At Least One Office Will Remain Open During the Hurricane

Hurricane Sandy is about to hit the eastern coast of the United States. But the guards at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, Virginia have sworn:

Through the years of diligence and praise and the discomfort of the elements, I will walk my tour in humble reverence to the best of my ability.

They have stood continuous watch since April 6, 1948. They will continue.
More

HMS Bounty Sinks in Sandy

Crew rescued, two missing

The 180-foot wooden ship HMS Bounty sank in high seas off the coast of North Carolina. Read more

Ye olde hurricane analysis

The above is an excerpt from the entry on hurricanes in A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, published in 1763 by the delightfully named "A Society of Gentlemen".
The entry contains information on how natives of the Caribbean were said to be able to predict hurricanes — portents that center around the color of the sky and the phases of the Moon. I'm curious whether any meteorology fans and experts out there can offer insight on that. Read the full entry. (It's short.) And let me know. Does this sound like stuff that would line up with what we know about hurricanes today?
Also: Helpful tip. "F" is pronounced "S" here.

Old Timey Medical treatments Inspired by Your Nightmares

A hundred years ago, the state of medical knowledge was a bit thin by our standards, but it was much better than what came before. A list at Cracked makes us glad to live in the time we do, despite the price of health insurance. You are probably familiar with some of the frightening treatments on the list, but some may be new to you, like the practice of stuffing balls into a person's lung. I am not making this up.

It was a procedure called plombage, which was the process of collapsing a person's lungs with acrylic balls to allow them to "rest" and heal the lesions caused by tuberculosis. The drawback to this therapy was that sometimes the balls were never taken back out, which led to infection, sepsis and other serious complications related to having your lung tissue inundated with balls made of the same material used to craft RuPaul's fingernails.

There are other treatments that are illustrated with pictures that may be disturbing. More

The legend of Sleepy Hollow

The entire 1949 Disney work that was banned.

The Great New England Vampire Panic

Although European vampire panics died out in the 1700s, America had its share of scares in the 1800s, particularly in New England, and particularly during outbreaks of tuberculosis. Some of the dead were dug up and killed a second time, just to make sure.

The particulars of the vampire exhumations, though, vary widely. In many cases, only family and neighbors participated. But sometimes town fathers voted on the matter, or medical doctors and clergymen gave their blessings or even pitched in. Some communities in Maine and Plymouth, Massachusetts, opted to simply flip the exhumed vampire facedown in the grave and leave it at that. In Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, though, they frequently burned the dead person’s heart, sometimes inhaling the smoke as a cure. (In Europe, too, exhumation protocol varied with region: Some beheaded suspected vampire corpses, while others bound their feet with thorns.)

Often these rituals were clandestine, lantern-lit affairs. But, particularly in Vermont, they could be quite public, even festive. One vampire heart was reportedly torched on the Woodstock, Vermont, town green in 1830. In Manchester, hundreds of people flocked to a 1793 heart-burning ceremony at a blacksmith’s forge: “Timothy Mead officiated at the altar in the sacrifice to the Demon Vampire who it was believed was still sucking the blood of the then living wife of Captain Burton,” an early town history says. “It was the month of February and good sleighing.”

Yes, it happened in several states, a lot more often than one would suspect in 19th-century America. Read about these incidents in Smithsonian magazine's extensive article about American vampires. More

Extremely Silly Photos of Extremely Serious Historical Figures

It's always nice to catch a glimpse of VIPs doing things everyday normal people do. This image of Tsar Nicholas II playing airplane made me wonder whether the guy supporting him was really a "friend" or a subject forced to carry him -but the source gallery at Retronaut labels him as a fellow royal. Other celebrities in the list at Flavorwire include Albert Einstein, Joe Stalin, Richard Nixon, Franklin Roosevelt, and more. More

Four Stories Of Alleged Time Travelers

Is it possible to travel through time? Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the need for the traveler to experience the intervening period (at least not at the normal rate).

Although time travel has been a common plot device in science fiction and the theories of special and general relativity allow methods for forms of one-way travel into the future via time dilation, it is currently unknown whether the laws of physics would allow time travel into the past. We may never know, but in the meantime we can at least enjoy a good laugh at those who would have us believe they've cracked the code.

