Wednesday, August 27, 2014
The Daily Drift
Carolina Naturally is read in 200 countries around the world daily.
Everybody, Pull ... !
Today is - Tug of War Day
Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is
Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Choudrant,
Celebration, Columbus, Cumming, Charlotte, Chicago, College Park,
Cincinnati, Careywood, Charleston and Cleveland, United States
Lima, Peru
San Paulo, Rio De Janeiro and Pocao De Pedras, Brazil
Luquillo, Puerto Rico
Montreal, Red Deer, Centre City, L'ancienne-Lorette, Academy, Vancouver and Regina, Canada
Tipitapa, Nicaragua
Montevideo, Uruguay
Santiago, Chile
Europe
Vladivostok, Krasondar, Moscow and Ryazan, Russia
Nottingham, Birmingham, London, Slough and Liverpool, England
Ravenna, Treviso, Catanzaro, Milan, Affi and Bari, Italy
Kista and Karlskoga, Sweden
Madrid and Getafe, Spain
Tallaght and Dublin, Ireland
Nuremberg, Eschborn and Widdern, Germany
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Diemen, Netherlands
Berkak, Norway
Prague, Czech Republic
Cerny and Velizy-Villacoublay, France
Belgrade, Serbia
Ankara, Turkey
Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Reykjavik, Iceland
Vienna, Austria
Bratislava, Slovakia
Asia
Cochin, Bikaner, Kolkata, Bangalore, Raipur, New Delhi, Noida, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Coimbatore, Pune, Jodhpur and Delhi, India
Pavlodar, Kazakhstan
Alor Setar, Kuala Lumpur and Bayan Lepas, Malaysia
Tokyo, Japan
Denpasar and Jakarta, Indonesia
Seoul, Korea
Tehran and Hamadan, Iran
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
Africa
Algiers, Algeria
Warri, Nigeria
Johannesburg, South Africa
The Pacific
Makati, Philippines
Sydney, Australia
Today in History
| 1626 | The Danes are crushed by the catholic league in Germany, marking the end of Danish intervention in European wars. | |
| 1776 | The Americans are defeated by the British at the Battle of Long Island, New York. | |
| 1793 | Maximilien Robespierre is elected to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris, France. | |
| 1813 | The Allies defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Dresden. | |
| 1861 | Union troops make an amphibious landing at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. | |
| 1862 | As the Second Battle of Bull Run rages, Confederate soldiers attack Loudoun County, Virginia. | |
| 1881 | New York state's Pure Food Law goes into effect to prevent "the adulteration of food or drugs." | |
| 1894 | The United States congress passes an income tax law as part of a general tariff act, but it is found unconstitutional. | |
| 1910 | Thomas Edison demonstrates the first "talking" pictures–using a phonograph–in his New Jersey laboratory. | |
| 1912 | Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes first appears in a magazine. | |
| 1916 | Italy declares war on Germany. | |
| 1928 | Fifteen nations sign the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, outlawing war and calling for the settlement of disputes through arbitration. Forty-seven other countries eventually sign the pact. | |
| 1941 | The Prime Minister of Japan, Fumimaro Konoye, issues an invitation for a meeting with President Roosevelt. | |
| 1945 | B-29 Superfortress bombers begin to drop supplies into Allied prisoner of war camps in China. | |
| 1963 | Cambodia severs ties with South Vietnam. | |
| 1975 | Veronica & Colin Scargill of England complete tandem bicycle ride around the world, a record 18,020 miles (29,000.4 km). | |
| 1979 | Lord Mountbatten is killed by an Irish terrorist bomb in his sail boat in Sligo, Ireland. | |
| 1984 | President Ronald Reagan announces NASA Teacher in Space project, intended to inspire students and honor teachers and spur interest in the fields of science, mathematics and space exploration. | |
| 1989 | Chuck Berry performs his tune Johnny B. Goode for NASA staff in celebration of Voyager II's encounter with the planet Neptune. | |
| 1991 | Moldavia declares independence from USSR. | |
| 1993 | The Rainbow Bridge, a 1,870-foot suspension bridge over Tokyo Bay, completed. | |
| 2003 | Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing within 34,646,418 miles (55,758,005 km). | |
| 2008 | Democrats nominate Barack Obama for president, first African American nominated by a major political party for the office of President of the United States. | |
| 2012 | First interplanetary human voice recording is broadcast from the Mars Rover Curiosity. |
Ten Amazing Inventions By Teens
So the next time you see a group of kids and naturally assume they are just playing around, stop and take a moment to realize one of those kids may just have the intellect, passion, and drive to change and better the world.
