The Daily Drift

Photographer Marko Popadic took this marvelous photo of a butterfly inside the eye socket of a human skull. Titled Oki ("eye" in Croatian), the butterfly's wing looks eerily like an eye staring out of the lifeless void. More

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

There's a new Chef in the kitchen ...
 



Today is World Rat Day

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Some of our readers today have been in:

Kiev, Ukraine

Santiago, Chile

Marrakesh, Morocco

Beirut, Lebanon

Muscat, Oman

Tallinn, Estonia

Caracas, Venezuela

Hamilton, Bermuda

Warsaw, Poland

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Ludwigsburg, Germany

Konya, Turkey

Doha, Oatar

Bangkok, Thailand

Zagreb, Croatia

Kabul, Afghanistan

Nicosia, Cyprus

Lahore and Islamabad, Pakistan

Surabaya and Jakarta, Indonesia

Naic and Manila, Philippines

Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa

Puchong, Kuching, Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

And across our home state in:

Charlotte, Durham, Greenville, Winston-Salem, Apex, Asheville, Boone, Hickory, Raleigh, Wilmington, Greensboro, Cullowhee, Fayetteville, Manteo, New Bern, Wilkesboro, Flat Rock, Rockingham and Albemarle

Today in History

527		In Constantinople, Justin, seriously ill, crowns his nephew Justinian as his co-emperor.
1581		Francis Drake completes circumnavigation of the world.
1812		The territory of Orleans becomes the 18th state and will become known as Louisiana.
1818		The United States flag is declared to have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars.
1841		President William Henry Harrison, aged 68, becomes the first president to die in office, just a month after being sworn in.
1862		The Battle of Yorktown begins as Union gen. George B. McClellan closes in on Richmond, Va.
1917		The U.S. Senate votes 90-6 to enter World War I on Allied side.
1918		The Battle of the Somme ends.
1941		Field Marshal Erwin Rommel captures the British held town of Benghazi in North Africa.
1949		The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty is signed.
1968		Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
1974		Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth's home-run record.
1979		Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan is executed.
1985		A coup in Sudan ousts President Nimeiry and replaces him with General Dahab.

Non Sequitur

The Secret World of Garbagemen

If you don't know a sanitation worker personally, and have never done the work yourself, you probably don't know much about the guys who take away the rubbish. New York University anthropologist Robin Nagle spent years researching the occupation, from following New York Department of Sanitation workers to training and taking the exam to become one herself. Then she wrote a book, Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City.

Sanitation workers, it turns out, have twice the fatality rates of police offers, and nearly seven times the fatality rates of firefighters. And their work has similarly life-or-death consequences in the long term, as Nagle shows by taking a look back at New York City's history. "A study done in 1851," Nagle writes, "concluded that fully a third of the city's deaths that year could have been prevented if basic sanitary measures had been in place."

The Atlantic has a short interview with Nagle about her experiences learning about the workers we only notice when their work doesn't get done. More

Did you know ...

That customers are fleeing empty wal-mart shelves for Target & Costco

About global warming's latest victim: wine

About religious grauma syndrome: how some organized religion leads to mental health problems

That the repugican cabal says, ladies, listen closely

About why women should not go to a catholic hospital

That intense terahertz pulses causes DNA damage and repair

About the 147 people destroying the world

That repugicans live in an  opposite world

Typical repugican: He opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality, Obamacare & cross-dressing Satanists

That is the secret plan, you know. First we legalize gay marriage, then we steal your dogs, then your guns, then we go to church and worship Satan in drag.  This gem of a quote comes from a Tea Party conference call with repugican Congressman Louie Gohmert (r-Texas (where else?)), who’s never at a loss for words.Gohmert is the brainiac who wants guns to be permitted on the US House floor.
Gohmnert is also the guy who came up with the idea of “terror babies.” Daniel Schulman at Mother Jones explains:

Recently, Rep. Louie Gohmert (r-Tex.) has beens sounding the alarm about a new and insidious plot involving so called “terror babies.” Infants are sometimes known to be terrors in their own right, but this diabolical plan involves terrorists sending pregnant women into the US to birth their America-hating spawns. The mothers and their kids then return home where, the congressman says, the children “could be raised and coddled as future terrorists”— and later, “twenty, thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life.”

Or even worse, there could be gay terror babies — terror gaybies.
Like I said, Texas.
Back to bestiality.  Gomert was asked during the Tea Party conference call about gun control, and here’s what he had to say:

Love the rouge, Louie.

In fact, I had this discussion with some wonderful, caring Democrats earlier this week on the issue of, well, they said “surely you could agree to limit the number of rounds in a magazine, couldn’t you? How would that be problematic?”

And I pointed out, well, once you make it ten, then why would you draw the line at ten? What’s wrong with nine? Or eleven? And the problem is once you draw that limit ; it’s kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?
There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used, then it’s just really easy to have laws that make them all illegal.

RightWingWatch has the audio too, but it’s not embeddable.
Earlier in the call, Gohmert explains how Obamacare will force churches to hire cross-dressing Satan-worshippers (seriously).  RightWingWatch has that audio too, go to their site to check it out.

***

Seriously folks?! 

How deranged to they have to be before you throw them out?

