The Daily Drift

Today of all days

Carolina Naturally is read in 191 countries around the world daily.

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Today is Niagara Falls Runs Dry Day
 

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Today in History

1461		The armies of two kings, Henry VI and Edward IV, collide at Towton.
1638		A permanent European colony is established in present-day Delaware.
1827		Composer Ludwig van Beethoven is buried in Vienna amidst a crowd of over 10,000 mourners.
1847		U.S. troops under General Winfield Scott take possession of the Mexican stronghold at Vera Cruz.
1867		The United States purchases Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars.
1879		British troops of the 90th Light Infantry Regiment repulse a major attack by Zulu tribesmen in northwest Zululand.
1886		Coca-Cola goes on sale for the first time at a drugstore in Atlanta. Its inventor, Dr. John Pemberton, claims it can cure anything from hysteria to the common cold.
1903		A regular news service begins between New York and London on Marconi's wireless.
1913		The German government announces a raise in taxes in order to finance the new military budget.
1916		The Italians call off the fifth attack on Isonzo.
1936		Italy firebombs the Ethiopian city of Harar.
1941		The British sink five Italian warships off the Peloponnesus coast in the Mediterranean.
1951		The Chinese reject Gen. Douglas MacArthur's offer for a truce in Korea.
1951		Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I opens on Broadway starring Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner.
1952		President Harry Truman removes himself from the presidential race.
1961		The 23rd amendment, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to vote for president, is ratified.
1962		Cuba opens the trial of the Bay of Pigs invaders.
1966		Leonid Brezhenev becomes First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. He denounces the American policy in Vietnam and calls it one of aggression.
1967		France launches its first nuclear submarine.
1971		Lt. William L. Calley Jr. is found guilty for his actions in the My Lai massacre.
1973		The last U.S. troops withdraw from South Vietnam.
1975		Egyptian president Anwar Sadat declares that he will reopen the Suez Canal on June 5, 1975.
1976		Eight Ohio National Guardsmen are indicted for shooting four Kent State students during an anti-war protest on May 4, 1970.
1986		A court in Rome acquits six men in a plot to kill the Pope.

Non Sequitur

The Prom Comes to Katelyn

Fourteen-year-old Katelyn Norman of LaFollette, Tennessee, has terminal bone cancer. One of the items on her bucket list was to go to the prom. Campbell County High School had their prom early and arranged for her to go, but then Katelyn's declining health landed her in East Tennessee Children's Hospital.

In stable condition and in high spirits, Katelyn was able to have a make shift prom in her room.

The hospital staff decorated the room and her date gave her a corsage and a special sash. Family and friends gathered outside with candles.

Meanwhile, in Campbell County, the celebration of Katelyn was taking place.

The music was blaring, the decorations were hung, it was meant to be Katelyn's perfect night, and she wanted it to go on, even if she wasn't there.

"She contacted me and said prom must go on, that's her, and you can't help but feed off that energy, that life," said Sharon Shepard, an instructor at Katelyn's school and organizer of the prom.

The night was a celebration of Katelyn, featuring all her favorite things.  But most important, the people she loves most.

More

More  pictures.

Did you know ...

That the drought will likely get worse in 2013

About the private sector parasites that suck the system dry

That Glenn Beck is making a lot of money

Meanwhile, the founding director of Pew research says Faux News is the problem with the repugican cabal

Did you know that repugican Policies Result In 20%-32% of Kids In the Poorest Red States Living In Poverty

