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Friday, May 10, 2013
Today in History
1285
Philip III of Spain is succeeded by Philip IV ("the Fair").
1503 Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.
1676 Bacon's Rebellion begins in the New World.
1773 To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.
1774 Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France.
1775 American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.
1794 Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded.
1796 Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.
1840 Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.
1857 The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British.
1863 General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville.
1865 Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia.
1869 The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah.
1859 French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.
1872 Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman nominated for U.S. president.
1917 Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic.
1924 J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1928 WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming.
1933 Nazis begin burning books by "unGerman" writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.
1940 German forces begin a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line.
1940 Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister.
1941 England's House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs.
1960 The USS Nautilus completes first circumnavigation of globe underwater.
1994 Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa's first black president.
1503 Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.
1676 Bacon's Rebellion begins in the New World.
1773 To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.
1774 Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France.
1775 American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.
1794 Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded.
1796 Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.
1840 Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.
1857 The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British.
1863 General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville.
1865 Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia.
1869 The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah.
1859 French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.
1872 Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman nominated for U.S. president.
1917 Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic.
1924 J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1928 WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming.
1933 Nazis begin burning books by "unGerman" writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.
1940 German forces begin a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line.
1940 Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister.
1941 England's House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs.
1960 The USS Nautilus completes first circumnavigation of globe underwater.
1994 Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa's first black president.
Fifteen Charming Side Streets
Did you know ...
About the pregnant t-mobile worker forced to take vacation time to use bathroom
That Donald Trump's anti-wind farm ad gets banned in Scotland
John Boehner Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot, and Insults The Troops In Spectacular Fashion
John Boehner opened mouth and inserted foot in a spectacular fashion
when he told Bloomberg that paying back China was a higher priority than
paying the troops.
Video:
Transcript:
Speaker Boehner: Our goal here is to get ourselves on a sustainable path from a fiscal standpoint. I think doing a debt prioritization bill makes it clear to our bondholders that we’re going to meet our obligations.
Peter Cook: Doesn’t it mean as Democrats have basically suggested, you’re choosing to pay China before U.S. troops?
Boehner: Listen. Those who have loaned us money, like in any other proceeding, if you will, court proceeding, the bondholders usually get paid first. Same thing here.
Cook: And you don’t worry about the politics of this?
Boehner: No. Not at all.
In the same interview, Boehner also claimed that Obama’s economic policies are preventing economic growth, “repugicans have a plan to get our economy going again, get wages growing again and get job opportunities growing again. Things like fixing our long-term spending problem, fixing our broken tax code to make America more competitive. How about expanding American energy production and the Keystone Pipeline? There are a lot of things. The red tape – in many cases, it’s the president’s own policies that are getting in the way of growing our economy.”
The repugicans seem to be building on the apathy that they first displayed towards the troops during the shrub years. In fact, Boehner has moved on from apathy to flat out deprioritization. The Full Faith and Credit Act that House repugicans are pushing is all about priorities. If repugicans refuses to raise the debt ceiling and the nation defaults, the Full Faith and Credit Act would mandate that the Treasury Department pay the Chinese before they pay for things like national security, the military, and the troops.
It isn’t an exaggeration to say that this piece of legislation literally puts the Chinese government ahead of the troops in the battlefield.
The reality of the legislation is bad enough, but then John Boehner opened his mouth and dropped an atomic bomb on the repugican house of cards.
Behind the bluster, the Full Faith and Credit Act is nothing more than another House repugican threat to push the economy over the brink. As usual, House repugicans failed to think this through. Their threat has turned into a giant red, white, and blue club that Democrats are using to against them.
This bill is an insult to every active duty member of the military, and their families.
Video:
Transcript:
Speaker Boehner: Our goal here is to get ourselves on a sustainable path from a fiscal standpoint. I think doing a debt prioritization bill makes it clear to our bondholders that we’re going to meet our obligations.
Peter Cook: Doesn’t it mean as Democrats have basically suggested, you’re choosing to pay China before U.S. troops?
