Random Photo

No particular reason for this photograph 'borrowed' from Grow-A-Brain.
Just struck me as funny is all.

Dolly forms in the western Caribbean

Tropical Storm Dolly formed in the western Caribbean and approached Mexico on Sunday, as Tropical Storm Cristobal edged closer to the North Carolina coast.

The National Hurricane Center issued a tropical storm warning for Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula from Campeche to the border with Belize.

At 11:45 a.m. ET, the hurricane center said the center of Dolly -- the fourth tropical storm of the Atlantic season -- was about 270 miles east of Chetumal, Mexico, and 230 miles southeast of Cozumel.

Dolly was moving northwest at about 17 mph, with top sustained winds near 45 mph.

Meanwhile, Cristobal moved "parallel and very close" to the North Carolina coast Sunday morning, but the storm was expected to drift away from the eastern coast by Monday.

"The center of the tropical storm is expected to move parallel and very close to the coast of North Carolina today and begin to move away from the coast by Monday," the hurricane center said in its 11 a.m. advisory. It is expected to dump 1 or 2 inches of rain along the North Carolina coast Sunday, it said.

A discussion posted online by hurricane center forecasters said the satellite view of Cristobal "remained unimpressive-looking" and predicted that the storm would "lose tropical characteristics" over the next two or three days.

A tropical storm warning -- meaning tropical storm conditions with maximum winds of 39 mph are expected within the next 24 hours -- was canceled for an area from north of Little River Inlet, North Carolina, to the North Carolina-Virginia border. Another warning remained in effect from north of Surf City to the North Carolina-Virginia border.

As of 11 a.m. ET Sunday, Cristobal's center was about 15 miles southwest of Cape Lookout, North Carolina, and about 70 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. It was moving northeast at near 7 mph.

The storm's maximum sustained winds were near 50 mph, with higher gusts.

Cristobal evolved Saturday from a tropical depression that formed Friday.

Meanwhile, Bertha was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm Saturday evening. The storm, centered about 670 miles east-northeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland, is moving quickly into the northern Atlantic, the hurricane center said Sunday morning.

Bertha, the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic season, formed July 3 in the eastern Atlantic and dealt a glancing blow to Bermuda before heading north.

The storm set several records:

It is the longest-lived tropical cyclone on record during the month of July and the third-strongest July storm on record, behind Dennis and Emily in the 2005 hurricane season.

Tropical Storm Cristobal rumbles off the Carolinas

Tropical Storm Cristobal, the first tropical storm to menace the Southeast seaboard this hurricane season, sent outer bands of intermittent rain lashing the eastern Carolinas late Saturday as forecasters predicted it could dump several inches in some areas of drought-stricken North Carolina.

At 8 p.m. EDT, the center of the storm was about 130 miles east of Charleston and about 185 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, N.C.

The National Hurricane Center said Cristobal was moving northeast at about 6 mph with maximum sustained winds of about 45 mph and some higher gusts.

"Basically the track is running parallel to the coast," said lead center forecaster Martin Nelson. "Slow strengthening is forecast for the next day or two."

At the By The Sea Motel in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., out-of-state visitors photographed outer storm bands as Cristobal churned off the coast, said hotel manager Charlie Peterson.
Intermittent light rain fell in the afternoon but that wasn't enough to chase them away.
"They've got their cameras set and they think there is going to be lightning over the water," he said.

Bradley Rose, a surf instructor at SandBarz in Carolina Beach, N.C., said surfers took the plunge.
"It looks pretty fun out there," Rose said.

Although the center of the storm was forecast to remain off the coast through the weekend, tropical storm warnings were in effect from the South Santee River in South Carolina to the North Carolina-Virginia state line, including Pamlico Sound.

Flood advisories were posted for coastal counties and Wilmington, N.C., received 2 1/2 inches of rain Saturday, said Stephen Keebler, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service there.

Cristobal's winds were not expected to be a problem, Keebler said.

Forecasters predicted up to 5 inches of rain along the North Carolina coast, with heavier amounts in some areas.

Eastern North Carolina is under a moderate drought while areas along South Carolina's northern coast are considered abnormally dry, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Officials have blamed the drought for a huge wildfire that has charred more than 40,000 acres in eastern North Carolina since it began June 1 with a lightning strike.

Also, on Saturday, Hurricane Fausto strengthened far off Mexico's Pacific coast, while Hurricane Bertha raced rapidly to the northeast over the North Atlantic, hundreds of miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Neither of those storms currently threaten land.
Bertha had blustered across Bermuda earlier this week, knocking out electricity to thousands there.

Family of slain NC woman plan return to Canada

The parents of a North Carolina mother found slain near her home tearfully asked Friday for the culprit to show "a shred of decency" by confessing, while her husband's attorney said he's an innocent man who wants to grieve in private.

Nancy Cooper's body was found Monday at a construction site about three miles from her home in Cary, a Raleigh suburb.

Her husband, Bradley Cooper, told police that she went jogging on Saturday and he had not seen her since.

No suspects have been named, but a custody move for the couple's two young daughters has revealed deep tension between the wife's family and her husband.

Bradley Cooper's attorney, Seth Blum, said Friday that he has repeatedly answered questions from police and allowed them to search his home and vehicles. Authorities have said he has been cooperative.

The wife's parents won temporary custody of the children, claiming in court filings that the husband was having an affair, was emotionally unstable and posed a danger to the girls.

They claimed he recently threatened to commit suicide, was verbally abusive and prevented his wife and daughters from going to Canada by taking away the children's passports.

The wife's family didn't discuss those claims in emotional news conferences this week.
They focused on memories and praise for the mother and daughters.

The wife's father, Garry Rentz, said the girls have not even asked for their father.
He said his family's pain would only subside if her killer came forward and confessed.
"I think this is an act of extreme cowardice - whoever the person was who did this," Rentz said. "And I think if they had a shred of decency in their body, they would come forward and acknowledge their guilt."

The husband's attorney, meanwhile, took an apparent swipe at her family:
"Attending press briefings does nothing to catch a killer."
"Brad Cooper is a man in mourning," Blum said.
"Different people grieve in different ways. Mr. Cooper wishes to mourn privately."
Blum declined to answer questions about the custody battle, asking that those decisions be kept private.

Family members planned to take the girls to Canada this weekend and meet with a psychologist who was a friend of Nancy Cooper to get advice on how to explain the situation to the girls: One is 4 years old and the other turns 2 next week.
"We have not told them, and they have not mentioned to us that they know," Rentz said.
"So, we are going to walk very gingerly into this area."

After a private memorial service Friday night, the family will host a public memorial service Saturday afternoon in Raleigh.

They'll have a second service in Edmonton.

Family members planned to return next week before a Friday court hearing to decide a more long-term custody arrangement for the girls.

Police declined to discuss the case Friday.

Chief Pat Bazemore said they planned no other public updates on the case until they name a suspect or make an arrest.

"Would I like it to be over tomorrow morning? Yes, I would," Rentz said.
"Am I uncomfortable that it's not? No, and we'll allow people to take their time."

See what religion will get you

The military standoff between Cambodia and Thailand entered its fifth day Saturday as both sides continued to reinforce their troops ahead of scheduled talks over a disputed border area near an 11th century temple.

Some 300 more Cambodian soldiers and 100 Thais were seen arriving near the Preah Vihear temple late Friday, although commanders declined to confirm those numbers.

Earlier, Cambodian Brig. Gen. Chea Keo said Cambodia had about 800 troops against 400 Thai soldiers in the area.

The countries are to meet Monday in an attempt to defuse the conflict over territory surrounding the ancient temple, which escalated when UNESCO recently approved Cambodia's application to have the complex named a World Heritage Site.

Thai activists fear the new status will undermine Thailand's claim to nearby land since the border has never been demarcated.

Carolina Naturally is read in ...

Some odd sounding places like:

Owosso, Michigan - Palatine, Illinois - Metuen, Massachusetts - Cary, North Carolina - House Springs, Missouri - Blue Ridge, Georgia - Bayonne, New Jersey - Ketchikan, Alaska - Vandergrift, Pennsylvania - Concord, North Carolina

OK, so some of those don't sound too odd after all.