America is home to a very active pro-life movement founded on the concept that all life is precious, and is synonymous with the concepts of right-to-life and culture-of-life the religio-nuts and repugicans spend undue time on attempting to control women and protect single-celled organisms. However, at the end of gestation, the same movement spends unwarranted amounts of time and energy abandoning infants and children to poverty, hunger, and ill-health in a never-ending crusade to cut programs that ensure babies and children are mired in poverty and lack basic necessities of life making a mockery of their pro-life moniker.
The repugicans have developed a stellar record of perpetuating poverty, and are renowned for cutting safety nets for the poorest Americans while taking particular delight in promoting their cuts as common sense and crucial to protect future generations from crushing deficits. However, at the rate poverty among children is rising, future generations will be hard-pressed to survive, much less contribute to paying off repugicans’ debts. In a new study from First Focus and the Urban Institute, there are  6.2 million children living in poverty where at least one parent is unemployed, and the number rises to 12.1 million when considering that most of the parents are underemployed. Obviously, when parents are under, or unemployed, children are bound to live in stark poverty and suffer the effects of hunger, ill-health, and the likelihood of never escaping poverty in their lifetime.
The report shows that instability of home life accompanying long-term unemployment, and the inability to stay situated in one place very long predicts children have poor school attendance, lower math scores, and increased chances of being held back  in school by 15%, and are unlikely to pursue or afford higher education. The anti-choice repugicans exacerbate children’s plight by  perpetually cutting funding from safety nets that are the worst in the industrialized world, and it has reached a point that more families qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP – food stamps) than unemployment insurance.
SNAP benefits average $278 per month per household, and the average unemployment benefits are $299 per week ($1,286 month). In at least eight states with the highest child poverty rates, they have cut or reduced the length of unemployment programs from 26 down to 12  weeks according to a new report from the National Employment Law project. Unfortunately for children with unemployed parents, federal benefits are dependent on a state’s unemployment offerings that prevent the poor from having access to federal programs. In 2011, between federal and state unemployment insurance programs, 2.3 million Americans avoided falling into poverty, but when red states slash unemployment programs, the unemployed lose federal unemployment insurance that all but assures a drastic rise in children living in poverty. Cutting unemployment benefits also has a deleterious effect on the economy and other Americans because according to the Congressional Budget Office, cuts to unemployment benefits cost Americans at least 300,000 jobs in a year leading to more children living in poverty.
As it is now, America has the second highest child poverty rate in the developed world behind Romania, and the rate will only increase as repugican sequestration cuts keep 70,000 children out of the Head Start program as well as tens-of-thousands more losing access to healthcare coverage. The repugican budget slashes billions from anti-poverty programs and it leads one to wonder how repugicans claim to be pro-life when their policies are detrimental to children living in poverty’s lives. They are pro-life as long as life is a zygote, embryo, or fetus in a poor mothers’ womb for nine months, and then their culture of life becomes a culture of hunger, ill-health, and eventually death
The repugicans could improve the lives of children and lift them and their parents out of poverty if they spent one tenth the time creating jobs as they do protecting zygotes, embryos, and fetuses. It has been two years and three months since repugicans took control of the House promising to focus on creating jobs, and yet they began the 112^th Congress protecting zygote-life and cutting assistance to real live children and killing jobs ever since. They rejected all of President Obama’s jobs plans at the same time they deliberately killed jobs, and rejected raising the minimum wage that would keep some Americans just above the poverty line.  Just their sequester cuts alone will kill a million jobs and send tens-of-thousands of middle class Americans into poverty with mandatory unpaid furlough days.
In the poorest red states, 20-32% of children live in poverty, and nationwide the rate is over 23% and climbing, and integral to high poverty rates are the lack of decent jobs. Many Americans who are fortunate enough to find jobs are offered part-time work at minimum wages at corporate-owned businesses, and even if they worked full-time at minimum wage they could not afford a place to live in any state in the Union. Many, many American families are nearly homeless and bounce around between shelters, motels, and live in cars to save what little they have to feed their children. There are millions of Americans who were in the middle class, but because of outsourcing and public sector layoffs slipped into poverty, and as their unemployment benefits run out and repugicans cut spending on safety nets, they have little opportunity of ever returning to the middle class in their lifetimes.
The repugicans in Congress and statehouses have made every attempt to create a permanent underclass living in poverty, and they are unfazed at the devastation they are creating for children whose parents cannot find a job, or are severely under-employed at part time, minimum wage jobs. The key to lifting Americans and their children out of poverty, growing the economy, and reducing the deficit is creating jobs that generate a vibrant economy and a culture of life all Americans deserve, even children. If repugicans cared a fraction about children’s lives as they do a zygote’s, maybe they could wear the pro-life label with pride, but they care about children’s lives about as much as they do jobs, and as they are killing Americans’ jobs, they are killing America’s children; and they are barely getting started.

