said they plan to mobilize their members in the coming weeks to press repugicans to support the extension of tax cuts for middle income families. Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, said labor needs to remain "as engaged as we were in the election throughout the rest of this year to make sure we get the repugican House to say yes to tax cuts for the middle class."
One participant in the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private session, said the president told the group that he was not going to bend on letting tax cuts expire for top wage earners. The president said that the tax issue was clear during the election and that he had extended the Bush-era tax cuts once and would not do so again, the participant said.
According to participants, White House aides said the president intends to hold campaign-style events across the country after Thanksgiving to drum up support for his proposed solution to the fiscal cliff. It would build upon more than 100 rallies organized by labor unions last week urging members of Congress to avoid cuts to entitlement programs.
Obama was kicking off a series of meetings this week with labor officials, business executives and congressional leaders aimed at finding consensus on the fiscal cliff. The week will include a tone-setting news conference Wednesday that will give the president the chance to frame his outlook on the year-ending lame duck session.
The president views his re-election as an affirmation of his belief that raising taxes on families earning more than $250,000 a year is what voters want. repugican House Speaker John Boehner has expressed a willingness to raise revenues but remains opposed to boosting tax rates, pointing instead to closing tax loopholes, lowering rates and fixing entitlement programs.
Both sides have voiced the potential for cooperation, but face a post-election confrontation over a series of expiring tax cuts approved during the shrub junta and tough, across-the-board spending cuts set to take place because lawmakers failed to reach a deal to reduce the federal debt.
Economists have warned the combination of the expiring tax cuts and reduced spending could hinder the economic recovery.
During Tuesday's meeting, participants said the president reiterated his contention that the wealthy should pay more in taxes and that his views were vindicated by the election. They said the president showed no willingness to extend the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy. "He's standing firm on taxes, on the issue of raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans," said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress.
The labor and liberal organizations said they made clear their opposition to any benefit cuts to Medicare recipients or increasing the eligibility age. Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, said after the meeting he was confident that "whatever savings come out of those programs would not come out of beneficiaries or citizens, it would be focused more on providers."
Obama meets Wednesday with a dozen CEOs from companies such as General Electric, Walmart, Ford and Chevron. Some of the participants are involved with The Campaign to Fix the Debt, which has pushed for a long-term plan to fix the nation's debt and deficits.
The gatherings set the stage for a Friday meeting with the top four leaders of Congress before Obama departs on a trip to Asia leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Romney didn’t win even one vote in 59 Philly neighborhoods

Nobody besides perhaps Karl Rove would have expected Romney to win many votes in Philadelphia, but in parts of Philadelphia Romney failed to even win the support of one voter.In logic that can only make sense to the vote-denying repugican cabal, their explanation for why Romney wasn’t able to win even one single vote is that the repugican cabal wasn’t allowed to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
Right.
The first thing that enters a repugican politician’s mind when told that his candidate isn’t doing well enough in black votes is, “well then, how do we suppress the black vote?”

Guess who he’s not voting for?

Of course, as the Philadelphia Inquirer article points out, blocking more blacks from voting doesn’t really help you get more Republican votes.  Perhaps the answer is to stop always thinking of new ways to take civil rights away from African-Americans, and perhaps then, some day, some of them will finally vote for you?
I’m sure that Romney’s attack on the 47%, and the historical racism of Mormon‘s that has yet to be fully repudiated by Mormon leaders, and the repugican cabal’s general disdain for African-Americans and minorities generally, had nothing to do with the reason that not in recent polls in the last months, Romney was getting zero percent of the black vote.
Philadelphia Inquirer:

Upon hearing the numbers, Steve Miskin, a spokesman for Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, brought up his party’s voter-identification initiative – which was held off for this election – and said, “We believe we need to continue ensuring the integrity of the ballot.”
The absence of a voter-ID law, however, would not stop anyone from voting for a repugican candidate.

Predictably, the vote was more even in South Philly, where the infamous “order in English” cheesesteak shop is based.

Judge slams Ohio repugican Secretary of State for vote suppression

This just in from one of the lawyers in the case, Subodh Chandra.  It’s a tad complicated.  But newsworthy.