Boehner: Listen. Those who have loaned us money, like in any other proceeding, if you will, court proceeding, the bondholders usually get paid first. Same thing here.
Cook: And you don’t worry about the politics of this?
Boehner: No. Not at all.
In the same interview, Boehner also claimed that Obama’s economic policies are preventing economic growth, “repugicans have a plan to get our economy going again, get wages growing again and get job opportunities growing again. Things like fixing our long-term spending problem, fixing our broken tax code to make America more competitive. How about expanding American energy production and the Keystone Pipeline? There are a lot of things. The red tape – in many cases, it’s the president’s own policies that are getting in the way of growing our economy.”
The repugicans seem to be building on the apathy that they first displayed towards the troops during the shrub years. In fact, Boehner has moved on from apathy to flat out deprioritization. The Full Faith and Credit Act that House repugicans are pushing is all about priorities. If repugicans refuses to raise the debt ceiling and the nation defaults, the Full Faith and Credit Act would mandate that the Treasury Department pay the Chinese before they pay for things like national security, the military, and the troops.
It isn’t an exaggeration to say that this piece of legislation literally puts the Chinese government ahead of the troops in the battlefield.
The reality of the legislation is bad enough, but then John Boehner opened his mouth and dropped an atomic bomb on the repugican house of cards.
Behind the bluster, the Full Faith and Credit Act is nothing more than another House repugican threat to push the economy over the brink. As usual, House repugicans failed to think this through. Their threat has turned into a giant red, white, and blue club that Democrats are using to against them.
This bill is an insult to every active duty member of the military, and their families.
The NRA Is More Interested In Selling Assault Weapons Than Protecting the 2nd Amendment
In 2004 the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) enacted in 1994 reached its sunset date and expired without being renewed at the behest
of the NRA, and it was curious why an organization that boasted their
advocacy for firearm safety and hunting was adamantly opposed to banning
weapons created for the battlefield and not duck hunting or home
protection. Since then, the NRA actively promoted assault-style weapon
ownership and spent no small sum of money paying congressional
representatives for their votes to oppose any gun safety laws the NRA
considered a direct assault on the United States Constitution
Republicans are loathe to acknowledge as the law of the land. Throughout
the NRA’s lobbying efforts to arm every man, woman, and child in
America, reasonable Americans wondered if the NRA had an extrinsic
reason for pushing the proliferation of assault weapons in the
population, and if they were concealing a different intent from their
stated reasons of protecting the people’s right to defend their homes
and shoot birds.
When reports that a new gun advocate was taking the reins of the NRA from outgoing president David Keene, it appeared it was just another gun fanatic no reasonable American would want living in their immediate vicinity, and it appears no American except neo-confederates would welcome incoming National Rifle Association President Jim Porter into their neighborhoods. Porter is not the run-of-the-mill gun-zealot, he is a Southern fanatic who is still smarting because the South did not prevail in the Civil War, and in 2012 he appeared to reveal the NRA’s ulterior motive in arming the population with assault weapons, and it is not to shoot pheasants or for home security.
When Porter was addressing the New York Rifle & Pistol Association in 2012, he assailed President Obama as a “fake president” and emphatically labeled Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly un-American.” The racial element to Porter’s rant became evident when he called the war to end slavery the “War of Northern Aggression.” Porter reiterated to New York gun fanatics that even though they “might call it the Civil War, we call it the War of Northern Aggression down south,” and it is an odd statement considering that it was the Confederate Army that began the Civil War by attacking and seizing a United States military installation at Fort Sumter. The resulting war killed at least 750,000 Americans and decimated the South’s infrastructure and obviously, Porter is disappointed at the outcome.
Porter explained that the NRA was started because “some Yankee generals didn’t like the way my southern boys had the ability to shoot,” and that they started the NRA “to
teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military
firearm. And I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of
our most greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the
civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so that when they have to fight for their country they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it.”
