The Daily Drift

Ain't that the truth ...!

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Today in History

13 - General Tiberius' (later Emperor) triumphant procession through Rome after siege of Germany
1380 - French King Charles VI declares no taxes for ever
1676 - 1st colonial prision organized, Nantucket Mass
1776 - 1st gun salute for an American warship in a foreign port - US Andrew Doria at Ft St Eustatius
1798 - Kentucky becomes 1st state to nullify an act of Congress
1801 - 1st edition of New York Evening Post
1824 - NY City's Fifth Avenue opens for business
1938 - LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.
1945 - UNESCO is founded.
1950 - Harry Truman proclaims emergency crisis caused by communist threat
1963 - Touch-tone telephone introduced

Non Sequitur

A white supremacist makes an interesting discovery

Craig Cobb, a white supremacist trying to establish a 'whites-only' enclave in North Dakota, appeared on The Trisha Show and agreed to take a test to determine his genetic ancestry. The test results were aired at the taping. Cobb’s genetic makeup is 86% European, and 14% sub-Saharan African.

Here's the video.

Did you know ...

That 40% of American workers made less than $20,000 last year

That military sexual assaults may be more pervasive than previously thought

What will America's coastlines look like once the global ice caps melt?

That the 1% really believe that greed is good

It’s Time to Kill the Absurd Notion That Cutting Taxes on the Rich Grows The Economy

Ronald Reagan has been dead for over nine years and it is time to kill his absurd notion that cutting taxes on the rich and corporations produces a balanced budget … 

