CAROLINA NATURALLY

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Thirty-Three Years Ago Today

Today In Entertainment History December 8

The Eagles released their "Hotel California" album on December 8, 1976.

SBI Agents Question Incomplete Records In Shaniya Davis Case

Agents are investigating whether child welfare workers turned over complete records of their contacts with the family of the 5-year-old who death was ruled a murder.

Incomplete Records In Shaniya Davis Case

Unusual Holidays and Celebrations

There are no unusual holidays or celebrations today, but ...

There are ONLY 16 more shopping days until xmas!

So be sure not to miss out on the true meaning of the holiday season and not shop-til-ya-drop.

Daily Almanac

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 8, the 342nd day of 2009.

There are 23 days left in the year.

Today In History December 8

Our Readers

Some of our readers today have been in:

Seoul, Kyonggi-Do, Korea
Saarbrucken, Saarland, Germany
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Landskrona, Skane Lan, Sweden
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Stockholm, Stockholms Lan, Sweden
London, England, United Kingdom
Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Calcutta, West Bengal, India

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

You're interested in the ethics of this situation.
The question may be obvious at first, but the answer is deep.
Even if you're not a scholar or an attorney, you feel equipped to dissect this matter down to the bones.
A new decision pushes some familiar old buttons although you might never have been here before.
You learn something all over again once you revisit the beliefs instilled in you from early childhood.
There's more order to the world than you thought.
Clarify your own position by explaining to somebody else how it all fits together.

Will do.

Monday, December 7, 2009

NFL nixes historic Chicago sports ads

The city's Blackhawks and Bears teamed up for a series of commercials, only to be rebuffed.

The objection

Also:

Idea from birds could save aircraft fuel

Airlines could make big cuts in fuel use just by changing how they fly, a study finds.

Safety concern

Also:

Miranda rights warning may be rewritten

The Supreme Court is weighing whether the famous warning given by police is explicit enough.

What may change

Also:

Exercises that can make you look sleek

If you're seeking sculpted shoulders, a lean back, and incredible calves, try these routines.

'Triceps throwdown'

Also:

Seven simple dinners

Make dinner a stress-free event with these easy menus for every day of the week.

Get recipes

Also:

Hyped spaceship for tourists unveiled

After years of buzz and heavy secrecy, the SpaceShipTwo goes public — and clients are lining up.

First passengers

Also:

How to land a work-from-home job

The at-home workforce is booming and includes several new occupations.

Some pay as much as $25 per hour

Also:

Surprise competition threatens repugicans

repugicans have plenty to fear from the right as well as the left, a poll suggests.

Tea Party's rise creates big dilemma

Also:

Poll numbers in detail

Red flags when buying a home

7 red flags when buying a home

Failing to identify these hidden problems could cost you thousands down the line.

Low water pressure

Also:

Walters' White House wrongdoing

Forget the Salahis, Barbara Walters is the latest White House guest stirring up trouble.

But she didn't get caught

Also:

Pentagon's $40K challenge solved in hours

A team of MIT researchers surprises organizers who expected the contest to take days.

Their big task

Also:

Quote of the Day

"The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the axis. the FBI has its finger on those. the dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. with a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

...." if we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful.

... they are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

...."the American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy."

- Vice President Henry Wallace writing the the NYTimes in 1944

*****
Just insert either 'teabagger' or 'wingnut' in lieu of 'fascist' and he could have said the above today.

Eat protein to heal a damaged brain

A diet of chicken, fish and protein shakes might be just the thing for people with brain injuries, suggests a study in mice.

Eat protein to heal a damaged brain

Dinosaur-killing impact set Earth to broil, not burn

An asteroid impact 65 million years ago did not trigger global wildfires after all, new work suggests, leaving open the question of what killed off most of the world's species.

Dinosaur-killing impact set Earth to broil, not burn

Geological News

From BBC-Science:

The UK rocks

The British Geological Survey opens up its image archive containing some 50,000 pictures

Chicago man accused in Mumbai terror attacks

A Chicago man accused of planning an armed attack on a Danish newspaper was charged Monday with conducting surveillance on potential targets in the Indian city of Mumbai before terrorist attacks there in 2008 that killed 166 people.

Full Story

16 Crazy Food Tattoos

Insatiable sweet tooth?
Avowed carnivore?
Meet some foodies who have memorialized their love with food tattoos.

Full Story

Another beef recall

How does salmonella get in beef?

More than 20,000 pounds of beef have been recalled by a California company amid worries the meat is linked to two cases of salmonella, a federal food safety agency said.

Beef Packers Inc., based in Fresno, California, recalled 22,723 pounds of ground beef products produced on September 23, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service said in a statement. The labels on the beef include the establishment number "EST. 31913," the agency said.

Five top AIG employees threaten to quit if their pay is cut

OK. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Like there aren't a lot of people just dying to get their jobs right about now.
The again, I'm not sure how many companies are interested in hiring the geniuses who made AIG what it is today.

Insurance industry insider on compromises from Senate Democrats: We WIN

Ben Smith got an email from an insurance company insider, crowing about the way the Senate Democrats movement on the public option is heading:

"We WIN," the insider writes. "Administered by private insurance companies. No government funding. No government insurance competitor.”

The email from the rest of us is: We LOSE.