The repugicans' Economic Ignorance Is Pushing America Off The Austerity Cliff

Leadership is a highly regarded commodity and includes social influence where one person enlists the aid and support of others to accomplish a specific goal or agenda, and without adherents or devotees willing to follow without question, success at achieving the leader’s goal is nearly impossible. America has been a world leader for the past seventy years, but for the past two years under repugican rule, America relinquished its leadership position to Europe and became a devotee of austerity economics to follow the Eurozone into economic contraction and recession regardless the damage to America and its citizens.
For two years immediately following the Great Recession, President Obama showed true leadership and avoided following Europe’s lead in imposing austerity economics, and with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act created jobs, grew the economy, and set the country on a course toward fiscal health. However, repugicans took control of the country’s purse-strings in 2011 and committed Washington to follow Europe’s austerity lead and their course began bearing fruit in the fourth quarter of 2012 when the economy’s growth slowed on the way to a new recession. Europe never recovered from the Great Recession, and is precariously close to full-blown depression that repugicans have convinced nearly all of Washington to follow with blatant disregard for the deleterious effects to the people, the economy, and nation’s well-being. It is a sad commentary for America that repugican leadership convinced Washington to blindly follow Europe’s lead with their infectious debt and deficit reduction agenda, but they succeeded driving a narrative that without cutting government, killing jobs, and contracting the economy, America was doomed.
The economic retardation and contraction aside, the effect on Americans is beginning to produce real results that Europeans have experienced for over two years with massive unemployment, shredded social safety nets, and rising debt that Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman labeled “Europe’s Second Depression,” and it is slated to last much longer than the first one. In fact, the current European recession has already gone on longer than the 2008 financial crisis. As was pointed out several times, austerity is toxic during a recession, and seeing the effects of prescribing poison to a sick patient, repugicans are increasing the dose to America and like Europe, austerity will cost American lives. It is noteworthy that repugicans are administering toxic economic policies to destroy the government by design, and if the people suffer and die, then as John Boehner is wont to say, “so be it,” because corporations, the oil industry, and Wall Street are thriving at Americans’ expense.
It is pointless to predict what is going to happen in America, or theorize on the effects of austerity during a tepid recovery, because the effects of the sequestration cuts are already creating economic havoc on middle class Americans and crushing the life out of the working poor mired in poverty. It is important to remember that the sequester’s cuts are a ten year crusade to decimate Americans, and the $85 billion in cuts the first year will increase to $112 billion each year for the remaining nine years that portends a dire situation for the people, jobs, and the economy over the next decade.
Thus far, federal employees are taking 22 furlough days without pay that equates to a 20% cut in pay, and those middle class Americans will stop buying cars, durable goods, and most likely lose their homes in order to afford food and shelter for their families. Besides the hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs lost during the past four years, school districts across America are shedding a hundred thousand more middle class teaching jobs as education takes a massive sequestration hit. In aviation, air traffic control towers at 149 executive and regional airports are being closed threatening air travel safety and eliminating the subsequent jobs servicing commercial airline traffic. Law enforcement and first responders, already at dangerously low levels, are taking another round of layoffs that not only threatens public safety, but takes living wage jobs out of the economy and pushes more Americans into anti-poverty assistance that has been ravaged before the sequester began just one month ago.
There are devastating cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and 600,000 mothers and their children face the next ten years without assistance that spells certain extreme poverty for the working poor and epidemic-levels of children and babies going without basic healthcare. The Head Start program that provides pre-school aged children with health and nutrition services are losing access to the program that was already stretched so thin that in many states a percentage of legal gambling revenue has been diverted to maintain a semblance of the program intact. In Tennessee, there is such a shortage of healthcare and Medicaid assistance for the extremely poor, that they reverted to a lottery-type system to apportion dwindling medical services to those fortunate enough to win an application for entrance into a healthcare program. It was just revealed this week that over 140,000 poverty-level elderly and disabled Americans lost access to housing assistance that gives them no option but homelessness or finding disappearing room in shelters.  The list goes on and on, and instead of scrambling to stop the poverty-creating sequester cuts, Washington is seeking deeper austerity because although repugicans concede there is no immediate debt crisis, they created a future crisis in the form of “generational warfare” from the burdens of future debt on the next generation.
The next generation of Americans will find their burden is living in a country that watched an ill-advised, economically ignorant  Europe tumble off the economic cliff and after two years of stimulus, job creation, and economic growth, changed course and embraced a ten-year austerity program that guarantees dire circumstances for all but the wealthiest Americans. The repugicans bear the responsibility for  the economic quagmire Americans are, and will, suffer for the next ten  years, but they have garnered willing accomplices in Washington who latched on to the European austerity model of debt and deficit reduction regardless the damage to the people and the economy. President Obama is powerless to stop the looming crisis, and is as infected with deficit fever as most Democrats who have little choice but to acquiesce to repugican demands for more austerity in the fleeting hopes of finding the elusive “grand bargain” of entitlement cuts, tax reform, corporate tax cuts, and no infrastructure, education, or safety net funding increases for the next decade.
America ceded world leadership in 2010 when firebaggers, HamWalds, Ed Schultz, and EmoProgs convinced Democrats to sit out the midterm elections and usher in teabaggers who gave repugicans cover to impose European austerity on Americans. As repugicans followed Europe’s austerity lead, Democrats jumped on the debt and deficit reduction bandwagon to pacify their constituents who fell for repugicans’ “debt crisis” and believed that the course of action to grow the economy, create jobs, and build a secure future was austerity that killed jobs, retarded the economy, and set a course that portends increased poverty, hungry and sick children, and an elderly population that will struggle to find housing, healthcare, and if they are fortunate, adequate nutrition. When the next generation looks back and wonders what happened to America they heard about from their grandparents, they will learn that the once powerful American economy fell victim to European-envy and instead of staying the course of economic recovery borne of investing in America, followed a sick and dying economic reality knowing full well that austerity during a recession or recovery resulted in dire economic contraction and more recession.
There is good news though, because every month there might be some part-time minimum wage jobs added, corporate profits will continue to soar, Wall Street will post record numbers, and for the next ten years, children will be hungry, seniors will be homeless, and the great American middle class will slip into oblivion. America’s best days are historical because instead of leadership and bold forward thinking, repugicans seized the initiative and led by following this country’s leading trading partner over an austerity cliff while watching Europe fall into depression after recession.

