Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Did you know ...
About the five step process to screw the middle class
That Wal-Mart plans to hire any veteran that wants a job
That outrage without action is just whining
That a cat outperformed investment brokers picking stocks
That Wal-Mart plans to hire any veteran that wants a job
That outrage without action is just whining
That a cat outperformed investment brokers picking stocks
Middle Class in Manhattan
"What
is middle class?" is a simple question with a very complex answer.
Obviously, it depends on where one lives - but in Manhattan, New York,
with cost of living that are akin to skyscrapers compared to other places
in the United States, the answer becomes much muddier:In a city like New York, where everything is superlative, who exactly is middle class? What kind of salary are we talking about? Where does a middle-class person live? And could the relentless rise in real estate prices push the middle class to extinction?Amy O'Leary of The New York Times explains: Here.
“A lot of people are hanging on by the skin of their teeth,” said Cheryl King, an acting coach who lives and works in a combined apartment and performance space that she rents out for screenings, video shoots and workshops to help offset her own high rent.
“My niece just bought a home in Atlanta for $85,000,” she said. “I almost spend that on rent and utilities in a year. To them, making $250,000 a year is wealthy. To us, it’s maybe the upper edge of middle class.”
“It’s horrifying,” she added.
Why You Truly Never Leave High School
Science knows that our teenage years are extremely important in determining who we are. It's the time our bodies become adult and our brains rewire themselves to give us a sense of adult identity. It's also the time we learn our place among other people in the world, explore what to do with our lives, and begin mate selection. Through most of history, these changes would occur in the context of the larger world, among family and community. But in the last 100 years or so, we've expanded the role of education so much that teenagers spend about 16 hours a week interacting with adults and 60 hours a week with other teenagers who are just as clueless. This is akin to throwing them into a crucible, a "Roman amphitheater," in which cliques and hierarchies are determined by arbitrary standards such as athletic prowess, looks, or family wealth. The experiences of high school can leave scars for the rest of one's life.
In 2000, three psychologists presented a paper titled “Peer Crowd-Based Identities and Adjustment: Pathways of Jocks, Princesses, Brains, Basket-Cases, and Criminals,” which asked a large sample of tenth-graders which of the five characters from The Breakfast Club they most considered themselves to be, and then checked back in with them at 24. The categories were “immensely predictive,” according to Jacquelynne Eccles, one of the authors. (Criminals were still most apt to smoke pot; male jocks still had the highest self-esteem.) But one datum was interesting: At 24, the princesses had lower self-esteem than the brainy girls, which certainly wasn’t true when they were 16. But Eccles sees no inconsistency in this finding. In fact, she suspects it will hold true when she completes her follow-up with the same sample at 40. “Princesses are caught up in this external world that defines who they are,” says Eccles, “whereas if brainy girls claim they’re smart, that probably is who they are.” While those brainy girls were in high school, they couldn’t rely on their strengths to gain popularity, perhaps, but they could rely on them as fuel, as sources of private esteem. Out of high school, they suddenly had agency, whereas the princesses were still relying on luck and looks and public opinion to carry them through, just as they had at 16. They’d learned passivity, and it’d stuck.
From my vantage point, 24 seems
awfully young to say that anything "stuck," but I'm no scientist.
Besides, my high school was so small that everyone had to wear more than
one label. Still, now that my kids are in high school, I can see the
findings of the many different adolescent studies cited in this New York
magazine article playing out in their experiences. How has your high
school experiences shaped your life afterward? More
Grown Man Refused to Eat When Forbidden to Play Video Games
Throwing
tantrums when not allowed to play video games ain't exactly a new thing
for parents, but there's a small twist in what the Yang family in Chongqing,
China, is facing:Yang Yang (pseudonym) was at home playing video games all day last Wednesday. Unhappy that her son was gaming all day, as well as worried for his well-being, Yang's mother wanted him to take a break.Eric Jou of Kotaku has the full story. See if you can guess who folded first: Here.
After a failed attempt by the her mother to get Yang Yang to relax, Mr. Yang became fed up with his son's attitude and barged into his room. Seeing his son's room covered with snack wrappers and empty soda bottles, Mr. Yang asked Yang Yang how long he's been playing. He flippantly replied "not long."