 It is standard procedure for large organizations to select one person to represent and speak for their organization, and it is equally true in the political world where one person speaks on behalf of the entire party. For a country, it falls on the government to speak for, and represent, the will of the people as a population, and for over thirty years repugicans have taken it upon themselves to speak for the population they claim demanded that government protect the wealthy and their corporations at the expense of the people.
According to a twisted economic theory promoted during the Reagan junta, the key to a thriving economy was cutting government spending and giving the proceeds to the richest Americans and corporations that failed to deliver jobs or economic growth for the people. Still, for the past four-and-a-half years repugicans continued to claim they spoke for the people they argued whole-heartedly supported pursuing an anti-government agenda comprised of gutting domestic programs that killed millions of jobs to fund greater tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Prior to, and throughout, their 5 week vacation this past August, repugicans boasted that when they returned from their hiatus they would ramp up their “fight against Washington for all Americans” and drastically cut domestic spending and oppose taxes on the rich and corporations because as House Speaker John Boehner said, “it’s what the American people want us to do.”
According to a recent poll, what the American people overwhelmingly want Congress to do is increase government spending to create jobs, protect Social Security and Medicare, and expand social programs by requiring corporations and the wealthy to pay higher taxes to “shoulder more of the burden of supporting government.” The poll’s results reveal a year-long trend among Americans who favor abandoning the Reaganomics of tax cuts for the rich and shrinking government down to a size repugicans can “drown it in a bathtub,” and is a stark departure from what repugicans claim the people demand from Congress. In fact, the poll revealed that 68% support strengthening the economy with job creation while only 28% support teabagger and repugican policies of cutting corporate and the wealthy’s taxes, slashing domestic spending, and reducing government to cut the nation’s deficit.
The poll also revealed that even teabagger repugicans favor progressive tax and spend policies by 25%, and that nearly 80% of all respondents want corporate tax loopholes closed to fund government spending. the repugicans claim the American people oppose closing corporate loopholes because it is a “tax hike” on corporations that have posted record profits and claimed most of the wealth from the tepid recovery after repugicans crashed the economy in 2008. Voters also favor maintaining current tax rates on offshore corporate profits and enacting the “Buffet Rule” on income over $1 million by a surprising 70% that repugicans oppose as a brutal imposition on “job creators.” The poll’s results belie a perpetual repugican assertion that the American people believe the richest Americans pay too much income tax and deserve greater tax breaks such as those in the Ryan Budget.
This latest poll reinforces, and is consistent with, several other polls during the past year the belie repugican claims that Americans demand a “cut spending” only economic approach such as an ABC News/Washington Post poll in October showing that nearly 60% of Americans favor a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.  Five different CBS News/New York Times polls this year produced nearly identical results to the latest poll including an Associated Press survey that showed 6 in 10 voters support the “Buffett Rule” of a minimum tax rate of 30% on incomes over $1 million. The Hart poll found that, like Gallup polls going back nearly ten years, an overwhelming two-thirds majority of Americans believe corporations pay too little in taxes that is contrary to what repugicans claim Americans believe.
The repugicans are completely out of touch with the American people who are finally coming to their senses after three decades of handing over their tax dollars to the rich and their corporations and funding the taxpayer largesse by cutting government. Last week going into to bicameral budget negotiations Ayn Rand sycophant Paul Ryan flatly stated that any talk of new revenue from closing corporate and wealthy tax loopholes is “not going anywhere” as he proposed drastic cuts to Medicare and Social Security on top of more cuts to safety nets. The latest poll reinforces the argument that the public is deeply opposed to the repugican sequester that has cut services and slated to kill an additional 1 million jobs within the next year. If nothing else, the poll’s findings reveal that Americans reject the repugican’s three-decade old contention that job creation and economic prosperity depends on reduced taxes on the rich that has never borne fruit.
Ronald Reagan has been dead for over nine years and it is time to kill his absurd notion that cutting taxes on the rich and corporations would produce a balanced budget, create jobs and economic growth, and engender marvelous prosperity and wealth for working Americans. What Reagan’s three-decade experiment in tax cuts for the rich and Draconian cuts to government spending have produced is massive federal debt, job losses, cuts to safety nets, and worse-than decreasing wages that put 2012 median wages at their lowest levels since 1998.  All the while the richest Americans pay a significantly smaller share of their incomes than workers earning close to poverty level wages; billionaires pay next-to-nothing to support the government they have profited from in ways most Americans could only dream of.
The repugicans claim they speak for the American people, and to a point they may be right, but it is not the great majority of Americans. They speak for the Koch brothers, Wall Street CEOs, the extremely wealthy, and corporations that all demand cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, infrastructure improvements, healthcare, and education to make room for greater tax cuts for themselves.
Conversely, the American people support expanding and strengthening Social Security by finally eliminating the cap on earnings that will keep the New Deal program solvent forever, and spending on programs that create jobs and prosperity for all Americans as well as assist the most vulnerable citizens. The people are weary of seeing repugicans take everything they have; their retirement, wages, healthcare, and nutrition assistance for the poor and then have the audacity to claim it is what the people want. Democrats would be wise to pay heed to the preponderance of poll results that decry three decades of reaganomics and support the tax and spend policies the majority of Americans clearly and overwhelmingly support.

At Least One Institution is Thriving Under Our Divided Federal Government – Gangs!!!

Within a few years, there could be one million gang members in the U.S. 

Gangs are a refuge for children of poverty.

 