The repugicans Use the Deficit As an Excuse to Cut Food and Health Care for Children

There is an intrinsic quality in the animal kingdom, including human beings, to care for the young that transcends species, religion, and race without exception. In nature, the innate protection quotient is based on maintaining the species survival, and to a degree it is true of human beings as well although love and parental bond certainly play a major role. Even selfish repugicans care for children, except their regard is limited to their own offspring, unless it is politically expedient to make a phony outward display of concern for “future generations” as they enact austerity cuts to education and domestic programs that provide children with healthcare, food assistance, and a secure future.  Now, repugicans are back again fighting for children’s futures and, as is their wont, they are protecting the next generation by seeking entitlement cuts to Social  Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as the debt and deficit reduction frenzy focus shifts to protect America’s most precious resource; our children.
Over the past few weeks repugicans acknowledged there is not an imminent debt crisis even as they voted for an austerity-laden budget and celebrated drastic job-killing sequestration cuts. The fear-mongering over the immediate debt crisis is now fear mongering over the long-term deficit repugicans claim is a moral issue, and that unless deeper austerity and Social Security cuts are enacted,  then America is waging “generational warfare” by “imposing a crippling burden on the next generation.” Of course, with nearly 25% of America’s children living in extreme poverty, and deeper sequester cuts over the next nine years loom large, chances are the next generation will be much smaller so it makes sense to cut “entitlements” like Social Security in the repugicans’ never-ending war on the deficit.
Last month when the President  met with repugicans to mend fences and find common ground to address the deficit threatening today’s children, Social Security chained CPI cuts were on the agenda. Chained CPI reduces the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) calculations for Social Security and veterans’ benefits, and it is curious that the President is unaware that Social Security does not, by statute, add to the nation’s deficit. Perhaps the President is still laboring under the illusion that repugicans will compromise if he just gives them everything they want in exchange for a so-called “grand bargain,” but after four years of intransigence and obstruction, anything less than privatizing or eliminating both Medicare and Social Security will be met with a new hostage situation over increasing the nation’s debt limit. However, at least the President is not yet acquiescing to eliminating domestic programs or education that give the next generation a slim hope of escaping poverty.
The repugicans who are now worried sick about America’s children’s future, have already taken care to assure future generations will stay mired in poverty and ignorance unless they are part of the privileged elite who can afford private schools, healthcare, and three nutritional meals a  day. Over the course of the past three years, hundreds of thousands of schoolteachers were dismissed and assistance that, at one time, made college affordable for children of less-affluent families has been slashed to ensure the next generation struggles to survive the poverty 24% of today’s children live in. The millions of jobs repugican austerity cuts destroyed in deficit reduction madness all but guarantees recent high school and college graduates will never start a career unless one considers part-time minimum wage WalMart jobs a career.
If repugicans are so concerned America is cheating today’s children with crushing future deficits and creating undue burden with Social Security that does not affect the deficit, there are fiscally responsible ways to help them now and in the future. The President just re-introduced an infrastructure plan that will save over 3.1 million jobs and create millions more, but repugicans claim “America is broke” even though corporations and big businesses are hoarding huge amounts of cash from soaring profits and avoiding paying taxes on that cash. The repugicans could also stop slashing public education funding and rehire over half a million teachers instead of shifting public school funds to under-performing charter schools (read private religious training) in a massive union-busting scheme funded and promoted by ALEC and the Koch brothers. No, it is much more fiscally responsible to protect children now, and in the future, with cuts to Social Security, education, Head Start, and education that all but guarantees the nearly 25% poverty-level children will struggle to survive, much less contribute to  Social Security with decent paying jobs.
The repugicans care about as much about future generations as they do this generation or the children they cut services and education for eliminating any hope of a living wage job now or in the future. It is important to remember, that cutting the deficit will not produce one job, hire one teacher, or feed one child that repugicans are suddenly concerned about, and cutting Social Security will not reduce the deficit by one penny which makes the bipartisan “entitlement” hawks’ argument seriously suspicious. There is a simple fix for Social Security that no repugican will consider, and it is possible they are unaware that lifting the cap on earnings will keep the American peoples’ retirement accounts solvent forever, but asking the wealthy to contribute like every other American is anathema to repugicans. It is much easier to cut Social Security under a “protect our children’s future” meme because it tugs at Americans’ heartstrings and demonstrates concern for the next generation that will face deeper poverty in their retirement.
One hopes President Obama has a strategy in acquiescing to repugicans’ 80 year assault on the New Deal’s Social Security Trust, because if cutting benefits for retirees, Veterans, and the disabled is truly to reduce the deficit and unburden future generations from repugican debt for two unfunded wars, an entitlement to big pharma, and tax cuts for the rich, he needs to read the statute that forbids the Trust from adding to the deficit. The repugicans have no excuse because they were slashing programs and enacting austerity before they changed course to “unburden future generations” from “generational warfare,” and they will proceed cutting domestic programs and push for tax cuts for the rich regardless if America is swimming in cash.
It is true that children need to be protected now and in the future, but it is from repugicans who have shown a predilection to cutting education, safety nets, and jobs their parents need to provide for them now and in the future. What cutting Social Security now does is ensure that in the future, not only will today’s children struggle to provide for their own children because jobs vanished from repugican cuts, they will struggle to provide for their parents whose Social Security benefits were slashed in the deficit cutting frenzy and all because no politician in Washington understands Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. Fortunately, President Obama does understand that jobs and education will protect children’s’ future, but if he thinks giving repugicans Social Security cuts they lust for will protect children or fund job creation and better schools, he needs to look back at his first term and recall that regardless what he gave repugicans, they still cut spending on children, their education, and their future they suddenly are concerned about.