Thus, the NRA’s push to arm Americans with assault weapons is to train
civilians in the use of standard military firearms so they are “ready to fight tyranny,”
because if Americans are called to fight for their country, it is
apparent to Porter that the United States military is ill-equipped to
train one-time civilians in the use of the standard military firearm to
use under the aegis of the United States military; so the NRA will train
them to fight tyranny.
The idea that the government under an African American President is tyrannical did not originate with Porter’s 2012 rant; the teabaggers began crying tyranny shortly after the health care reform debate began in 2009. Since then, a quick perusal of the Internet will garner thousands of neo-conservative, teabagger, and gun fanatic articles decrying the tyranny of the Obama Administration with no basis in fact, but for disaffected revolutionary sycophants and angry neo-confederates, facts are irrelevant to their cries of tyranny. The teabagger standard, the Gadsden flag, is the revolutionary war symbol of opposition to tyranny and it is no coincidence that the incoming NRA leader made it quite clear that the organization’s new direction is to train civilians in the use of military firearms to fight tyranny Porter appears to claim is the purview of the “fake president” conservatives spent over four years asserting is stealing Americans’ rights to unrestricted ownership of weapons fashioned after “the standard military firearm.”
It is possible the NRA missed Porter’s neo-confederate rant against the North’s war of aggression the rest of the nation knows as the Civil War, but the new message cannot be any more direct and threatening to the security of the United States. And Porter’s call to arms for civilians to arm themselves with replicas of the standard military firearm to be ready to fight tyranny cannot be misconstrued as anything other than the real drive behind the NRA’s rampage to arm the entire population. Gun fanatics claim assault rifles are simply “long arm rifles” used for hunting and home protection, but they directed the American Legislative Exchange Council to create templates for states to ban restrictions on machine guns and altering semi-automatic assault weapons into fully automatic “standard military firearms.”
The incoming NRA president is a bad omen for the new direction the NRA is bound to take as they ramp up opposition to gun safety laws and push for every American to stock up on assault weapons and inordinate amounts of ammunition that belie their use as personal protection and shooting rabbits. That Porter is still angry about the outcome of the Civil War and referring to 1871 military leaders as “Yankee Generals” who “didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot,” and his number one goal of training civilians to use standard military firearms to fight tyranny of “a fake President” is a real danger considering the assault weapon frenzy and fear mongering that Americans’ liberties are under assault. Porter is living breathing proof that the NRA and their gun-crazed supporters threaten the security of every American not lusting for civil, racial, or revolutionary war, and there is little doubt that America is inching closer to violent conflict, and front and center are Republicans blocking any chance at reining in the proliferation of military-style weapons or the angry gun zealots ready to use them.
When reports that a new gun advocate was taking the reins of the NRA from outgoing president David Keene, it appeared it was just another gun fanatic no reasonable American would want living in their immediate vicinity, and it appears no American except neo-confederates would welcome incoming National Rifle Association President Jim Porter into their neighborhoods. Porter is not the run-of-the-mill gun-zealot, he is a Southern fanatic who is still smarting because the South did not prevail in the Civil War, and in 2012 he appeared to reveal the NRA’s ulterior motive in arming the population with assault weapons, and it is not to shoot pheasants or for home security.
When Porter was addressing the New York Rifle & Pistol Association in 2012, he assailed President Obama as a “fake president” and emphatically labeled Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly un-American.” The racial element to Porter’s rant became evident when he called the war to end slavery the “War of Northern Aggression.” Porter reiterated to New York gun fanatics that even though they “might call it the Civil War, we call it the War of Northern Aggression down south,” and it is an odd statement considering that it was the Confederate Army that began the Civil War by attacking and seizing a United States military installation at Fort Sumter. The resulting war killed at least 750,000 Americans and decimated the South’s infrastructure and obviously, Porter is disappointed at the outcome.