John Boehner Promises To Take Healthcare Away from 30-40 Million People

Most people have heard it is better to give than to receive, and nearly everyone experiences that warm feeling when giving to someone in need out of the goodness of their heart, and not an obligation or expectation of reward. Americans are extremely generous people who should be feeling very satisfied because they have given much more than they can afford over the past five years, and doubtless they are going to give a lot more. Even greedy repugicans enjoy giving, and without doubt their generosity comes from the heart and is borne of their obligation to care for their loved ones like every other human being, or maybe it is their constitutional mandate to “provide for the general welfare” of the people they govern.  However, repugicans do not govern the people, they provide for the specific welfare of their corporate and religious masters, and they only give what they take from the people, or put on credit for the people to pay later.
On the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, John Boehner reiterated a repugican promise to “scrap Obamacare in its entirety to protect families, workers and seniors from losing their health insurance.” Boehner’s lies notwithstanding, scrapping the ACA takes healthcare coverage from 30-40 million Americans and takes protections from predatory insurance companies away from the people. The idea of taking from the people has been the hallmark of the repugican agenda for the past five years, and it violates the Constitution’s mandate that Congress “provide for the general welfare” of the people according to Thomas Jefferson. Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution says, “Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes…to pay the Debts and provide for the general Welfare of the United States,” and Jefferson and George Washington acknowledged that providing for the general welfare meant providing for “the governed people;” but it does not mean Congress takes from the people.
The repugicans have been on a tear to take everything and anything from the people for decades that began with the New Deal’s provisions for Social Security, labor laws, and banking regulations that benefit and protect the people. In fact, since President Obama has been in office, the repugican cabal tapped into religious and racial bigotry to garner support for taking more from the people to give to the rich, and they have spared no department, program, or policy that helps the people; including programs funded solely by the people.
The budget House repugicans passed last week is representative of the repugican cabal’s crusade to take food, shelter, healthcare, Veterans’ benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, Meals on Wheels, and educational opportunities from the American people. John Boehner called the Draconian budget “common sense” cuts, but they will not cover tax cuts for the richest Americans. The budget’s tax reform is taking middle class family’s tax credits and deductions away while giving the rich a 15% cut, and giving corporations the means to continue avoiding income tax.  One wonders if there is anything else repugicans can possibly take from the people under the “debt and deficit” mantra infecting Washington, and unfortunately they are taking people’s jobs.
In the run up to the 2010 midterm elections, repugicans pledged creating jobs was their highest priority, but they began 2011 attempting to take away women’s reproductive rights, the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and public sector jobs they claim America cannot afford. The repugicans also attempted to take disaster relief, labor rights, research and development, Centers for Disease Control, financial reform, and education funding away from the people as they heaped gifts on the oil, pharmaceutical, and agriculture industry in the form of subsidies they stole from American taxpayers. When John Boehner was given proof the repugican’s habit of taking from the people kills millions of jobs, he said “so  be it” and it revealed that taking food from seniors and children is of no more concern to repugicans than taking Americans’ jobs.
Just in the past year, repugicans proposed taking away child labor laws, minimum wage, overtime pay, voting rights, collective bargaining rights, religion-free education, and freedom from religious imposition and one wonders; just what else can they possibly take from the American people? Their government; it is why they openly campaigned on an anti-government platform and dream of drowning it in a bathtub, and why they promote privatizing everything from schools to the Postal Service to Medicare and Social Security. However, at the rate they are progressing, many Americans would never live long enough to qualify for Social Security, and many children will die before they reach school age for lack of adequate nutrition and healthcare.
There is no limit to what repugicans will take from the people, and no end to their gifts to the rich and corporations. Throughout the repugican cabal’s assault on the people, and with every new attempt to take something away, they stood firm behind their commitment to provide for the general welfare of the rich and powerful. When Americans cried out for jobs, repugicans offered more tax breaks for “job creators” and enacted spending cuts that kill millions of jobs. When tens-of-millions of Americans begged for affordable healthcare coverage, repugicans promised to “scrap the health law,” cut Medicaid and Medicare, and slash healthcare programs for the poorest Americans. And when natural disasters ravaged giant regions of the nation and victims requested assistance, repugicans balked until they could take something else from other Americans.
America, as the richest nation on Earth is rapidly devolving into a country of peasants existing to serve the rich with no government to protect them or their interests. The repugicans have led a thirty year crusade to take any and everything of value from the people whether it is food, healthcare, their retirement, or their jobs, and if they have the opportunity, they will take their lives if they can only find a way to give them to the rich.