Angered by his response, Mr. Yang seized Yang Yang's keyboard and smashed it to the ground. Shocked and angry, Yang Yang gave his father a death stare only to be told by his father "The heck are you looking at? Time for Dinner."
As soon as Mr. Yang left Yang Yang's room, he locked the door.
Yang Yang, a man in his twenties, locked himself in his room, inside his parents house, for a whole night, refusing to eat or drink anything.
Evidence mounts for role of mutated genes in development of schizophrenia
Johns Hopkins researchers have identified a rare
gene mutation in a single family with a high rate of schizophrenia,
adding ...More on "Escape From Tomorrow," the guerrilla art-house movie shot at Walt Disney World and Disneyland
The New York Times's Brooks Barnes has some tantalizing details on "Escape From Tomorrow," the art-house movie I blogged about yesterday, which was shot in part at Walt Disney World and Disneyland:
There's a possible trademark claim, and I suppose that Disney could conceivable bring suit for violating the park's terms of use, but these are much harder cases to make than copyright, and don't have built-in, easy Internet censorship in the form of DMCA takedown notices.
His cast and crew spent about 10 days filming at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., and two weeks at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., he said. The end credits cite the involvement of over 200 cast and crew members, although only small groups entered the Disney parks at one time to avoid drawing attention.Barnes (and the headline writer) focus on whether this infringes Disney's copyright. Judging from what I've read about the film, this sounds like fair use to me. Film insurers routinely require that filmmakers go far beyond what copyright demands and act as though fair use doesn't exist, but the Stanford Fair Use Center has an insurer that will extend coverage to any film that complies with its broad, sensible fair use guidelines.
Still, there were moments during filming that Disney clearly knew something was up, Mr. Moore said. “I think they probably just thought we were crazy fans making a YouTube video, which is something that happens a fair amount,” he said. He added, “Look, I have amazing memories as a kid from going to the parks. I think Walt Disney was a genius. I just wish his vision hadn’t grown into something quite so corporate.”
There's a possible trademark claim, and I suppose that Disney could conceivable bring suit for violating the park's terms of use, but these are much harder cases to make than copyright, and don't have built-in, easy Internet censorship in the form of DMCA takedown notices.
The Ten Most Futuristic Museums Of Contemporary Art Around The World
What Is Lake-Effect Snow?
Lake-effect snow occurs on such a small scale, almost on the scale of a summertime thunderstorm. One portion of a neighborhood or city might be under heavy snow, where a few miles away you may be under sunny skies.
Feelin’ Hot, Hot, Hot
Climate Change and Spicy Food
It
is tough being a freelance writer. You have to be pitching stories
left and right, grabbing interviews whenever you can and literally dance
for every drink, every lunch and every story. Meanwhile, any jerk with a
blog could come along and steal your job. Your life is best defined by
these three words: Dance, monkey, dance!Or so I’m told. While freelancing can be a cold and cruel world, being the friend of a freelancer is awesome. You end up tagging along to random strange locations (Fermentation Festival, anyone?) where people are talking about weird things (colon health!) and doing unusual things (cedar chip enzyme bath? Sure!).
While your friend is hunting down photographs of kombucha mothers and pygmy goats, as their “date” you get to surreptitiously stuff your face with complementary goat salami, and sip sherry while Sean Lennon performs his dad’s “Oh Yoko!” — OK, that was a little freaky.
As a diligent friend, you put up with these unusual encounters, because, like, what else are you going to do with your time?
One of the best of these “friend missions” involved an encounter with hot sauce. Or I should say, many hot sauces. A certain writer-friend had been given the mission of taste-testing 10 of the spiciest hot sauces on the market. These were not simple “five alarm” sauces – please, if you are going to truly have a hot sauce you wouldn’t give it such a clichéd name. We are talking hot sauces with names involving major players in the underworld, outlandish scatological terminology and references to BDSM activities that I’ve only heard about on the Savage Love. These were not meant to be shared in polite company.
After a few hours of nose-dripping, eye-watering fun, we had chosen the tastiest and hottest of the bunch. We were no doubt experiencing the spiciest of the spicy, but the question was clear, could we go even hotter?