The Stark Beauty of Arizona’s Petrified Forest

From the painted desert badlands to the rainbow-colors of petrified wood, the Petrified Forest is one national park you won't want to miss. More

Thai man caught with 16 tiger cubs in truck

Thai authorities have arrested a lorry driver after 16 tiger cubs were discovered in the back of his vehicle. The man was stopped near the border with Laos after avoiding a police checkpoint.

The driver told police he had been paid 15,000 baht ($490; £300) to transport the cubs. Thailand is one of the centers of the illegal trade in tigers. Tiger body parts are prized in many parts of Asia for their reputed medicinal properties.

The cubs were found packed into eight plastic crates. The driver now faces the possibility of a four-year jail term or a fine of 40,000 baht ($1,300; £800) on wildlife-smuggling charges. The animals are now in the care of wildlife officials.

YouTube link.

Only six subspecies of tiger remain in the wild, with fewer than 1,000 tigers thought to be left in each group. Earlier this year, heads of police and customs from 13 countries with wild tiger populations agreed to tighten controls and improve cross-border co-operation to combat smuggling.

Hermit Crabs Socialize To Evict Their Neighbors

Social animals usually congregate for protection or mating or to capture bigger prey, but a University of California, Berkeley, biologist has found that the terrestrial hermit crab has a more self-serving social agenda: to kick another crab out of its shell and move into a larger home.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Yes, do ...

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Durban, South Afica

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Zagreb, Croatia

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Lublin, Poland

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Islamabad, Pakistan

Warsaw, Poland

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Today in History

312		Constantine the Great defeats Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius at the Mulvian Bridge.
969		After a prolonged siege, the Byzantines end 300 years of Arab rule in Antioch.
1216		Henry III of England is crowned.
1628		After a fifteen-month siege, the Huguenot town of La Rochelle surrenders to royal forces.
1636		Harvard College, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, is founded in Cambridge, Mass.
1768		Germans and Acadians join French Creoles in their armed revolt against the Spanish governor of New Orleans.
1793		Eli Whitney applies for a patent on the cotton gin, a machine which cleans the tight-clinging seeds from short-staple cotton easily and effectively–a job which was previously done by hand.
1863		In a rare night attack, Confederates under Gen. James Longstreet attack a Federal force near Chattanooga, Tennessee, hoping to cut their supply line, the "cracker line." They fail.
1886		The Statue of Liberty, originally named Liberty Enlightening the World, is dedicated at Liberty Island, N. Y., formerly Bedloe's Island, by President Grover Cleveland
1901		Race riots sparked by Booker T. Washington's visit to the White House kill 34.
1904		The St. Louis police try a new investigation method: fingerprints.
1914		The German cruiser Emden, disguised as a British ship, steams into Penang Harbor near Malaya and sinks the Russian light cruiser Zhemchug.
1914		George Eastman announces the invention of the color photographic process.
1919		Over President Wilson's veto, Congress passes the National Prohibition Act, or Volstead Act, named after its promoter, Congressman Andrew J. Volstead. It provides enforcement guidelines for the Prohibition Amendment.
1927		Pan American Airways launches the first scheduled international flight.
1940		Italy invades Greece, launching six divisions on four fronts from occupied Albania.
1944		The first B-29 Superfortress bomber mission flies from the airfields in the Mariana Islands in a strike against the Japanese base at Truk.
1960		In a note to the OAS (Organization of American States), the United States charges that Cuba has been receiving substantial quantities of arms and numbers of military technicians" from the Soviet bloc.

Non Sequitur

Marco Rubio not told daughter was in accident until after rally for Romney

We need to know more, but I do find it interesting that no one reportedly told repugican Senator Marco Rubio that his daughter was airlifted to a hospital in stable condition following a car accident until AFTER he was done doing a campaign rally with Mitt Romney.Miami Herald:

Rubio was notified of the accident after coming off stage while campaigning with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Kissimmee.