Here’s ThinkProgress’ explanation of the background of the case from a week ago:

 In a last-minute directive that directly conflicts with Ohio law, [Ohio's repugican Secretary of State Jon] Husted ordered all voters who make a mistake when filling out a form accompanying provisional ballots to be disenfranchised. As the majority of provisional ballots are cast in Ohio’s five largest counties — all of which favor Democrats — and because low-income and transient voters are also more likely to vote provisionally, Husted’s directive will likely disenfranchise many more Democrats than repugicans.

And here’s the lawyer for the good guys, Subodh Chandra, with quotes from the judge’s ruling which was just issued (the full ruling is further below):

U.S. District Judge Marbley finds that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted violated provisional voters’ substantive due process and equal-protection rights, violated a federal Consent Decree, and violated state law by–at the eleventh-hour, the Friday night before the election–shifting from poll workers to voters the statutory responsibility of recording identification information, and then directing elections boards to disenfranchise voters where the information was incomplete or missing.
[Among the judge's findings:]

“Counsel for the Secretary unambiguously assured this Court that the Secretary understood the recording of ‘identifying information’ to be a duty ‘imposed upon the poll worker’ and that the failure to do so would not ‘invalidate ballots.’ The Court relied on this statement to the Plaintiff’s detriment. Nine days after making that representation to the Court, the Secretary ordered that no provisional ballots be counted if the identification information was improperly recorded, without [e]ngaging in fact-finding to support the change.” (PAGE 13)
“The surreptitious manner in which the Secretary went about implementing this last minute change to the election rule casts serious doubts on his protestations of good faith.” (PAGE 13)
“Here the Secretary’s eleventh hour Directive, which disenfranchises an unknown but potentially large number of Ohio voters and violates state law, is one of the ‘rare, but serious’ violations of state election law” that violate substantive due process. (PAGE 14)
“The poor drafting of Form 12-B which, by design or by accident, purports to shift the poll worker’s statutory duty to record the form of identification to the provisional voter, did not provide occasion for the Plaintiffs to seek injunctive relief until the Secretary issue Directive 2012-54 at 7:00 pm on November 2…” (PAGE 9)
“Ohio voters reasonably expect that the Secretary of Ohio will abide by the General Assembly’s laws in administering a federal election. For an executive official of the state to [flout] state law in arbitrarily reassigning a poll worker’s statutory duty to a voter, with the result being disenfranchisement of the voter, is ‘fundamentally unfair and constitutionally impermissible.’” (PAGE 15)
“First, having created the equal protection issue by issuing a directive that violates both state law and a voluntarily entered Consent Decree, the Secretary cannot benefit from his illegal act by using it to escape his obligations under the Consent Decree. Second, if the Secretary has drafted Form 12-B in such a way that it both illegally shifts the burdens of recording identification information from election officials to voters and does not allow election workers to distinguish poll-worker error from voter failure to provide identification, that is the Secretary’s mistake. There were myriad options available to the Secretary to create a form which would have made such distinctions clear, but he chose not to pursue those options.” (PAGE 11)
“The voter acting in good faith cannot suffer disenfranchisement as a result of the Secretary’s drafting errors.” (PAGE 12)

And here’s the judge’s order:

2012-11-13 NEOCH #357 Opinion and Order of Judge Marbley

Woman mows down husband with car for not voting

In a typical whiny-ass repugican knee-jerk reaction ...

Arizona repugican Holly Solomon, 28, was arrested Monday after running over her husband, Daniel Solomon, following his failure to vote in last week's presidential election. Solomon remains in critical condition, but his vote was not critical to the victory of Democrat Barack Obama.

Colorado man accused of threats against kids, Obama

A suburban Denver man has been arrested after telling his therapist he wanted to shoot children, kill people on Halloween and kill President Barack Obama, federal court records show.Mitchell Kenneth Kusick, of Westminster, was being held Tuesday on suspicion of a federal charge of threats against a president. He identified himself as a student at Colorado Mesa University in western Colorado, investigators said.
According to KUSA-TV in Denver (http://on9news.tv/T2rbYC ), Jefferson County court records show Kusick told his therapist about wanting to shoot students at a trick-or-treat event at Standley Lake High School.
Federal court records indicate that Kusick took a shotgun from his aunt's house and tried to buy ammunition. He told his therapist on Oct. 29 about his plan and allegedly said he wanted to go down in history as the "guy who killed Obama," the records say. His alleged comments came days before the president held a campaign rally in Boulder.
Kusick also said he was obsessed with the deadly shootings at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech, according to court records.
The therapist called police, and Kusick was placed on a mental health hold at a hospital.
According to court records, Kusick told investigators he also studied this summer's Aurora movie theater shooting in which 12 people were killed, and he talked about what the gunman did wrong.
Online court records didn't list the name of Kusick's attorney.
A detention hearing is scheduled Friday.