But what about these:

Ostersund, Sweden - Palma De Mallorca, Spain - Lodz, Poland - Ljubljana, Slovenia - Crawley, England

Well, some of those are not too odd either come to think of it are they?!

It is good for this ol'Scot to see readers from Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland.

I still haven't figured out just why this blog is so popular in Almere, Amsterdam and The Hague, Netherlands but I am not complaining.

Thanks to all the readers of Carolina Naturally.

As of this moment ...

Of our troops in Afghanistan:

476 brave men and women are gone.

Support our troops ... Bring them home now!

How to Reach Age 99: 100 Essential Habits

Having a sense of humor is one of the most vital things to a long life ... that and following healthier habits:

No matter what you do, you must know that the odds of living to age 99 are against you. While living to experience age 99 isn’t an easy task, it can be done. One huge factor that can decrease your chances dramatically is heart disease. So, our focus is on that issue. But, your risk for heart disease can be reduced drastically with small measures, and the majority of habits listed here coul help you realize your old-age potential. The reason the ‘tips’ listed below are called ‘habits’ is because they are life-changing skills that must be repeated throughout your life to realize the possibility of reaching that age 99 goal.

Read more from How to Reach Age 99: 100 Essential Habits

As of this moment ...

Of our troops in Iraq:
4,124 brave men and women are gone.

4,124 families have been destroyed

Support our troops ... Bring them home now!

Faux Pas

You knew there was a connection, right?!

And, you didn't believe it!

SAUT D'EAU, Haiti : Voodoo Pilgrimage

Every year, Haitians crowd into the basin of a sacred waterfall to relax and pray for a better future.

This time, they asked for relief from soaring food prices and rampant unemployment.

Thousands of pilgrims bathed and threw their clothes into the cascading veils of Saut D'Eau, where the faithful believe the Virgin Mary, known as Erzulie in Haitian Voodoo, appeared in the 1800s.

The observant lit candles and sacrificed a cow nearby.

Many traveled for days on foot or horseback to reach the holy site, which lies 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Port-au-Prince.

"Whatever the Saint gives me, I will take," said 38-year-old Fifi Jean, who spent US$5.30 of her last savings to make the trip.

The former food vendor lost her Port-au-Prince market stand when she got sick.

Now, she said, she can't afford the US$17 monthly rent for her and her daughter.

Haitian Voodoo was created when African slaves fused their religious tradition with Roman Catholic saints and practices so they could continue observing their beliefs under the noses of their French masters.

Today, many move freely between the two beliefs."I used to be a Christian, but then things went bad for us," said Marie Denise, 35, who wore a blue scarf and white frock marked with the numbers of her favorite Psalms.

The single mother hopes Erzulie will provide money and help for her two daughters.

Even Haiti's most powerful showed up.

Chamber of Deputies President Eric Pierre Jean-Jacques descended concrete steps to the water's edge on the last day of the pilgrimage, flanked by guards carrying assault rifles.

Lawmakers are recovering from deadly food riots and face an impasse that has left Haiti without a prime minister for more than three months.

"I'm going to pray that the country changes," Jean-Jacques said, "that people get a better way of life."

Gray Wolves protected again

A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, derailing plans by three states to hold public wolf hunts this fall.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy granted a preliminary injunction late Friday restoring the protections for the wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

Molloy will eventually decide whether the injunction should be permanent.The region has an estimated 2,000 gray wolves.

They were removed from the endangered species list in March, following a decade-long restoration effort.

Environmentalists sued to overturn the decision, arguing wolf numbers would plummet if hunting were allowed. They sought the injunction in the hopes of stopping the hunts and allowing the wolf population to continue expanding.

Needle inspired by mosquito

This could be a great thing ...

Researchers have developed a microneedle inspired by the the blood-sucking action of a female mosquito. Described as "painless," the microneedle has applications for blood drawing, injections, and biomonitoring. Designed by engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology and Tokai University, the device uses shape-memory alloy to push the needle into the body. Then, a microelectromechnical pump sucks out the blood or delivers the drugs. From New Scientist:

Contrary to popular belief, a mosquito bite does not hurt. It is the anticoagulant saliva that the creature injects to stop your blood clotting that causes inflammation and pain.

The new needle has an inner diameter of around 25 microns and an external diameter of 60 microns, which is about the same size as a mosquito's mouthpart. Its size and the fact that it works by suction, makes it painless. To compare, a conventional syringe needle has an outer diameter of around 900 microns.

Mosquito-inspired microneedle

Doing the exact opposite from what they should be doing

Breaking News:

More US troops may go to Afghanistan this year

Pentagon leaders on Wednesday signaled a surge in U.S. forces in Afghanistan "sooner rather than later," a shift that could send some units there within weeks, as officials prepare to cut troop levels in Iraq.

Senior military officials are looking across the services to identify smaller units and other equipment that could be sent to Afghanistan, according to a defense official.

Although there are no brigade-sized units that can be deployed quickly into Afghanistan, military leaders believe they can find a number of smaller units such as aviation, engineering and surveillance troops that can be moved more swiftly, said the official, who requested anonymity because the discussions are private.

The moves are expected to happen within weeks rather than months, the official said.

*****

They should be bringing ALL the troops home not sending MORE!
But in typical cabal fashion they are doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing!

The shrub is claiming privilege

As if that is anything new ...

The shrub invoked executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with the prick Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration's leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003.

The shrub's decision drew a sharp protest Wednesday from Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over the documents."This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person," the California Democrat said. "If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"

Waxman left little doubt he would soon move for a committee vote to hold Mukasey in contempt of Congress.

Casino regulators got items meant for Katrina victims

The agency that regulates Mississippi's casinos got pillows, stoves, dinnerware and other items meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, according to state records.

The Mississippi Gaming Commission was among 11 state agencies that received the household items from the state's surplus agency.

A breakdown of what each agency received shows the commission took a coffee maker, a case of pillows, wash kits, two dual-burner stoves, plates and utensils, two cases of hand sanitizers and 20 five-gallon containers.

Larry Gregory, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission, could not be reached for comment. But an aide, Becky Clark, said the agency is keeping the items "in case of another hurricane."

The Mississippi Department of Corrections also got 20 coffee makers, 15 tents, four cases of pillows, five cases of men's underwear and other supplies.

An investigation revealed in June that for two years after Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency stored 121 truckloads of household items that were purchased or donated for Katrina victims. FEMA eventually declared the items surplus, saying it was too expensive to keep warehousing them, and then offered them to federal agencies and states.

Sixteen states, including storm-ravaged Mississippi, took the items. However, it was discovered that those items were given to the 11 state agencies, schools, cities and fire departments rather than being distributed to residents trying to rebuild their homes.

Leaders of nonprofit groups helping Katrina victims were astounded when shown photos of the FEMA supplies. All said they were unaware that such supplies were available.

As of this moment ...

4,121 brave men and women are gone.

Life's Cardinal Rules

The Cardinal Rule of Moving

Never pack a box heavier than you can lift because you may be the one lifting it!

*****

Now, if someone would tell the Mrs., of this rule maybe my back will stop hurting. Of course when moving a library one does have to expect a little heft to be involved - books are heavy ... but come on, a 100 lbs in a square/foot box - now damn it that's a bit excessive even for this old ball player.

She can only lift 10 lbs by the way. More boxes, but hey, no back pain, there.

White worm-eating slug discovered in Wales

Here's a BBC story about the discovery of a new slug species.

It's pure white and carnivorous, feasting on worms instead of the typical slug diet of plants and decaying matter.

Because it was found in Wales, it's been christened with a partially-Welsh name: Selenochlamys ysbryda.

Ysbryd is Welsh for ghost.

Worm-eating slug found in garden

15 Smart Ways to Beat Jet Lag

No one likes jet lag. We get off a flight feeling wrinkled and exhausted and then head into a day full of meetings or jump full swing into a vacation. Here’s how to reset your body clock and sleep better.

Read more from 15 Smart Ways to Beat Jet Lag

Analysts: More Banks Will Fail

From the New York Times:

“As home prices continue to decline and loan defaults mount, federal regulators are bracing for dozens of American banks to fail over the next year.

But after a large mortgage lender in California collapsed late Friday, Wall Street analysts began posing two crucial questions: Just how many banks might falter? And, more urgently, which one could be next?

