CAROLINA NATURALLY: May 24, 2013

Friday, May 24, 2013

The Daily Drift

True that!

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1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publishes proof of a sun-centered solar system. He dies just after publication. 1607 Captain Christopher Newport and 105 followers found the colony of Jamestown at the mouth of the James River on the coast of Virginia.
1610 Sir Thomas Gates institutes "laws divine moral and marshal, " a harsh civil code for Jamestown.
1624 After years of unprofitable operation, Virginia's charter is revoked and it becomes a royal colony. 1689 English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration, protecting Protestants. Roman Catholics are specifically excluded from exemption.
1738 The Methodist Church is established.
1764 Boston lawyer James Otis denounces "taxation without representation," calling for the colonies to unite in opposition to Britain's new tax measures.
1798 Believing that a French invasion of Ireland is imminent, Irish nationalists rise up against the British occupation.
1844 Samuel Morse taps out the first telegraph message.
1846 General Zachary Taylor captures Monterey.
1861 General Benjamin Butler declares slaves to be the contraband of war.
1863 Bushwackers led by Captain William Marchbanks attack a Federal militia party in Nevada, Missouri. 1878 The first American bicycle race is held in Boston.
1930 Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to fly from England to Australia.
1941 The British battleship Hood is sunk by the German battleship Bismarck. There are only three survivors.
1951 Willie Mays begins playing for the New York Giants.
1961 Civil rights activists are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.

Non Sequitur

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When America issued dogtags to kids to help identify their nuke-blasted corpses

Matt Novak hits some highlights from Joanne Brown's 1988 Journal of American History paper A is for Atom, B is for Bomb (paywalled link), which discusses the weird, grim stuff that America contemplated at the height of the cold war, and worried about how it would identify the charred corpses of children after a nuclear blast:

In February of 1952 the city of New York bought 2.5 million dog tags. By April of that year, just about every kid in the city from kindergarten to fourth grade had a tag with their name on it. Kids in many other cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Las Veagas and Philadelphia also got dog tags, allowing for easy identification should the unthinkable occur.
But educators weren't considering just dog tags to identify the scores of dead and injured children that would result if the cold war suddenly turned hot. They also considered tattoos.

That Time American School Kids Were Given Dog Tags Because Nukes

The truth be told

Did you know ...

That Dimbulb is whining over blame for millions in losses

That no, millennials aren't lazy entitled slackers

How to tell ABC news to correct their false Benghazi report

That the world's fish are migrating to escape global warming

Lush Dimbulb was given to us ...

Lush Dimbulb was given to us, the liberals, so that we would have irrefutable evidence that wingnuts are morons. Thanks, karma.