Is This Cord In Stock or Out of Stock?
Ferguson Cop Who Arrested Two Reporters During Protests Also Hog-Tied A 12-Year-Old Boy
An article posted by the Huffington Post on Sunday evening reveals that Justin Cosma, a Ferguson police officer who arrested two reporters for sitting at a McDonald’s
in Ferguson, is currently dealing with a civil rights lawsuit due to an
incident where he hog-tied a 12-year-old boy. The lawsuit was filed in
2012 and derives from an incident in 2010, when Cosma was employed by
the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. Cosma had just started working
for the Ferguson police department when the lawsuit was filed. It is
quite possible that the pending litigation was a contributing factor to
him moving jobs.
Per the lawsuit, Cosma and another officer became
confrontational with the child and intimidated him. Eventually, they
threw the boy to the ground and choked him. The following is from the
HuffPost article:
According to a lawsuit filed in 2012 in Missouri federal court, Justin Cosma and another officer, Richard Carter, approached a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mailbox at the end of his driveway in June 2010. Cosma was an officer with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office at the time, the lawsuit states. The pair asked the boy if he’d been playing on a nearby highway, and he replied no, according to the lawsuit.Then, the officers “became confrontational” and intimidated the child, the lawsuit claims. “Unprovoked and without cause, the deputies grabbed [the boy], choked him around the neck and threw him to the ground,” it says. The boy was shirtless at the time, and allegedly “suffered bruising, choke marks, scrapes and cuts across his body.”The 12-year-old was transferred to a medical facility for treatment, but the lawsuit says Cosma and the other officer reported the incident as “assault of a law enforcement officer third degree” and “resisting/interfering with arrest, detention or stop.”Jefferson County prosecutors “refused to issue a juvenile case” against the young child, the suit says.
This is just the latest revelation among many
regarding St. Louis area police officers that have come out in the wake
of the shooting death of Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson police
officer Darren Wilson. Recently, St. Louis County police officer Dan
Page, a 35-year veteran of the force, was suspended indefinitely
when video surfaced of him at an Oath Keepers event making extremely
inflammatory and offensive statements. Among many outrageous comments,
Page said the following:
“I’m into diversity. I kill everybody, I don’t care,” St. Louis Police Officer.I personally believe in Jesus Christ as my lord savior, but I’m also a killer. I’ve killed a lot. And if I need to, I’ll kill a whole bunch more. If you don’t want to get killed, don’t show up in front of me, it’s that simple.”
Page was in Ferguson during
the protests, and there is footage of him forcefully pushing CNN’s Don
Lemon back along with a number of demonstrators. Lemon was later the one
who brought attention to a YouTube video of Page making his hate-filled
speech.
Besides Page, we’ve seen another officer suspended
due to his pointing a gun at protesters and cameramen and telling them,
“I’ll f***ing kill you!” When protesters asked his name after he said
that, the officer said, “Go f*** yourself!” The officer was later
identified as Lr. Ray Albers, a 20-year veteran with the St. Ann police
department. Albers was suspended without pay and ordered to undergo a
psychological evaluation. The suspension came on the heels of a YouTube
video showing the altercation. You can see the video here (I am not embedding it due to profanity in the title and throughout the video).
At the same time Page was
suspended, another St. Louis County cop, Michael Pappert, was also put
on leave after hateful Facebook posts he made about Ferguson protesters
were made public. Per Raw Story, a sampling of his Facebook posts featured the following:
I’m sick of these protesters. You are a burden on society and a blight on the community,” wrote Michael Pappert, in one of at least five posts that have gone up since Sunday.“These protesters should have been put down like a rabid dog the first night,” he added.In a reference to the Boston Marathon bombing, he also wrote: “Where is a Muslim with a backpack when you need them.”