The nation’s banks are in far less danger than they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when more than 1,000 federally insured institutions went under during the savings-and-loan crisis. The debacle, the greatest collapse of American financial institutions since the Depression, prompted a government bailout that cost taxpayers about $125 billion.

But the troubles are growing so rapidly at some small and midsize banks that as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months, analysts say. Other lenders are likely to shut branches or seek mergers…”

Read the rest of the article here.

Phil Gramm: Pornographer?

Thanks to the folks over at Scrutiny Hooligans for this one:

(quote)

By Arratik

Turns out that McCain surrogate/lobbyist/bank president/sub-prime mortgage crisis profiteer Phil Gramm, who famously referred to the United States of America as a “nation of whiners” last week, was actually doing his part to turn us into a nation of moaners back in the seventies as a producer of sub-Cinemax soft-core pr0n.

This popped up @ The Nation, among other places:

Before Gramm joined the Christian Coalition’s Ralph Reed to call for the defunding of the NEA, before he attacked an opponent for taking money from a gay rights group, and before he was interviewed by the white supremacist Southern Partisan magazine, Gramm was an avidly active investor in soft-core pornography movies.

Gramm’s journey into porn began in 1973, when his brother-in-law, George Caton, rushed to tell him about an exciting low-budget soft-core production called “Truck Stop Women.” A promo poster for the film boasted of its buxom stars: “No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle.” Caton, who was in charge of fundraising for the production, asked Gramm to become an investor. To entice his brother-in-law, Caton showed him scenes of Playboy Playmate of the year Claudia Jennings displaying her bare essentials (she is naked throughout much of the film).

These scenes “really got Phil titillated,” Caton told journalist John Judis in 1995. Gramm enthusiastically cut Caton a check for $15,000. Because the film was oversold, however, Caton returned his brother-in-law’s money, offering him an investment opportunity in an upcoming feature

That “upcoming feature” was originally supposed to be a film about beauty pageant judges who have sex with contestants, but that film was shelved at the eleventh hour in favor of another production called White House Madness, a satire of the Nixon Administration (of which, ironically, Gramm was a staunch supporter) that featured a troupe of drag queens (called The Cockettes) and depicted Nixon as someone who wandered around the White House naked. It was a box-office flop.

I don’t know about you, but “failed pr0n investor” is exactly the kind of thing I look for on the resume of a potential Secretary of the Treasury.

(end quote)

I don’t know about you, but “failed pr0n investor” is exactly the kind of thing I look for on the resume of a potential Secretary of the Treasury.

You and me both, you and me both.

Bertha the longest-lived July storm in history

Not exactly what I thought would happen, but the neck hairs are never wrong - Bertha did do something before she was all said and done (and she isn't all said and done just yet).

Tropical Storm Bertha headed back out over open ocean and away from the U.S. mainland Tuesday after it battered Bermuda, knocking out electricity to thousands on the Atlantic tourist island.

It is the longest-lived July tropical storm in history, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Bertha became the Atlantic season's first hurricane, before weakening into a tropical storm.

It is expected to strengthen over the next 24 hours, forecasters said.

The previous longest-lived storm, known as Storm No. 2, occurred in 1960 and lasted just over 12 days, according to forecaster Daniel Brown. Bertha is entering its 13th day.

The storm was centered 360 miles (580 kilometers) northeast of Bermuda Tuesday night, with sustained winds near 65 mph (100 kph), the center said. It was moving northeast at 6 mph (9 kph).

Mystery insect bugging experts at London museum

The experts at London's Natural History Museum pride themselves on being able to identify species from around the globe, from birds and mammals to insects and snakes. Yet they can't figure out a tiny red-and-black bug that has appeared in the museum's own gardens.

The almond-shaped insect, about the size of a grain of rice, and was first seen in March 2007 on some of the plane trees that grow on the grounds of the 19th century museum, collections manager Max Barclay said Tuesday.

Within three months, it had become the most common insect in the garden, and it was also spotted in other central London parks, he said.

The museum has more than 28 million insect species in its collection, but none is an exact match for this one. Still, Barclay is cautious about calling it a new discovery.

"I don't expect to find a new species in the gardens of a museum," he said. "Deep inside a tropical rainforest, yes, but not in central London."

The bug resembles the Arocatus roeselii, which is usually found in central Europe but is a brighter red and lives on alder trees. Entomologists suspect the new bug could be a version of the roeselii that has adapted to live on plane trees, but acknowledge it could be a new species.

Either way, it appears the museum's tiny visitor, which appears harmless, is here to stay.

"We waited to see if the insect would survive the British winter," Barclay said. "It did and it's thriving, so now we had better figure out what it is."

*****

OK, all you armchair bug experts in Cyberland let's help the fellas in London identify this bug!

Bud Ain't American No More

Philip McClary was grilling out at his home in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday night when he heard hometown brewer Anheuser-Busch would be bought by the Belgian company InBev.

"I was actually drinking a Bud Light when I heard, and I couldn't even finish it. That's the honest-to-God truth," he said Monday.

"I was proud to drink Budweiser, not any more," said P.J. Champion, a student at the University of Mississippi who said the brew is "a great piece of American history."

McClary put Champion's thoughts to music, posting his song "Kiss Our Glass" on YouTube and on a Web site that tried to stop the sale, SaveBudweiser.com.

"America is not for sale, and neither is her beer," McClary sings.

"All you hard-working Americans stand up and show some class," the song continues, "Have a drink with Mother Freedom, and tell InBev to kiss your glass."

Such outrage is to be expected, says Matt Simpson, who bills himself as The Beer Sommelier and teaches Beer Education 101 at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. But he said the protests will soon fade.

"Unless it affects [Americans] in the product or the pocketbook, they're likely to forget about it," Simpson says. And he doesn't think InBev will change its iconic product.

"You don't mess with a good thing," he says. "It really isn't about nationalism, it's about money."

Even McClary agrees.

"I think there will be somewhat of a backlash; I would anticipate initially that people will be furious and stop drinking it. Maybe after six months, though, they'll switch back."

Simpson says that if American beer drinkers turn away from Budweiser and other Anheuser-Busch brands, it will be because they are turning to microbrews.

"They are heading the pack in popularity and business success these days," he says of the small breweries. "Today, taste is king. You really don't get from the macro beer producers."

But he doesn't expect Budweiser to go away, either.

"There's nothing inherently wrong with the taste of Budweiser. It's a light American lager. There will always be some sort of market for that," he says.

For McClary, taste was never an issue. "I've drank tons of different beers, different brands; but Bud Light has always been the one to me that was the easiest to go down and had the smoothest taste."

But he says he's quaffed his last Bud Light, and the issue is larger than beer.

"We've kind of lost a part of our history here and all across the United States," he said.

InBev says it won't be changing Budweiser or Bud Light, which it says are the best-selling beers in the world.

"Budweiser will be brewed in the same breweries ... by the same people, according to the same recipe," said Carlos Brito, InBev's chief executive officer.

But iReporter Adam Williams, who lives across the street from Anheuser-Busch's St. Louis brewery, doesn't share that feeling of a continued tradition.

Things will change, Williams says, right down to the company's mascot Dalmatians that have been a constant commotion in the neighborhood.

"I will miss the nuisance that ... the Budweiser Dalmatians have meant around our neighborhood," he writes. "They may still exist over there for some time to come, but their kingdom's significance has severely diminished.

"What is the mascot of InBev, anyway?"

Dead Army nurse's husband charged with murder

The husband of an Army nurse who worked in the maternity ward at Fort Bragg's hospital was charged Monday with murder in her death, a day after her body was discovered by authorities.

Marine Cpl. John Wimunc, 23, was also charged with first-degree arson and conspiracy to commit arson in the death of his wife, Army 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc, of Dubuque, Iowa. Her body was found Sunday, three days after a suspicious fire at her Fayetteville apartment.

In May, Wimunc secured a temporary restraining order against her husband. She told authorities he got drunk and held a loaded handgun to her head and his. At the time of her death, the couple was going through a divorce.

"You start with people who are closest to the spouse and you work your way out from that," Fayetteville Detective Jeff Locklear said of the investigation.