The Classics

1946 Ford Super Deluxe Six

The kids dig minor keys

How pop music has changed since 1960 

While 85% of Billboard Top 100 songs of the 1960s were written in a major key, that preference no longer holds true today. Minor key songs have become the majority, representing about 60% of modern hits. Scientific American's Helen Lee Lin delves into this, and other documented changes in musical preference. The research is totally interesting, even if the scientists don't seem to have a good idea of what it means. Maybe we're depressed. Or maybe we're just trying to sound more mature. Here's the original paper.

Inside a cannabis grow house in the San Fernando Valley

An indoor cannabis farmer invited a television reporter to visit his growing operation. He said he has 40 employees, seven indoor gardens, and earns $420,000 a year.

Mike admits his landlord doesn’t know he’s an urban farmer. His latest round of "OG Kush" will yield some 150 pounds of marijuana, a value of $510,000 turning over every 10 weeks. Mike’s partners at dispensaries in the Southland then sell the OG Kush by 1/8 of an ounce – sometimes more – charging $40 to $60 each.
"My biggest concern is staying out of the way of the Feds," he said, "but I don’t see myself doing anything else."

Inside a Marijuana Grow House in the San Fernando Valley

FDA wanted to close Massachusetts pharmacy in 2003

Nearly a decade ago, federal health inspectors wanted to shut down the pharmacy linked to a recent deadly meningitis outbreak until it cleaned up its operations, according to congressional investigators. About 440 people have been sickened by contaminated steroid shots distributed by New England Compounding Center, and more than 32 deaths have been reported since the outbreak began in September, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That has put the Framingham, Mass.-based pharmacy at the center of congressional scrutiny and calls for greater regulation of compounding pharmacies, which make individualized medications for patients and have long operated in a legal gray area between state and federal laws.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a detailed history of NECC's regulatory troubles on Monday, ahead of a meeting Wednesday meeting to examine how the outbreak could have been prevented. The 25-page report summarizes and quotes from FDA and state inspection reports and internal memos, though the committee declined to release the original documents.

The report shows that after several years of problems, Food and Drug Administration officials in 2003 suggested that the compounding pharmacy be "prohibited from manufacturing" until it improved its operations. But FDA regulators deferred to their counterparts in Massachusetts, who ultimately reached an agreement with the pharmacy to settle concerns about the quality of its prescription injections.

The congressional report also shows that in 2003 the FDA considered the company a pharmacy. That's significant because since the outbreak came to light in late September, public health officials have charged that NECC was operating more as a manufacturer than a pharmacy, shipping thousands of doses of drugs to all 50 states instead of small batches of drugs to individual patients. Manufacturers are regulated by the FDA and are subject to stricter quality standards than pharmacies.

The report offers the most detailed account yet of the numerous regulatory complaints against the pharmacy, which nearly date back to its founding in 1998. Less than a year later, the company was cited by the state pharmacy board for providing doctors with blank prescription pads with NECC's information. Such promotional items are illegal in Massachusetts and the pharmacy's owner and director, Barry Cadden, received an informal reprimand, according to documents summarized by the committee.

Cadden was subject to several other complaints involving unprofessional conduct in coming years, but came to the FDA's attention in 2002. Here are some key events from the report highlighting the company's early troubles with state and federal authorities:

__ In March of 2002 the FDA began investigating reports that five patients had become dizzy and short of breath after receiving NECC's compounded betamethasone repository injection, a steroid used to treat joint pain and arthritis that's different from the one linked to the current meningitis outbreak.
FDA inspectors visited NECC on April 9 and said Cadden was initially cooperative in turning over records about production of the drug. But during a second day of inspections, Cadden told officials "that he was no longer willing to provide us with any additional records," according to an FDA report cited by congressional investigators. The inspectors ultimately issued a report citing NECC for poor sterility and record-keeping practices but said that "this FDA investigation could not proceed to any definitive resolution," because of "problems/barriers that were encountered throughout the inspection."