Sarah Palin Returns To Help Democrats Win More Elections In 2014

Sarah Palin is back, and ready to help Democrats win more seats in 2014 by supporting repugicans that will never win in November.
Video:

The video mentions her record of picking winners in places like Texas, Arizona, and South Carolina, but it doesn’t mention that her meddling also gave the party losing candidates like Joe Miller and Christine O’Donnell in 2010. Palin picked a lot of winners in a repugican landslide year (2010), but she also donated to lots of losers in 2012.
In this video Palin tries to position herself as the tea party outsider with the strength and skill to go up against Karl Rove and the repugican establishment in 2014. Keep in mind that this self styled wingnut kingmaker was fired by Fox News because her lunatic ramblings hurt the image of the network and the repugican cabal.
The idea that the perpetually trapped in 2008 Palin is in touch enough with the country to pick candidates that will appeal to a broad spectrum of voters borders on insane. Palin is so out of step with the times that she is still questioning Obama’s birth certificate.
If Palin donated the super PAC money that she raises to candidates, she could be taken seriously. However, SarahPAC has a long history of spending money on Sarah Palin. An election is coming up, so Sarah Palin is back to line her pockets while pretending that she is interested in helping the wingnut cause. SarahPAC took in more than $5 million in 2012, but the PAC only donated a little over $300,000 to candidates. The PAC spent nearly as much money on Sarah Palin’s travel ($260,000) as it donated to candidates ($311,000).
Palin easily cost repugicans at least two Senate seats in 2010, and while the arrogance in this latest SarahPAC video is laughable, any involvement on her part bodes well for Democrats in 2014.

The Pink Panty Sheriff: 'I Could Lose'

 

Teabagging, Birther racist slimeball Joe Arpaio says he's afraid he could lose his post if his critics succeed in forcing a recall election against him. The Pink Panty Sheriff said that he's afraid he could lose if he doesn't fight back.

Recall organizers say they've gathered nearly 150,000 of the 335,000 signatures required by May 30 to prompt the election.  Recall organizers say Arpaio should be recalled, in part, because his office failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crimes cases.

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The truth be told

Cops running out of bullets because gun nuts have bought them all

It seems that so many gun nuts are buying up ammunition, in the fear that President Obama will take away their precious guns, that there’s now an ammo shortage in our country that’s directly affecting police departments.Things are so bad that even Walmart has been rationing ammo sales since January
Here’s AP on the nationwide spike in sales and the effect its had on nationwide stockpiles:

 

Now for some specifics.  Take the town of Jenks, Oklahoma.  The Jenks Police Department says they can’t get the guns or ammo they need because prices have skyrocketed and supplies have dwindled, in part thanks to gun-nut-landia buying everything in stock:

“Most police departments are having a very difficult time even getting the necessary ammunition for handguns, shotguns and especially rifles,” Arthur said. “With the delay in ammunition, some departments are limiting the number of rounds they carry in their handgun because of the shortage of ammunition. We get to the point where it is difficult to have enough ammo to train and also equip the officers.”

Or Greer, South Carolina.  They’re running out of bullets, and they don’t even have the ammunition they need to train officers:
Police departments in Michigan and Indiana are seeing similar shortages:

While the shortage is affecting business for local gun shops, Rupert says several police departments are getting desperate.
“Right now, we see a lot of smaller police departments that have resorted to paying retail prices for ammunition, because they cannot get it through their suppliers,” said Rupert.

In Bozeman, Montana, the cops are finding that there’s no one they can order ammo from, everyone is so out of stock.  And the manufacturers can’t even tell them when there will be more supplies.
Or Shelbyville, Tennessee, where they claim not to have an ammo shortage, but there are still massive delays in getting new shipments because of the nationwide gun-nut panic.

Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon says the NRA is to blame, and he’s not far from the truth.  Alex notes two particular peaks in gun and ammo sales.  First, after Obama’s election in 2008 (there was also a run on bullets in 2009 as, for whatever reason, gun nuts again feared massive imminent gun control), and second, after the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre this past December.
The NRA is in the business of selling guns, figuratively and literally, to the American people.  They’ve got a vested interest in keeping their paranoid membership, well, paranoid.  Paranoia helps keep membership up, and helps fuel gun and ammo sales.  And what’s good for Big Gun is good for the NRA.
It’s why the NRA has been warning gun nuts of a coming Zombie Apocalypse for a while now.  Here’s NRA chief Wayne LaPierre in a recent op ed, explaining why private citizens need to stockpile guns and ammo:

Meanwhile, President Obama is leading this country to financial ruin, borrowing over a trillion dollars a year for phony “stimulus” spending and other payoffs for his political cronies. Nobody knows if or when the fiscal collapse will come, but if the country is broke, there likely won’t be enough money to pay for police protection. And the American people know it.
Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face—not just maybe. It’s not paranoia to buy a gun. It’s survival. It’s responsible behavior, and it’s time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that.