Authorities also charged Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Alden, 22, with first-degree arson, conspiracy to commit arson and accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. Both were arrested at Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps base about 130 miles southeast of Fayetteville where they are stationed as combat engineers.

Wimunc's body was found in a wooded area near the southern border of Camp Lejeune late Sunday afternoon, not far from Alden's residence. The body had been there several days and there is evidence she was dead upon arrival, said Onslow County District Attorney Dewey Hudson, who wouldn't elaborate. The men were arrested late Sunday night after police interviewed Alden.

"We were able to corroborate a lot of the things he told us," Locklear said. "We used that information, interviews with witnesses ... to get the arrest warrant."

Both men are currently being held without bond in the Cumberland County jail and are scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. It wasn't immediately clear if they had attorneys. John Wimunc's father declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press, but Alden's mother said her son's only involvement was giving a friend a ride to Fayetteville.

"He had no idea what was going on. He didn't do this," Connie Johnson said in a phone interview from her home in Pequot Lakes, Minn.

Fayetteville police began searching for Wimunc when she didn't show up for work Thursday. Co-workers could not find her at her apartment, but smelled what they suspected was a fire and called police. Once inside, investigators found evidence of arson.

Sgt. Chris Corcione said Monday that investigators found several points where the fire was started, but the blaze was concentrated in the apartment's rear bedroom. While the interior walls of the burned room were black with soot, Corcione said, the fire burned itself out and left behind useable evidence.

Holley Wimunc, 24, was commissioned by the Army Nurse Corps in 2007. Her first duty assignment was at Fort Bragg, where she worked in the mother and baby unit at Womack Army Medical Center.

Corcione said Wimunc was last seen alive the night of July 8, when she went out with friends and used her ATM card. Police believe she was dead when she was taken out of the apartment, but they are not yet sure when her body was taken to Onslow County.

Hudson said an attempt to burn the body set off a brush fire that drew the attention of authorities, and the body was located by Division of Forest Resources personnel. He said detectives likely would never have found her body had it been burned in a brush-free area about 100 feet away.

"It seems that someone tried to torch the body in the shallow grave," Hudson said.

Maj. Cliff W. Gilmore, a spokesman with the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, said both suspects are assigned to the division's 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion. John Wimunc has served two tours in Iraq, including one that ended in January. Alden's mother said he went to Iraq in 2006.

"All he wanted to do was defend our country," Johnson said. "He has a wonderful, loving heart."

Holley Wimunc's father in Dubuque, Jesse James, said his daughter was a St. Ambrose University graduate, and excited about nursing and her career in the U.S. Army. She also had a son and daughter.

John Wimunc was not the father of Holley Wimunc's two children, and they were not in Fayetteville when the fire was reported. She had sent them to live with her father because of "the domestic situation," Corcione said.

Wimunc's death is the third homicide of a young North Carolina-based female service member in the past seven months.

In January, the body of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, of Vandalia, Ohio, was found in the back yard of a fellow Marine, Cpl. Cesar Laurean. He fled to Mexico and was captured in early April, and is charged with murder in her death.

Last month, the decomposing body of Spc. Megan Touma, of Cold Spring, Ky., was discovered in a motel near Fort Bragg. Authorities have made no arrests in that case, but stressed Monday it has no connection to Wimunc's death.

Father says NC remains in fire are missing soldier

The father of a missing Fort Bragg soldier says authorities have identified the remains of a woman found in a brush fire near Camp Lejeune as those of his missing daughter.

Army nurse Holley Wimunc (WHY-munk) has been missing since a fire Thursday at her apartment in Fayetteville.

On Monday, her father told Raleigh television station WRAL that authorities informed the family that a body found in the brush fire Sunday was that of his daughter.

Wimunc was going through a divorce from Camp Lejeune Marine Cpl. John Patrick Wimunc.

Fayetteville police questioned the husband last week. He has not been named as a suspect in her disappearance.

World's oldest blogger dies in Australia

A 108-year-old Australian woman who was promoted as the world's oldest blogger has died two weeks after making her last post about "singing a happy song," her great-grand son and her online forum said.

Olive Riley wrote 74 entries in her blogs, firstly http://www.allaboutolive.com.au and later http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com. A friend introduced Riley to blogging early in 2007, and was hooked.

Riley "passed away peacefully on Saturday, July 12," a posting on her Web site said. No cause of death was given. "She will be mourned by thousands of Internet friends and hundreds of descendants and other relatives."

She entered a nursing home in Woy Woy, 50 miles north of Sydney, last month, from where she blogged about having a bad cough and feeling weak.

In her last entry, on June 26, Riley thanked supporters for "a whole swag of e-mails and comments from my Internet friends" and described meeting a new friend in the bed next to her.

"She and I sang a happy song, as I do every day, and before long we were joined by several nurses, who sang along too. It was quite a concert!" she posted.

Great-grandson Darren Stone said Riley loved being able to stay in touch with correspondents all over the world and said she believed it kept her mind active.

"It was mind blowing to her," Stone said. "She had people communicating with her from as far away as Russia and America on a continual basis, not just once in a while."

Born in the remote mining town of Broken Hill in 1899, Riley blogged regularly in the last year of her life about growing up in the Outback, raising three children and working as a farm cook and bartender earlier in her life.

NAACP Chairman says Obama win won't solve racial injustice

The chairman of the NAACP says racial disparity will remain an issue in America whether or not Barack Obama is elected as the nation's first black president.

Julian Bond told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People convention Sunday night that Obama's candidacy doesn't "herald a post-civil rights America, any more than his victory in November will mean that race as an issue has been vanquished in America."

He says black Americans should feel proud that a presidential candidate who couldn't have stayed in some cities' hotels several decades ago won the Democratic nomination.

Obama plans to address the convention Monday night. Republican presidential candidate John McCain plans to speak Wednesday.

Don't blame me for IndyMac failure

Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday the Bush administration is trying to "blame the fire on the person who calls 911" by suggesting he had a role in one of the costliest U.S. bank failures.

Federal regulators with the Office of Thrift Supervision were "asleep at the switch" when it came to IndyMac's "reckless" behavior, the New York Democrat complained.

The OTS announced Friday that it was taking over the $32 billion IndyMac and transferring control to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The OTS pointed the finger directly at Schumer for the failure, accusing him of sparking a bank run by releasing a letter that "expressed concerns about IndyMac's viability."

"In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts," the OTS said in a statement announcing the California-based lender's takeover on Friday.

The statement included a quote from OTS Director John Reich saying, "Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process."

Schumer, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, chairman of Congress' Joint Economic Committee and the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, rejected any suggestions of responsibility for IndyMac's collapse

"OTS ought to stop pointing false fingers of blame and start doing its job to protect the future of the banking system, so that there won't be other IndyMacs," he said.

Schumer's June 26 letter said he was "concerned that IndyMac's financial deterioration poses significant risks to both taxpayers and borrowers."

In a Sunday news conference, he said everything in his letter was already known to the public.

"IndyMac was one of the most poorly run and reckless of all the banks," he said. "It was a spinoff from the old Countrywide, and like Countrywide, it did all kinds of profligate activities that it never should have. Both IndyMac and Countrywide helped cause the housing crisis we're now in."

The embattled Countrywide Financial Corp. was recently purchased by Bank of America.

Schumer argued that the "breadth and depth" of the problems at IndyMac were "apparent for years, and they accelerated in the last six months." But OTS, he said, "was asleep at the switch and allowed things to happen without restraint.

"And now they are doing what the Bush administration always does: Blame the fire on the person who calls 911."

The White House had no immediate response.

Schumer said OTS is "known as a weak regulator," and added, "my job was to try and toughen them up and that's what I tried to do."

IndyMac, with assets of $32 billion and deposits of $19 billion, is the fifth bank to fail this year. Between 2005 and 2007, only three banks failed. And in the past 15 years, the FDIC has taken over 127 banks with combined assets of $22 billion, according to FDIC records.

IndyMac will reopen Monday with a new charter and a new name -- IndyMac Federal Bank.

*****

Proof of the typical behavior of the Haters - Accuse everyone else of what you are doing! And the shrub and the cabal are skilled in only one thing and that is Hating ... with all its accompanying behaviors.