On Sunday, November 10, around 11 a.m. an 18-year-old young man from my Upstate South Carolina county seat was shot three times. Responding police officers found him lying on his back between two vacant houses not far from a popular city park. He died around 6 p.m. He was walking with a couple of friends and a family member. Another group comprised of four men according to a witness, approached the four. It was later established they were there for a pre-arranged meeting. They talked. Something went terribly wrong as 5 or 6 shots rang out. Another young black man dead well before his time and in the most offensive and uncivilized of circumstances. The shooter(s) fled in their car.
Tuesday, November 12, around 9:15 a.m. a 31-year-old black man was found dead in the same city. It’s a puzzling case. Witnesses saw shots fired from the back seat of a white LeSabre with tinted windows. The victim had been visiting his mother’s home. Officers were called to the home prior to the shooting as a result of a loud disturbance involving the victim, another man and guns. But it was a gun fired from a drive-by that ended with the man dead on the walkway in front of the home surrounded by family members. The dead man had recently been released from prison on drug charges. The distraught mother is “putting it in God’s hands.”
There’s a $2,000 reward in the latter case. The money notwithstanding, lots of people know the shooters identity, but are not coming forth out of fear or the stigma of being a ‘snitch’. Police are denying there’s any connection between the two deadly incidents. Maybe, maybe not. But the two fatal shootings, so close together, certainly got me to thinking about drugs, gangs, gang violence and retribution and the particular scourge on the black and Hispanic/Latino communities.
Yes, 31 is a slightly advanced age for gang-banger activity, but it’s not out of the question that a man in his 30s could be highly active in a gang. Again, I’m not saying that’s the case in this incident, but there’s certainly a drug component in the older victim’s background.
Using these tragic killings as our template, let’s take yet another look at gang and drug activity in this country. It’s still raging out of control in much of America. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency operates under the auspices of the Department of Justice and works in conjunction with other federal agencies including the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Under the heading of The National Gang Center, these federal entities and several others in Washington, keep track of gang activity. The agencies quantify it, maintain databases and do what they can to assist local authorities in getting a handle on what is truly the number one terrorist problem in the nation.
Slightly dated numbers point to a total of roughly 30,000 gangs in the U.S. with a membership measuring plus or minus 800,000 members. It might surprise you that, yes, there are more gang members, percentage-wise, in large cities, but small cities and suburbs don’t trail far behind. A rural environment is a much safer haven from gangs with a membership percentage at less than 3%. Find more statistics here.
Membership and violence is up of late, largely driven by economic conditions. Poor often equals desperate; for young people desperation often translates into gangs. That’s not a bleeding heart explanation, that’s a cold, hard fact. And racially, there are an inordinate number of black young men, young black women (an average of about 8% of gang membership) and certainly their families, suffering from gang desperation. It must also be recognized that everyone living in a gang-ridden hood is pretty miserable as well. It’s called line of fire, though most gangs try to protect their “homies.” Opposing gang bullets have no such altruism and the media is rife with accounts of toddlers, young children and innocent teenagers being killed by stray gang-war bullets.
Similar problems exist in the Hispanic and Latino communities. In fact, a higher percentage of the Hispanic/Latino youth population is involved in gang activity than blacks or whites in larger and smaller cities and the suburbs. This is a population with high unemployment numbers and language barriers that often feels alienated (no pun intended) and resented because of the relentless right-wing attacks on immigration reform and such idiotic comments as “self deportation.” White gang membership hovers between 10-15 percent.
There are some other disturbing statistics worthy of note: Of gang-related murders, a total of 92% of such homicides involve a gun (you go Wayne). The favorites in the gang neighborhood in which I once resided for a couple of years were the Glock 9mm that sounded like freight train wheels clacking down the track and for quick, heavy fast-fire, the super-cheap and super-deadly Uzi SMG. It sounded exactly like what it was, a machine gun. The introduction to the ear of the Uzi ammo pitch was when I knew death was the next stop. I’ve already told of the young Puerto Rican, killed not 20 feet from my Chicago, Milwaukee St-area front door early on an otherwise placid morning.
None of these just-expressed concerns seem to move teapugicans at all. Red states shrug their shoulders at the annual gun deaths of over 10,000 or more young men by street violence. They’re mostly brown and black so why should god’s chosen lily-whites give a shit?
State and federal far-right budget decisions are harbingers of months, years, maybe decades of the continuing class war that’s really not a war at all, but an aberration of democracy where ‘all men are created equal’ actually means almost no men beneath the top 2 percentile of the privileged economic class qualify for any level of equality. Red state legislatures rip every vestige of health care, education, jobs, decent wages, law enforcement and the very sustenance needed for survival, from the grasps of the permanent underclass, kept that way intentionally for cheap, dirty and back-breaking labor; their will to resist beaten down to little more than sighs into bottles of cheap wine. And then we send them to prison.
Back in April, we wrote of John Boehner, praising the police response to the Boston Marathon terror bombings while at the same time leading the House in ripping law enforcement training and hiring budgets asunder.
As the year progressed, law enforcement and education budgets were front and center for every state legislative right-wing budget cleaver at the very time they were needed most. Chris Christie, the “moderate” repugican, once proposed cutting the New Jersey state education budget by $820 billion. This anti-worker huckster is about as moderate as Grover Norquist.
So the next time you hear the cackle of an Uzi submachine gun outside your door, give your state House or Senate seat-holder a call. Thank him or her for your low wages, dangerous neighborhood and a generation of lost young people, then tell them you’re going to work 24/7 for their Democratic rival.