These people are crazy.
What’s the answer?  Jon Green wrote about it right after Sandy Hook – we ought to be taxing the hell out of bullets to make it prohibitively expensive for any American to have more than what is needed for self-defense.  Period.

Saboteurs caught trying to sever major undersea Internet cable to Egypt

The Egyptian military claims it caught saboteurs in a small boat trying to sever one of the country's main undersea Internet cables. No word yet on who the guys were and what their motive might be:

Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said in a statement on his official Facebook page that divers were arrested while “cutting the undersea cable” of the country’s main communications company, Telecom Egypt. The statement said they were caught on a speeding fishing boat just off the port city of Alexandria.
The statement was accompanied by a photo showing three young men, apparently Egyptian, staring up at the camera in what looks like an inflatable launch. It did not further have details on who they were or why they would have wanted to cut a cable.

Egypt: Naval forces capture 3 divers trying to cut undersea Internet cable

Woman accused of pawning stolen jewellery to help retrieve repossessed car

According to Boynton Beach police in Florida, 25-year-old Chelsey Adele Edwards stole thousands of dollars' worth of jewellery from the J.C.Penney department store where she  was the jewellery section manager, then tried to pawn them off for cash to help regain her repossessed car.

It began when a loss prevention officer at the store in the Boynton Beach Mall told police Edwards came to him with a men's necklace, ring, and bracelet in a jewellery bag that Edwards said she found in the store safe.

After the loss prevention officer told Edwards to put the items back in the safe so he could investigate it later, police say he received a tip that she had pawned off the jewellery instead of putting the jewellery back. When the officer checked the safe, only the necklace was inside.

A search by police found Edwards had pawned the other items, valued at about $1,034, at a West Palm Beach business for $500. Edwards was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on Friday and released on Saturday on $9,000 bail, facing charges of stolen property, larceny and fraud.

Thief's alleged to-do list included drug run, break-in and doing good deed for a stranger

Find crystal meth. Get a gold watch. Commit a break-in or rob a dealer. Sell drugs. Do one altruistic thing for a stranger. Those were the some of the to-do items in the notebook of a North Weymouth, Massachusetts, man who faces charges of breaking and entering, police Capt. Richard Fuller said.

Evan T. Dorsey, 25, was arraigned on Monday and ordered to undergo in-patient drug and alcohol treatment and return to court April 22. Officers responded at about 5pm on Friday after residents reported seeing a man carrying a bag and knocking on doors. The callers told police they saw the man, later identified as Dorsey, break into a garage on Wessagusset Road. When two of the residents confronted Dorsey, he said he was going door to door conducting a survey about opening a marijuana dispensary, Fuller said.

The officers spotted Dorsey where they watched while he knocked on a side door, then stole diabetic supplies including insulin from a UPS package on the doorstep and attempted to pry open a door before they stopped him, Fuller said. Dorsey was carrying a blackjack, burglary tools and about two dozen pieces of jewellery, Fuller said. Dorsey allegedly had no explanation for where the jewellery came from. He also had a notebook with a list of goals for the day that also included getting cocaine, Fuller said.

“This is a first for us,” Fuller said. “Those aren’t things you would normally put on your daily to-do list.” Dorsey was charged with breaking and entering in the daytime for a felony, larceny of drugs, possession of Class E drugs, possession of burglary tools, receiving stolen property over $250, receiving stolen property $250 or less, carrying a dangerous weapon and attempting to commit a crime. Police are investigating where the stolen jewellery came from and say Dorsey is a suspect in several other crimes in the area.