__ In October of 2002, the FDA received new reports that two patients at a Rochester, N.Y., hospital who came down with symptoms of bacterial meningitis after receiving a different NECC injection. The steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, is the same injectable linked to the current outbreak and is typically is used to treat back pain. Both patients were treated with antibiotics and eventually recovered, according to FDA documents cited by the committee.

When officials from the FDA and Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy visited NECC later in the month, Cadden said vials of the steroid returned by the hospital had tested negative for bacterial contamination. But when FDA scientists tested samples of the drug collected in New York they found bacterial contamination in four out of 14 vials sampled. It is not entirely clear whether FDA tested the same lot shipped to the Rochester hospital.

__ At a February 2003 meeting between state and federal officials, FDA staff emphasized "the potential for serious public consequences if NECC's compounding practices, in particular those relating to sterile products, are not improved." The agency issued a list of problems uncovered in its inspection to NECC, including a failure to verify if sterile drugs met safety standards.

But the agency decided to let Massachusetts officials take the lead in regulating the company, since pharmacies are typically regulated at the state level. It was decided that "the state would be in a better position to gain compliance or take regulatory action against NECC as necessary," according to a summary of the meeting quoted by investigators.

The FDA recommended the state subject NECC to a consent agreement, which would require the company to pass certain quality tests and assurances to continue operating. But congressional investigators say Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy did not take any action until "well over a year later."

__ In October 2004, the board sent a proposed consent agreement to Cadden, which would have included a formal reprimand and a three-year probationary period for the company's registration. The case ended without disciplinary action in 2006, when NECC agreed to a less stringent consent decree with the state.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and Massachusetts Department of Public Health interim commissioner Lauren Smith are scheduled to testify at Wednesday's hearing.

According to the congressional report, lawmakers plan to ask the witnesses whether the FDA and state pharmacy board acted appropriately. Cadden is also scheduled to appear at the hearing, after lawmakers issued a subpoena to compel him to attend.

The NECC has been closed since early last month, and Massachusetts officials have taken steps to permanently revoke its license. The pharmacy has recalled all the products it makes, including 17,700 single-dose vials of a steroid that tested positive for the fungus tied to the outbreak.

Obedience and fear: What makes people hurt other people?

Stanley Milgram's "Obedience to Authority" experiments are infamous classics of psychology and social behavior. Back in the 1960s, Milgram set up a series of tests that showed seemingly normal people would be totally willing to torture another human being if prodded into it by an authority figure.

The basic set-up is probably familiar to you. Milgram told his test subjects that they were part of a study on learning. They were tasked with asking questions to another person, who was rigged up to an electric shock generator. When the other person got the questions wrong, the subject was supposed to zap them and then turn up the voltage. The catch was that the person getting "zapped" was actually an actor. So was the authority figure, whose job it was to tell the test subject that they must continue the experiment, no matter how much the other person pleaded for them to stop. In Milgram's original study, 65% of the subjects continued to the end of the session, eventually "administering" 450-volt shocks.
But they weren't doing it calmly. If you read Milgram's paper, you find that these people were trembling, and digging nails into their own flesh. Some of them even had seizure-like fits. Which is interesting to know when you sit down to read about Michael Shermer's recent attempt to replicate the Milgram experiments for a Dateline segment. Told they were trying out for a new reality show, the six subjects were set up to "shock" an actor, just like in Milgram's experiments. One walked out before the test even started. The others participated, but had some interesting rationales for why they did it — and a simple ingrained sense of obedience wasn't always what was going on.

Our third subject, Lateefah, became visibly upset at 120 volts and squirmed uncomfortably to 180 volts. When Tyler screamed, “Ah! Ah! Get me out of here! I refuse to go on! Let me out!” Lateefah made this moral plea to Jeremy: “I know I'm not the one feeling the pain, but I hear him screaming and asking to get out, and it's almost like my instinct and gut is like, ‘Stop,’ because you're hurting somebody and you don't even know why you're hurting them outside of the fact that it's for a TV show.” Jeremy icily commanded her to “please continue.” As she moved into the 300-volt range, Lateefah was noticeably shaken, so Hansen stepped in to stop the experiment, asking, “What was it about Jeremy that convinced you that you should keep going here?” Lateefah gave us this glance into the psychology of obedience: “I didn't know what was going to happen to me if I stopped. He just—he had no emotion. I was afraid of him.”