The revelation of Cosma being involved in a civil
rights case alleging he abused a minor is sadly unsurprising at this
point. In the wake of Brown’s killing, a bright light has been shone on
St. Louis area police departments, and the results have not been pretty.
However, it would be naive to think that these issues are only
affecting St. Louis County and that other metro-area police departments
are free of bad actors or racial disparity. The fact is, only because of
the media spotlight focused on Ferguson are we aware of these
underlying issues and abusive officers in the county.
The repugicans Fearmonger Over ISIS to Distract From Their Ineptitude
What is curious, is that repugicans are campaigning against
President Obama who is not running for any political office, but since
they cannot run on their records…
Fear is a natural emotion that is induced by a
perceived threat, or a specific stimulus happening in the present, or
some future situation. In both human beings and animals, fear is
modulated by cognition and learning and in humans it can be either
rational and appropriate, or irrational and inappropriate; irrational
fear is a phobia. The repugicans have learned that sowing fear is a
valuable campaign tactic, and the more irrational fear among their
supporters, the more motivated they are to vote for repugicans
promising to eliminate whatever perceived threat their base’s phobia is
grounded in. As political psychologist Drew Westen of Emory University
wrote in The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation; “In
politics, the emotions that really sway voters are hate, hope and fear
or anxiety. But the skillful use of fear is unmatched in leading to
enthusiasm for one candidate and causing voters to turn away from
another.” If nothing else, repugicans are skillful at using fear
to sway voters and lacking any record to run on, they are opting for
fear in the leadup to the midterm elections.
After the past few days of repugican fear-mongering
over the “perceived” threat from the ISIS (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria, it
is blatantly obvious that besides drumming-up support for a new Middle
East war to profit their military industrial complex donors, they are in
campaign mode. What is curious, is that Republicans are campaigning
against President Obama who is not running for any political office, but
since they cannot run on their records in Congress, they are using
conditions in Iraq to frighten Americans into supporting the repugican cabal.
Of all the outrageous claims made by repugicans
criticizing the President for the “threat” of ISIS, one that stands out
was Senator Lindsey Graham’s remark that President Obama “has to realize, as the shrub did, that his Iraq strategy is not working.”
Graham then went on to tout the vaunted surge’s success, and that the
President has to put all options, including ground troops, on the table
to defeat ISIS. Warmonger John McCain is also criticizing the President for not coming forward “with
a cohesive, comprehensive strategy, not only in Iraq, but also in
Ukraine also in other parts of the world,” and not outlining “a role
that the United States of America has to play, and that’s a leadership
role.”
First, Graham, like warmonger John McCain has to
understand that Barack Obama is not the President of Iraq, Syria,
Ukraine, or “other parts of the world,” and could not leave troops or a
‘surge’ of troops in a sovereign nation. Second, Americans do not want
another war in Iraq, and there is no way ISIS can be defeated. Sunni and
Shia Muslims have been at war in the region around Iraq for centuries
over Sunnis creating an Islamic caliphate, and after a period of
relative peace under Saddam Hussein, it was American actions
in Iraq that created ISIS; particularly the group’s leader. Before
becoming Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the islamic state in Iraq and Syria and architect of the violent campaign to redraw
the map of the Middle East, he was an innocent non-combatant rounded up
and thrown into prison by Americans in or around early 2004.
There is no question that ISIS is a threat to Iraq
and Syria, but it is important to remember that it was the shrub junta’s fear-mongering the drove so many Americans, including
many Democrats to support invading Iraq in the first place. What is
telling about the stale mindset of repugicans, is their reiteration of islamic terrorists attacking America to frighten Americans into
supporting a new Iraq war in the same manner they pushed the shrub’s war of
aggression and profit. Their problem is the shrub is not the president and it
is more likely than not they know, and accept, that Obama is not taking
America into another stupid and wasteful war in Iraq.
