Friday, May 6, 2011
Dimbulb, like all repugicans, just makes shit up
Dimbulb: "I, Me, My... 3 of the most used words in President Obama's media appearance"
Life satisfaction, state intervention go hand in hand
People living in countries with governments that have a greater number of social services report being more satisfied with life, according to a study by a Baylor University researcher.
Well, that explains why the wingnuts are like they are - they can't be satisfied.
Record floods swamp 8 states
A slow-motion disaster triggered by the overflowing Mississippi River threatens millions.
Also: 
What Do Bosses Do All Day?
Besides pestering you with thankless tasks, what exactly do CEOs do all day? Thanks to a new Harvard Business School study, now we know:Researchers asked the chief executives of 94 Italian firms to have their assistants record their activities for a week. You may take this with a grain of salt. Is the boss’s assistant a neutral observer? If the boss spends his lunch hour boozing, or in a motel with his assistant, will she record this truthfully? Nonetheless, here are the results.
The average Italian boss works for 48 hours a week and spends 60% of that time in meetings. The most diligent put in another 20 hours. And the longer they work, the better the company does.
Less diligent chief executives are more likely to have one-to-one meetings with people from outside the company. The authors speculate that such people are trying to raise their own profile, perhaps to secure a better job. Bosses who work longer hours, by contrast, spend more of them meeting their own employees.
Things They Won't Tell You
Your office mates may secretly resent you for bringing in fattening treats.
Also: Where workers are scarce
U.S. manufacturers are scrambling to fill positions that pay $50,000 to $80,000, plus benefits.
Also: Homes to sell for $1 down
A Florida developer raises fears with a plan to offer $150,000 houses for buyers with a buck.
Also: Ways to pay less for gas
Avoid stations near the highway, which charge 10 to 15 cents extra per gallon.
Also: Feeling sorry for yourself ... break out the plastic
People shop for high status items when they’re feeling low, and they’re more likely to make those expensive purchases on credit, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Food prices higher due to warmer climate
But wait, climate change doesn't really exist so there must be a mistake.
Global warming has already harmed the world's food production and has driven up food prices by as much as 20% over recent decades, new research has revealed.
The drop in the productivity of crop plants around the world was not caused by changes in rainfall but was because higher temperatures can cause dehydration, prevent pollination and lead to slowed photosynthesis.
Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, Washington DC, said the findings indicate a turning point: "Agriculture as it exists today evolved over 11,000 years of reasonably stable climate, but that climate system is no more." Adaptation is difficult because our knowledge of the future is not strong enough to drive new investments, he said, "so we just keep going, hoping for the best."
Generating Electricity with Whiskey
Photo: Murdo MacleodWhisky. Is there anything it can’t do? Here’s what the Scots are going to do with the byproducts of whisky-making process:
It is the spirit that powers the Scottish economy, and now whiskey is to be used to create electricity for homes in a new bioenergy venture involving some of Scotland’s best-known distilleries.Sure gives a new spin on "drunk with power," doesn’t it?
Contracts have recently been awarded for the construction of a biomass combined heat and power plant at Rothes in Speyside that by 2013 will use the by-products of the whiskey-making process for energy production.
Vast amounts of "draff", the spent grains used in the distilling process, and pot ale, a residue from the copper stills, are produced by the whiskey industry each year and are usually transported off-site. The Rothes project, a joint venture between Helius Energy and the Combination of Rothes Distillers (CoRD) will burn the draff with woodchips to generate enough electricity to supply 9,000 homes. It will be supplied by Aalborg Energie Technick, a danish engineering company. The pot ale will be made into a concentrated organic fertilizer and an animal feed for use by local farmers.
Odds and Sods
Talk about a robust wine. A 500-year-old grapevine, an ancestor of Austria's storied gruner veltliner, has survived a vandal's attack and is sending out new shoots after being hacked into pieces two months ago.
Pricey miniature airport
A miniature version of Hamburg's airport goes on display in Germany after 6 years of construction.
Also: Pakistani Homemade Machine Gun Market
From the folks at Vice Magazine comes this mini documentary on the Pakistani Homemade Machine gun market. It gives an in depth look (with photos and video) of how arms are created, bought and sold in that part of the world.
The bulk of Pakistan’s homemade automatic weapons and explosive devices are forged, built and sold at Darra Adamkhel, a village located near Peshawar where main street is an open-air arms market.
Mind-boggling optical illusions
Watch — and be amazed — as these cute bugs appear to move before your eyes.
Also: 'God of Silence' Statues Give Few Hints About Origins
More lost artifacts are being returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo -- some of which the museum never owned.
Paper announces discovery of 1 of earliest minerals formed in solar system
In the May-June issue of the journal American Mineralogist, a team of scientists announced the discovery of the new mineral krotite, one of the earliest minerals formed in our solar system.