It turns out, that with climate change the answer is, Hell yeah! In a higher carbon dioxide environment, habanero plants (you know, the really f*ing hot ones) have more peppers. Those peppers are larger and when ripe, they have more capsaicinoids (which includes capsaicin – the hot stuff — and a couple other secondary metabolites) (1). Since capsaicin is thought to be a deterrent to herbivores (hello bugs!) and fungal infection, this could be a good thing for both hot sauce-enthusiasts and plants alike.
Moreover, while other chili plants (which are a little different from habaneros) may be more susceptible to bacterial infection in a warmer climate, when combining a warmer and higher carbon dioxide environment they are not more susceptible to fungal infection (2). Could it be that higher CO2 is increasing capsaicin and other defensive compounds, thereby making the plants a little bit better at protecting themselves from fungal infection?
Eh, possibly. We have just entered what is called “hypothesis-ville”. It’s somewhere between “maybe-town” and “perhaps-square”.
If you are looking for a cool experiment, this could be your next USDA grant. You just need a panel of Texan scientists to read your proposal and a couple freelance writers to follow you around to document the whole thing. Who knows? If it works out, you might find me sitting in the back of your very first press conference on the topic. I’ll be the one stuffing those complimentary donuts into my pockets.
Because, that’s what friends are for.
Further Reading:
(1) Enrichment of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the capsaicinoids content in Habanero peppers (Capsicum chinense Jacq.)
(2) Elevated CO2 and Temperature Effects on the Incidence of Four Major Chili Pepper Diseases
In The News
No cloned Neanderthal baby for Harvard (at least not yet)
For the record, a Harvard scientist is NOT looking for an "adventurous woman" to give birth to a cloned Neanderthal. Ladies, you can stop filling out those application forms. Apparently, geneticist George Church and the German magazine Der Spiegel had a bit of a translation problem.Great mysteries of archaeology
These flat ceramic disks were either playing pieces for an ancient Roman game, or, possibly, really uncomfortable toilet paper. Scientists are investigating.French stench reaches London
Reuters: "A cloud of harmless gas smelling of sweat and rotten eggs leaked out of a chemicals factory in northwest France and wafted across the English Channel as far as London on Tuesday."What, 300 Million year old machine parts?!
The metal detail was supposedly 300 million years old and yet the scientists suggest that it was not created by nature but was rather manufactured by someone. The question of who might have made an aluminum gear in the dawn of time remains unanswered.
"Bog army" found in Denmark
Archaeologists have spent all summer excavating a small sample of what has turned out to be a mass grave containing skeletal remains from more than 1,000 warriors, who were killed in battle some 2,000 years ago... The site is located in the Alken Enge wetlands near Lake Mossø on the Jutland peninsula.
The area that has so far been excavated contained bone fragments from around 240 men aged between 13 and 45. The men’s bones are marked by melee weapons such as swords and axes... The marks from the predators’ bite indicate that the dead warriors were left to die and rot on the battlefield, without anyone bothering to bury or even remove the bodies...
One of the greatest historians of the Roman Empire, Tacitus (56 AD – 120 AD) described the aftermath of the Roman’s famous defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD.
“In the middle of the plain, bones lay either spread out or heaped, depending on whether they had fled or resisted. Next to the bones lay bits of spears and horse limbs, and there were also human heads nailed to trees. In the nearby groves were barbarian altars in which they had sacrificed tribunes and centurions of the first rank,” Tacitus wrote in his Annals...
“The bones are completely fresh,” he says. “Some DNA has been preserved, so we can get a good profile of what Iron Age man looked like. An anthropological analysis of the bones will provide us with a picture of their diet and their physical appearance.” ..
The project, titled ‘The army and post-war rituals in the Iron Age – warriors sacrificed in the bog at Alken Enge in Illerup Ådal’ is a collaboration between archaeologists and geologists at Skanderborg Museum, Moesgård Museum and Aarhus University.
Unloading supplies onto the International Space Station
As Matt Lynley put it, "Meanwhile, in space ..."
Bow Shock
Wave in Space
This wispy yellow arc was created by the massive star Zeta Ophiuchi (centre), which emits about 65,000 times more light than the sun. The star is speeding through space at more than 85,000 kilometres per hour - possibly because of the gravitational recoil it experienced when a former companion star exploded in a supernova.From the NewScientist.
Zeta Ophiuchi sloughs off a strong wind of charged particles that compresses the gas and dust in front of it, creating a curved feature called a 'bow shock' that resembles the shape that water takes in front of a speeding boat (or in this case, a bird's profile).