Police destroy 150kg of cheese seized from back of car

A man has been charged after police allegedly found 150 kilograms of cheese in his car in Sydney, Australia. Officers were patrolling in Carlingford when they stopped a black Ford Focus at 3.30am on Thursday.

After talking to the 38-year-old female driver and her 31-year-old male passenger, they searched the car and allegedly found drugs. But when they looked further they also found what they called ‘Cheese King’ cheese in the back seat and boot.

Police believe the cheese was "stolen or illegally obtained". The man has been charged with possessing prohibited drugs. He's also been charged with goods in personal custody suspected of being stolen in connection with the cheese.

He was refused bail and will appear in Ryde Local Court. No charges have been laid against the woman. Police say the cheese has now been destroyed.

Man impersonates cop to get doughnut discount

Charles Barry, 48, of Pasco County, Florida was arrested yesterday for impersonating a law enforcement officer and improper exhibition of a firearm. He was attempting to get a discount at Dunkin' Donuts. Apparently he had been demanding a police discount for quite some time, including on weekends when visiting the establishment with his family, and the Dunkin Donuts manager stopped offering him the discount "because of his abuse.”

When Barry showed up at Dunkin’ Donuts last Wednesday morning, a worker denied him the discount. An “irate” Barry--who was driving a Volkswagen minivan--then displayed a badge and firearm. “See I am a cop,” the 6’1’, 320-pound Barry reportedly declared. A police surveillance operation netted Barry yesterday morning as he drove away from the Dunkin' Donuts. Deputies seized a fake law enforcement badge from his wallet and a .38 caliber revolver from his front pocket.

"Floridian Masqueraded As Lawman To Secure 'Police Discount' At Dunkin’ Donuts"

Ziggy

Syrian Refugees Sell Organs to Survive

by Ulrike Putz

In the shadow of the Syrian civil war, a growing number of refugees are surviving in Lebanon by illegally selling their own organs. But the exchange comes at a huge cost. More

U.S. Couple Faces Bizarre Murder Charges in Qatar

U.S. Couple Faces Bizarre Murder Charges in Qatar

An American couple is charged with starving their adopted daughter to sell her organs .Cultural misunderstandings may have played a role in the accusations.

The ability to taste bitter flavors probably didn't evolve as a self-dense mechanism

From beer to coffee, bitter flavors are things that most of us have to learn to enjoy over multiple tastings. Scientists have long assumed that our ability to even taste those flavors is rooted in self-defense — a way to root out and avoid potentially poisonous plants in the diet of our hunting and gathering ancestors. But new research suggests that the ability to taste bitter flavors isn't strongly tied to hunting and gathering lifestyles, which leaves researchers at a loss for why the skill might have evolved. My hypothesis, based on experience with espresso and IPA lovers: Perhaps there's an evolutionary advantage to beverage pretentiousness.

Why Women Live Longer Than Men

Why Women Live Longer Than Men

In the U.S., women live 5 to 10 years longer than men. Are men doing something wrong, or are women really the superior sex? Laci explains this life expectancy discrepancy.

Why School Buses Are Yellow

School buses are the primary mode of student transportation in North America. An estimated twenty-six million students in the United States alone are transported to school every school day via bus - over half the student population in the country.

While school buses in countries outside of North America usually look like any other buses, North American school buses are distinctive for their yellow color. Why is that?

Random Celebrity Photos

_{Carole Lombard, 1934}

Rise Of The Machines

Tractors And The End of Rural America

We've all known people who only buy Hondas, others who swear by their Volvos, and those who proclaim their undying loyalty to Chevys or Fords. But for farmers, brand allegiance to a particular make of tractor is in their blood, which generally flows John Deere green or Farmall red.

Author and photographer Lee Klancher's new book on International Harvester tractors is a thoughtful rumination on a company whose roots can be traced to Cyrus McCormick (who may or may not have 'invented' the first mechanical reaper), as well as the impact of tractors on rural America.