The idea that the government under an African American President is tyrannical did not originate with Porter’s 2012 rant; the teabaggers began crying tyranny shortly after the health care reform debate began in 2009. Since then, a quick perusal of the Internet will garner thousands of neo-conservative, teabagger, and gun fanatic articles decrying the tyranny of the Obama Administration with no basis in fact, but for disaffected revolutionary sycophants and angry neo-confederates, facts are irrelevant to their cries of tyranny. The teabagger standard, the Gadsden flag, is the revolutionary war symbol of opposition to tyranny and it is no coincidence that the incoming NRA leader made it quite clear that the organization’s new direction is to train civilians in the use of military firearms to fight tyranny Porter appears to claim is the purview of the “fake president” conservatives spent over four years asserting is stealing Americans’ rights to unrestricted ownership of weapons fashioned after “the standard military firearm.”
It is possible the NRA missed Porter’s neo-confederate rant against the North’s war of aggression the rest of the nation knows as the Civil War, but the new message cannot be any more direct and threatening to the security of the United States. And Porter’s call to arms for civilians to arm themselves with replicas of the standard military firearm to be ready to fight tyranny cannot be misconstrued as anything other than the real drive behind the NRA’s rampage to arm the entire population. Gun fanatics claim assault rifles are simply “long arm rifles” used for hunting and home protection, but they directed the American Legislative Exchange Council to create templates for states to ban restrictions on machine guns and altering semi-automatic assault weapons into fully automatic “standard military firearms.”
The incoming NRA president is a bad omen for the new direction the NRA is bound to take as they ramp up opposition to gun safety laws and push for every American to stock up on assault weapons and inordinate amounts of ammunition that belie their use as personal protection and shooting rabbits. That Porter is still angry about the outcome of the Civil War and referring to 1871 military leaders as “Yankee Generals” who “didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot,” and his number one goal of training civilians to use standard military firearms to fight tyranny of “a fake President” is a real danger considering the assault weapon frenzy and fear mongering that Americans’ liberties are under assault. Porter is living breathing proof that the NRA and their gun-crazed supporters threaten the security of every American not lusting for civil, racial, or revolutionary war, and there is little doubt that America is inching closer to violent conflict, and front and center are Republicans blocking any chance at reining in the proliferation of military-style weapons or the angry gun zealots ready to use them.
Welcome to the century of the copyright troll
Prenda Law was just the beginning
As the saga of the porno copyright trolls Prenda Law moves into its end-game (likely to involve disbarments and jail time for the fraudsters behind the multimillion-dollar scheme that relied on bogus legal threats and sloppy accusations of copyright infringement), it's worth asking, how, exactly, this scam was able to go on for so long, and what can be done to prevent it in the future.A pair of articles -- one by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Mitch Stoltz, the other by Ars Technica's Nate Anderson -- delve into this in depth.
First, Anderson explains how Prenda hit on a cunning legal strategy that allowed it to try out variations on its scam, looking for the right combination of tactics to extract maximum revenue from its victims, without risking its own finances. This strategy cost the public a fortune in court costs and cost the victims another fortune in their legal costs, but Prenda didn't bear any of that. In effect, the public subsidized its brute-force attack on the American legal system:
How could the scheme go on for so long even as federal judges complained about fraud, as "John Doe" defendants complained repeatedly that they had no idea what the cases were about, and as critics complained about the injustice of the entire business model? The answer is that federal judges aren't generally investigators. Prenda had gone to great lengths to obscure what was really going on, who was doing what, and where the money went. Judges want to clear cases off their dockets and in rare cases will entertain sanctions motions, but to unravel something as complex as Prenda's behavior required a real investigation. Yet without more details, actual criminal investigators had very little to go on; most of the judicial complaints dealt with behavior in court, not public crimes.But as EFF's Stoltz explains, this isn't a bug in the system, it's a feature. Modern copyright law has been bought, paid for, and designed by the entertainment industry, and they demanded as system with as few safeguards and checks and balances as possible. Every element of copyright law that might enable an innocent person to easily defend herself meant added expense and burden for the entertainment industry's lawsuits against its customers and against technological innovators:
So Prenda could essentially turn the entire US judiciary into a laboratory for incrementally refining its porn trolling techniques, testing venues, judges, corporate structures, collection procedures, and legal arguments, looking for perfection. And what it arrived at in the end had a certain devious logic to it. Even Otis Wright, the federal judge in Los Angeles who brought down Prenda's principals and referred them all for criminal and tax prosecution this week, had to concede the conceptual beauty of the system.