The repugicans have no record to run on leading up to the midterm
elections, and after shutting down the government, threatening a credit
default, failing to raise the minimum wage, create one job, pass
immigration reform, extend unemployment benefits, or do anything for the
American people, they have to resort to fear-mongering about ISIS
attacking America. A few days ago Rick Perry told an audience that he
was certain ISIS was crossing the border under the guise of being
Central American children to rain terror on Americans. Even though Perry
said he, or repugicans, had no credible information, or evidence ISIS
was invading the southern border, the damage was done and the repugican
base was duly mortified. That irrational fear is more than sufficient
to erase any memory of repugican inaction in Congress, or the damage
from shutting down the government.
Even Paul Ryan jumped in to help distract voters
from repugicans’ failure to govern for the people and joined the
fear-mongers saying yesterday that, “What I want to hear from our
commander-in-chief is that he has a strategy to finish ISIS off. To
defeat ISIS. If we don’t deal with this threat now thoroughly and
convincingly, it’s going to come home to roost.” The repugicans even
used the beheading of a journalist to distract voters from their
ineptitude over the past three years by attacking the President for
going golfing instead of grabbing an AR15 and leading troops into battle
in Syria. They failed to mention that five Americans were beheaded when the shrub was pretending, but that would have devalued the distraction factor
of assailing the President for not preventing the shrub’s invasion of Iraq
that led to all of the beheadings.
The repugicans have nothing to run on, not their
pathetic do-nothing record, not the steadily-improving economy and
monthly job increases, not the success and growing popularity of the
Affordable Care Act, not the President’s perpetual accommodation of the
religio-wingnuts, and not the fact that the President has kept America
out of any number of wars repugicans lust to start. So they have
resorted to what works on their wildly ignorant base; irrational fear.
Fear of immigrant children seeking asylum, fear of losing their
religious liberty, fear of African Americans, and fear of Sunni Muslims
fighting a several-century old war against Shia Muslims. A war that the shrub
revived when he used fear-mongering to remove the one man that kept
what would become ISIS at bay; Saddam Hussein
A few years ago President Obama was asked about the culture of fear gripping America, and his response was as apropos today as it was then. He said, “We
have been operating under a politics of fear: fear of terrorists, fear
of immigrants, fear of people of different religious beliefs, fears of
gays that they might get married and that somehow that would affect us.
We have to break that fever of fear. Unfortunately what I’ve been seeing
from the repugicans is that they are going to perpetuate this
fearmongering.” The President was right; they are perpetuating
“this fearmongering” because it works, and as a campaign tactic is
successfully distracting voters from their gross ineptitude and refusal
to work for the people.
What Is a Lobbyist?
We hear often about this or that "lobby," representing this
or that issue to our elected officials. What's the world of government
lobbyists like, and can lobbying -- though deeply unpopular -- be a good
thing?
A Completely Out-Of-Context Photo That Sums Up the Internet
Sometimes, the best thing about the internet is the random insanity it throws at us out of context. Take, for example, this photo. It evokes thoughts of Walter White chilling with the family, eating some snacks. The best part is, we really have no idea what is going on here. Apparently, someone with a surplus of money (we wont ask how) also needed a place to lay their nachos, salsa, and guac. What better place, we ask, then a giant pallet of (what must be laundered) money? Honestly, I can think of many places better to eat nachos off, but that is not the point here.
The point here is this is a perfect image for a lazy Sunday afternoon. It pretty much sums up the internet, and in the process, is something that 90% of us will not be able to relate to. Heck, I can't even afford the nachos. To whomever felt the need to both do this and photograph it to show the world, we are not sure if we admire you, or hate you.
Probably a little of both.
Why Terrorists Behead Their Victims
Feds can't sell booby-trapped property of terrorist tax evaders
These things happened in the United States this year. An unarmed
man was killed by police, supposedly for stealing some cigars. Those who
took to the streets simply seeking truth, among them some looters, were
denounced by some conservatives and an entire news network as "thugs"
and "lynch mobs." Just months earlier, a Nevada tax cheat owing the
federal government a million dollars welcomed dozens of heavily armed
militia members who threatened to murder government officials. An entire
news network and a Republican United States senator called them
"patriots" and "freedom riders." (The FBI suffers from no such
confusion: the Bureau under the last three presidents has labelled
Cliven Bundy's ilk "domestic terrorists.")But while all eyes have been focused on Ferguson, Missouri, the latest chapter in the saga of another terrorist tax evader was quietly being written in New Hampshire. There, federal officials were unable to sell the properties confiscated from Ed and Elaine Brown because prospective buyers the lands and buildings might be booby-trapped.