This 240-Year-Old Machine Is An Ancestor To The Modern Computer

An automaton is a self-operating machine or robot. Seen above is the Writer, an automaton built in the 1770s by world-renowned Swiss watchmaker, Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721-1790).

Made from nearly 6000 parts, the Writer is a self-operating, programmable machine, capable of writing letters and words with a quill pen. The 240-year-old machine is said to be a distant ancestor of the modern-day, programmable computer.

Bizarre Forms Of Ancient Currency

Would you accept a brick of salt or a large rock instead of your regular paycheck? Understanding the value of money over time is a key point in finance - and time has certainly changed what people value. Historically, people have assigned monetary value to a wide variety of objects.

And while most of these currencies wouldn't be practical today, they serve as important reminders of what people used to value and why. Ancient currencies came in many amazing shapes, sizes and formats. Take a look at ten incredible examples of currency that are quite different from what we use today.

Stone-Tipped Spears Predate Existence of Humans

Stone-Tipped Spears Predate Existence of Humans

Human-like beings before our species likely handcrafted sophisticated tools, suggests newly discovered prehistoric stone-tipped throwing spears found in Ethiopia.

Science In The News

Massive Antarctic Iceberg Sets Sail

After lingering in its birthing bay for nearly six months, an Antarctic iceberg the size of Singapore is finally heading out to sea.

Did Early Life Build Earth's Continents?

The story of how life changed the face of the Earth may be more profound than previously envisioned and could lead to new clues for detecting life on exoplanets.

Riddle of Early Bird Migration Cracked

Individual birds haven't changed their migration schedules in response to climate change. Instead, the results of a 14-year-long study of a migratory shore bird species suggested that early-born birds get more worms and can migrate sooner.

Rare Life Dating Back 3.5 Billion Years Found

Gloppy mats of microscopic life left the same signature on coastal and river bank sediments 3.48 billion years ago that they do today.

Oldest Big Cat Fossils Discovered in Tibet

The earliest known big cat lived in what is now China between 5.9 million and 4.1 million years ago, newfound fossils of the ancient prowler suggest.

Marine Blizzards of Death Feed Deep Sea Life

Occasional explosions of sea-surface life provide a feast for creatures on the ocean floor that are worth years of their otherwise normal food supply.

New discovery could cause scientists to rethink chemical makeup of Earth's mantle

A new discovery by researchers from the University of Notre Dame's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences could change prevailing assumptions about the chemical makeup of the Earth's mantle.

Ol Doinyo Lengai, Tanzania [Credit: University of Notre Dame]

Antonio Simonetti, an associate professor in the department, and his doctoral student Wei Chen worked in cooperation with Vadim Kamenetsky of the University of Tasmania, Hobart (Australia) to learn the art of conducting chemical and mineralogical analyses of melt inclusions within crystals of the mineral magnetite (Fe3O4).

Simonetti points out that the magnetite crystals are hosted within igneous rocks (rocks resulting from the melting of the Earth's mantle) referred to as carbonatites.

"The latter are an exceptional and intriguing type of igneous rock since they are composed primarily of calcium carbonate, or Calcite-CaCO3, rather than silicate minerals, which are the predominant minerals in the Earth's crust and oceanic rocks," Simonetti said. "Despite the small number of carbonatite occurrences worldwide compared to their volcanic counterparts in the past and present day, carbonatites continue to receive considerable deserved attention because of their unique enrichment, relative to crustal abundances in incompatible trace elements, such as niobium and the rare Earth elements."

To date, most of the geological community believed that the sodium- and potassium-rich magmas being erupted at the Earth's sole active carbonatite volcano at Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania were unique, since all other carbonatite occurrences worldwide are dominated by calcium-rich carbonate or calcite.

In an attempt to resolve this question, Wei sought to determine the initial melt composition that gave rise to the Oka carbonatite complex, which is located in southeastern Quebec.

"We approached this issue by examining the nature and chemical composition of melt inclusions within individual magnetite crystals present in carbonatites," Simonetti said. "Melt inclusions are micron-sized 'pockets' present within minerals that represent a combination or mechanical mixture of co-trapped crystals and melt engulfed and isolated early in the crystallization history of the magma while the magnetite crystals were forming. Hence, investigating melt inclusions represents a powerful tool for determining the chemical composition of the initial carbonatite magma at the Oka complex."