Places That Don't Not Look Normal, But Are Actually Real
Mount Grinnell – Glacier National Park, Montana
Welsh Tourist Wrestles Australian Shark
Paul
Marshallsea of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, was barbecuing at Bulcock Beach
in Australia when he heard bathers yell "Shark!" The 62-year-old tourist
saw a shark approaching children and ran into the water, grabbed the
shark, and pulled it away from the youngsters."My instincts took over and I just grabbed the shark by the tail.The six-foot dusky shark snapped at Marshallsea's leg, but missed by a fraction of an inch. A nearby TV crew caught the action on video. More
"I know it was dangerous but it almost looked beautiful - you have got to have respect for a beautiful animal."
Helicopters and lifesavers on water bikes later lured the shark out to sea with the tide.
An Australian coastguard spokesman said: "We don't recommend manhandling sharks but this gentleman did a great job."
Shellfish Feel Pain
A recent experiment adds to evidence that shellfish, such as crabs, lobsters and shrimp, experience pain.
This 500-Million-Year-Old Animal Looked Like a Tulip
The Cambrian marine animal Cotyledion tylodes in fossil form and as illustrated by artists.
The research reveals that this odd marine creature was likely an ancestor of a group known as the entoprocta. Previously, the oldest fossil entoprocta came from the late Jurassic, about 145 million years ago. The new fossils date all the way back to theCambrian, about 520 million years before the present.
That is near the so-called Cambrian Explosion, when most of the major lineages of animals appeared on the scene, as did complex ecosystems. Some odd animals emerged during this time, such as bizarre shrimplike monsters called anomalocaridids that could grow up to about 6 feet (1.8 meters) in length; a 515-million-year-old predator with compound eyes containing 3,000 lenses; and a 50-legged arthropod that skittered along the seafloor of what is now Canada.
The newfound species, Cotyledion tylodes, has been analyzed before, but the discovery of hundreds of new specimens allowed researchers led by Zhifei Zhang of Northwest University in Xi'an, China, to take a more detailed look. The team analyzed 418 specimens from Yunnan, China.
They found that C. tylodes lived a lifestyle fixed to one spot, filtering water through a ring of tentacles that surrounded its mouth — and its anus. The two openings sat right next to one another, connected by a U-shaped gut.
That gut proved that the previous classification of C. tylodes as a cnidarian, or jellyfishlike creature, was wrong, the researchers report today (Jan. 17) in the journal Scientific Reports.
Instead, the flowerlike filter feeder was likely an early entoproct, Zhang and colleagues found. The body pattern is almost identical, though the ancient version grew to a length of 0.3 inches to 2.2 inches (8 to 56 millimeters), while today's entoprocts are comparatively tiny at between 0.004 inches and 0.27 inches long (0.1 to 7 mm).
Another big difference between C. tylodes and modern entoprocts is on the outside. Unlike what is found in living entoprocts, the stem and flowerlike feeding cup of the ancient creature were covered by tiny hardened protuberances called sclerites, which may have formed a sort of hard exoskeleton for the creatures.
Amazing video of dolphin seeking help from scuba divers
This video of a dolphin in need is really something on so many levels.It turns out that the dolphin had fishing line and a hook stuck on
one of its fins, so it approached a group of divers who were watching
manta rays at night near Kona, Hawaii. Fortunately one of the
professional divers was able to help remove some of the fishing line
that was restricting the movement of the dolphin, though in the end they
were unable to remove the hook.
There
are plenty of warnings at the beginning (the divers are professional so
don’t try this at home), followed by the dolphin swimming around the
group, with the untangling action starting around the 3:30 mark.
You won’t believe how calm and trusting the dolphin is with the diver, who patiently cuts away the line.
There
are plenty of warnings at the beginning (the divers are professional so
don’t try this at home), followed by the dolphin swimming around the
group, with the untangling action starting around the 3:30 mark.You won’t believe how calm and trusting the dolphin is with the diver, who patiently cuts away the line.
Monday, January 21, 2013
The Daily Drift
I feel like a hug ...