Consider this: U.S. copyright law provides statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work - without the copyright owner having to show actual harm. Individuals have been hit with damages in the six figures, and companies with bankrupting judgments in the tens of millions. Threats of damages like this are one of the main ways that copyright trolls convince their victims to pay $2,000 to $4,000 in "settlements." But statutory damages are also wielded as a club by entertainment, media, software, and technology companies. They can destroy competitors and dry up investment with mere threats of litigation, giving them veto power over new technologies and emerging artists.As Stoltz writes, Prenda is just the beginning. The US copyright system is an attractive nuisance, a moral hazard on steroids, and the entertainment indsutry's own much-publicized efforts are the tip of the iceberg. Prenda's masterminds weren't all that clever -- there are smarter con artists out there who've learned a lot from Prenda's efforts, and they're licking their chops and getting ready to prey on you and your neighbors. And as with Prenda, we'll all foot the bill for their cons, thanks to Big Content's depraved indifference to the fallout from its legal projects.
And consider "secondary liability," the judge-made rules for when one person can be held responsible for copyright infringement by another. The rules are vague and their application often uncertain. Copyright trolls use this uncertainty to make plausible-sounding threats against Internet subscribers. You may not have been the one who downloaded our movie, say the trolls, but your name is on the cable bill and the law will hold you responsible. It's not always true - in many cases, an ISP subscriber is protected from liability for others' downloading - but the rules are vague and complex enough to make the threat sound real.
Looking beyond trolls, the same vague legal principles create legal nightmares - and sometimes financial ruin - for people that try to play by the rules. Companies like ReplayTV and Veoh went bankrupt trying to convince courts that they shouldn't be held responsible when customers copy TV and movies. Dish Networks/ReplayTV, YouTube, and many less prominent technology companies face lawsuits where the toolmaker must answer for the tool user. Only lawyers benefit, as vagueness means long fights and lots of legal fees.
Technology, business, culture and more
Medium just launched Lady Bits,
a new collection hosted by former Wired.com editor Arikia Millikan. The
goal: Provide a space for the kinds of stories and perspectives that
get left out of traditional magazines because of advertising profiles
that say tech readers are all dudes. It's a worthy idea and I'm looking
forward to seeing how it plays out.
The Invisible Epidemic
More on America on the decline
Big business is happy with the transition of America - before long there will be enough poverty stricken to work their factories for cents on the dollar that they used to have to pay - and they will own not just your money but your soul.From Crooks and Liars
When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic
It's an invisible epidemic -- and because people are so desperate to have and keep a job, some employers are taking full advantage of the hard economic times. Lynn Stuart Parramore at Alternet:
Americans like to think that a fair day's work brings a fair day's pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it's back and taking a terrible toll. We're talking billions of dollars in wages; millions of workers affected each year. A gigantic heist is being perpetrated against working people: they're getting screwed on overtime, denied their tips, shortchanged on benefits, defrauded on payroll, and handed paychecks that bounce like rubber balls. A conservative estimate of unpaid overtime alone shows that it costs workers at least $19 billion per year.
The laws protecting workers are grossly inadequate, and wage thieves go unpunished. For giant companies like Walmart, Citigroup and UPS, getting fined is just the cost of doing business. You could even say that they're incentivized to cheat because punishment is so unlikely, and when it happens, so light. The protections we used to take for granted, like the right to receive at least the minimum wage, the right to workers' compensation when hurt on the job, and the right to advocate for better working conditions, are nothing more than a quaint memory for many Americans. Activist Kim Bobo, author of Wage Theft in America,calls it a "national crime wave."
The sheer scope of the problem is jaw-dropping, sweeping across key industries and inflicting massive damage on individuals and society as a whole. In 2009, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a ground-breaking study, "Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers," which found that in America, an honest day's work is frequently rewarded with theft and abuse. A survey of over 4,000 workers in Chicago, L.A. and New York found that minimum and overtime violations were rife, and any attempt to complain or organize was swiftly met with punishment. Among the revelations:
26 percent of low-wage workers got paid less than the minimum wage.