The repugicans Claiming Tax Exempt Status Conspired to Hide Illegal Donations

It is not unusual for convicted criminals to characterize themselves as victims, and as a rule they blame law enforcement, judges, and district attorneys for doing their jobs and cry they were unfairly persecuted despite mountains of evidence they committed a crime. It is part of a mindset inherent in criminals who often believe the crime they committed was justified, or to portray law enforcement and the judicial system as unfairly tyrannizing them regardless they were caught red-handed or confessed to violating the law. Under normal circumstances, only corrections officers are privy to whiny criminals’ persistent complaints they were maltreated by “the system,” and as a rule the louder they complain, the guiltier they are. Over the past ten days, all Americans have witnessed firsthand repugicans and teabags complaining they were singled out for persecution by the government, and they have taken a page right out of convicted felons’ book and accused an enforcement agency, the Internal Revenue Service, of abusive treatment despite they were doing their jobs to prevent violations of tax and campaign law, and the cries of scandal, cover-up, and persecution inform there is a conspiracy underlying the alleged scandal.
The faux outrage over the I.R.S. doing its due diligence in scrutinizing political activists’ applications for tax exempt status as social welfare organizations is shining a spotlight on conservative’s dirty practice of concealing dark money being spent on campaigns. Instead of keeping quiet and letting the controversy die down, wingnut are giving the rest of the country an opportunity to look closely into repugican attempts to circumvent tax and campaign laws. As it turns out, the groups claiming they promoted social welfare may have conspired to conceal illegal campaign donations as well as protect their donors if they illegally deducted contributions to a tax exempt “social welfare charity” they would be disallowed from claiming if they gave to Political Action Committees or directly to any particular campaign.
The reality is that the dark money so-called conservative 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations spent on conservative candidates was dirty money, and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, and various teabagger patriot clubs committed perjury if they told the IRS they would not participate in political campaigns. If any of the so-called social welfare organizations assisted donors to write off illegal campaign contributions, they must face I.R.S. audits to determine their donors and if they gave them permission to write off their political donations under the guise of charitable contributions.
According to IRS Publication 557, Tax-Exempt Status for Your Organization, “A donor can deduct a charitable contribution of $250 or more only if the donor has a written acknowledgment from the charitable organization. The donor is responsible for requesting and obtaining written acknowledgment from the donee.” An extensive audit will determine if any of the wingnut groups gave written acknowledgments to donors, or if they requested said acknowledgment, but at the very least the largest groups appear to be guilty of perjury.
The application for recognition as a social welfare nonprofit, 1024 Form, explicitly asks a group whether it has spent, or plans to spend, “any money attempting to influence the selection, nomination, election, or appointment of any person to any Federal, state, or local public office or to an office in a political organization,” and the wingnut groups said no. Karl Rove’s “social welfare” organization, Crossroads GPS, complained it is among the conservative groups “targeted” by the IRS, and it should have been for spending more than $70 million in federal races in 2012. However, Crossroads GPS has not been granted tax-exemption, and yet claimed it was exempt under 501(c) on its tax return. The Koch brothers’ non-profit “social welfare,” Americans for Prosperity, spent more than $36 million despite saying it did not spend on political campaigns. Besides Rove’s group, most wingnut “social welfare” non-profits applied to the IRS and were recognized as tax-exempt, and despite the IRS code rule that “promoting social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office” the groups poured millions into Republican candidates’ coffers. They are guilty of perjury and it may explain why repugicans knew about the IRS scrutiny during the 2012 election and remained silent.
As reported on Tuesday, Darrell Issa was aware of the Treasury Department investigating the IRS in 2012, and yesterday an MSNBC host asked why Willard Romney failed to bring up the alleged scandal during the 2012 election. One can only conclude it was either because shrub appointees were responsible for the so-called persecution of wingnut groups, or because they were mortified the illegal “tax-exempt” status and dark money groups would be exposed in the heat of a presidential campaign. After a judge found that teabagger non-profit True the Vote violated their tax-exempt non-profit status and illegally aided repugicans, it is hardly a stretch to believe repugicans and their “social welfare” political action committees were anxious to keep their perjury-laden applications under the radar. However, now that they are crying foul and claiming they were treated unfairly by shrub appointees and blaming the White House, it is time for a thorough FEC, IRS, and Justice Department investigation of all conservative groups that applied for, or were granted, tax-exempt status by the .
Any investigation must include delving into whether or not millionaires and corporations asked for, or received, written acknowledgment to deduct their donations to conservative “social welfare” organizations that perjured themselves by pouring money into repugican political campaigns, and if they did, if they are guilty of tax evasion by deducting them as charitable contributions. At the very least, the groups that claimed they were exempt and still donated to political campaigns are guilty of perjury, and there is the little issue of Karl Rove’s group claiming they were exempt without any record with the IRS.
The repugicans will rue the day they complained they were unfairly scrutinized because it appears the IRS was performing its job well by giving extra attention to political activists claiming their work was strictly promoting social welfare. There are too many unanswered questions that give the appearance of a grand scheme to circumvent campaign finance laws as well as evading tax liability, and based on the wingnut’s complaints they’ve been unfairly persecuted, it is highly likely the criminals are guilty and deserve a serious round of investigations to bring them to justice.