The Washington Post has the same story. And the AP is reporting that Rubio was informed after coming off stage AFTER the rally was over.
I don’t know about you, but if my child were in a car accident, and in bad enough shape that she needed to be airlifted, I’d like to know immediately, not after I’m done campaigning for Mitt Romney.
It will be interesting to see whose staff, Rubio’s or Romney’s, made the decision not to tell Rubio that his daughter was laying on a stretcher until after he was done giving his campaign speech for Mitt Romney.
No matter which 'camp' it was it shows how 'compassionate' repugicans truly are - which is to say not compassionate at all.

More repugican lies ...

Well, what do you know, it turns out that tax cuts for the top 5% does nothing to create jobs.

It's just another repugican lie - but we knew that anyway.

Obama 74.4% chance of winning, Romney 25.6%

Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight and the NYT keeps showing Obama with an increasing chance of winning the election.  Obama’s chances versus Romney’s are currently 74.4% to 25.6%.

[W]e may be approaching the point where the state polls will have to be systematically biased toward Mr. Obama in order for Mr. Romney to have strong chances of prevailing on Election Day.

 

Nate’s graph shows Obama’s chances steadily improving since October 13/14.
It’s interesting to note that Nate and HuffPost say the race is virtually tied, in terms of votes, but not according to electoral votes.  And if you look at HuffPo’s electoral map, you can see why.  At this point, Romney has to win more than is likely in order to pull it off – meaning, he has to win ever state where he has strong support (191 electoral votes), every state that leans his way (15), every tossup state (55), and he’d still be 9 electoral votes short of winning.

That’s not to say it’s impossible, but a lot has to go Romney’s way for him to win.
Politico’s Mike Allen is saying that this could be the closest race in our lifetimes:

 If you’re a political junkie, enjoy it, soak it in: In our lifetimes, there may never be another  race that looks this close for the final two weekends.

The Huffington Post also has an interesting piece up about how Hurricane Sandy might affect the election (in case you’ve been living under a rock, there’s a massive storm heading to the East Coast that’s freaking everyone over here out). The head of Gallup is worried that the storm might make it difficult to correctly poll people who live out east.

Newport, appearing on MSNBC’s “Jansing & Co.,” responded to a question from Chris Jansing about the potential impact of the storm on Gallup’s polling by saying, “It affects us, because if a sizable hunk of the country can’t communicate — power’s out or they’re disrupted — then that can affect our national estimate. So you’re right, we might have to stop polling for the days when the storm hits, unfortunately.”

I also wonder how the storm might impede any early voting, and also it will steal the news cycle away from the candidates – though not entirely.  The President will have to weigh in, and possible tour the area – that could help or hurt depending on whether it’s seen as empathetic or opportunistic.  As for Mr. Romney, expect him to be holding lots of press conferences in people’s flooded interviews announcing that he’s there to help.

A 108-year-old to vote for first time

South Carolina woman grew up during Jim Crow laws

 A 108-year-old woman plans to vote in her first election next month, and the South Carolina woman spoke about what inspired her to cast a ballot after so many years.
"I feel good," said Joanna Jenkins.
For decades, Joanna has watched elections come and go. But something, and someone, is standing out about this election, and she is using her right to vote for the very first time.
"She's just excited. She wants to vote this year,” said cousin Shirley Lee. “We were looking at the elections, and as the debates were going on, she decided -- say, 'I want to vote,' all of a sudden. She just wants to vote. She just decided that she wants to vote. She's excited to vote."
Because she can't read or write and does not have a state-issued ID, Joanna’s family didn't think she'd be eligible to vote. But thanks to help from their family doctor and the Beaufort County Board of Elections, she's now registered as an absentee voter.
But elections officials said her case is extremely unusual.
"It's incredible,” said Scott Marshall, Beaufort County election director. “She grew up in a time when Jim Crow laws were fully in effect, and minority voter suppression was the norm. And to vote was a fight, not a right, at that time. So for her to be voting now is a great example to others that it's never too late to vote, and you should always exercise your right to vote."
"She was telling everyone, everybody that came by to visit, she was just telling everybody, 'I'm going to vote! I'm going vote! I'm going vote!' So this year, she's going do it,” said Lee.
For Joanna, there's no better time than now to start her voting record, and who gets her vote?  Obama.