76 percent of workers toiling over 40 hours were denied overtime.
Workers lose an average of $2,634 a year due to these and other workplace violations.
Hedge fund managers suck at making money (for you)
The Financial Times analyzed the stock picks of the presenters at this
week's Ira Sohn Investment conference in NYC and found that, on average,
following a hedge fund manager was a much worse bet than buying passive
index funds (though a couple hedgies did do pretty well last year, they
were dragged down by the spectacularly wrong advice from the majority):
But a Financial Times analysis of last year's tips shows decidedly mixed results. An investor who followed every top idea from the 12 speakers last year would have made 19 per cent, less than the 22 per cent gain available from a passive index fund tracking the US stock market.
Many of the ideas have proved woefully miscued, including some from the most high-profile managers who will return to the stage on Wednesday: David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital and Bill Ackman of Pershing Square.
German children use bundled inflationary money as blocks in 1923
German children using marks as building blocks, when Germany tried to pay its war debts by printing money, causing hyper-inflation. 1923.
Why a grand, unified theory of artificial intelligence may be a pipe dream
A computer scientist and a psychology professor analyze Entropica — the artificial intelligence system that's been getting major buzz in the blogosphere. Quick version: It's a good idea, but it underestimates the complexity of the real world. Sure, you could create an AI that can play chess, but that same bot won't necessarily have the skills it needs to also be capable of understanding grammar and sentence structure.
How to build a working digital computer out of paperclips (and stuff)
The instructions include a read-only drum memory for storing the computer program (much like a player piano roll), made from a juice can, with read heads made from bent paper clips. A separate manually-operated “core” memory (made of paper-clip switches) is used for storing data.
So can this “paper clip” computer actually built, and if so, would it work? Apparently yes, on both counts. Cleveland youngsters Mark Rosenstein and Kenny Antonelli built one named “Emmerack” in 1972 (albeit substituting Radio Shack slide switches for most of the paper clips), and another was built in 1975 by the Wickenburg High School Math Club in Arizona. And, at least one modern build has been completed, as you can see on YouTube.
Health News
Strange ways to contract rare diseases
The Body Horrors blog has a new recurring series called Microbial Misadventures — all about times when people met disease-causing microbes under less-than-normal circumstances. It starts with an interesting question: Given the fact that most anthrax infections come from eating tainted meat, how did a vegetarian end up with the disease in 2009? Two-word hint: Drum circle.More evidence that your mom's illnesses can affect your mental health
You've probably heard before that people with schizophrenia are more likely to have been born in winter than other seasons — and that this weird fact could be linked to their mothers coming down with the flu, or suffering from Vitamin D deficiency. A new study has now found that people with bipolar disorder had a greater likelihood of being born to women who had had the flu while pregnant. It's a strange connection, and might just be correlation. So far, doctor's don't really understand why a virus-infected mama would lead to her child developing mental illness later in life.This 105-Year Old Woman Attributes Her Longevity to Eating Bacon Every Day
Bacon--it's nature's font of miracles! Pearl Cantrell of Richland Springs, Texas is 105 years old. How did she live so long? You already know the answer:
"I love bacon, I eat it everyday", says Pearl, "I don't feel as old as I am, that's all I can say", she explains.
Still feisty and full of life, Pearl has been through a lot, and has plenty of reasons to complain or even give up. After mothering seven children, outliving three of them, losing a husband, and enduring decades of physical labor, she still has a smile on her face.
"I would go to the field and work till dinner, then come home to fix dinner, then I would go back out to the field and work again until supper", Pearl tells us.
But Pearl's daughter, Anno, says complaining is the last thing you'll ever hear her mother do.
"She's taught us to work hard and to get up every morning and think about living. She's never thought about dying", says Anno.