The repugicans Use Budget Cuts as Retribution for Re-electing Barack Obama

For Americans who make it their business to follow politics, it is a recurring theme that every time a Democrat is elected president, fiction writer Ayn Rand’s novels become all the rage in wingnut circles. When teabaggers took control of the House in 2011, Rand devotee Paul Ryan made waves when he decried the “takers” draining assets from the beleaguered richest one percent he referred to as “makers,” and although Ryan’s characterization of the poor is despicable, he is correct that Americans are being raped by “takers.” However, the takers are not Americans ravaged by the shrub-repugicans economic malfeasance that destroyed millions of jobs and increased the number of Americans living in poverty, but repugicans in Congress and state legislatures who have spent the past two-and-a-half years taking any and everything from the American people they can lay their dirty hands on. In fact, it is an exercise in futility to cite anything repugicans have not attempted to take from Americans and with the debt and deficit falling at a record pace, it appears their cuts are anything other than retribution for electing an African American President.
Last year it was revealed that America ranked second to Romania as the nation with the highest rate of children living in poverty (23.1%) and hunger, and this week House repugicans celebrated their proposal to cut $21 billion from SNAP (food stamps) that will take food stamps away from 2 million people, as well as ensuring that 210,000 hungry kids are no longer able to get free school lunches. It is the ultimate expression of evil to take food out of the mouths of any hungry human being, but it takes a special kind of monster to deliberately withhold food from hungry children. Wingnuts prevented a farm bill from passing last year because they opposed the Senate’s bill as not harsh enough and forced them to start anew in this session of Congress.
The Senate is working on its second farm bill in less than a year that cuts $4 billion from the SNAP over ten years to garner support from selfish repugicans. Democrats attempted to eliminate cuts to food stamps, but repugicans refused to vote for any measure that fails to take food away from the poor; especially hungry children. It is just what they enjoy doing. Last year the Senate passed a similar farm bill but wingnuts in the House balked because the Senate bill did not take enough food from hungry seniors, children, and working-poor Americans. As it stands now, food stamp recipients receive on average about $133.42 per month that poverty experts say is barely enough to cover two weeks in groceries, and when temporary provisions from the stimulus package expire, SNAP recipients will have even less to spend on food, regardless if the House farm bill passes or not. However, hungry Americans and their children should not feel singled out because repugicans have left no group unaffected from their agenda of taking from Americans who are not in the richest one percent of income earners.
Over the past two years, in their drive to take everything from the people, repugicans have left few Americans untouched whether it is senior citizens’ Social Security and Medicare, low-income Americans’ Medicaid, students, seniors and minorities’ voting rights, the Affordable Care Act, meals on wheels, and even disaster relief. The dust barely settled from the devastating tornado in Oklahoma two days ago before Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn promised he will insist that before giving disaster relief to victims in his home state, the cost will have to be paid for by taking something away from other Americans in the form of spending cuts. Officials had not yet estimated the cost of the damage, or the number of lives that were lost, and Coburn said he would “absolutely” demand offsets for any federal aid that Congress provides that has been the practice of repugicans since President Obama has been in office. The repugicans have typically balked at providing disaster-relief funds when there’s a devastating storm unless they can take from other Americans, but they change their minds when their constituents are affected, but Coburn is callous enough to ransom his own constituents to take something from other Americans. The depth of repugicans’ heartless taking is not confined to spending, and it informs the true nature of their evil tendencies.
They are taking representative government in states like Michigan where the repugican governor disbanded local governments and appointed dictators in the form of an “emergency managers.” In states with repugican legislatures they have taken away a woman’s right to choose their own reproductive health and put it in the hands of religious extremists, and are taking the right to vote from students, seniors, and minorities because they do not vote for repugicans. The repugicans have also taken away American workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively for decent wages, and as a canard to cut budgets have regularly taken public sector workers’ pensions and delivered the proceeds to corporations in the form of tax cuts. In Congress, repugicans are actively pursuing taking away the minimum wage as well as overtime pay that prevents most working people from falling into poverty, and they have intimated they will take away child labor laws that have been in effect for over 70 years. In an alarming number of states, repugicans are taking away women’s 14^th Amendment rights to conform to religious maniacs’ demand that single-celled organisms are living breathing “persons” worthy of the Constitutional protections, and all Americans are losing their right to clean air and water as repugicans are fighting to take away environmental protections at the behest of the Koch brothers and energy industry contributors.
There is really no end to what repugicans are going to take away from the American people, and they cannot claim it is because the nation is drowning in debt. Taking away women’s rights, voting rights, environmental protections, minimum wage, overtime pay, or religious freedoms have nothing whatsoever to do with debt and deficit and everything to do with callous disregard for the people they are elected to serve. One might hope that repugicans would be aghast that the richest nation on Earth has nearly a quarter of its children living in poverty and going hungry, or that the nation’s infrastructure ranks below every developed and several undeveloped countries, but they are unfazed and seek out more to take from the people. What is stunning, really, is their apparent anger that they are prevented from taking even more despite the harsh Draconian cuts they have imposed on the poorest Americans.
Wingnuts hate change, but something changed since the people elected an African American as President and it is not Democrats and it is not the majority of the American people. It is repugicans and their vile teabag supporters who have taken what were typically universally supported policies of caring for the people and made it a carnal sin to help Americans whether they are disabled, elderly, hungry, sick, or jobless, and they seem to take the greatest pleasure in taking what little the great majority of Americans have left. Paul Ryan is right; there is an epidemic of takers in America, but they are wicked wingnuts who are not taking out of selfishness or greed, but because it feeds their vapid soulless egos.