Fire bomb thrown at US Consulate General

An assailant threw a homemade firebomb into the U.S. consulate compound on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, home to most of the American troops based in Japan, but nobody was injured in the attack, police said.

The Molotov cocktail fell in the garden inside the compound and burned itself out, Okinawan police official Yasuhiko Yoshinaga said. He declined to give further details.

A local resident told police that a person driving a black motorbike fled the scene after the attack.

Okinawa, located 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, is home to more than half the 50,000 U.S. troops based in Japan and is considered a linchpin in the American military posture in Asia.

There has long been anti-U.S. military sentiment on the island, with Okinawans complaining of soldier-related crimes.

This is one situation that we cannot lay squarely at the feet of the shrub and the cabal (albeit, they have acerbated the situation simply by they way they do things), it has been a thorn in the side of the island residents and the US military basically since before the end of WW2 when American troops landed on the island - and instances such as this are actually not all that uncommon.

The island residents DO have legitimate claims as to crimes by US Service Personnel ... quite a bit is swept under the rug as it were (not so much today as was years ago when it was pretty much open range for the servicemen to do as they pleased with not a fear of retribution or of any consequences for that matter in the early years following the war).

As of this moment ...

473
Dead in Afghanistan

4118
Dead in Iraq

Support our troops - Bring them home now!

Daily Horoscope

Conditions are good for peacefully contemplating the meaning of life.

*****

Am I so ever glad that is the case - contemplating the meaning of life while conditions are not good for peacefully contemplating is a royal pain in the arse!

Ash in the sky

A volcano erupted Saturday with little warning on a remote island in Alaska, sending residents of a nearby ranch fleeing from falling ash and volcanic rock.

The Okmok Caldera erupted late Saturday morning, just hours after seismologists at the Alaska Volcano Center began detecting a series of small tremors.

The explosion flung an ash cloud at least 50,000 feet high, said geophysicist Steve McNutt.

Ten people, including three children, were at Fort Glenn, a private cattle ranch six miles south of the volcano on Umnak Island, located in the western Aleutians about 860 miles southwest of Anchorage.

They were later picked up by the fishing boat Tara Gaila, which responded to a Coast Guard request for emergency assistance. The Tara Gaila was taking them to Dutch Harbor, the Coast Guard said late Saturday night.

The ranch residents had managed to call military police on Kodiak Island on a satellite phone before losing their connection, according to the Coast Guard.

At the same time it issued the general request for assistance from boats in the area, the Coast Guard diverted the cutters Jarvis and Melon to head toward the scene from their patrols in the Bering Sea.

A rescue helicopter from the Melon responded but had to land in Dutch Harbor after flying through some volcanic ash, causing some damage to the aircraft, the Coast Guard said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lee Goldsmith said those at the ranch reported rock and ash falling around them.

Okmok is 60 miles west of the busy fishing port of Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island. Ash was reported falling in the region, McNutt said.

Two planned flights from Unalaska were canceled in response to the eruption, said Jerry Lucas, a spokesman for PenAir, the primary airliner serving the area.

The 3,500-foot volcano last erupted in 1997, according to McNutt. The volcano has shown signs of increased activity during the last few months, he said.

Previous eruptions have typically produced lava flows, but the volcano center could not immediately determine if that had occurred in Saturday's explosion, McNutt said.

Parkways are not Beltways

Meandering through wooded hills, the George Washington Memorial Parkway offers stunning views of the Potomac River and the capital's monuments beyond. It also offers one of the most direct commutes to downtown Washington for suburban residents - and that has brought traffic it was never intended to handle.

Unlike an ordinary highway, the GW, as it's commonly known, can't just be widened, flattened and straightened to make room for more vehicles at higher speeds. The road is the property of the National Park Service, and its central mission is to showcase the area's historic sights and natural beauty.

Around the country, old parkways designed mainly with aesthetics in mind are bumping up against modern realities, turning scenic roads into hotbeds of commuter frustration and treacherous driving.

Classic parkways are ill-suited for heavy traffic because they often contain sharp curves and steep hills and lack features like merge lanes. The challenge for the agencies overseeing them is to balance their historic and scenic value with the need for safe and free-flowing arteries.

"It's a real balancing act. It always has been, and it becomes more so as traffic increases," said Jon G. James, acting superintendent of the GW, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary as a National Park Service site next month.

The road runs 25 miles in northern Virginia from the Capital Beltway to George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, with two lanes in each direction. The smaller Clara Barton Parkway in Maryland across the Potomac is also part of the GW.

Park officials estimate that 75,000 to 80,000 vehicles drive on the parkway every day - far more than intended.

The GW is not alone in its beauty or its challenges. In the densely populated suburbs of New York City - where the nation's first parkway, the Bronx River Parkway, opened in 1925 - a network of scenic highways showcases rivers, rolling hills and dramatic cliffs.

Those roads have grown to become key commuter arteries. On the southern portion of the Taconic State Parkway, for example, average daily traffic has increased from 44,000 in 1981 to 106,000 in 2003.

In Connecticut, the picturesque Merritt Parkway features bridges representing Art Moderne, Art Deco, Classical, Gothic and Renaissance architecture. In the 1990s, officials considered widening the road to cope with traffic growth on the key conduit toward New York City, but preservationists blocked the effort, said Jill Smyth, executive director of the Merritt Parkway Conservancy, an independent nonprofit that grew out of that fight.

On the West Coast, the Arroyo Seco Parkway follows a dry riverbed from Los Angeles to Pasadena. With large bands of parkland running parallel to it and several historic monuments located off it, the parkway is considered California's first freeway. Like the GW and the Merritt, it is recognized under the America's Byways program administered by the Federal Highway Administration. But critics say it has been poorly adapted to handle today's traffic, contributing to frequent accidents.

Despite their practical flaws, parkways are important to preserve and can even provide a model for future construction, advocates say.

"The experience of driving doesn't have to be terrible. There's still room for beauty and enjoyment," said Kevin Fry, president of Scenic America, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the nation's "visual character." Fry's group advocates flexibility in road construction and upgrades. Such compromises can be used to improve safety features of parkways while still maintaining their aesthetics.

On the GW parkway, guard rails, which were not part of the original design, have been added. But rather than using metal fixtures, the park service used steel-backed timber to give them "a more rustic, historic appeal," James said.

The latest project on the GW is reconstruction of the Humpback Bridge, near the Pentagon, to make it wider and improve visibility. There, the contractor is trying to incorporate the original stone work in the new bridge, James said.

In New York, shoulders have been added on parkways. But rather than add an 8- to 10-foot swath of pavement, officials have opted to make them half paved and half grass.

But in some cases, practical concerns have won out over ambiance. The Taconic, for example, remains largely unchanged on the lightly traveled northern portions approaching Albany, but is a much different road on the portions near New York City, where it has been expanded from two lanes in each direction to three or four.

"We've had to reconstruct it and improve the alignment, and for sure it has lost a lot of its original character," said Sandra Jobson, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Transportation.

The GW is unlikely to be changed as dramatically, since the National Park Service sees "park" as the operative word in "parkway."

Even drivers who use the road more for transportation than for pleasure say they appreciate it for what it is.

"It's a beautiful way to commute even if there's cars around you," said Ellen Walter, who lives near the parkway in Alexandria. "It's pretty. It's green. A lot of times there's pretty birds."

Still, there are concerns that the current levels of commuter traffic compromise safety, since commuters tend to ignore the posted speed limits of 25 mph to 50 mph.

"If commuters want to drive on the parkways, that's fine, but they have to drive on them as parkways, not the beltway," said Dan Marriott, a historic roads consultant, adding that he would like to see more aggressive speed enforcement. Efforts to limit rush-hour traffic through tolls or high-occupancy requirements might also be worth considering, he said.

James said he too wants drivers to slow down and notice what's outside their window. The park service's two priorities are visitor safety and letting people appreciate the sights, he added.

"If people would drive the speed limit," he said, "we would be solving both things at once."

Rock Honors: The WHO

The Who was celebrated at a special concert by a few bands outside of their generation.

The legendary band was honored at the Saturday taping of the third annual "VH1 Rock Honors," which will air Thursday on the cable channel. Celebrity guests such as David Duchovny, Mila Kunis, Rainn Wilson and Adam Sandler introduced The Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Incubus, Tenacious D and Pearl Jam, who covered songs from such Who albums as "Tommy," "The Who Sell Out" and "Quadrophenia."