CVS charges $133 more than Costco for generic drug

The Consumer Reports survey sent secret shoppers to 200 pharmacies

CVS charges $150 for a monthly prescription of the generic version of the cholesterol drug Lipitor. The same drug goes for $17 at Costco.

That's according to a recent Consumer Reports nationwide survey that sent secret shoppers to 200 pharmacies that carry five blockbuster drugs: Lipitor, Lexapro, Plavix, Actos and Singulair, all of which lost their patents in the last two years.
Shoppers found they could be paying as much as $749, or 447 percent, more for a generic prescription drug in one year at the highest-priced pharmacy, compared with the lowest.
The priciest places to pick up these prescriptions were CVS, Target and Rite Aid. The least expensive were Costco and Sam's Club, while Wal-Mart, and Walgreen's fell in the middle.
So what's behind the huge discrepancy?
Lisa Gill, a Consumer Reports editor who focuses on prescription drugs, said the difference stems primarily from what sells at the stores.
"At places like CVS or Rite Aid, the pharmacy is their major source of revenue and profit," she said. "Costco and Sam's Club are using the low drug prices to pull people in stores who will spend money on other things."
Consumers are often willing to pay higher prices at a drug store because many of them are conveniently located, open 24 hours a day and have drive-through windows, according to Gill.
But for most people, it can be worth the extra hassle. This is especially true for those who take medication long-term, since they will get better deals at the warehouse clubs, or big box stores, Gill said.
Carolyn Castel, a spokeswoman for CVS, said that pricing surveys like this are too small to draw "meaningful conclusions about which pharmacies offer the best overall value." She also noted that they don't take into account the discount and third-party insurance programs that pharmacies use to lower prices.
A Target spokeswoman said it offers a number of ways for customers to save on drug prices, like rewards and discount programs.
Consumer Reports' Gill said these programs are helpful, but they're not doing enough to lower costs.
It's no secret that the cost of drugs can be prohibitive, especially at a time when incomes are stagnating. Consumer Reports found in a separate national telephone survey that Americans who regularly took prescription drugs, spent $758 out of pocket in 2012, or 12 percent more than the previous year.
Gill said that one way for people to save is by refilling prescriptions every 90 days instead of each month, since most pharmacies provide discounts on three-month supplies.
To get the best price, she said, people should comparison shop by calling different pharmacies to see who offers the lowest price.

Former Vogue Editor: Models ‘In Hospital on a Drip a Lot of the Time’, Eating Tissue

The next time your girlfriend or boyfriend bemoans how “fat” she/he is after trying to fit into the latest fashion, you might want to inform her/him that some of the fit models, upon whose bodies the clothes are designed, spend their time on a drip in the hospital and while other models eat tissue to stay skinny. No, this is not a joke.
Fired after 25 years of service, former Vogue Australia Editor Kirstie Clements has written a tell all about the magazine industry entitled “The Vogue Factor”. The International Business Times revealed a few disturbing tidbits:

In her new book, Clements claims models still regularly starve themselves to stay super skinny and some resort to eating tissues to help them feel full. Clements quotes an unnamed Russian model who told her over lunch that her roommate was a fit model, “so she is in hospital on a drip a lot of the time.” A fit model, Clements says, is the body used by top designers and ateliers around which the clothes are designed.

And models starving themselves down a few more sizes so they can be booked overseas are called “Paris thin”:

Clements, who was Vogue Australia’s top editor for 13 years, recounts on one occasion she didn’t once see a top model eat a single meal on a three-day gig. Even worse, Clements recounted that on the last day of the job, the model could hardly hold herself up or keep her eyes open. She also claimed that “When a model who was getting good work in Australia starved herself down two sizes in order to be cast in the overseas shows … the Vogue fashion office would say she’d become ‘Paris thin.’”

These claims probably sound outrageous, but as someone who has worked in the industry, it doesn’t shock me at all. I recall weighing 93 pounds and having an agent tell me that I had big hips, when in fact, my hips were 33 inches. I wasn’t working in high fashion, either, where the standards for thinness are expected to be ridiculous.
Who can forget the models eating cotton balls:

So it hardly surprises me that very successful models need to stop in to hospital for a drip of nutrition. Is it the fashion industry’s fault? In as much as they set the standards, perhaps, but they are also a reflection of the broader culture.
The airbrushed world of fashion is certainly a large source of our ideas aabout how we should look. When we purchase clothing, we are informed that we should look a certain way. After all, it was designed on someone who may or may not be starving themsleves and eating tissues to feel full. The chances that it’s going to look good on the average person are slim (no pun intended). This tends to make us feel bad, even if we consciously reject the idea that we should look a certain way.
The fashion world has been in the spotlight before for their perceived contribution to the rise in eating disorders and body dysmorphia for things like selling women the idea that having a waist the size of a typical 7-year-old was ideal.
My EDIN reports that eating disorders are on the rise:

Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder are on the rise in the United States and worldwide. Among U.S. females in their teens and 20s, the prevalence of clinical and subclinical anorexia may be as high as 15%. Anorexia nervosa ranks as the 3rd most common chronic illness among adolescent U.S. females. Recent studies suggest that up to 7% of U.S. females have had bulimia at some time in their lives. At any given time an estimated 5% of the U.S. population has undiagnosed bulimia. Current findings suggest that binge-eating disorder affects 0.7% to 4% of the general population.