Attacking the defenseless AKA Standard repugican Procedure

Mean-spirited, lacking n compassion, cruel, heartless, selfish, vicious, lacking in empathy, nasty - sorry, but I'm running out of adjectives for repugicans. (actually I have a lot more but they're not fit to print)

From Occupy Democrats...

If you thought that the tea party repugican House couldn't sink their stature any lower, think again. Their latest attack on the American middle-class is against America's most innocent, vulnerable, and needy groups: hungry poor children and school kids.

Although they have remained steadfast in their support of the federal government doling out massive budget busting corporate welfare to international banks and multinational corporations, House repugicans have finally found what is wrong with America, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

On Wednesday, the House Agriculture Committee voted to cut $21 billion from SNAP's budget. If signed into law, these heartless cuts would yank food stamps away from 2 million poor kids. To make matters worse, they would also ensure that 200,000 poor and hungry school kids would not be able to get free school lunches that are vital for their nutrition and health.

Reality is ...

Pennsylvania Judge Sentenced For 28 Years For Selling Kids to the Prison System

Mark Ciavarella Jr, a 61-year old former judge in Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for literally selling young juveniles for cash. He was convicted of accepting money in exchange for incarcerating thousands of adults and children into a prison facility owned by a developer who was paying him under the table. The kickbacks amounted to more than $1 million.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned some 4,000 convictions issued by him between 2003 and 2008, claiming he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles – including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Some of the juveniles he sentenced were as young as 10-years old.

Ciavarella was convicted of 12 counts, including racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also ordered to repay $1.2 million in restitution.

His "kids for cash" program has revealed that corruption is indeed within the prison system, mostly driven by the growth in private prisons seeking profits by any means necessary.

Forging £1 coins is apparently profitable

Three men have been convicted of forging £1 coins. The London Police Detective Inspector even got all quippy about the sentencing ("These three men are organised criminals who were intent on undermining the UK monetary system. There is nothing fake about the reality they must now face of life behind bars." -- yes, yes, very clever DI South) but what fascinates me about the story is that it can somehow be profitable to forge £1 coins.
I got passed a fake pound shortly after I first moved to the UK, almost ten years go; it was a foil-wrapped plastic slug. Not realizing it was fake, I tried to buy something with it at a corner shop and the cashier pressed it edge-on on his counter and the foil split open, revealing the green plastic disc inside.
From the sound of this article, these fakes were solid metal, which, I think, would make them more expensive than the fake I got. When you add the costs of the materials, the wages for the manufacturing process, warehousing, the discount for counterfeit cash, etc, it's hard to believe that this was worth anyone's while.
On the other hand, it's probably easier to go on counterfeiting when you're passing very small denominations as most people (me included) won't bother going to the cops over a mere pound; and it's much harder to remember where a given pound coin came from than a £20 note.