Wei and Simonetti's research revealed that the chemical composition of minerals trapped within the melt inclusions at the Oka complex are alkaline in nature and similar in composition to the minerals present at Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano. The finding will have a major impact in relation to deciphering and modeling chemical processes taking place in the Earth's mantle throughout geologic time.

"This has some significant consequences as to how earth scientists should view the overall chemical budget of the Earth's mantle since this is where carbonatite magmas are produced," Simonetti said. "We are not attributing enough alkalies in the region of the mantle where carbonitite melts form."

In addition to its significance for the field of earth science, the finding also has important practical and strategic importance. Carbonatites are of critical importance in the continually evolving fields of superconductors, electronics and computing. Several countries such as the USA, China, Brazil and Canada are host to carbonatite occurrences, and there is active exploration in many of these countries to locate new deposits given the ever-increasing demand for the manufacturing of sophisticated electronic components.

The paper describing Wei and Simonetti's research appears in the journal Nature Communications.

Apollo 11 spacesuit was made by a bra manufacturer

The spacesuit that Neil Armstrong wore when he stepped onto the moon was constructed by a bra manufacturer in Dover, Delaware. Smithsonian magazine tells the history of the Apollo suit:

For the suit’s creator, the International Latex Corporation in Dover, Delaware, the toughest challenge was to contain the pressure necessary to support life (about 3.75 pounds per square inch of pure oxygen), while maintaining enough flexibility to afford freedom of motion. A division of the company that manufactured Playtex bras and girdles, ILC had engineers who understood a thing or two about rubber garments. They invented a bellowslike joint called a convolute out of neoprene reinforced with nylon tricot that allowed an astronaut to bend at the shoulders, elbows, knees, hips and ankles with relatively little effort. Steel aircraft cables were used throughout the suit to absorb tension forces and help maintain its shape under pressure.

"Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit Was Made by a Bra Manufacturer"

Space Junk Is All Around Us

If you needed any reminder of the vast amount of stuff orbiting the third rock from the sun, consider the one-ton European science satellite that just ran out of fuel, plunged back into earth's atmosphere, burned up into a fiery mess, and dumped debris across the southern Atlantic.

Luckily, the scorched remnants of the European satellite fell harmlessly from the sky. Even so, there are millions of pieces of space junk that swarm around in earth's orbit at blistering speeds, according to NASA, and some of it reenters the planet's atmosphere every day.

Daily Comic Relief

Amazing Facts About Fish Fingers

Fish fingers, or fish sticks, are a processed food made using a whitefish, such as cod, haddock or pollock, which has been battered or breaded. They are commonly available in the frozen food section of supermarkets. They can be baked in the oven, grilled, shallow fried, or deep-fried.

Did you know that 1 in 5 kids think that fish fingers are made from chicken? Here's an infographic showing everything you ever wanted (and needed) to know about fish fingers.

Denmark Leads Way in Healthier Pig Farming

by Julia Koch

Many tons of antibiotics are administered every year to chickens and pigs in Europe, a trend that encourages the rise of drug-resistant microbes. But Denmark has shown how farmers can be made to abandon this policy of dangerous over-medication. More

• Photo Gallery: Cracking Down on Antibiotic Use at Danish Pig Farms

Ten Incredible Roles Performed By Dogs In Warfare

Man's best friend has been used in warfare since ancient times; and today, thanks to specialized training, these canine combatants are taking on crucial military roles and have become, in effect, guardians of national security.

US representative Walter Jones says, 'Those who have been to war tell me that the dogs are invaluable.' He adds, 'They are just as much a part of a unit as a soldier or marine.' Here's a look at ten of the most incredible security roles military canines have fulfilled over the years.

Animal News

Rescued Dog Conquers Mount Everest

Rescued from a rubbish dump when he was a puppy, Rupee is thought to be the first dog to reach the iconic mountain's base camp.

Monkey-Human Ancestors Got Music 30 Million Years Ago

A Dr. Doolittle-inspired study uncovered a previously unknown musical ability in squirrel monkeys.

Animal Pictures