As the AP reported:
The auction of Ed and Elaine Brown's fortress-like home on 100 acres in Plainfield was held at U.S. District Court in Concord on Friday. The minimum bid was $250,000.
Elaine Brown's dental office in a prime Lebanon commercial zone also was being auctioned with a minimum bid of $507,500, but it too attracted no bidders.That's right. Years before militia members with automatic weapons descended on Cliven Bundy's ranch to enable him to continue to collect "food stamps" for cows, Ed and Elaine Brown were threatening federal marshals simply trying to collect what the tax deadbeats owed Uncle Sam.
Federal marshals had arranged 16 folding chairs in a courtroom at the federal courthouse in Concord. They remained empty, serving as a stark reminder of the lack of interest as Deputy Chief U.S. Marshal Brenda Mikelson went through the motions of asking for minimum bids on both properties before the auction ended two minutes later.
Prospective bidders were not allowed to tour the properties, in part because the U.S. Marshals Service raised the possibility that explosives or other booby traps could be buried on the residential property.
They also cited the hordes of Brown supporters the 2007 standoff attracted.
Mass evacuation after woman took unexploded World War Two bomb into police station
A shopping center in the West Midlands was evacuated on Saturday afternoon after a woman walked into a police station with an unexploded World War Two bomb.
The woman found the device during a shed clearance. She then took it to a police station on Homer Road in Solihull.
Police confirmed the device which caused the security scare was a Luftwaffe incendiary bomb.
A spokesperson for West Midlands Police tweeted: "Solihull security alert is all over. Army bomb disposal experts identified the item as a WWII Luftwaffe incendiary bomb. Now taken away." Officers quickly cleared the building and also evacuated nearby roads and the town’s Touchwood Shopping Centre at 1pm. The centre was reopened shortly afterwards at around 2.20pm but the police station remained closed as a precaution while officers waited for bomb disposal experts to assess the device.
“Touchwood was originally included in the cordon but on further review
and advice from explosive experts, the center was later reopened.”
The spokesman added that the risk of it exploding had been "low" but the
area had been cleared as a precaution.
"The device had been stable for a long time and was likely to remain
so," the spokesman said.
He said if anyone finds such an item the advice was not to take it anywhere, but to leave it in place and call the police.
15 feet high parking signs halved in size to prevent confusion
For a brief time on Thursday and Friday the parking regulation signs
outside Linwood E. Howe Elementary School in Culver City, California,
topped 15 feet.
The signs were meant to clarify a new drop-off and pick-up procedure for
when classes resume at the school.
But people found them confusing.
Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells said the plan was for the signs to only be
displayed temporarily.
“They just didn’t look temporary,” she said. “So they were going to be
taken down. And it looked like … whoa. It was pretty impressive.”
By late on Friday, half of the signs were gone, although that still left
more than a few regulations for spaces near the school.
Culver City resident John Ikuma said parking near the school is at a premium. “There’s nowhere for the teachers to park,” said Ikuma. “And then we also have restaurants down the street. We had permits put in about three years ago, four years ago, and that’s helped. But this is a whole new level.”
Shred Your Butter to Make It Spread Better
A
common suggestion for making butter easier to spread is to use a grater
to shred it -but that's kind of a pain in the butt. Now there is a real
alternative though, the ButterUp. This clever creation allows you to
shred your butter with the same knife you use to cut your bread and
spread the butter. Best of all, it's easy to cleean, unlike a lot of
cheese graters.Read more about the ButterUp, including where you can buy one at Homes and Hues: The Ultimate Butter-Spreading Knife
How to Survive a Day Without Sleep
We've all been there: No sleep and still a full work day to
survive, hopefully with some sense you're functioning above zombie
level. Sourcefed's Reina Scully drops by with some tips for the
sleepless.