The Most Sleep Deprived Students in the World
"I think we underestimate the impact of sleep. Our data show that across countries internationally, on average, children who have more sleep achieve higher in maths, science and reading. That is exactly what our data show," says Chad Minnich, of the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center.But what about those Asian students who study all the time?
"It's the same link for children who are lacking basic nutrition," says Mr Minnich, based at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College.
Asian countries are the highest-performing in maths tests - and Mr Minnich says this has often been associated with long hours and cramming in after-school classes.Minnich placed the blame on smartphones and laptops. Sean Coughlan of the BBC has more: Here.
"One would assume that they would be extremely tired," he said. "And yet when we look at the sleep factor for them, they don't necessarily seem to be suffering from as much sleep deprivation as the other countries."
Plant Talk
The Ents of the “Lord of the Rings” series and the flowers in
“Alice in Wonderland” spoke with each other and people. In the real
world, plants may have a much more subtle form of communication.
The Eben Ice Caves
These wonders can be found in the Rock River Canyon Wilderness area of the upper peninsula of Michigan. Nature photographer Nina Asunto snowshoed there to capture these amazing images. You can view more photos here.
Astronomical News
What heats gas near supermassive black holes at the centre of
galaxies? Astronomers have looked at the centre of our Galaxy, the Milky
Way, with ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory and discovered a rich
variety of [...]
The Martian surface is peppered with impact craters of all
shapes, sizes and ages. However, many of the craters are just plain
weird.
Human brain cells developed in lab, grow in mice
A key type of human brain cell developed in the laboratory grows
seamlessly when transplanted into the brains of mice, UC San Francisco
researchers have discovered, raising hope that these cells might one day
be [...]
Bee Afraid, Bee Very Afraid
Commercial Honeybee Population Collapsed Last Winter
“We’re getting closer and closer to the point where we don’t have enough bees in this country to meet pollination demands,” said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp of the University of Maryland, who led the survey documenting the declines.
Beekeepers lost 31 percent of their colonies in late 2012 and early 2013, roughly double what’s considered acceptable attrition through natural causes. The losses are in keeping with rates documented since 2006, when beekeeper concerns prompted the first nationwide survey of honeybee health. Hopes raised by drop in rates of loss to 22 percent in 2011-2012 were wiped out by the new numbers.
The honeybee shortage nearly came to a head in March in California, when there were barely enough bees to pollinate the almond crop.
Had the weather not been ideal, the almonds would have gone unpollinated — a taste, as it were, of a future in which honeybee problems are not solved.
“If we want to grow fruits and nuts and berries, this is important,” said vanEngelstorp. “One in every three bites [of food consumed in the U.S.] is directly or indirectly pollinated by bees.”
The 26-foot Long Rhino
Paraceratherium
was a rhinoceros that lived around 20 million years ago. Standing tall
with a longer neck, it doesn't much resemble a modern rhinoceros. The
15-20 ton giant is the subject of a new book by paleontologist Donald
Prothero called Rhinoceros Giants. But it's not just about Paraceratherium. It's also a book about paleontologists finding evidence of Paraceratherium.For more than the first half of the book, in fact, Paraceratherium only appears as scattered fragments that puzzled and inspired successive generations of paleontologists. Prothero recounts the lives of fossil mammal researchers such as Walter Granger, Henry Guy Ellcock Pilgrim, Clive Forster Cooper, and Zhou Ming-Zhen, among others, in detail before diving into the geological particulars of where Paraceratherium bones are found and where the giant fit in the wider rhino family tree. While a giant rhino without a horn might look odd compared to living species, Prothero points out that Paraceratherium belonged to a major and totally-extinct group of rhinos, and that most fossil rhinos don’t show any evidence of horns at all. Modern rhinos might look prehistoric, but they’re actually quite different from their varied predecessors.Read more about this rhino and the book at Laelaps.
Animal News
A George Washington University biologist and a team of
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Researchers at the University of Strathclyde have discovered the greater wax moth
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Humans are only capable [...]
Blood, guts, manure and discarded food turned into animal feed by the once-pesky insects.
Small dinos may have been more diverse than thought.
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