The cause of anorexia is unknown, but it’s thought to be a combination of three factors — biological, psychological and environmental. The Mayo Clinic defines the environmental as “Modern Western culture emphasizes thinness. The media are splashed with images of thin models and actors. Success and worth are often equated with being thin. Peer pressure may help fuel the desire to be thin, particularly among young girls.”
A common myth is that eating disorders only affect females, but in fact, they impact both sexes. According to MyEDIN, “Females are more likely to focus on weight loss; males are more likely to focus on muscle mass.”
Being skinny doesn’t automatically make you happy and it won’t make you more loveable. That’s the secret they never tell you. And they don’t tell you this because they are very busy trying to sell you things, by sending you the message that if you buy their thing, you’ll look like X, and if you look like X, you’ll be fabulous and everyone will want to be you and thus you will be happy. Not true. It’s not real.
But you are real, and that’s pretty damn fabulous. Much better than being on a drip or eating tissues.

Second Grader Suspended for Body Odor

The student has missed 24 days of school so far, according to a report.

A girl has reportedly missed nearly a month of school over the way she smells. 

A Tennessee girl has missed nearly a month of school this year over suspensions tied to her alleged foul body odor, NBC affiliate WSAV reported.

The Washington County school reportedly sent the 8-year-old home several times since October, describing her smell as so potent that it distracted teachers and classmates. Suspension documents for an incident last week claimed the second grader did not bathe for the two days straight, slept in her clothes and couldn’t remember the last time she took a bath or brushed her teeth, WSAV said.

A school notice from October warned that suspensions would continue until there were "corrective measures." The child has been suspended at least seven times and missed a total of 24 school days, according to the station.

The girl's mother, Krystal Hensley, denied the accusations, saying her daughter takes daily baths. “You go to school to learn, not to be sent home,” she told WSAV.

The Department of Child Services investigated the issue at one point, Hensley said. The agency told WSAV they did not have an open case.

Woman in Coma Wakes Up After Home, Belongings Sold

 

A hospital bed like this one served as Rogers' home while her real one was reclaimed by the government.

Imagine waking up and being homeless.

Yvonne Rogers of Birmingham, England awoke from a 14-month coma to discover she no longer owned her home and her family had sold her belongings.

The Birmingham Mail reported that the wheelchair-bound patient suffered from hydrocephalus, meaning water on the brain. She fell into a coma after complications during surgery.

The Birmingham City Council reclaimed her home, saying that it had been unoccupied for too long. As a result, her family had to sell all her furniture, keeping only small items of memorabilia, because there was no storage space, according to the Birmingham Mail.

“I lost two years of my life in the hospital, and I lost my home too,” Rogers told the paper.

Woman poured super glue in man's eyes and one ear before beating him with prosthetic leg

A woman in Victoria, Australia, attacked her housemate with super glue and set fire to his jacket before beating him with a prosthetic leg on Easter Sunday, Ballarat police say. The woman, 48, has been charged with three assault offenses stemming from the alleged attack in their house in Sebastopol.

Her 64-year-old housemate arrived at Ballarat Base Hospital's emergency department with his eyes glued shut and one ear filled with glue late on Sunday night. The woman has been charged with intentionally causing serious injury, recklessly causing injury and reckless conduct endangering serious injury and bailed to appear in Ballarat Magistrates Court on May 2.

Ballarat Criminal Investigation Unit Detective Sergeant Steve Howard said the 64-year-old presented himself to emergency department late on Sunday night with the unusual injuries, plus a number of other minor injuries. “He’s shown up at emergency with his eyes full of super glue and some in his ear,” Detective Sergeant Howard said.

“We’re not sure what’s happened but it’s pretty obvious he didn’t do this to himself.” He said the man was taken to an ear and eye specialist before being admitted to the Base Hospital for further treatment. Ballarat Health Services spokesman Daniel Anderson said the man remained in hospital in a stable condition. Police said a woman was currently assisting them with their inquiries.

Couple each caught drunk driving twice on the same day

A couple have allegedly been caught drunk driving twice each in the same car within hours on an island in Queensland, Australia.

Police say they pulled over a 27-year-old woman on North Stradbroke Island on Monday, who recorded a blood alcohol concentration of 0.126 per cent. The same car was intercepted a short time later and a 34-year-old man was found behind the wheel and police say he blew point-110.

After the couple were released, police saw the same car being driven again. The man was back behind the wheel and was charged with drink driving and driving while suspended after recording yet another positive reading.

When the man was released yet again, the couple returned to the car. Police say the woman drove again this time. She was also charged with drunk driving and driving while suspended. Both will appear in Cleveland Magistrates Court on May 14.

Man claimed he had the devil trapped in branches on his truck

Police in Trinity, Texas, arrested a man on Sunday following a high-speed chase involving a driver who claimed he had the devil trapped in the bed of his pickup.

Police Chief Steve Jones said the family of the man, Norman Damon Foley, 36, of Trinity, reported he had been acting strange. Officer Donald Givens reported seeing driving erratic and speeding. He attempted to stop Foley and Foley led a chase with speeds topping at 92 miles per hour.