Who guitarist Pete Townshend and lead singer Roger Daltry closed the special concert at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion with a performance of some of the band's greatest hits. Original drummer Keith Moon died in London in 1978. Original bassist John Entwistle died in Las Vegas in 2002. Moon and Entwistle were remembered in pre-taped retrospectives during the over two-hour show.

"I have had a life of absolute privilege and wonder," Daltry told AP Television News on the red carpet before the concert. "How could it ever be bittersweet? I miss old friends, but they are with me. When we start playing our music, John (Entwistle) and Keith (Moon) echo with us all the time, so it's kind of like they never left."

"The Office" funnyman Wilson, dressed as Elton John's character Local Lad from "Tommy," introduced The Flaming Lips, who performed a medley of songs from The Who's legendary 1969 rock opera. Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne began the "Tommy" set inside of a giant plastic bubble that which traveled over the first few rows of the audience.

"It's an honor to honor what I consider to be the greatest band of all time," actor and Tenacious D lead singer Jack Black told the crowd before acoustically performing "Squeeze Box" with musical partner Kyle Gass. "Wanna know why they were the greatest? Because they were the first ones to really rock hard."

Sean Penn introduced Pearl Jam, who were joined for "Love Reign O'er Me" with an orchestra and "The Real Me" with horn players. Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder and lead guitarist Mike McCready respectively paid homage to The Who's penchant for destroying instruments by throwing a microphone into the audience and a guitar up in the air.

"We know that we're all here tonight because The Who never did sell out, unlike certain music channels," Penn told the crowd.

The Who wowed the packed audience with such tunes as "Teenage Wasteland," "The Seeker," "My Generation," "Two Thousand Years," "Batman" and "Who Are You." Townshend stopped the band in the middle of performing "Won't Get Fooled Again" because of an issue with his speaker and later started the song over from the beginning. Daltry and Townshend closed the show with "Tea and Theatre."

Homeland Security Aide Caught On Tape

You knew it was happening and just as with anything the cabal does they are sloppy about it - providing the proof of their wrongdoing:

The Sunday Times reports Stephen Payne, a cabal pioneer and a political appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, was caught on tape offering access to key members of the cabal's inner circle in exchange for “six-figure donations to the private library" being set up to commemorate shrub's malignancy.

In an undercover video, Payne is seen promising to arrange a meeting for an exiled leader of Krygystan with Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice. (Not the shrub because “he doesn’t meet with a lot of former Presidents these days,” Payne says. “I don’t think he meets with hardly anyone.”) All it will take for him to arrange this high-level meeting, says Payne, is “a couple hundred thousand dollars, or something like that”:

PAYNE: The exact budget I will come up with. But it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the shrub library. […]

200, 250, something like that. That’s gonna be a show of “we’re interested, we’re your friends, we’re still friends.”

Watch the startling video here.

The Times reports, “The revelation confirms long-held suspicions that favors are being offered in return for donations to the libraries which outgoing presidents set up to house their archives and safeguard their political legacies.” shrub loyalists previously said they had “identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential ‘mega’ donors” to the shrub library.

The Department of Homeland Security website reports that the “Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) provides advice and recommendations to the Secretary on matters related to homeland security.” Payne has been a member of the council since August 2007.

In Jan. 2008, Payne — an early supporter of Rudy Giuliani — said he would throw his support to John McCain if Giuliani dropped out. A personal lackey of shrub, Payne has helped clear brush on the Crawford Ranch with the shrub.

The Move is on

The move to the new Library begins in a week.
Well it has begun - I got the keys from the contractor yesterday ... the really hard part starts when we actually begin picking up all the boxed books and other pieces in the collection next Saturday.
How many pieces is that again?!

Bertha hovers off Bermuda

Bertha is virtually standing still off Bermuda.
Here is where she is going to surprise the forecasters and prove my prickly neck hairs accurate - she is going to do something nasty before she's through and sitting over one spot in the ocean pulling in all that water ... look out!

Left Coast gets its fifth

Tropical Storm Elida, the fifth named storm of the Pacific season, formed off southern Mexico and was picking up steam late Saturday.

Forecasters predicted it would continue to strengthen and likely become a hurricane in the next 24 hours, but it was expected to remain well south of the Mexican coast.

On Saturday night, Elida had maximum sustained winds near 60 mph (90 kph) with higher gusts, the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported.

The storm was located about 205 miles (325 kilometers) southwest of Acapulco and was traveling west-northwest at near 16 mph (26 kph).

Large swells and high surf could begin affecting Mexico's southwestern coast over the next couple of days, the center said.

One Thousand Posts In The Ground

1000 posts!

Carolina Naturally has made it to the one thousand post milestone.
Hopefully it has informed and entertained and provoked thought and reflection for all the loyal readers and the fly-by-night readers.
Since its first incarnation just over a year ago Carolina Naturally has been a voice of reason in an unreasonable world presenting news and events with a serious and a humorous outlook ... sometime making it a wee bit difficult to recognize the difference.

Thank you for supporting this blog world wide in all 197 countries - of whom 65 are regular visitors.

Trail Mix

Just some rambling thoughts mixed in with profound ideas:

Naked women on the wall.

Coke with Splenda is wonderful.

Serenity is having enough self control not to choke the living mud out of someone who desperately needs it!

Belly Dancers know how to move.

New houses, new dreams.

The lone wolf will survive because he is the toughest - he has to be for all he has to rely on is himself.

Money is the root of all evil they say ... what they don't say it the the excess and the lack of it is the root of all evil.

Nobody is perfect - I am nobody, therefore I am perfect!

I am getting old ... I remember when DEEP THROAT was the date movie every couple had to go see - and they actually watched the movie!

A lady in the bank today actually said "I can't be out of money, I still have checks!"

To know his importance in the scheme of things every man should have a dog who adores him completely and a cat who ignores him entirely!

Obama not doing NASCAR sponsorship

NASCAR's BAM Racing team has presented Barack Obama's presidential campaign with a potential sponsorship deal in the Sprint Cup series later this year, but it doesn't look like an Obama car will be burning rubber on the track anytime soon.

BAM team spokesman Rhett Vandiver told The Associated Press on Friday that the team made a sponsorship proposal to the Democratic presidential hopeful's campaign, and has made similar proposals to the campaign of Republican John McCain and at least one third-party candidate.

Late Friday, the Obama campaign said there would be no sponsorship.

"The Obama campaign will not be sponsoring a car in the Sprint Cup series, though we will continue to look for ways to reach out to voters and convey Senator Obama's message of change." said Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman

Sports Illustrated first reported the proposal on its Web site, saying Obama's campaign is in talks with BAM, a part-time operation that hasn't raced in recent weeks, to sponsor its No. 49 car in the Aug. 3 race at Pocono.

"The Obama campaign will not be sponsoring a car in the Sprint Cup series, though we will continue to look for ways to reach out to voters and convey Senator Obama's message of change." Bill Burton, Obama Campaign Spokesman

It would have been a fairly bold move within a sport whose competitors spend all year turning left on the track but tend to lean to the right politically.

BAM's choice of drivers and car brands might have been a little too sticky politically for the Obama camp.

The car, a Toyota - the only foreign automaker racing in NASCAR - would be driven by veteran Ken Schrader.

According to the Federal Election Commission's Web site, Schrader gave $1,000 to the campaign of North Carolina Republican congressman Robin Hayes in June 2004, and a total of $2,500 in 2003 and 2004 to the failed Virginia congressional campaign of Republican Kevin Triplett, a former NASCAR official.

Also according to the FEC, Mrs. Ann Schrader of Concord, N.C. and Ken Schrader Racing donated a total of $2,000 to President Bush's campaign in May 2004 and $900 to the North Carolina Republican Executive Committee in August 2004.

NASCAR has been playing an increasing role in politics, as so-called "NASCAR dads" were considered a key constituency in recent elections.

A Cup series car carried a George W. Bush logo in 2004 but wasn't officially associated with the campaign. And Democratic presidential hopeful Bob Graham sponsored a truck in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2003.