US more racist now than before Obama, poll shows

Not so surprisingly, four years of racist hate from the tea party and mainstream repugicans has come with a price: a new poll shows that racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008.Day after day, year after year, they spew hate and the repugican cabal leadership and much of the media fails to call them out for what they are.

 

Though they’re wearing American flag shirts or Paul Revere costumes, it’s not an overstatement to say these people hate America and what we used to stand for.
They’re against change, they’re terrified of the future, they detest science, and are as closed minded as the Taliban. Besides being generally ignorant, and not very bright, they control almost 50% of the politicians in Washington. How embarrassing for our country.
The added insult from these knuckle-draggers is that they will probably be blaming Obama for the increase in racism, rather than looking in the mirror and accepting what putrid hate mongers they are.

Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.
Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people’s more favorable views of blacks.
Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

Fearful Kids More Likely to Become Wingnuts

People raised by parents who value obedience are more likely to vote wingnut, research suggests. Read more

Why Do Children Think Covering Their Eyes Makes Them Invisible?

Anyone who has ever engaged in a round of peekaboo with a child has witnessed an adorable yet somewhat illogical behavior that is nearly universally shared among children: the attempt to hide from view by simply closing their eyes. This is cute and all, but it's also baffling.

Why do children think they can render themselves invisible? And why have nearly all young children come to this same irrational conclusion? Cambridge researchers are finding out why.

Differences That Confuse Us All

Do you know the difference between a boat and ship? A ghost and a ghoul? Speed and velocity, or a pill and a tablet? English can be a very confusing language - with similar terms for different things and different terms for similar things.
Here's a selection of 20 things that have vastly different names for things we consider the same - but as you will see, in most cases they are completely different.

World's Worst Prisons

Hard time is a lot harder in any of these jails.  
Read more

Assault suspect had victim's ear in his pocket

A Tulsa, Oklahoma, man is being held in lieu of $50,500 bond after police found part of an ear in his pocket. Joseph Sidney Hall Jr., 24, was booked on Friday morning on complaints of domestic assault and battery, kidnapping, maiming and obstructing an officer.
Police say the mother of Hall's son contacted them after she escaped from the Braden Creek Apartments where she said she was being held against her will. The victim had been severely assaulted and had contusions to her face, head, torso, arms and legs, according to a police report.

The woman also had several bite marks on her body, broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Part of her right ear had been cut or torn off, the arresting officer states.

Police went to Hall's apartment they took him into custody. Officers say they found blood stains and clumps of hair consistent with the victim's. When they booked Joseph Hall into the Tulsa County Jail, police say they found the missing part of the victim's ear in his pocket. Hall has a tattoo that says "misunderstood," police noted in their report.

Pro Tip

Don't Rob Banks Where the Tellers Know You By Name  

Especially if you're on a first-name basis with them:

During one robbery the teller actually recognized her, asking Heffernan, “Do you want to make a deposit Kerri?”

No, Kerri wanted to make a withdrawal. But before she could complete the transaction, police in Whitman, Massachusetts arrested her for this bank robbery and on suspicion of three others.

More

Man who lost pants while stealing iPads found hiding in dog house

When Brad Storck fled Sheriff's deputies from Orangevale Open K-8 School, California, with four stolen iPads, he left behind something important: his pants.  Storck's crime occurred on Wednesday, Oct. 17 at around 2:47am. According to a report filed by Sacramento County Sheriff's Department deputies, officers were dispatched to a silent alarm call at the school where they saw Storck casually walking away from the school.

Seeing the deputies, Storck, 35, made a snap-decision. "When deputies first arrived in the area in response to the call, one of them observed Storck hiding behind a tree," said Sheriff's Sgt. Jason Ramos. Once deputies observed Storck hiding out, he took off running and the chase was on, Ramos said. Storck took off westbound through yards, hopping fences and dropping the iPads in the process. It's also around that time Storck dropped his pants.

"We assume that he lost his shorts as he was fleeing, or simply ditched them to be wearing something different than what he was first seen wearing (because we also recovered his sweatshirt along the way)," Ramos said. Storck managed to briefly elude deputies till a K9 officer's dog found him hiding in a doghouse approximately one block south of the fence he jumped, Ramos said.