Google vs. Sweden Over "Ogooglebar"

Every December, Sweden's Language Council issues a list of new words. The year 2012 brought the word "ogooglebar," which means "ungoogleable." Google objected, noting that its name is a trademark, and shouldn't be used in an unauthorized manner.
Exasperated, Sweden's Language Council director Ann Cederberg opted to delete the word from the list because she had "neither the time nor the inclination to pursue the lengthy process that Google is trying to launch."
But this is the Interweb - and rather than letting the matter slide into obscurity, the Streisand Effect has been invoked. Now, "ogooglebar" is spreading. As Cederberg wrote (and Google translated)

"Google has forgotten one thing: language development does not care about brand protection. No individual can decide the language. Whoever in the future googling ogooglebar will not only find the wording that Google wanted to change, and that will remain online despite that Language Council amended the list. Anyone looking will also find all the comments that follow after the news spread that word was removed. That is how the Internet works."

One thing's for sure. Irony is not ogooglebar. Quartz has the story: Here.

Dead words that want reviving

Here's Death and Taxes's collection of 18 obsolete words that would be handy (or at least funny) to use today, compiled by Carmel Lobello from a book called The Word Museum and a blog called Obsolete Word of the Day. Some of my favorites:

Snoutfair: A person with a handsome countenance — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk
Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them – www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com
Spermologer: A picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger, what we would today call a columnist — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk
Jirble: To pour out (a liquid) with an unsteady hand: as, he jirbles out a dram — www.Wordnik.com

18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style

Six People Who Went to Great Lengths for their Pranks

With so much press about Easter and Passover, you might not realize that April Fool's Day is Monday. Covering someone's cubicle with tinfoil changing your co-worker's desktop image pale in comparison to the pranks of some folks. Mental_floss looks at six elaborate pranksters and their elaborate schemes. One of them was President Lyndon Johnson, who loved a prank -especially since he could get away with them. One he employed many times involved an amphibious car he kept at his ranch in Texas.

He would invite his visitors to take a drive around the ranch with him in the blue convertible. When they got to a steep hill at the edge of a lake, Johnson would let the car pick up speed. Then he’d yell, “The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in!” As the car entered the lake, the passengers would panic—until they realized that rather than sinking, they were motoring across the lake. One victim of the prank, Special Assistant to the President Joseph A. Califano, Jr., recalled that his boss teased him later for trying to save his own skin instead of the president’s.

Read about the other pranksters in a list at mental_floss.

The Most Beautiful Cherry Blossoms Around The World

One of the best known symbols of spring in Japan are the magnificent pink Japanese cherry trees, also called sakura. Starting in mid-March, the Internet is flooded with amazing pictures of all varieties of pink, blooming in parks and streets of different cities of Japan.

Even though sakura is the unofficial national flower of Japan, today they have spread to many other countries as well, mostly due to the Japanese diaspora. The blooming of the sakuras is definitely one of the most beautiful sights every spring, wherever you find them.

Daily Comic Relief

Fifteen minutes of fame?

15 minutes of fame? Study finds true fame isn’t fleeting

True fame isn’t fleeting. That’s what a team of researchers led by McGill University’s Eran Shor and Stony Brook University’s Arnout van de Rijt conclude in a new study that appears in the April issue [...]

What Causes Hearing Loss?

Not age is the leading cause of hearing loss, but noise. Unless you take steps now to protect your ears, sooner or later many of you - and your children - will have difficulty understanding even ordinary speech. Many people, including 12% to 15% of school-age children, already have permanent hearing loss caused by the everyday noise that we take for granted as a fact of life.

While there are myriad regulations to protect people who work in noisy environments, there are relatively few governing repeated exposure to noise outside the workplace, from portable music devices, rock concerts, hair dryers, sirens, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, vacuum cleaners, car alarms and countless other sources.

Seeing happiness in ambiguous facial expressions reduces aggressive behavior

Seeing happiness in ambiguous facial expressions reduces aggressive behavior

Encouraging young people at high-risk of criminal offending and delinquency to see happiness rather than anger in facial expressions results in a decrease in their levels of anger and aggression, according to a new study [...]

Science news

Synchrotron yields 'safer' vaccine

British scientists develop a new way to create an entirely synthetic vaccine which does not rely on using live infectious virus, meaning it is much safer. 205

• Interactive video: Synthetic viruses

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Sea hares' sticky defence uncovered

Sea hares fool hungry predators with a sticky secretion that deactivates their sense of smell, scientists say. BBC Nature

• Squid eye is sperm whale defence
• Bizarre rat reveals toxic trick

Pesticides 'damage brains of bees'

Commonly used pesticides are damaging the brains of honey bees and affecting their ability to learn, two studies suggest.