Antarctica Ice Shelf 'hanging on by a thread'

It's going to crack any day now... Does anybody care?

Link

Excerpt:
New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up,
in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread"
to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

"Since the connection to the island... helps stabilize the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge
will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said.

Are musicians owed royalties for performance of their music in torture chambers?

Interesting question there, isn't it?

Canadian copyfighter Howard Knopf has suggested (presumably with tongue firmly planted in cheek) that recording artists whose music is played by torturers in Gitmo are owed performance royalties:

Leaving aside the legal niceties about whose law if any applies in that dreadful place, one can only wonder if ASCAP might not want a piece of the action. After all, it went after the Girl Guides not so long ago. And if it could try to make a buck off Girl Guides, who are nice people, why not alleged terrorists? Why should terrorists enjoy free music?

Link

(Thanks to the folks over at Boing Boing for bringing this to our attention)

Pastor among suspects in illegal snake bust

"A venomous snake isn't a pet. You don't play with it. If you do, you're an idiot."

The pastor of a Kentucky church that handles snakes in religious rites was among 10 people arrested by wildlife officers in a crackdown on the venomous snake trade.

More than 100 snakes, many of them deadly, were confiscated in the undercover sting after Thursday's arrests, said Col. Bob Milligan, director of law enforcement for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife.

Most were taken from the Middlesboro home of Gregory James Coots, including 42 copperheads, 11 timber rattlesnakes, three cottonmouth water moccasins, a western diamondback rattlesnake, two cobras and a puff adder.

Handling snakes is practiced in a handful of fundamentalist churches across Appalachia, based on the interpretation of Bible verses saying true believers can take up serpents without being harmed. The practice is illegal in most states, including Kentucky.

Coots, 36, is pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name in Middlesboro, where a Tennessee woman died after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a service in 1995. Her husband died when he was bitten by a snake in northeastern Alabama.

Coots was charged Thursday with buying, selling and possessing illegal reptiles. He had no listed telephone number and couldn't be reached for comment. There was no phone listing for the church.

"It is disturbing to me that individuals would keep such dangerous wildlife in their homes and in neighborhoods where they put their families, visitors and neighbors as such high risk," Milligan said.

The snakes, plus one alligator, were turned over to the nonprofit Kentucky Reptile Zoo in Slade. Most appeared to have been captured from the wild, with some imported from Asia and Africa.

Zoo Director Jim Harrison said some of the animals would likely have become exotic pets had they not been seized.

"There's been a large trade in exotics for years," he said. "Some people are just fascinated with them."

Undercover officers purchased more than 200 illegal reptiles during the investigation, some of which were advertised for sale on Web sites. One such Web site lists copperheads for $50 each and cobras for $450.

"You can purchase anything off the Internet except common sense," Harrison said. "A venomous snake isn't a pet. You don't play with it. If you do, you're an idiot."

*****
True that!

Carolina Naturally is read in ...

Domestically:

Durham, Hickory, Mebane and Charlotte, North Carolina - Greenville, South Carolina
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Brooklyn Park, Minnesota - Boulder, Colorado
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World Wide:

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Stevenage, England

A bit of wisdom floating in the ether

Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes

Oh, for the love of Sunshine!

Sunshine!

After the week of torrential downpours and thunderstorms

- one was so intense it literally blackened day into night better than any eclipse I've witnessed ... at 4:45PM I was looking out the window into a blackness I have only seen underground in caves when the torch has gone out -

it is nice to see the sun shining.

Now, I think we might have come close enough to erasing the drought we have experienced over the last two years that we can say the drought is over. I have not checked the official totals but if we aren't within spitting distance I'll be a monkey's uncle!

The birds are singing!

Holocaust siblings meet after 66 years

A frail Irene Famulak clutched her brother on the airport tarmac, her arm wrapped around him in a tight embrace, tears streaming down their faces. It was the first time since 1942 they had seen each other, when she was 17 and he was just 7.

That was the night the invading Nazis came to take her away from her Ukrainian home.

"I remember it well because I kissed him good-bye, and he pushed me away," she said of her brother. "I asked, 'Why did you do that?' And he said that he doesn't like kisses."

"The Nazis told my mother that I was being taken to work in a German labor camp for six months. But it was, of course, much longer. I was there for years."

Both siblings survived the Holocaust and grew up on different sides of the Iron Curtain, not knowing the fate of the other.

But after 66 years apart, Famulak, 83, was reunited with her long lost 73-year-old brother, Wssewolod Galezkij. They held each other close this time, cherishing the moment.

"I don't believe anyone has ever known such happiness. Now, I truly believe I can die satisfied," Galezkij said.

Famulak made the long journey to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after being contacted by the American Red Cross. The organization told her they had located her only surviving sibling.

Famulak said she spent World War II in a labor camp in Munich, Germany, working in the kitchens. She had been taken to the camp with her older sister. When it was liberated in 1945, Famulak stayed in Germany for several years, eventually emigrating to the United States in 1956.

She never saw her parents again after that day in 1942 when Nazis separated her from her family. She and her brother still have no idea what happened to their mother and father. Some of their siblings lived through the war, but later died; others, they never heard from again after being separated.

But her younger brother never gave up hope of tracking his sister down. He, too, was sent to a German labor camp, but after the war, he moved back to Ukraine, then a republic of the Soviet Union.

Under Soviet leader Josef Stalin, information on lost relatives was kept sealed, and Galezkij said it wasn't until reforms in the late 1980s, followed by the Soviet collapse, that he started making progress in finding his sister.

Even then, it took him more than 17 years to locate her in the United States. He broke down in tears as he spoke of his overwhelming happiness at finding her.

"When the Red Cross told me they had found her in America, it was such a joy," he said, sobbing.

In fact, he had to be taken to the hospital because he was so overcome when he first learned she was alive. At this week's reunion, there was a doctor on hand at the airport as a precaution.

Back in the United States, there were tears, too.

Linda Klein, the director of the American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center, said the volunteer who helped the siblings find each other got caught up in the emotion herself.

"When I showed her the picture, she stood there and wept," Klein said. "She was beside herself."

Klein's group has reunited 1,500 families since it began work in 1990. She said the former Soviet Union released records in 1989 of concentration camps it liberated, greatly helping organizers find information on Holocaust victims.

The organization has 100 volunteers -- a third of them Holocaust survivors, Klein said. The group also helps families find information about their loved ones who died during the Holocaust. They have brought together more than 50 families this year. All of their work is free. She says it's often like "looking for a needle in a haystack."

"We're playing beat the clock right now," she said, adding, "It's about families that one day they were together and then they were apart."

"When a connection is made, there are just smiles all around."

That was the case for this family in Ukraine. Years of trauma, of separation, of not knowing what happened to loved ones, have been replaced by celebration.

In a picturesque orchard overlooking rolling fields, Galezkij, his wife and their neighbors laid out a feast for his American sister. As the vodka flowed, he told her how he had survived for a lifetime without her.

"He says he always thought he'd see me someday. He dreamt lots about me," Famulak said, as she sat next to her brother.

"And he wrote a song for me. When he went to sleep, he sang every night and cried."

With that, Galezkij, weakened by illness and age, burst into song. But this time, he sang the words with pure joy.

*****

It is nice when a sad story has a happy ending isn't it!

China's new Nude Beach

China's new nude beach gaining publicity just in time for the summer Olympics

Great debate is now raging on the Chinese internet about the appearance of a nude beach in Sanya and whether it should be acceptable or not. A reporter found a dozen middle-aged men in a deserted part of the Dadonghai Bay tanning nude and they didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that just a few dozen metres away, regular tourists and families are doing their thing. Tourists and residents interviewed by the reporter also don't seem to be greatly bothered by the presence of nudists on the beach either as long as they stick to their areas.

According to this article from the Hainan News Network, that part of the beach sees as many as 400-500 male and female nudists during peak season. While some local men seem pretty happy to join the crowd in their birthday suits, the females spotted on the beach are all foreigners. As with previous attempts to create nudist spots in Heilongjiang, Sichuan and Zhejiang provinces, the Sanya beach has sparked a huge public outcry, but Hainan tourism officials are neither clamping down on the beach nor actively promoting it as a destination.