Read the rest in Michael Shermer's column at Scientific American

Grandmother, uncle plot murder-suicide, 3 kids die

Caught up in a family disagreement over who should care for three young children, a grandmother and her son barricaded themselves and the kids in a garage and filled it with deadly carbon monoxide gas. All five died.

Police spent Tuesday trying to explain the heartbreaking scene discovered a day earlier at the home of 54-year-old Sandy Ford and her son Andy in a quiet Toledo neighborhood.

Firefighters using a sledgehammer broke down the garage door to find the bodies of 5-year-old Madalyn Hayes, her 6-year-old brother Logan and 10-year-old sister Paige slumped inside a car, along with their grandmother and uncle. Two hoses attached to the exhaust of a pickup truck pumped gas fumes through the car's rear window.

Police said letters inside the house indicated the woman and her son plotted the murder-suicide, beginning by picking up the children from school Monday morning after their mother had dropped them off earlier.

They also had disabled the garage door opener and nailed plywood over the windows, said Toledo police Sgt. Joe Heffernan. He wouldn't say what was in the letters, but it appeared some were written by the children.
"We're trying to figure out all the why's in this," he said.

Authorities were called to the home by the children's frantic grandfather after he discovered the letters and was unable to force open the garage door. Despite the grisly scene, investigators found no signs the children were forced into the car and believe all five died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Until last week, the children had spent the last three years living with their grandparents, Sandy and Randy Ford, and their uncle at the house in a residential neighborhood close to the Michigan state line.

Their mother, Mandy Hayes, had asked her mom for help caring for the three children because a fourth child at the home was becoming disruptive, said children's services representatives and a family friend.

"She was just being protective," said the friend, Cammie Turner.
While the children were living with their grandparents, their parents saw them almost every day and went on outings to parks and the zoo, Turner said.
"Their kids mean everything to them," she said.
But recently Hayes had decided they should all return home, and the children moved back in with their parents last week, upsetting Hayes' mother, Turner said.
"Mandy wasn't taking the kids away from her entirely," she said. "She wanted them home. It wasn't like she was taking them and grandma could never see them again."
Turner said Hayes had confided that her mother was controlling, but she never seemed alarmed by it.
"It doesn't make sense," she said. "I can't imagine. To have your mom ..."

Police were at the house last week and children services workers met with both sides of the family, most recently on Saturday, said Dean Sparks, executive director of Lucas County Children Services.

"We only know that there were a lot of allegations back and forth," he said, adding that Sandy Ford was worried about placing her grandchildren back in the home with their 9-year-old brother, who had been disruptive in the past.

But the agency had no authority to decide who should keep the children, Sparks said, and the parents had every right to bring them back into their home.

Turner said she never saw any indication of a strained relationship between Hayes and her mother, and they never went to court over the issue of custody.

Family members declined to comment.

Doug Hall, a neighbor who lives across the street, said he often saw the children with their uncle, raking leaves or shoveling snow. He said the only unusual thing he noticed was a police car at the house last Thursday. He said he didn't know why it was there.

Neighbors said the family spent a lot of time together and that the Fords had put in a swimming pool this summer for the children.

Another neighbor said he saw the kids playing in the leaves just a few days ago.

"One minute they're doing the leaves, and then the next there are cop cars all over," Eric Pieper said.

That's a good one

Maintenance Matter 

A husband frantically calls hotel front desk from his hotel room, “Please come fast I’m having an argument with my wife and she says she’s going jump out the window of your hotel”.

The manager responded,  “Sir that’s a personal matter.”

Husband: “You idiot, the window won’t open! That’s a maintenance matter!”

Sphinx Destruction Urged By Egyptian Salafi With Taliban Connections

The Sphinx destruction as well as the Giza pyramids are being called for by an Egyptian Salafist. Murgan Salem al-Gohary is a Muslim jihadist leader with connections to the Taliban who went on TV over the weekend to announce jihad on one of the seven wonders of the world.