It is the main component of an unusual inclusion embedded in …
It is the main component of an unusual inclusion embedded in …
How Many Intelligent Aliens are Out There?
Mark Thompson explores the famous Drake Equation and estimates how many communicating extraterrestrials could be out there.
Listeria has evolved to live in your fridge
Cold cuts are pretty much delicious little hostels for listeria—a bacteria that can cause serious food poisoning, and even kill vulnerable populations like babies, the elderly, and the sick.
That's why doctors advise pregnant women to not eat them, and why the CDC suggests that older people reheat their "cold" cuts to 165 degrees before eating them.
Why are listeria able to get such a foothold on a food product that's already been cooked, and that is generally stored in refrigerators? Shouldn't those two factors impede bacterial growth?
Turns out, this is another case where we have evolution to thank for a public health predicament. Listeria has actually adapted to survive at refrigerator temperatures.
So, all it takes is some improper handling of the meat, somewhere along the production chain, and a little listeria can bloom—inside your fridge—into a potentially serious problem.
Infectious polio virus stolen during car hijacking
A shipment of potentially infectious polio virus destined for a South African research center is missing after the vehicle carrying it was hijacked in Johannesburg.
The potentially deadly virus is considered a biohazard, said South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), though the government research center downplayed the threat of a polio outbreak.
"The risk is fairly small, but we'd like to advise that if the package was found for the public not to tamper with it. Simply return it to the NICD or to the police," said Adrian Puren, deputy director of NICD.
He said there was no risk the package could be used in a terrorist attack and that the carjackers who stole the courier vehicle carrying it probably did not realize what the box contained – stool specimens from the Congo being sent to the NICD for polio testing. The NICD said the vehicle was stolen on Tuesday and later recovered, but that the specimen shipment was missing.
The potentially deadly virus is considered a biohazard, said South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), though the government research center downplayed the threat of a polio outbreak.
"The risk is fairly small, but we'd like to advise that if the package was found for the public not to tamper with it. Simply return it to the NICD or to the police," said Adrian Puren, deputy director of NICD.
He said there was no risk the package could be used in a terrorist attack and that the carjackers who stole the courier vehicle carrying it probably did not realize what the box contained – stool specimens from the Congo being sent to the NICD for polio testing. The NICD said the vehicle was stolen on Tuesday and later recovered, but that the specimen shipment was missing.
Oceans Could Rise 5 Feet by 2100
Melting ice and snow due to climate change has already accounted for 40 percent of recent increases in ocean levels.
Battle Scars Discovered on Dino-Era Sea Monster
The battle scars on the remains of a 120-million-year-old marine reptile suggest ocean life during the time of the dinosaurs was rough.
Chimps have a language all there own
Wild chimpanzees use at least 66 distinct gestures to communicate with each other, according to scientists. Earth News
Amazon dolphins recover from drought
Several months ago, parts of the Amazon rainforest were in the grip of one of the most severe droughts on record.
Scientists Create All-Female Species of Lizard
New all-female lizards, bred in the lab in one generation
We've all heard about those weird lizard species that are all-female and breed parthenogenically—basically, they clone themselves. But how long does it take for natural selection to evolve a species into that state? Apparently, not real long at all. It's just luck of the draw on having the right parents.
In a lab in Kansas, Aracely Lutes has created a new species of all-female lizard that reproduces by cloning itself. There wasn't any genetic engineering involved; Lutes did it with just a single round of breeding ...
Some groups are exceptionally good at making hybrids. ... The North American whiptail lizards (Aspidoscelis) are grandmasters at it. The genomes of the living lizards testify to their weird origins, but it's much harder to actually witness these beginnings. When scientists find first-generation hybrid whiptails in the wild, they're almost always sterile. One group even spent 29 years trying to breed a new hybrid species in the lab, a project that involved 230 lizards, nine species, five sterile hybrids, and zero success.
There has been one tantalizing exception to this catalog of failure. In 1967, William Neaves (who was also involved in this new study) described two eggs that had been laid by a hybrid lizard, the offspring of a Western whiptail (A.inornata) and a Chihuahuan spotted whiptail (A.exsanguis; itself a hybrid). The lizard seemed fertile, but its eggs dried out before they could hatch. No one could prove that the hybrid would truly have raised viable young.
But that was enough for Lutes. She set about trying to breed a hybrid whiptail, using the same combination of parent species that Neaves described.
She succeeded.
Researchers have bred a new species of all-female lizard, mimicking a process that has happened naturally in the past but has never been directly observed.
“It’s recreating the events that lead to new species,” said cell biologist Peter Baumann of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, whose new species is described May 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It relates to the question of how these unisexual species arise in the first place.”