The court heard Fisher, of Rags Lane in Goffs Oak, Hertfordshire, Sullivan, of Bancroft Chase in Hornchurch, east London, and Abbott were arrested during an undercover police operation in Essex last May.
Police found a storage container with 1.6 million metal discs inside and fake coins equivalent to £20,000.
Fake coins equivalent to a further £30,000 were found in a nearby car.

Three men jailed over 'largest' fake £1 coin plot

Location, Location, Location

Why the Super Bowl’s location matters

If you’re a small charity looking for some corporate largesse, pegging your ask to a big morale-boosting event planned for your community may help seal the deal, suggests a new study on corporate giving. The [...]

Man leaves $1K tip to help waitress realize dream of visiting Italy

On the Casual Cynic Tumblr, a heart-warming story about a waitress who got a $1,000 tip from a diner she'd met for the first time that night, who wanted to help her realize her dream of visiting Italy, whence her family hailed.

So my mom and I have been working the same waitress job for 5-6 years now. She had been waitressing years before, but this is recently. Anyway, about… 15 minutes ago this guy she waited on left and told her to take care. Just that. Prior to this she had talked to him about Italy. Her people are from Florence, this and that, and she said she’s never been. She’s got 8 years of art education and she’s working a waitress job. It’s pretty… Sad and disappointing, I guess. Her and my father divorced 6 years ago and she hasn’t had a real job ever. Just been stuck in a small town she’s not from.
This man who we have never seen before tipped her 1000 dollars for a trip to Italy. Walked out, not another word.
…you know. Just when I start to lose faith in humanity….Hm.

So my mom and I have been working the same waitress job for 5-6 years now

Helen Mirren Fulfills Sick Little Boy's Dream of Tea with the Queen

Oliver Burton, 10, is fighting a form of bone cancer. He wanted to have tea with Queen Elizabeth II. Unfortunately, she was not available. But Helen Mirren, the actress who portrayed the Queen in a 2006 biopic and in an ongoing stage production, was. Tara Brady of The Daily Mail writes about Dame Mirren's in-character meeting with Oliver:

Catherine and father James were so delighted that their son actually thought the actress was the real Queen.
His father James Browne said: 'She stayed in character for the whole thing. Oliver thought she was the real Queen, and well, that's good enough for us.
'She was really lovely. She did the whole thing - had a butler there, was dressed in costume and did it all properly for him.
'She sat in Oliver's wheelchair and gave him her big chair. She had a glass of coke together and biscuits and little sandwiches and they even brought in her corgis from the show, Coco and Roco.
'She was wonderful and in some of the photos you do a double take because she really does look like the real Queen.
'She knighted him and told everyone that they had to call him Sir Oliver. He had a brilliant day.
He took his British flag and got her to sign it and just waved and waved it all day.'

At the link, you can see photos of their meeting.

In the Star Trek canon, the United Federation of Planets was formed in San Francisco, California. Starfleet maintains its headquarters there. Starfleet Academy lies within sight of the bay. Much of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home takes place in that city. More than any other city, San Francisco is the center of the Star Trek universe.
Why San Francisco as opposed to, say, Lubbock? Or Dallas, Brownsville, San Antonio, Longview or other excellent options? Ted Trautman of Wired examined why that city was important to Gene Roddenberry and a symbol of Star Trek. San Francisco was a Navy town, a site of technological innovation and a diverse, international city. Trautman writes:

Plenty of science fiction is city-specific: it’s impossible to imagine RoboCop anywhere but Detroit, or Blade Runner outside of Los Angeles. What sets Star Trek apart is the attention it pays to one little city, barely seven miles across, when the other points on its journey are not cities or countries, but planets and star systems. Many of Star Trek’s struggles take place not long ago in a galaxy far, far away, but in a city we have already built, just a couple centuries down the road. And it’s a city whose culture of curiosity, craftsmanship and tolerance have left an indelible mark on one of the world’s most successful sci-fi franchises.