How Does Loud Music Damage Our Hearing?
The cat's pretty much out of the bag, in this day and age,
that prolonged exposure to loud sounds can wreak havoc with our ability
to hear, but what's going on in our heads to make it happen? New
research thinks it's nailed down the problem.
6 Strange Body Hacks That Are Actually Useful
Here are six body hacks that let people sense the world around them in new ways.
9 Most Outrageous Things Ever Faked In China
The Archaeology of an Old Purse
(Gemma Correll)What's
in the purse? Not even Indiana Jones is reckless enough to excavate the
unearthly horrors that lie beneath the surface of receipts. Rather than
incur the curse, it's best to just leave the old purse alone.
Moon Hill
The Hill With A Hole Through It
The Chinese province of Guangxi, on the border of Vietnam, is renowned
throughout the world for the beauty of its karst landscapes. One of the
more unusual features the province has to offer is Moon Hill. It has a
large semi-circular hole which goes right through it.As such it struck the imagination of those who first came across it and it has been forever known as Moon Hill. Moon Hill looks almost as if it was man-made. Yet it is the product of almost unimaginable millennia of dissolution by nature.
Hundreds of Methane Plumes Erupting Along East Coast
A close-up of methane hydrate observed at a depth of 3,460 feet (1,055 meters) off the U.S. Atlantic … In an unexpected discovery, hundreds of gas plumes bubbling up from the seafloor were spotted during a sweeping survey of the U.S. Atlantic Coast.
Even though ocean explorers have yet to test the gas, the bubbles are almost certainly methane, researchers report today (Aug. 24) in the journal Nature Geoscience.
"We don't know of any explanation that fits as well as methane," said
lead study author Adam Skarke, a geologist at Mississippi State
University in Mississippi State.
Surprising seeps
Between North Carolina's Cape Hatteras and Massachusetts' Georges Bank, 570 methane seeps
cluster in about eight regions, according to sonar and video gathered
by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration ship
Okeanos Explorer between 2011 and 2013. The vast majority of the seeps
dot the continental slope break, where the seafloor topography swoops
down toward the Atlantic Ocean basin.
The Okeanos Explorer used sound waves to detect the methane bubbles and
map the seafloor. The technique, called multibeam sonar, calculates the
time and distance it takes for sound waves to travel from the ship to
the seafloor and back. The sonar can also detect the density contrast
between gas bubbles and seawater.
Methane bubbles rising from the seafloor 1,400 feet (425 m) below the surface offshore of Virginia.
Huge canyons etched in
the shallow continental shelf also hide bubble plumes, as well as
diverse ecosystems that are based on methane-loving bacteria. In 2013,
researchers explored a handful of these seeps with Jason, a remotely
operated vehicle, finding them teeming with crabs, fish and mussel beds.
In Norfolk canyon off the coast of Virginia, researchers from the
University of North Carolina at Wilmington discovered the largest methane seep ever found in the Atlantic Ocean, and possibly all the world's oceans.
Most of the methane seeps are in water less than 1,640 feet (500
meters) deep. Most of these shallow methane seeps seem to arise from
microbes blurping out methane, the researchers said. The researchers did
find some deeper methane vents, at which the ROV Jason glimpsed patches
of methane hydrate. This is the icy mix of methane and water that
appears when deep ocean pressures and cold temperatures force methane to
solidify. Any type of methane gas can form hydrates.
While methane vents are common around the world, only three natural gas
seeps — where methane escapes from seafloor sediments — had been found
off the East Coast before 2012.
"It was a surprise to find these features," Skarke said. "It was
unexpected because many of the common things associated with methane gas
do not exist on the Atlantic margin."
Gas, gas, gas?
An illustration of the Atlantic margin showing the relationship between methane seeps and seafloor
The East Coast is a
passive margin, and methane isn't expected to come out of this
environment. The margin hasn't been squeezed or pulled by plate tectonic
activity for tens of millions of years, and that means a lack of escape
routes for methane. "I usually describe passive margins as cold, old
and boring," said study co-author Carolyn Ruppel, chief of the U.S.