Authorities finally stopped Foley in Walker County, when a deputy joined the pursuit. Jones said the deputy stayed behind Foley and Givens pulled up beside the truck and forced him over to the shoulder.

Jones said Foley had branches inside the pickup and that he had the devil trapped in the branches on his truck and that he was going to burn the devil. A state trooper in Walker County conducted a field sobriety test and determined Foley was not intoxicated. He has been charged with evading arrest with a vehicle.

With news video. There's a raw video of the police chase here.

Saudi Arabia eases ban on women riding bicycles in public for recreational purposes only

Saudi women are now allowed to ride buggies and bicycles in public after the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice lifted a ban on them. Under the new rules, women can use parks, esplanades and open desert areas and enjoy themselves as long as they are modestly dressed, sources from the Commission said
A male relative should be present to ensure he can provide prompt assistance in case of falls or accidents, the source said. Women wishing to ride the buggies or bikes should avoid places where there are assemblies of young people to protect themselves from physical or verbal harassment and possible theft, he said.

However, according to the source, the women should use the bikes and buggies only for recreational purposes and not as permanent means of transport. The Commission said that it never barred foreign women from riding buggies or bicycles. Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive. A traffic official said that they were not involved in the decision to allow women to ride bicycles or buggies or any other means of transport.

“Our concern is the positive traffic culture and full compliance with traffic rules and regulations by all drivers and riders,” Ali Al Zahrani, the spokesman for the Eastern Province Traffic, said. However, Samia Al Bawardi, the head of an NGO for the victims of car accidents, warned women about riding bicycles and buggies. “Wearing abayas — the coverall worn by Gulf women — and erratic driving could result in terrible accidents,” she said.

High-profile rapes threaten India tourism business

 

A fatal gang rape in New Delhi didn't deter Germans Carolina De Paolo and Canan Wahner from traveling to India for a six-week tour. The attack was awful, but there is crime everywhere, they figured, and they'd take precautions.

Then a man sidled up to Wahner on a train to Goa and ran his hand up her leg a few weeks into the trip. On another train, a different man grabbed De Paolo's breasts from behind.

"I wanted to scream and do something, but he ran away," De Paolo said. She never reported the crime, deciding there would be no point. The two women, both 22, say there were times they didn't feel safe, but they insist they still would come to India again.
That separates them from many tourists, who are choosing not to come at all.
Violence against women, and the huge publicity generated by recent attacks here, is threatening India's $17.7 billion tourism industry. A new study shows tourism has plunged, especially among women, since a 23-year-old Indian student was raped on a New Delhi bus and later died from her injuries — a case that garnered worldwide publicity. The government denies any fall off in tourism.
Concerns only grew after the reported gang rape of a Swiss woman in central India last month and after a British woman jumped out of her hotel room window fearing the manager was trying to break into her room to sexually assault her. That incident happened in Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, one of India's chief tourist attractions.
Merchants say India is being unfairly singled out, but perception is everything in the tourist business. And businesses catering to tourists are already suffering.

Foreign tourist arrivals have dropped 25 percent since the December gang rape in New Delhi, and the number of female travelers fell by 35 percent, according to the study by the New Delhi-based Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry. The study, which surveyed 1,200 tour operators across the country, indicated that "concerns about the safety of female travelers" have changed tourists' plans. Instead, they are going to countries perceived to be safer, including Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Tourism Minister K. Chiranjeevi disputed the survey Wednesday, saying that foreign tourist arrivals into India in January and February grew by 2.1 percent.
But Mehraj Shora says it is hard to see that as business dries up in his Mumbai carpet shop.
"Every day it's getting worse," Shora laments. "Tourists are coming, but not like before."
In good times, Shora used to sell two or three Kashmiri carpets a day to foreign visitors at prices starting at $300. Now, days might go by without a single rug sold. He estimates sales are down 50 percent and says the rape cases have added to the strain of a stalling economy.
He blames the international media for hyping recent cases when crimes occur in any country. "Actually, India is quite safe. In some ways it's safer than other places."
Still, just as the New Delhi gang rape sparked a national outcry over the mistreatment of women, the attacks on female tourists have highlighted what has long been known: Women traveling in India, especially alone, frequently face unwanted advances from men.

Crimes against female tourists happen everywhere. Thailand has, for instance, seen at least three rapes of foreign tourists this year. In the Philippines, a local man was arrested in January on charges of raping a 23-year-old British woman on the resort island of Boracay. Over the weekend in Brazil, an American woman was gang raped and beaten aboard a public minibus she had boarded in Rio de Janeiro. Still, in India it is particularly easy to find stories from foreign women who, like some Indian women, have been harassed, followed or fondled.