Gray Wolf Removed From Endangered Species List
The 1,300 gray wolves in the Rocky Mountain region are considered recovered and are losing federal protection.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Daily Drift
The Daily Drift
Today's horoscope says:One of the most important skills you still need to master is knowing when to ask for help.
It's important to not immediately call out to friends or coworkers if you feel like you're in over your head.
First take a deep breath and assess your situation.
Chances are things are nowhere near as daunting as you think.
Only when details pile up and obscure your route to success should you send up a signal.
The farther you can go on your own, the better.
Every step teaches you something.
Some of our readers today have been in:
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Jakarta, Jakarta Raya, Indonesia
London, England, United Kingdom
Rennes, Bretagne, France
Gloucester, England, United Kingdom
Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Wurzburg, Bayern, Germany
Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia
Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Cork, Cork, Ireland
Pakanbaru, Riau, Indonesia
Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Moscow, Moskva, Russia
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Jakarta, Jakarta Raya, Indonesia
London, England, United Kingdom
Rennes, Bretagne, France
Gloucester, England, United Kingdom
Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Wurzburg, Bayern, Germany
Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia
Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Cork, Cork, Ireland
Pakanbaru, Riau, Indonesia
Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Moscow, Moskva, Russia
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
as well as Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Israel, Finland, Austria, Norway, Georgia, Mexico, Peru, Kuwait, Serbia, Bangladesh, Latvia, Greece, Scotland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Wales, Iran, Singapore, Poland, Taiwan, Sweden, Afghanistan, Belgium, Tibet, Croatia, Pakistan, Romania, Paraguay, Sudan, Vietnam, Argentina, Cambodia, Egypt, France, Estonia, Puerto Rico, Maldives, Qatar, Brazil, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Slovenia, China, Iraq, Ecuador, Nigeria, Colombia, Chile, Honduras, Paupa New Guinea, Moldova, Venezuela, Germany, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Vietnam, Norway, Finland
and in cities across the United States such as Houston, Oakland, Cordova, Buffalo and more.
and in cities across the United States such as Houston, Oakland, Cordova, Buffalo and more.
Today is:
Today is Thursday, May 5, the 125th day of 2011.
There are 240 days left in the year.
Today's unusual holidays or celebrations are:
Cartoonists Day
Martin Z. Mollusk Day
National Day of Reason
Totally Chipotle Day
and
Cinco De Mayo.
Don't forget to visit our sister blog!
Field of Poppies is Most Popular Mother's Day Picture
Photo: artdaily, Poppy Field in Argenteuil, Monet
The people have spoken and Monet's Poppy Field in Argenteuil turns out to be the most popular piece of art for Mother's Day this year. An online art gallery has taken a poll of the most popular picture for mom and two million surfers of the net responded with a click for this beautiful field of red poppies. Mother and child pictures were popular but nature won.
Article continues: Field of Poppies is Most Popular Mother's Day Picture
The Prettiest towns in America
Stunning scenery and lots of activities make these must-see places stand out.
Also: 
Mozilla tells DHS: we won't help you censor the Internet
The US Department of Homeland Security has asked the Mozilla Foundation to take down the "Mafiaa Fire" plugin, which automatically redirects browsers to the new URLs for sites that have had their .com and .net addresses seized in the latest round of the copyright wars. The Mozilla Foundation has firmly refused.
However, where ICE might have expected a swift take down from Mozilla, the legal and business affairs department of the tech company was not planning to honor the request so easily. "Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order," Anderson explains.
According to Anderson complying with the request without any additional information would threaten open Internet principles. So, instead of taking the add-on offline they replied to ICE with a set of 11 well-crafted questions.
Looser security rules for fliers
Some fliers could keep their shoes on during airport security checks.
Also: Pro-Gaddafi forces fire on humanitarian ship in Misrata
The UN is going to have a lot more to work with for their crimes against humanity case.
The Guardian:
The Guardian:
The Red Star 1, a ferry chartered by the International Organization for Migration, had been forced to wait outside Misrata for four days after loyalist troops planted sea mines and pounded the harbor with missiles.
The port controller has finally given the ship the go-ahead to dock following a lull in shelling. But as containers of food and medical supplies were being unloaded from the ship, up to a dozen missiles were fired into the area of the port where migrant workers were gathered.
Witnesses said one missile hit a Nigerian or Ghanaian family, killing at least two children and their mother. Others said that the father and a third child had also died.
All you can say is ... Idiots
A South Carolina man who called police to complain that his cocaine dealer gave him the wrong change was in custody Thursday.
A Texas teacher is suspended after teasing Muslim student about bin Laden's death.
A Texas teacher is suspended after teasing Muslim student about bin Laden's death.