“The idols and statues that fill Egypt must be destroyed. Muslims are tasked with applying the teachings of Islam and removing these idols, just like we did in Afghanistan when we smashed the Buddha statues,” Gohary said in a Saturday night television interview, according to Egyptian daily al-Masry al-Youm. “God ordered Prophet Mohamed to destroy idols. When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”
According to The Blaze, “Gohary, 50, is well-known in Egypt for his advocacy of violence. He was sentenced twice under former President Hosni Mubarak, one of the two sentences being life imprisonment. He subsequently fled Egypt to Afghanistan, where he was badly injured in the American invasion. In 2007, he traveled from Pakistan to Syria, which then handed him over to Egypt. After Mubarak’s fall in early 2011, he was released from prison by a judicial ruling.”
The Egyptian Interior Ministry believes these threats are to be taken very seriously. According to al-Masry al-Youm, Egyptian officials have “taken the necessary precautions to prevent violations of the law or any abuses of anything in the public domain or archaeological treasures including the pyramids.”
The newspaper al-Masry al-Youm also spoke with a security official but only under the condition of anonymity. This unnamed source claims that the police and security authorities in Giza had “taken the necessary precautions to deal with any aggression” against the pyramids and Sphinx destruction. “They are a source of national income and they bring tourists to Egypt.”
The Sphinx destruction would bring an end to an iconic marvel that has gathered visitors from all corners of the globe. In previous months, the Egyptian and Arab press have been reporting calls to jihad by Egyptian Salafists and foreign Islamists to demolish the pyramids and bring about the Sphinx destruction. Hopefully, we won’t wake up one morning to hear news of the Sphinx destruction by Islamic terrorists.

Random Celebrity Photo

Barbara Eden

Archduke Joseph Diamond fetches record $21.5M

Geneva's jewelry auctions, held in five-star hotels along its elegant lakefront, can seem a continent if not a world away from the grim austerity gripping much of Europe. Two out-of-this-world diamonds are being auctioned off this week, joining a long list of other fabulous jewels, watches and other luxury goods sold in Geneva. Here's a look at the city's most eye-popping diamonds:

PERFECTLY TRANSPARENT

On Tuesday night, Christie's auctioned off the Archduke Joseph Diamond for $21,474,525 including commission, a world auction record price per carat for a colorless diamond. That was well above the expected $15 million and more than triple the price paid for it at auction almost two decades ago. The 76.02-carat diamond, with perfect color and internally flawless clarity, came from the ancient Golconda mines in India.

The seller, Alfredo J. Molina, chairman of California-based jeweler Black, Starr & Frost, said immediately afterward that there were two main bidders and that he was delighted with the result. Molina said the winning bidder, who wished to remain anonymous, is going to donate the diamond for display at a museum.
"It's a great price for a stone of this quality," Molina told The Associated Press. "It's one of a kind, so it's like saying 'Are you pleased when you sell the Mona Lisa?' Or 'Are you pleased when you sell the Hope Diamond?' It's all what the market will bear, and the stone sold for a very serious price."

Named for Archduke Joseph August of Austria, the great-grandson of both a Holy Roman emperor and a French king, the diamond passed to his son, Archduke Joseph Francis, who put it in a bank vault, then to an anonymous buyer who kept it in a safe during World War II. From there it surfaced at a London auction in 1961, then at a Geneva auction in 1993, when Christie's sold it for $6.5 million.

It wasn't the only mega-diamond to go under the hammer at Tuesday's auction in the hotel room packed with well-heeled bidders. Beneath a row of three enormous chandeliers that cast panther-like shadows on the ceiling, the participants eagerly pounced at the jewels while competing with bidders from around the world calling in to Christie's employees seated in rows on both sides of the room.
But perhaps the buyers weren't entirely immune to the harsh financial climate in Europe — or at least some Geneva version of it. Two plus-sized diamonds did not sell Tuesday night. A yellow diamond with 70.19 carats failed to sell because the final bid was 2.8 million Swiss francs, just slightly below the reserve price. A 12.16 carat pink diamond didn't sell because the final bid was 1.8 million francs, well under the reserve price.
FANCY DEEP BLUE

Sotheby's on Wednesday will auction what it calls an exceptionally rare fancy deep blue briolette diamond of 10.48 carats expected to get up to $4.5 million. Also on the block: a conch pearl, enamel and diamond Cartier bracelet that formerly belonged to Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain that's expected to sell for up to $1.4 million.