"After he was caught, a deputy returned to the place he was first seen and found four iPads. It does not appear that he had any kind of bag to carry them in," Ramos said. Storck was booked at Sacramento County's main jail where he faces felony burglary charges. According to the school, the four I-pads are all that were taken and all recovered. Ramos added that Storck's shorts were later found in a yard southwest of the fence.

There's a short news video here.

Russian man refuses to pay traffic fine over Doomsday fears

A Kemerovo region resident has refused to pay a fine after getting into a traffic accident because of the upcoming apocalypse.
The unnamed resident was issued a 1,000 ruble fine (£20, $32) for being involved in a minor car accident, but he dismissed it as meaningless and declined to pay.

He wrote a 10-page explanation of his decision, saying that “according to his calculations the Doomsday will come at the end of the year, and the payment would be pointless,” regional court marshals said in a statement. Every day he visits a court marshal to back his predictions with “schemes, drawings and graphs,” the marshals said.

“The debtor thinks that if people become kinder to each other and forgive debts, then the Doomsday won’t happen,” court marshal Irina Felzinger said. She didn’t say whether officials backed his opinion. According to myth, the Maya predicted the Doomsday would occur on Dec. 21.

Mayans Pissed Off Over Doomsday 'Deceit'

A Mayan group has criticized the Guatemalan government's handling of the "doomsday" nonsense that is misrepresenting their beliefs and culture. Read more

What Happened at the OK Corral?

What Happened at the OK Corral?

The Gunfight at the OK Corral is perhaps the best-known incident in the Old West. But what happened?

How Vikings Really Fought

Hollywood is guilty of twisting our perception of reality in many areas, and sword fighting is one of the biggest. See how the Vikings really fought with swords in this Gotta-See Video. Read more

Archaeologists: Hadrian's Wall Was an Economic Boon to Ancient Britons

Hadrian's Wall is a 73-mile set of fortifications built across northern Roman Britain to protect it from raiding Picts. It was very costly to the Empire. But according to a 2008 article in the Telegraph, local Celts found it a highly profitable venture:

Mr MacLeod, senior investigator for English Heritage's aerial survey and investigating team, said: "Having got over the first shock of the invasion and occupation the native population began to see the potential created by the presence of the Roman garrison.
"The building of the wall appears to have provided a boost to the local economy. A sophisticated network seems to have grown up to supply the new market created by the occupation."
He said the survey found photographic evidence of several farmsteads and field networks on either side of the wall which would have adapted themselves to supply crops, livestock and other raw materials, such as leather, to the Romans.

More

Easter Island Statues Could Have 'Walked'

The massive statues can be moved side to side like refrigerators by a small number of people, researchers found. Read more

Earth's Magnetic Field Made Quick Flip-Flop

Earth's magnetic field reversed extremely rapidly soon after modern humans first arrived in Europe, completely flip-flopping in less than a thousand years. Read more

Ancestor Lucy Spent Time in Trees

Our closest relative 3.3 million years ago was a half-human, half-ape who could both walk on the ground and swing through trees. Read more

Deer goes on rampage after breaking into office

Workers at a Jackson, Mississippi business got a break-in they didn't expect. "The last thing you expect to do, is come to work and find a large deer standing behind your desk," said Margie Purvis. The deer crashed through a double paned window and found his way to the break room where employees locked him in.

The 80 pound spike was not happy with the room layout. He knocked over tables and chairs and even tried to leap on top of cabinets to escape. Employees stayed at bay until Animal Control arrived, but even they were caught off guard. After a few minutes of planning, an animal control officer went in and eventually came out with a bloody and tired deer.

As Animal Control led the deer to freedom outside, employees examined the damage left behind inside. "He trashed it. We definitely need a paint job and a carpet cleaner," said Richard Lingle. Workers say they may never know why the deer decided to crash into their workplace.

"The deer could have been chased by something and ran through the glass, or he could have seen himself and wanted to fight, I mean you don't know," said Lingle. Animal Control officials say the deer had a few cuts from his run in with the window, however they expect him to make a full recovery back out in the woods.