While the Sanya beach evolved over the last two years because tourists were flocking to this spot, the last nude beach that received widespread attention in the Chinese media was actually an invention of forward-thinking Hangzhou tourism officials. Although located some 80km away from the provincial capital, the nude beach was quickly shut down by the authorities after a huge controversy broke out.

We'll see how long it lasts ... knowing how the Chinese officialdom works (and it is no different than how 'officialdom' works anywhere) it will either be ignored completely or quashed with the fervent zeal of a fanatic - in any case I''d be willing to lay odds 'ignored' will be the 'official' policy during the Olympics ... afterward ...

Did You Know ...

That F.W. Woolworth, who established his first five-and-dime store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1879, used to check his employee's alertness by shoplifting merchandise from his own stores.

Thought for the Day

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be the right thousand words.

Strange Inspirations

Mother and Child Reunion is a famous Paul Simon song that got its inspiration from a menu item of the same name offered in a restaurant in Chinatown in New York City.

The dish featured chicken and eggs.

An American life? It's worth less today.

It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be.

The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May - a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago.

Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.

When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.

Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted.

Some environmentalists accuse the cabal of changing the value to avoid tougher rules - a charge the EPA denies.

"It appears that they're cooking the books in regards to the value of life," said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents state and local air pollution regulators. "Those decisions are literally a matter of life and death."

Dan Esty, a senior EPA policy official in the administration of the shrub's father and now director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, said: "It's hard to imagine that it has other than a political motivation."

Agency officials say they were just following what the science told them.

The EPA figure is not based on people's earning capacity, or their potential contributions to society, or how much they are loved and needed by their friends and family - some of the factors used in insurance claims and wrongful-death lawsuits.

Instead, economists calculate the value based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks, and on how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks. Most of the data is drawn from payroll statistics; some comes from opinion surveys. According to the EPA, people shouldn't think of the number as a price tag on a life.

The EPA made the changes in two steps. First, in 2004, the agency cut the estimated value of a life by 8 percent. Then, in a rule governing train and boat air pollution this May, the agency took away the normal adjustment for one year's inflation. Between the two changes, the value of a life fell 11 percent, based on today's dollar.

EPA officials say the adjustment was not significant and was based on better economic studies. The reduction reflects consumer preferences, said Al McGartland, director of EPA's office of policy, economics and innovation.

"It's our best estimate of what consumers are willing to pay to reduce similar risks to their own lives," McGartland said.

But EPA's cut "doesn't make sense," said Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi. EPA partly based its reduction on his work. "As people become more affluent, the value of statistical lives go up as well. It has to." Viscusi also said no study has shown that Americans are less willing to pay to reduce risks.

At the same time that EPA was trimming the value of life, the Department of Transportation twice raised its life value figure. But its number is still lower than the EPA's.

EPA traditionally has put the highest value on life of any government agency and still does, despite efforts by administrations to bring uniformity to that figure among all departments.

Not all of EPA uses the reduced value. The agency's water division never adopted the change and in 2006 used $8.7 million in current dollars.

From 1996 to 2003, EPA kept the value of a statistical life generally around $7.8 million to $7.96 million in current dollars, according to reports analyzed by The AP. In 2004, for a major air pollution rule, the agency lowered the value to $7.15 million in current dollars.

Just how the EPA came up with that figure is complicated and involves two dueling analyses.

Viscusi wrote one of those big studies, coming up with a value of $8.8 million in current dollars. The other study put the number between $2 million and $3.3 million. The co-author of that study, Laura Taylor of North Carolina State University, said her figure was lower because it emphasized differences in pay for various risky jobs, not just risky industries as a whole.

EPA took portions of each study and essentially split the difference - a decision two of the agency's advisory boards faulted or questioned.

"This sort of number-crunching is basically numerology," said Granger Morgan, chairman of EPA's Science Advisory Board and an engineering and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University. "This is not a scientific issue."

Other, similar calculations by the cabal have proved politically explosive. In 2002, the EPA decided the value of elderly people was 38 percent less than that of people under 70. After the move became public, the agency reversed itself.

Talk about 'cooking the numbers'!

Woman pleads innocent to killing pregnant woman

Update:

A woman pleaded innocent yesterday to stabbing a pregnant woman to death and cutting the baby out of her womb.

The charge of aggravated first-degree murder against Phiengchai Sisouvanh Synhavong, 23, carries either the death penalty or life in prison without parole, if she is convicted. Prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to seek the death penalty.

Araceli Camacho Gomez, 27, was found dead in a city park on June 27, stabbed multiple times. Her baby had been cut from her body.

Police have said Sisouvanh Synhavong tried to pass off the baby as her own in calls to emergency dispatchers. Authorities have said there was no evidence the women knew each other.

The baby boy is in serious condition at a hospital in Spokane. Camacho Gomez's husband, Juan Campos-Gomez, who was in the court, said he plans to take his wife's body back to Mexico to be buried when it is released.

Sisouvanh Synhavong was granted credentials as a nursing assistant by the state Department of Health in 2005. She applied for renewal of her credentials in March.

The next hearing in the case is set for Aug. 6.

Indonesia executes man for 42 murders

Indonesia executed a man convicted of killing 42 women and girls in a series of ritual slayings he believed would give him magical powers, his lawyer said Friday.

Ahmad Suradji, 57, was killed by firing squad late Thursday in western Indonesia despite a last minute appeal by Amnesty International, a U.K.-based human rights advocacy group that opposes capital punishment in all cases.

"He appeared resigned to his fate," said Attorney General Office's spokesman Bonaventura Nainggolan. "His final wish was to see his wife. We fulfilled this."

Suradji was arrested in May 1997 following the discovery of a body in a field close to his house in Lubukpakan, a village in North Sumatra province. Forty-one other corpses were later found nearby.

Police have said the victims came to Suradji because they believed he had supernatural powers. The victims were believed to have been seeking his help in making their husbands or boyfriends faithful, find a partner or get rich.

He lured them to the field and buried them up to the waist, telling them it was part of the ritual. He then strangled them and buried their bodies with the heads pointing toward his house.

He has told police he believed the 11-year killing spree would boost his magical powers.

Suradji's wife, Tumini, was also sentenced to death for assisting with the murders, but her sentence was later reduced to life in prison.

Belief in sorcery and the supernatural is common across Indonesia, especially in poor, rural areas where education levels are low.

Media reports said authorities were forced to cancel a plan to bury Suradji's body in a public cemetery because up to 100 relatives of his victims were waiting there, planning to disrupt the funeral.

As of Friday morning, his body remained at the morgue of a local hospital.

Indonesia resumed executions in June 2008 after a 14-month hiatus, when two Nigerians were put to death for drug trafficking.

Authorities do not release official statistics on the death penalty, but at least 112 people are known to be under death sentences in Indonesia. The time and place of executions are never made public before they occur.

According to Amnesty International, authorities are preparing to execute at least four other Indonesians. One of them is also a sorcerer, who was found guilty of killing 8 people. The other three are Islamic militants.

*****

The belief that taking the life of another gives the taker the taken one's 'power', 'life force', or what have you is as old as humanity and is just as boneheaded today as it was when the first idiot came up with the idea eons ago. Indonesia could have saved the expense of the bullets used to kill this particular fool - all they had to do was turn him over to the victims relatives that were waiting at the cemetery before hand and they could have carried out the sentence and the internment all at the same time.

Chatter

This installment of CHATTER deals with Trolls.

It seems the subject of internet trolls is again on the forefront of several forums. We all know what they are and in most cases who they are. They are pervasive and they are quick to accuse anyone and everyone else of being exactly what they are.

The chatter is about these individuals and the lack of a life they have. For the most part on the various forums they are absent from the conversations - an odd but welcome respite. On other forums it is the trolls complaining about themselves although they won't admit it - almost every poster on those threads are the very trolls they are whining about ... and that I find to be quite funny.

I have noticed an increase in the most insidious of the internet trolls recently ... that being the oatmeal and tapioca pudding troll - who seek to discourage all but the most banal of banalities on every forum they infest ... they are harder to spot until it is too late in some cases than their flamboyant brethren but are still from under whatever slime covered rock in the fetid swamp they are hatched in to slither out and infest the world from.

So, look carefully when cruising the net because the slow drivers cause the most accident just like they do in the real world.