• EU delays action on pesticides ban
• EU targets pesticide to save bees

Lightest-ever aerogel is only twice as heavy as hydrogen

In a Nature paper called "Solid carbon, springy and light, scientists from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China introduce a record-breakingly light aerogel, lighter than helium, only twice as heavy as hydrogen:

Gao Chao's team had already been building macroscopic graphene materials in one and two dimensions; to create the new aerogel, the researchers branched out into the third dimension, using a new method of freeze drying the solutions of carbon nanotubes and graphene to create malleable carbon sponges.
PhD candidate Sun Haiyan explained, "It's somewhat like large space structures such as big stadiums, with steel bars as supports and high strength film as walls to achieve both lightness and strength. Here, carbon nanotubes are supports and graphene is the wall."
The new material is amazingly absorptive, able to suck in up to 900 times its own weight in oil at a rate of 68.8 grams per second — only oil, not water, which means it has massive potential as a cleaning material when it comes to events such as oil spills.

Graphene aerogel is the new world's lightest substance  

Random Celebrity Photo

Photos from on top of the Great Pyramid

The Pyramids of Giza close to tourists at 4:00 pm. Recently, a group of Russians managed to hide out at the site after closing time and scramble up the Great Pyramid of Cheops in the fading light. Naturally, they took photos. (Because if there is one thing the Internet has taught me about Russians, it's that they like to climb to dangerous heights and then take photos.)
These shots are kind of fabulous, not just for the thrill of "yeah, somebody broke the rules!", but because of the perspective you get from on high that isn't visible in the many ground-level shots I've seen. From on top of the Pyramid, you can see how the stone is pockmarked and carved — it really looks like something humans cut out of the Earth. You can also see the graffiti left by generations of tourists in multiple languages; English, Arabic, French, and more. And you can see the edge of the modern city, shimmering just at the horizon. I don't think I'd previously had such a profound sense of how closely modern Egyptians lived and worked to the Great Pyramid, before. What a fascinating view!

Tattooine Photographed

Luke Skywalker's planet Tattooine has two suns that rise and fall close together. When Star Wars first came out, it seemed ridiculous that a planet could revolve around two stars at once, but as science fiction often goes, the real world catches up later. French scientists have photographed a heavenly body revolving around a binary star system. The possible planet is named 2MASS0103(AB)b, but is informally called Tattooine.

Philippe Delorme of the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, and colleagues took the picture in November last year using a telescope in Chile. Searches in the telescope's archives turned up data on the object's position in 2002 (marked in the picture by a green arrow), allowing them to trace its orbital motion around the binary stars.

Also known as Tatooines, after a fictional world in Star Wars, planets that orbit binary stars have only been found before through indirect methods. The new object orbits at a distance of about 12.5 billion kilometres, close enough to its stars to have been born from a disc of dust surrounding them, like a planet. But it is 12 to 14 times the mass of Jupiter, placing it near the dividing line between planets and failed stars called brown dwarfs.

Whether this mass is a planet or a star depends on how you define those things, as it appears now to sit on the dividing line between a planet and a star. Read more about Tattooine at NewScientist.

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The $91,500 Crocodile Skin T-Shirt

Ack! We've been underpricing our T-shirts over at the NeatoShop! Choire Sicha of The Awl has discovered the most expensive T-shirt for sale in New York City: a crocodile skin T-shirt in the Hermès men's store on Madison Avenue, listed for $91,500.

This t-shirt, to be fair, is made out of crocodile, hence its price. Literally, the entire shirt is just luxurious, beautifully sewn swaths of crocodile. This makes it possibly rather uncomfortable, and perhaps a little heavy, for a t-shirt. Seems like you might feel a little clammy in it? Also kind of awkward to just have everyone stare at your shirt. ("Is that strange rich man wearing a crocodile???)
Forgive me for not having pictures of the t-shirt itself; photographs are forbidden at the Hermès store, most probably as an anti-knockoff policy, or possibly to keep secret the fact that there are t-shirts that cost MORE THAN THREE OR FOUR ACTUALLY QUITE DECENT CARS.

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And what does a $91,500 crocodile leather t-shirt look like? The Daily Mail has the pic. I'll wait till it goes on sale at Costco!

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