ROYAL CONNECTIONS

In May 2012, Sotheby's sold the 34.98 carat Beau Sancy diamond to an anonymous bidder for $9.7 million. Marie de Medici had worn it at her coronation as Queen Consort of Henry IV in France in 1610. Then the diamond passed among the royal families in France, England, the Netherlands and Prussia. It was sold by the Royal House of Prussia.

Sotheby's also sold for $3.87 million the Murat Tiara, a pearl-and-diamond tiara created for the marriage of a prince whose ancestors included the husband of Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister. Christie's auctioned off a 32.08-carat Burmese ruby and diamond ring that sold for $6.7 million, a world record price for a ruby sold at auction.

PEAR-SHAPED

In November 2011, the Sun-Drop Diamond of South Africa, a giant pear-shaped yellow gem weighing 110.3 carats, sold for more than $10.9 million at auction, beating previous records for a jewel of its type. Including commission, the unidentified telephone bidder paid almost $12.4 million for the gem. Other lots at the $70 million sale included a white cushion-shaped diamond weighing 38.88 carats that sold for almost $7 million, including commission.

HEART-SHAPED

In May 2011, Christie's fetched $10.9 million for a 56-carat heart-shaped diamond that was internally flawless and $7.1 million for a 130-carat Burmese sapphire. Sotheby's got $12.7 million for a rare emerald-and-diamond tiara that a fabulously wealthy German prince, Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck, commissioned for his second, Russian-born wife around 1900. An intensely pink 11-carat diamond from the mines of India sold for $10.8 million.

INTENSELY PINK

In November 2010, a rare pink diamond smashed the world record for a jewel at auction, selling for more than $46 million to well-known London jeweler Laurence Graff. Four bidders competed for the pink diamond, which was last sold 60 years earlier by New York jeweler Harry Winston. The seller chose to remain anonymous. The 24.78-carat "fancy intense pink" diamond immediately became known as "The Graff Pink."

What's The Lightest Metal On Earth?

The lighter a structure launching into air, the better. That's one of the reasons why ostriches can't fly - because their bones are solid instead of hollow. It's also one of the reasons why researchers at HRL Laboratories created the lightest metal known to man.

The researchers collaborated with scientists at Caltech and UC Irvine to design metallic microlattice, a mesh lighter than styrofoam, for aerospace structural components. The material is so light it can sit atop a dandelion without crushing it.

Eternal Flame Falls

At the base of a waterfall deep in the forests of the state of New York a flame burns. A small grotto between the layers of shale protects this fire. Although the name suggest otherwise, the flame isn't eternal. This is a natural phenomenon but the flame occasionally needs a helping hand.

The area around the Eternal Flame Falls does have a different aroma to the surrounding forest. It is natural gas seeping from the layers of shale. Most dissipates in to the air but some of the gas, enclosed by the grotto, is concentrated enough to burn.

It's not as funny as you think ...

In having a Ph.D., we know this all too well.

Description of a flight through a nuclear mushroom cloud

The BBC's Keith Moore tells the tragic story of Joe Pasquini, an RAF navigator who was ordered to fly a jet through the mushroom cloud rising from the 1958 Grapple Y nuclear test, the largest nuclear explosion ever created by the British (he also flew through the Grapple Z test). He has since survived seven bouts with cancer; his children have also had various cancers. They blame his exposure to nuclear radiation, but have been denied any benefits by the British government, which, unlike the US military, does not acknowledge that veterans of nuclear tests are at any elevated risk of cancer. Here's Pasquini's description of his flight through the heart of a mushroom cloud:

"It detonated at 8,000 feet. We had our eyes closed, but even with our eyes closed we could see the light through our eye lids. It took 49 seconds for the light to stop.
"As soon as that happened, we immediately turned back. Fortunately being in the navigating position, I had a little window and I watched the whole thing develop and spread and then start climbing.
"I think I saw the face of God for the first time. It was just incredible, it blew our minds away. These were things that had never been seen before, certainly not by English people."
When the mushroom cloud had passed over them, Pasquini looked up at the window above him and had another surprise - radioactive rain.
"It's the only time I've experienced rain at 46,000 feet," he says.