Geological Survey gas hydrates project in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Also missing from the Atlantic Coast are layers of salt, which are responsible for the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas.
Without more exploring, the researchers can't say for sure why there
are so many methane plumes along the Atlantic coastline. "It's a huge
research area that needs to be pursued," Ruppel said.
If the East Coast could hide hundreds of bubbling methane pits, then
it's likely there are nearly 30,000 more awaiting discovery in the
world's oceans, the researchers said.
"These processes may be happening in places we didn't expect them," Skarke said.
Cup corals and bubblegum corals live on rock near the edge of the mussel bed.
There's also a good chance more methane vents
will be found off the East Coast, but that doesn't mean one should
expect new drilling platforms popping up offshore to extract the gas,
the researchers said. "We have no evidence to suggest this material
would be a recoverable resource," Skarke told Live Science. "There is no
evidence whatsoever that there are conventional deep-seated oil and gas
reservoirs underneath the Atlantic margin."
The more likely scenario: A fleet of research ships hurries to claim
the seeps. The methane seeps are near ports where many of the U.S.
research ships dock. The ease of access has set off an exploration
stampede, with several new projects in planning stages or already
funded.
"We're setting the stage for a decade of discovery," Ruppel said.From the Arctic to Atlantic
Interest is running high because the seeps could be a laboratory for studying how methane hydrates respond to climate change.
Methane is a greenhouse gas that disappears more quickly than carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere, but has more warming power than carbon
dioxide. Millions of tons of methane are frozen in Arctic permafrost,
both on land and in the seafloor. Recently, several studies have warned
that rapid warming in the Arctic could upset these deposits, melting them and freeing the gas. This would boost the planet's greenhouse gas levels and could accelerate climate change.
"Now we have a study site where we can monitor these locations and see
how they change," said David Valentine, a geochemist at the University
of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study.
"Finally we have a place where we can begin to address some of the
questions about how water temperatures are influencing methane."
At present, scientists think the East Coast seeps don't contribute much methane to climate change.
Most of the methane gas dissolves in the ocean before reaching the
surface, Ruppel said. The total amount of gas is also much smaller than
sources on land, such as cows or gas drilling. "It's probably on the
order of a feedlot of methane," Valentine said. However, some
shallow-water seeps could vent methane to the surface, and researchers
expect that future surveys will uncover even more shallow seeps. These
regions only received a cursory look during the survey.
Even though the methane may not escape to the atmosphere, the gas still
adds to the ocean's overall carbon budget — which is still a wildly
uncertain number.
"It's not a huge number, but it's an important number for us to know," Ruppel said.
Man had to undergo surgery to remove live moth which had been buzzing in his ear for three days
A man had to undergo surgery to remove a live moth from his ear which had been buzzing inside his head for three days.
Rob Fielding, 43, of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire was reading in bed
when the insect perched on his ear. He instinctively reached up to poke
it away but ended up pushing the insect into his ear canal.
After three restless days, his wife sent him to hospital for an examination. The insect was eventually removed during a 90-minute operation where his ear canal was pried open and the moth pulled out with a tiny pair of forceps.
Rob now displays the dead insect on his mantlepiece as a souvenir of the ordeal. He said: "It was awful knowing the moth was flying around inside my head and every now and then when I felt it move, it made me jump out of my skin."
The Portuguese Man O' War Up Close And Personel
Despite its outward appearance, the Portuguese man o' war is not a
common jellyfish but a siphonophore, which is a colony of specialized
minute individuals called zooids. These zooids are attached to one
another and physiologically integrated to the extent that they are
incapable of independent survival.
For nearly two years, retired U.S. Navy combat photographer Aaron
Ansarov has collected and photographed man o' wars that wash up on a
local Florida beach.
Animal News
A steroid and pheromone produced by male pigs has been shown
to stop dogs from barking incessantly.
More than a dozen honeycombs were discovered inside the ceiling.
Cane toads that go where no cane toad has gone before pave
the way for more timid toads to rapidly take over new territories, say
researchers.
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