Social steganography

Danah Boyd has a great summary of the new Pew report on Teens, Social Media, and Privacy. The whole thing is worth a read -- especially her thoughts on race and social media use -- but the most interesting stuff was about "social steganography" -- smuggling meaning past grown-ups through the clever use of in-jokes and obscure references (this is also something that Chinese net-users do to get past their national censors):

My favorite finding of Pew’s is that 58% of teens cloak their messages either through inside jokes or other obscure references, with more older teens (62%) engaging in this practice than younger teens (46%). This is the practice that I’ve seen significantly rise since I first started doing work on teens’ engagement with social media. It’s the source of what Alice Marwick and I describe as “social steganography” in our paper on teen privacy practices.
While adults are often anxious about shared data that might be used by government agencies, advertisers, or evil older men, teens are much more attentive to those who hold immediate power over them – parents, teachers, college admissions officers, army recruiters, etc. To adults, services like Facebook that may seem “private” because you can use privacy tools, but they don’t feel that way to youth who feel like their privacy is invaded on a daily basis. (This, btw, is part of why teens feel like Twitter is more intimate than Facebook. And why you see data like Pew’s that show that teens on Facebook have, on average 300 friends while, on Twitter, they have 79 friends.) Most teens aren’t worried about strangers; their worried about getting into trouble.
Over the last few years, I’ve watched as teens have given up on controlling access to content. It’s too hard, too frustrating, and technology simply can’t fix the power issues. Instead, what they’ve been doing is focusing on controlling access to meaning. A comment might look like it means one thing, when in fact it means something quite different. By cloaking their accessible content, teens reclaim power over those who they know who are surveilling them. This practice is still only really emerging en masse, so I was delighted that Pew could put numbers to it. I should note that, as Instagram grows, I’m seeing more and more of this. A picture of a doughnut may not be about a doughnut. While adults worry about how teens’ demographic data might be used, teens are becoming much more savvy at finding ways to encode their content and achieve privacy in public.

Thoughts on Pew’s latest report: notable findings on race and privacy

How Healthy Are You For Your Age?

On May 22, JoVE will publish details of a technique to measure the health of human genetic material in relation to a patient’s age. The method is demonstrated by the laboratory of Dr. Gil Atzmon at New [...]

Herb Doctor Jailed for Phony Cancer Cures

A Los Angeles doctor and minister who sold phony cures for cancer and other diseases is sentenced to prison.

How Our Brains Miss the Obvious

After the high-profile kidnapping in Cleveland, some wonder: How could so many people miss obvious signs?

Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

You don't have to be crazy to believe in conspiracy theories. In fact, 63 percent of registered voters in American believe in at least one political conspiracy theory. Scientists say that the belief that powerful people are manipulating things behind the scenes is the brain's way of making sense out of forces that the individual cannot control, sparked by the region of the brain called the amygdala.

Economic recessions, terrorist attacks and natural disasters are massive, looming threats, but we have little power over when they occur or how or what happens afterward. In these moments of powerlessness and uncertainty, a part of the brain called the amygdala kicks into action. Paul Whalen, a scientist at Dartmouth College who studies the amygdala, says it doesn’t exactly do anything on its own. Instead, the amygdala jump-starts the rest of the brain into analytical overdrive — prompting repeated reassessments of information in an attempt to create a coherent and understandable narrative, to understand what just happened, what threats still exist and what should be done now. This may be a useful way to understand how, writ large, the brain’s capacity for generating new narratives after shocking events can contribute to so much paranoia in this country.

“If you know the truth and others don’t, that’s one way you can reassert feelings of having agency,” Swami says. It can be comforting to do your own research even if that research is flawed. It feels good to be the wise old goat in a flock of sheep.

Read more about the research into conspiracy theories in an article by Maggie Koerth-Beker in the New York Times.

Corn Syrup: Addictive

Corn syrup can act as an addictive drug

Research presented today shows that high-fructose corn syrup can cause behavioral reactions in rats similar to those produced by drugs of abuse such as cocaine. These results, presented by addiction expert Francesco Leri, Associate Professor [...]