Italian model Ginevra Leggeri, 21, says she had no warning when a man groped her from behind while she was walking with a friend in Mumbai, where she came to work a few months ago.
"I was completely covered and we were just walking, and this man touched me, and I started screaming and I slapped him," she said.
Her friend and co-worker Amy Manson, 19, quickly pointed out that a pair of Indian men on a passing motorbike saw the incident and stopped to confront the attacker.
"An Indian guy grabbed her, but then two other Indian guys came and helped us," Manson said. "So it's like a 50-50 situation."
But she hesitates when asked if she would recommend a friend visit, and she agrees India's tourist business will be damaged if it doesn't take action to protect women. Last month, the government passed new, more stringent, laws against sexual violence.
"It's not just the girl in Delhi ... this has been happening for years and years and years," Manson said. "It's just coming out now, which is good, because maybe things will change."
Imran Latha, owner of the Visit India tour company in Mumbai, said some Indian men assume when they see foreign women drink or do drugs that they also are eager for sex. The only solution, he said, is for tourists to dress modestly and protect themselves.
"Trust me, India cannot do anything. The Indian government is the worst in the world. If we can't protect our own countrywomen, what can we do for foreigners?" he said.
At the end of their six-week trip, De Paolo and Wahner say their groping incidents are not the only thing they'll remember about a vast and richly cultured subcontinent.
Still, Wahner said, "Now, after this trip, I would for example never travel alone as a woman in India."
They quickly learned to take precautions: always dressing modestly in long sleeves and trousers outside major cities, rarely venturing out of their hotels after dark. Being friendly, but not too friendly, to men and trying to find Indian women for company.
"It's strange. You don't want to judge every man who sits next to you," Wahner said. "But sometimes in the end, yes, they do touch you."

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The Oldest Surviving Aerial Photograph

Aerial photography was first practiced by the French photographer and balloonist Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, known as 'Nadar,' in 1858 over Paris, France. However, the photographs he produced no longer exist and therefore the earliest surviving aerial photograph (photo above) is titled 'Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It.'

Taken by James Wallace Black and Samuel Archer King on October 13, 1860, it depicts Boston from a height of 630m (0.391 miles).

Rediscovering the Mysterious Maya Blue Formula

Rediscovering the Mysterious Maya Blue Formula

The recipe and process for preparing Maya Blue, a highly-resistant pigment used for centuries in Mesoamerica, were lost. We know that the ingredients are a plant dye, indigo, and a type of clay known as [...]

Who is the Red Head

Excerpts from a report at The History Blog:

A painting of Queen Elizabeth I that portrays her in all her aging glory has recently been authenticated as in now on display at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. This version of Elizabeth eschews the alabaster smooth skin and preternaturally youthful look that characterize her portraits long after the bloom of her youth had faded. She has deep wrinkles, bags under eyes, a greyish skin tone underneath the blobs of blush...

In 1596, the Privy Council took action against this state of affairs, ordering officers “to aid the Queen’s Sergeant Painter in seeking out unseemly portraits which were to her ‘great offence’ and therefore to be defaced and no more portraits to be produced except as approved by [the] Sergeant Painter.” Many paintings of Elizabeth were seized and burned...

The oil on panel portrait was purchased by Ruth Coltrane Cannon, founding member of the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, for $3,000 from a New York art dealer in the 1950s... She donated it to the Elizabeth Gardens, a botanical garden dedicated to the first British settlements in the New World founded by Sir Walter Raleigh during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I... The materials in the paint and the wood panel and frame date it to the Elizabethan period. Experts now think it may have originated in the London studio of Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger in the mid 1590s, although who commissioned it and which hand painted it remain unknown.

NASA Flies Dragon Eye Unmanned Aircraft Into Volcanic Plume

NASA Flies Dragon Eye Unmanned Aircraft Into Volcanic Plume

NASA Earth science researchers last month traveled to Turrialba Volcano, near San Jose, Costa Rica, to fly a Dragon Eye unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — a small electric aircraft equipped with cameras and sensors — [...]

Oceans could yield new sources of rare earth elements

Rare earth elements aren't actually rare, but right now the vast majority of them (97%) come from a single place — China. Given how important these elements are to the making of everything from computers to cars, that gives China quite the monopoly. With that context, here's the news: Japan just found a big supply of rare earth elements in mud at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Of course, what may be good news for manufacturing is not necessarily good news for the health of oceans.  

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Invasive pests cost Americans millions

The Giant African Snail can grow to 8 inches long and is now found in Florida. When it can't find one of the 500 or so plants it likes to eat, it will attack plaster and stucco on houses.