New Ladybug Tucks Head Like Turtle

This new ladybug, discovered by a graduate student, can tuck its head into it's throat like a turtle. Read more

Rarest dog genetically vulnerable

Rarest dog genetically vulnerable

Populations of the world's rarest dog, the Ethiopian wolf, are genetically fragmenting, scientists have found. BBC Nature

• Race to save world's rarest wolf
• Vaccine hopes for Ethiopian wolf

The Gharial

Good News For The Critically Endangered Indian Crocodile?

This strange looking creature, with its immensely long and delicate snout is the gharial (Gavialis gangeticus). Until very recently it thrived throughout the Indian sub-continent but now it numbers less than a few hundred in the wild. It seems destined for extinction, like so many other species. Is there a future for the gharial on earth?

How To: Fish in the desert

In the United Arab Emirates, a freshwater lake has appeared in the middle of the desert. The oasis is beautiful and full of life, and it's risen 35 feet since 2011. It's also probably accidentally man-made.
Hydrologists believe the lake formed from recycled drinking water (and toilet water). The nearby city of Al Ain pumps in desalinated sea water, uses it for drinking and flushing the toilet, cleans it in a sewage treatment plant, and then re-uses it to water plants. All of that water ends up in the soil and, at the lake site, it comes back up.
The water is clean, writes Ari Daniel Shapiro at NPR. Don't worry about that. Instead, the major side-effect of the lake is change, as scientists watch the desert ecosystem that used to exist on the site decline, and a new one rise to take its place. It's a great story that shows how complicated discussions about ecology can be. On the one hand, you're losing something valuable. At least in this one spot. On the other hand, you're definitely gaining something valuable, too.

"With every species that we lose, it's like rolling the dice. The whole ecosystem could crash down," Howarth says.
But Clark, with the U.S. Geological Survey, says he's not so worried about the desert ecosystem. He says the lake is tiny compared to the vast amount of desert in this part of the world. "If I look through the binoculars, there's, like, seven different kinds of herons. There's greater cormorants. There's ferruginous ducks, which are another very rare worldwide species," Clark says. "There's about 15 of them out here."
This year, three types of birds bred at this lake. They've never been able to breed before in the United Arab Emirates. But this lake, and the others like it, have changed all that. There are fish appearing in these lakes as well. Fish eggs cling to the feet and legs of the herons. So as the birds shuttle between old and new lakes, the eggs fall off and hatch. That's how you get fish in a desert.

Read the full story at NPR

Capturing Birds In Flight

A shot of a bird in flight has always been a challenge to photographers. Seeing a perfect print image only serves to make them eager to create the same result. Photographing a bird in flight presents one problem, but capturing that one special bird-in-flight shot that's in focus and has good composition plus good light can represent a whole set of problems.

Everyone has his share of good flight shots where the bird may be just a tiny bit soft. Those are easy. But, how do you get a great flight shot?

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

 "Nuff Said!"

Some of our readers today have been in:

Cebu City, Philippines

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia

Lima, Peru

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Bangkok, Thailand

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Cape Town, South Africa

Ampang, Malaysia

San Juan, Puerto Rico

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Today in History

97		To placate the Praetorians of Germany, Nerva of Rome adopts Trajan, the Spanish-born governor of lower Germany.
1553		Michael Servetus, who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood, is burned for heresy in Switzerland.
1612		A Polish army that invaded Russia capitulates to Prince Dimitri Pojarski and his Cossacks.
1806		Emperor Napoleon enters Berlin.
1809		President James Madison orders the annexation of the western part of West Florida. Settlers there had rebelled against Spanish authority.
1862		A Confederate force is routed at the Battle of Georgia Landing, near Bayou Lafourche in Louisiana.
1870		The French fortress of Metz surrenders to the Prussian Army.
1873		Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applies for a patent on barbed wire. Glidden eventually received five patents and is generally considered the inventor of barbed wire.
1891		D. B. Downing, inventor, is awarded a patent for the street letter (mail) box.
1904		The New York subway officially opens running from the Brooklyn Bridge uptown to Broadway at 145th Street.
1907		The first trial in the Eulenberg Affair ends in Germany.
1917		20,000 women march in a suffrage parade in New York. As the largest state and the first on the East Coast to do so, New York has an important effect on the movement to grant all women the vote in all elections.
1922		In Italy, liberal Luigi Facta's cabinet resigns after threats from Mussolini that "either the government will be given to us or we will seize it by marching on Rome." Mussolini calls for a general mobilization of all Fascists.
1927		Fox Movie-tone news, the first sound news film, is released.
1941		In a broadcast to the nation on Navy Day, President Franklin Roosevelt declares: "America has been attacked, the shooting has started." He does not ask for full-scale war yet, realizing that many Americans are not yet ready for such a step.
1962		Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev offers to remove Soviet missile bases in Cuba if the U.S. removes its missile bases in Turkey.