Man jailed for cowbell assault
A man alleged to have assaulted a Mississippi State student with a cowbell in 2009 was sentenced to 45 days in jail and a $500 fine after pleading guilty to a reduced assault charge on Monday in Oktibbeha County Circuit Court.
Brent Vowell withdrew his original not guilty plea and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor simple assault, a reduced charge from felony aggravated assault. A six-month sentence was reduced to 45 days based on future good behavior, according to a sentencing order signed by Circuit Judge Jim Kitchens. He will serve his sentence on weekends for the next two years starting on May 13.
Vowell was arrested and charged with aggravated assault after William Matthew Brasher suffered a head wound during an incident that occurred at the Egg Bowl on Nov. 28, 2009. Brasher and Vowell were students at the time of the incident. Brasher claims he suffered a 4-inch laceration when struck in the head with a steel cowbell, according to court documents related to a civil lawsuit. The separate civil suit is in the process of discovery.
Oxford attorney Doug Foster received approval from the court to add Mississippi State University and Event Operations Group to the suit as defendants last month. The lawsuit also lists the Southeastern Conference and Vowell as defendants. The suit seeks unspecified damages from the SEC and commissioner Mike Slive because the league had a "knowing refusal," the suit says, to enforce its own rule on artificial noisemakers.
Brent Vowell withdrew his original not guilty plea and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor simple assault, a reduced charge from felony aggravated assault. A six-month sentence was reduced to 45 days based on future good behavior, according to a sentencing order signed by Circuit Judge Jim Kitchens. He will serve his sentence on weekends for the next two years starting on May 13.
Vowell was arrested and charged with aggravated assault after William Matthew Brasher suffered a head wound during an incident that occurred at the Egg Bowl on Nov. 28, 2009. Brasher and Vowell were students at the time of the incident. Brasher claims he suffered a 4-inch laceration when struck in the head with a steel cowbell, according to court documents related to a civil lawsuit. The separate civil suit is in the process of discovery.
Oxford attorney Doug Foster received approval from the court to add Mississippi State University and Event Operations Group to the suit as defendants last month. The lawsuit also lists the Southeastern Conference and Vowell as defendants. The suit seeks unspecified damages from the SEC and commissioner Mike Slive because the league had a "knowing refusal," the suit says, to enforce its own rule on artificial noisemakers.
Do you remember ...
41 years ago today ...
An article at the National Press Photographers Association provides context and an update on the current lives of John Filo, the photographer who would win the Pulitzer Prize, and Mary Vecchio, a 14-year-old girl whose reaction was captured on Tri-X film that day.
On The Job
Train for jobs in these fields and you won’t be squeezed into a cubicle.
Also: I'm afraid of my paycheck: The most feared workplace phobias
A 1,000 Miles and $9.00 a Gallon
The fuel numbers on GM's electric car are impressive, but there’s one catch.
Also: $9.00 Gasoline
In the U.S.: Rental car gas prices hit more than $9 a gallon.But don't forget:The price of gasoline has reached more than $9 a gallon for drivers who don't pay ahead of time and who return their rental cars without a full tank.
A USA TODAY survey of auto rental gas prices at 13 big airports on April 25 found Hertz was charging $9.29 a gallon at all 13. Dollar and Thrifty were charging $8.99 a gallon at two.
At $9.29 a gallon, Hertz customers renting a Ford Club Wagon, which has a 35-gallon fuel tank, would owe Hertz $325.15 for gas if they returned the wagon with a nearly empty tank and hadn't prepaid for the gas.
Renters who pay ahead of time for a tank of gas from Hertz or another car rental company, though, may find the per-gallon price cheaper than at many local gas stations.So you'll want to return the car with only 7-8 drops remaining.
Fortune 500 surprises
It's no wonder oil refiners are prospering, but one mortgage company managed to crack the top 10.
Also: State pensions in worst shape
These ten public funds face the most trouble, according to a new study.
Also: Big shift in U.S. millionaires
Despite the recession, experts predict a doubling in the number of seven-figure families.
Also: There's homes and then there's homes
Mansions such as a 123-room estate with a barbershop list for more than $50 million apiece.
Also: The Crop Circle House
The Aliens may have been trying to tell us something by leaving those crop circles all those years; crop circles would be a neat design for a house. Jolson Architecture in Australia got the message by designing the Earth House. See link for gallery images.
Savings moves that don't pay
Good intentions can become brutally expensive if you set unrealistic expectations.
Also: Simple fixes for tech problems
Extend battery life, find deleted photos, and improve your Wi-Fi with these easy tips.
Also: What Is The Hardest Language To Learn?
Here's a look at which languages are easiest and most difficult for English speakers to pick up.
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