Nuclear test veteran who flew through a mushroom cloud

Slate's "The Vault" is a great, new history blog

Rebecca Onion is the curator at a new Slate blog that showcases nifty finds from America's historical archives. So far, she's got a photo of the be-loinclothed winner of a eugenics-inspired Better Baby Contest; a breakup letter written by Abraham Lincoln; and this specimen of 1950s-style STEM recruitment toys for girls.
What's interesting about this chemistry set is that you can't really say it's more or less sexist than the types of science kits you see marketed heavily to girls today. Sure, it's in a pink box and heavily insinuates that the best job a woman can hope for in science is as somebody's assistant. But, on the other hand, it's apparently the exact same chemistry set sold to boys, just with different packaging. Whereas today, pink-colored science kits trend heavily toward "girl" things, like teaching you how to make your own scented soaps — but at least you're in charge of the soap-making lab.
Progress!

The set, which is preserved in the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s collection of chemistry sets, is a product of post-WWII anxiety over the nation’s lack of what was called “scientific manpower.” Having seen what a difference science made in the war (the bomb, radar, penicillin), and realizing that the amount of work to be done in labs and industrial R&D was limitless, Americans worried that insufficient numbers of young people wanted to be scientists. Some called for young women to be included in recruitment efforts. Women had been largely shut out of scientific careers up until that point. But they had a major point in their favor: They were undraftable. If girls got the right training, future wartime labs could be staffed by women, who were naturally bound to the homefront.
But all science jobs are not alike, and women didn’t get the plum ones. Historian John Rudolph, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written about postwar efforts to upgrade the science curriculum. He found that girls were recruited to science careers after the war, but only for jobs that were to the side of the main show: lab technician, science teacher.

Read the rest at The Vault

Charles Babbage's dissected brain

A paper in a 1909 edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London described the dissection of Charles Babbage's brain. The whole article is on the Internet Archive, from which the Public Domain Review has plucked it.

Babbage himself decided that he wanted his brain to be donated to science upon his death. In a letter accompanying the donation, his son Henry wrote:
I have no objection…to the idea of preserving the brain…Please therefore do what you consider best…[T]he brain should be known as his, and disposed of in any manner which you consider most conducive to the advancement of human knowledge and the good of the human race.
Half of Babbage’s brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London, the other half is on display in the Science Museum in London.

The Brain of Charles Babbage (1909)

Myths About Space Travel That Make Science Fiction Better

We all love to point out the ridiculous bad physics in science fiction - it's like an awesome sport that everybody wins. But the truth is, sometimes you have to violate the laws of physics to create science fiction stories that people want to watch. Six great physicists were asked to name their favorite occasions when breaking the laws of physics makes science fiction better.

Here are 10 myths about space travel that make science fiction more fun.

Russian grandmother kills wolf with ax, bare hands

A  woman from a village in southern Russia fought off a wolf with her bare hands and killed it with an axe. Aishat Maksudova, from Novo Biryuzyak village in the Dagestan region, was in a group of villagers herding cows and sheep.

The 56-year-old heard the cry of a calf being attacked and rushed to scare off the wolf but it turned on her. "I was not even frightened. I stood like this, holding an axe like this. And the wolf, with an open mouth suddenly jumped on me. Jumped like that. The wolf clawed at my leg and I wanted to hit him with the axe," Ms Maksudova said.

In a reversal of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale where a granddaughter saves her grandmother from being eaten by a wolf, this Russian grandmother took fate in her own hands. "When I raised my arm up like this, the wolf was just holding my hand. Trying to claw my hand. I wanted to open his mouth and put my fist all the way there, all the way to his throat. But I could not open him.

YouTube link.

"So I just left my hand, and the wolf was just clawing into it, pulling on it, pulling away like this. And then I took the axe and hit him on his head," she said. Ms Maksudova needed hospital treatment after being bitten. Her fellow villagers have vowed to hunt down other wolves in the area.

Miraculous Termite Mounds

Termite mounds. They may look like just a big pile of well-structured dirt but they are actually marvels of architecture and fill an unexpectedly important function in the ecosystems in which they appear. In fact, the areas around termite mounds can be some of the most biologically diverse in an entire habitat.

From the functions they serve for termites to the functions they serve for other animal and plant life, termite mounds are mind-blowing.

The Wolf Spider

The wolf spider is the only species of spider that carries its offspring this way - live, hatched and wriggling on her back!
After a gestation of 9 to 27 days (dependent on temperature) during which the eggs are carried around in a silk globe attached to the mothers stomach, the offspring hatch and climb on to her back. They stay there until they're ready to hunt alone.

Animal Pictures