Non Sequitur

Frankenstorm

Hurricane Sandy is roaring through the Caribbean and is expected to inch up the East Coast of the US, landing in New York City early next week. A winter storm is brewing in the west, and is expected to reach New York City early next week. A mass of Arctic air is rushing down from the north, and is expected to reach New York City early next week. What happens when these weather events collide? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dubbed it "Frankenstorm." And according to NOAA forecaster Jim Cisco, it won't be just New York that will be affected: the storm may cover a large part of the East Coast and reach inland as far as Ohio.

Coastal areas from Florida to Maine will feel some effects, mostly from the hurricane part, he said, and the other parts of the storm will reach inland from North Carolina northward.

"It will get broader. It won't be as intense, but its effects will be spread over a very large area," the hurricane center's chief hurricane specialist, James Franklin, said Thursday.

One of the more messy aspects of the expected storm is that it just won't leave. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say. Weather may start clearing in the mid-Atlantic Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 in the Northeast, Cisco said.

"It's almost a weeklong, five-day, six-day event," Cisco said Thursday from NOAA's northern storm forecast center in near Washington. "It's going to be a widespread serious storm."

Read more about Frankenstorm. here

The TSA is now giving tips to terrorists

Sometimes I feel like people are being too mean to the TSA. (NOT)
Then one read stories like this, from the Washington Post the other day:

Flight enthusiasts, however, recently discovered that the bar codes printed on all boarding passes — which travelers can obtain up to 24 hours before arriving at the airport — contain information on which security screening a passenger is set to receive.
Details about the vulnerability spread after John Butler, an aviation blogger, drew attention to it in a post late last week. Butler said he had discovered that information stored within the bar codes of boarding passes is unencrypted, and so can be read in advance by technically minded travelers.
Simply by using a smartphone or similar device to check the bar code, travelers could determine whether they would pass through full security screening, or the expedited process.

A security expert points out that the whole idea behind random screening is that the terrorists don’t know what to expect. Well, now they do!
John Butler, of the blog PunkInflight, who discovered this, explains how it works:

The problem is, the passenger and flight information encoded in barcode is not encrypted in any way. Using a web site I decoded my boarding pass for my upcoming trip.

M1PUCK/COLWMR YXXXXXX PHXEWRUA XXX 294RXXXFXX 11F>30B
WWXXX BUA 0E016 3

So, here you see my flight information for my United flight from PHX to EWR. It is my understanding that this is similar to digital boarding passes issued by all U.S. Airlines; so the same information is on a Delta, US Airways, American and all other boarding passes. I am just using United as an example. I have X’d out any information that you could use to change my reservation. But it’s all there, PNR, seat assignment, flight number, name, ect. But what is interesting is the bolded three on the end. This is the TSA Pre-Check information. The number means the number of beeps. 1 beep no Pre-Check, 3 beeps yes Pre-Check. On this trip as you can see I am eligible for Pre-Check. Also this information is not encrypted in any way.

Butler goes on to explain the horrifying implications:

What terrorists or really anyone can do is use a website to decode the barcode and get the flight information, put it into a text file, change the 1 to a 3, then use another website to re-encode it into a barcode. Finally, using a commercial photo-editing program or any program that can edit graphics replace the barcode in their boarding pass with the new one they created. Even more scary is that people can do this to change names. So if they have a fake ID they can use this method to make a valid boarding pass that matches their fake ID. The really scary part is this will get past both the TSA document checker, because the scanners the TSA use are just barcode decoders, they don’t check against the real time information. So the TSA document checker will not pick up on the alterations. This means, as long as they sub in 3 they can always use the Pre-Check line.