More repugican peccadilloes

Georgia's repugican House Speaker Glenn Richardson resigned today, a few days after his ex-wife in a television interview said she knew for a fact that the wingnut had an extramarital affair with a utilities lobbyist even as he championed legislation highly beneficial to the lobbyist's employer.

What made this charge political dynamite is that House Democrats had filed an ethics complaint against Richardson in 2007 making that exact charge, which was briskly dismissed by repugicans.

Is paying for career advice worthwhile?

Enlisting the help of pros may help with your job goals, but it can be a costly endeavor.

Beware of 'fast' promises

Also:

Five CEOs worth their huge salaries

Apple's Steve Jobs made $14.6 million in two years, but the stock also soared 510% in five years.

Also:

Secret Service admits at least 91 breaches

The Salahis aren't the only ones to sneak past a security checkpoint in recent years.

'Family Outing' incident

Also:

Backlash over Amanda Knox verdict

Questions arise over anti-Americanism and the fairness of the Italian courts.

'Strange behavior' key to conviction

Also:

Effects of warmest decade ever

The past three summers alone melted more Arctic ice than any time in modern history, scientists say.

Grim path

Also:

Major record labels rip off 300,000 songs for compilation CDs, may owe $60 billion in damages

Jazz great Chet Baker's estate is suing the major record labels for releasing his music on Canadian CDs without paying compensation (a common practice in Canada, where over 300,000 songs have been released on CD without compensation).
The defendants -- Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada -- have admitted that they owe at least CAD$50 million, but Baker's estate is entitled to up to CAD$60 billion.

The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as "exploit now, pay later if at all." It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences...
It is difficult to understand why the industry has been so reluctant to pay its bills. Some works may be in the public domain or belong to a copyright owner difficult to ascertain or locate, yet the likes of Sarah McLachlan, Bruce Cockburn, Sloan, or the Watchmen are not hidden from view.
The more likely reason is that the record labels have had little motivation to pay up. As the balance has grown, David Basskin, the president and CEO of the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd., notes in his affidavit that "the record labels have devoted insufficient resources for identifying and paying the owners of musical works on the pending lists." The CRIA members now face the prospect of far greater liability.
The class action seeks the option of statutory damages for each infringement. At $20,000 per infringement, potential liability exceeds $60 billion.

Geist: Record industry faces liability over `infringement'

Science News

From BBC-Science:

US deploys balloons... to test accuracy of online spread of info

Have astronomers spotted the coolest exoplanet yet?

THE BIG PICTURE

We're the Monkey Wrench in the System

The entire basis of repugican policies, from the outset, has been to eliminate the concept of the American middle class.

Repugicans want two classes of Americans — rich and powerful, and poor and powerless, with the former telling the latter how to think, what to buy, and how to vote.

Middle class people are a monkey wrench in the system, because they're comfortable and secure enough to read newspapers and be at least nominally aware and involved in politics — and repugicans don't want that.

Another repugican being, well, a repugican

Judd Gregg (reptile-New Hampshire), the troglodyte repugican, has written up a manual for Congressional obstructionism.

Optimists think this will discredit Gregg or repugicans in general, (like that is possible - they have no credit in the first place).

Wal-Mart Screws Its Employees

Under pressure from a class-action lawsuit in Massachusetts, Wal-Mart has agreed to pay employees $40,000,000 as partial restitution for stolen wages.

The Boston Globe mentions in its first paragraph that it's the largest such settlement in state history, but a settlement means a compromise, of course, so the stolen wages were probably far in excess of $40-million.

Yet nobody at Wal-Mart apologizes, admits wrongdoing, or goes to jail.

*****
Same song different day.

BoFA Screws Its Customers

And this is news?

An ex-insider describes how Bank of America screws its customers.

It is interesting the ways they put it to you though.

Historic EPA finding: Greenhouse gases harm humans

EPA: Greenhouse Gases Endanger Human Health

The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people's health and must be regulated, signaling that the Obama administration is prepared to contain global warming without congressional action if necessary.

The Obama administration took a major step Monday toward imposing the first federal limits on climate-changing pollution from cars, power plants and factories, declaring there was compelling scientific evidence that global warming from man-made greenhouse gases endangers Americans' health.

Full Story

Indiana man caught on bike with stolen xmas tree

Authorities said they caught an Indiana man riding a bike while balancing a stolen xmas tree across the handlebars.

Full Story

Russian secret service eyed for climate change email hacks

If true, this would hardly be much of a surprise.
Considering how critical petroleum is to the Russian economy, any substantial change would not be viewed very kindly by the Russians.

From The Independent:

The news that a leaked set of emails appeared to show senior climate scientists had manipulated data was shocking enough. Now the story has become more remarkable still.

The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.

The leaked emails, which claimed to provide evidence that the unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, colluded with colleagues to manipulate data and hide "unhelpful" research from critics of climate change science, were originally posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk, at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business.

56 newspapers around the world carry climate change editorial

It's the same editorial being used around the world as leaders prepare for the Copenhagen talks. Only one - yes, one - newspaper in the US participated.

What a pathetic joke though it shows just how vocal the teabagging, anti-science crowd has become in the US.
How exactly does a country show leadership in the world when there's such a rejection of the modern world?
The teabaggers don't care if the US is the laughing stock of the world, as long as they have their bible.

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.