A snail as big as your foot, an insect the size of chocolate sprinkles and a mold related to the one that caused the Irish potato famine are on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's list of the top pests that threaten America's crops and forestland.
The list comes out Monday.
Some of the 15 are new, some we've been fighting for decades. To attack them, "a sea change" in how we interact with our environment is starting to take place, says Scott Pfister, who directs the pest management department at the USDA's plant protection and quarantine division in College Park, Md.
To stop insects like the Asian Citrus Psyllid or the Light Brown Apple Moth, it may no longer be OK to pick apples or oranges from a backyard tree and drive them to a friend's house if the fruit comes from a quarantine area. Bringing firewood from home might get you turned back at a campground entrance if you live where Asian Longhorn Beetles have taken up residence. Fear of Khapra beetles means if you carry rice from India across a U.S. border, you could pay a $1,000 fine.
"We need to get Americans to start thinking about how these pests are moving around the country," Pfister says. "April's the time of year when people start to go camping and hiking and work in their gardens, so it's a very appropriate time to address this national problem."
The USDA says April is Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month.
The nasty 15 includes moths, flies, beetles, ants, a louse, a snail and two pathogens. They range from the Asian Citrus Psyllid, which threatens to destroy the U.S. orange crop, to the Giant African Snail, which will happily munch on plaster and stucco when it can't get to one of the 500 plants it prefers. The Asian Ash Borer threatens the northern white ash trees used to make the famed Louisville slugger baseball bats.
People don't always take the threat posed by these pests seriously, says Ken Gilliland, director of international trade and transportation for Western Growers. His trade group represents farmers in Arizona and California, where much of the nation's fresh produce is grown.
"It just takes one or two people" carrying infected fruit or vegetables to an uninfected area to start an infestation, he says. "They don't see the direct impact they might have, but in the long term they're going to pay for it in higher prices," because of the costs involved in treating crops and inspecting them.
The Asian citrus psyllid, which has caused $4.5 billion in losses to Florida orange and grapefruit growers, got established in California when one person brought a cutting from a citrus plant home from a trip to Asia, Gilliland says: "They shared it with their neighbors, they all planted them, and it ended up resulting in a quarantine of the whole area."
In wilderness areas, bugs are a huge threat and can change forests and tree cover in just a few years, says Chris Martin, Connecticut state forester.
When the Asian Longhorned beetle arrived in Massachusetts, "It's been dramatic. You used to have tree-lined streets, and now these neighborhoods are just devoid of trees," says Martin, who chairs the science and health committee of the National Association of State Foresters.
When regulators started telling people they couldn't take firewood outside of quarantine areas because of the threat of transporting larvae, people balked, Martin says. Many private and state campgrounds in areas where beetles and borers have taken hold no longer allow outside firewood.
"It was like with recycling and seat belts. The government was telling us how to live our lives," he says. "But over time reasonable folks came around."
That's the message the USDA wants to get out: Ordinary Americans can help stop the spread of pests, Pfister says. The USDA website HungryPests.com has suggestions on how to stop the spread of invasive pests.
Gardeners, hunters, campers and hikers are the eyes and ears of state agriculture programs, he says.
"We have citizens all over the country calling us and saying that they've seen something," Pfister says. "Ninety-nine percent of the time it's nothing, but we want those calls, because citizens are our first line of defense."
The most threatening pests:
Asian Citrus Psyllid and Citrus Greening Disease. The size of a chocolate sprinkle, it carries Citrus Greening Disease, which turns fruit bitter. Found in California, Florida.
Asian Longhorned Beetle. Infests and kills hardwood trees. Found in Massachusetts, New York and Ohio.
Emerald Ash Borer. Iridescent green insect destroys ash trees. Found in 18 Midwest and Northeast states.
European Grapevine Moth. In caterpillar stage eats grape flowers and grapes, causes rot. Found in California.
European Gypsy Moth. In caterpillar stage defoliates 300 species of trees and shrubs. Found in 21 states and D.C.
False Codling Moth. Feeds on and destroys fruit trees, plants and field crops. Eradicated in Ventura County, Calif.
Giant African Snail. Up to 8 inches long, it eats paint, plaster and stucco when it can't get any of 500 plants. Can carry a parasite that can cause meningitis in humans. Found in Florida.
Imported Fire Ants. Sting repeatedly, causing blisters. Can kill small animals. Feed on crop plants. Found in 14 states and Puerto Rico.
Khapra Beetle. Eats grain crops and packaged foods. Not found in the United States.
Light Brown Apple Moth. Attacks 250 crops and garden plants. Found in California and Hawaii.
Mediterranean Fruit Fly. In Caterpillar stage, it feeds on nuts and vegetables, making them unfit for human consumption. Found in Hawaii.
Mexican Fruit Fly. Damaging to 50 plants, particularly citrus and mango. Eradicated in California and Texas.
Oriental Fruit Fly. Attacksmore than 230 fruits and vegetables. Found in Hawaii.
Sudden Oak Death. Kills more than 75 plant species, especially oak and California Bay Laurel trees. Found in California, Oregon.

Ten Of The Most Legendary And Mysterious Creatures Of Modern Times

There are creatures that lurk out there in the dark, that haunt the isolated forests of the world, that hide in the icy depths of the deepest lakes. They appear unexpectedly and inexplicably, then vanish just as mysteriously, usually leaving witnesses dumbfounded, frightened and, unfortunately in most cases, without a shred of evidence.

But, do these creatures really exist? Did they ever exist? Or are these merely hoaxes, or the result of over-active imaginations? Even though many people claim to have seen these creatures, for most of them they are just some legends of the ancestors, passed from a generation to another, and suffering modifications at each repetition.

Cthulhu come to life

Cthulhu come to life: Tiny octopus-like creature found in termite belly

University of British Columbia researchers have discovered two new symbionts living in the gut of termites, and taken the unusual step of naming them after fictional monsters created by American horror author HP Lovecraft. The [...]

The Star-Nosed Mole

The star-nosed mole is a ferocious, deadly predator. With the 25,000 sensory organs on the 22 appendages of its nose, this mole can find any insect that has foolishly ventured into its underground dominion. The Smithsonian quotes biologist Kenneth C. Catania:

The star-nosed mole’s “nose” is not an olfactory organ, but a skin surface that mediates touch. Innervated by more than 100,000 sensory neurons, the star is probably the most sensitive and highly acute touch organ found on any mammal. Under a scanning electron microscope, the skin surface resolves into a cobbled landscape covered with tens of thousands of tiny epidermal domes. Each is about 60 µm in diameter, and each contains a circular disk in its center. Known as Eimer’s organs, these sensory protrusions cover the entire surface of the star’s 22 appendages. In total, a single star contains about 25,000 domed Eimer’s organs, each one served by four or so myelinated nerve fibers and probably about as many unmyelinated fibers. This adds up to many times more than the total number of touch fibers (17,000) found in the human hand—yet the entire star is smaller than a human fingertip.

At the link, you can watch a video of this hunter at work.

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Record Dolphin, Sea Turtle Deaths Since Gulf Spill

Record Dolphin, Sea Turtle Deaths Since Gulf Spill

Residual contamination from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is still killing dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life in record numbers.

Animal Pictures