Seriously, no one at TSA thought about this?
Does anybody have an old pre-printed boarding pass – one you printed at home – that you can send?
That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, TSA.

The truth hurts

Romney wanted to institute a fee on the blind

The more I read of this man...the scarier he becomes.

Mitt Romney often hits president Obama for calling for tax increases on the wealthiest Americans. But a Democratic source forwards to this rather lengthy list of fees Romney raised in Massachusetts. He was struggling to close a budget gap without raising taxes; but many of which citizens of the state saw them as hidden tax increases nonetheless - buzzfeed

Romney surrogate: Powell supported Obama because he’s black

The Not-So-Subtle Racism that is Romney

I always find it interesting that Mormons, a people who have spent 150 years fleeing oppression, far too often find it far too easy to be aggressively bigoted towards others.
The Mormon animus towards gays and lesbians is legendary.  The Mormons hate us.  And are happy to spend millions to rip away our civil rights and force us to live under Mormon doctrine.
But the Mormons don’t like blacks either.  They think women are second class.  And they have a really special appreciation for Jews, who they think need to be mass converted in Mormonism, posthumously, against their will.  Especially if they’re Holocaust victims. (Though they also, crassly, converted Obama’s dead mother only months before the 2008 election, and without his permission or even knowledge.)
They’re persistent in their prejudice as well. The Mormons, who often promise to stop forcibly converting dead Jewish Holocaust victims to Mormonism against the wills of their own family and the Jewish community at large, just keep doing it.  Sometimes to the same person.  Poor Anne Frank has been forcibly converted to Mormonism nine times.  That we know of.

And the Racist Hits Just Keep on Coming from Team Romney

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the subtle racism that’s been coming from Mitt Romney throughout this campaign just keeps coming.

This time, its crazy old John Sununu, who’d probably rather be yelling at some (black) kid to get off his yard, telling a TV audience that the only reason Colin Powell is endorsing Barack Obama is because they’re both black.  That seems intended to remind the TV audience that Obama is NOT QUITE LIKE YOU AND ME (unless, of course, you and I are both black, then you’re not voting for Romney anyway, so Sununu and Romney aren’t terribly concerned about your vote – and in any case, the repugican cabal has moved on from its passing interest in token members of the black community – now they like Latinos).
Of course, it never crossed Sununu’s mind that maybe Colin Powell supports President Obama because Mitt Romney is a bullshitter.  Or maybe Sununu simply meant that because Colin Powell is black, he’s particularly smart and realizes that Mitt Romney is a weak, flip-flopping phony:

“I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy,” the former secretary of state said on CBS’s This Morning. “I don’t sense he’s thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have. He gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to modify as he goes along.”

Romney photoshops image to exaggerate crowd size, gets own name wrong

ROMNMNEY 2012

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed made a great find.
It seems that Team Romney  - actually Mitt Romney himself – sent out a photo on Instagram touting one of his “big” rallies.  The only problem is that the photo is clearly a really bad photoshop (or, as Zeke generously suggest, perhaps a really really awfully done panorama).
You can go over to Buzzflash and see all the spots where the photo is obviously faked, but my favorite is this below.  I took the photo, reversed it so you can see the Romney banner, then blew it up to make it more easily readable – and what does it read?

“ROMNMNEY 2012.”

“ROMNMNEY 2012″.
Now, for the entire photo that Romney sent out.  First,  here’s the “real” photo that I reverse-engineered by getting rid of the obvious photoshoppping, followed by the “original” that Romney sent out. I have them both left justified so you can see the difference.

Original Romney crowd without Photshopping (my mock up).

Fake photo Romney sent out.

A wee bit of a difference.
I do a lot of panoramic photography, and have for years.  I use some decently expensive software, but have also used Photoshop, and cheaper stuff.  I’ve never seen any automatic panoramic software do this bad a job.  There’s no way the software wouldn’t recognize, for example, the obvious support beam and cement base – it duplicated it, rather than merged them.  Highly unlikely that this was a software accident.
Oh, and one more thing: Those are rocks, or something similar, at the bottom of the photo and to the right.  How convenient that they look like additional heads in the crowd.

The truth be told