Some of our readers today have been in:
Quezon City, Philippines
Puchong, Malaysia
Kuwait, Kuwait
Cape Town, South Africa
Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Bangkok, Thailand
Kajang, Malaysia
Slivnitsa. Bulgaria
Batu Pahat, Malaysia
Lahore, Paistan
Paka, Malaysia
Ankara, Turkey
Subang Jaya, Malaysia
Potsdam, Germany
Butterworth, Malaysia
San Jose, Costa Rca
Jakarta, Indonesia
Vancouver, Canada
Amman, Jordan
T, Philippines
Plymouth, England
Kingston, Jamaica
Panevezys, Lithuania
Al Jizah, Egypt
Karachi, Pakistan
Nicosia, Cyprus
Kaunas, Lithuania
Sofia, Bulgaria
Kiev, Ukraine
Makati, Philippines
Caracas, Venezuela
Albertslund, Denmark
Monterrey, Mexico
Tunis, Tunisia
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Haifa, Israel
Bogota, Colombia
Islamabad, Pakistan
Today is National Hugging Day
Don't forget to visit our sister blog!
Today in History
| 1189 | Philip Augustus, Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa assemble the troops for the Third Crusade. | |
| 1648 | In Maryland, the first woman lawyer in the colonies, Margaret Brent, is denied a vote in the Maryland Assembly. | |
| 1785 | Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa and Wyandot Indians sign the treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the United States. | |
| 1790 | Joseph Guillotine proposes a new, more humane method of execution: a machine designed to cut off the condemned person's head as painlessly as possible. | |
| 1793 | The French King Louis XVI is guillotined for treason. | |
| 1910 | Japan rejects the American proposal to neutralize ownership of the Manchurian Railway. | |
| 1919 | The German Krupp plant begins producing guns under the U.S. armistice terms. | |
| 1921 | J.D. Rockefeller pledges $1 million for the relief of Europe's destitute. | |
| 1930 | An international arms control meeting opens in London. | |
| 1933 | The League of Nations rejects Japanese terms for settlement with China. | |
| 1941 | The United States lifts the ban on arms to the Soviet Union. | |
| 1942 | In North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launches a drive to push the British eastward. While the British benefited from radio-intercept-derived Ultra information, the Germans enjoyed an even speedier intelligence source. | |
| 1943 | A Nazi daylight air raid kills 34 in a London school. When the anticipated invasion of Britain failed to materialize in 1940, Londoners relaxed, but soon they faced a frightening new threat. | |
| 1951 | Communist troops force the UN army out of Inchon, Korea after a 12-hour attack. | |
| 1958 | The Soviet Union calls for a ban on nuclear arms in Baghdad Pact countries. | |
| 1964 | Carl T. Rowan is named the director of the United States Information Agency (USIA). | |
| 1968 | In Vietnam, the Siege of Khe Sanh begins as North Vietnamese units surround U.S. Marines based on the hilltop headquarters. | |
| 1974 | The U.S. Supreme Court decides that pregnant teachers can no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence. | |
| 1976 | Leonid Brezhnev and Henry Kissinger meet to discuss Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). | |
| 1977 | President Carter urges 65 degrees as the maximum heat in homes to ease the energy crisis. | |
| 1993 | Congressman Mike Espy of Mississippi is confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. |
President for a Day
President Obama took the oath of office for his second presidential term this afternoon, even though Inauguration Day with all its festivities is tomorrow. Why? The 20th Amendment to the Constitution says that a president's term ends on January 20th. This date falls on a Sunday every once in a while. Obama will be sworn in again tomorrow for the public, which will be his fourth swearing-in.
Of course, what would happen if the President, perhaps due to religious convictions, refused to take the oath on a Sunday. Well it happened before, perhaps. Outgoing President James Polk’s term ended on Sunday, March 4, 1849. His successor, Zachary Taylor, refused to be sworn in on a Sunday. Same for incoming VP Millard Filmore.Find out how Atchison spent his day as president at Josh Blackman's Blog. And that wasn't the only time such an anomaly has happened. Blackman has some other odd details of presidential succession and some discussion on the Sunday exception in the Constitution. More
So who was the President on Sunday, March 4, 1849?
Under the Presidential Succession statute at the time (the Presidential Succession Act of 1792), after the Vice President, the Senatore Pro Tempore was in line. Under this theory, Senator David Atchison of Missouri would have been the President for the Day. However, Atchinson, was the President Pro Temp during the Thirtieth Congress. This position expired when that Congress adjourned on March 4.
Athcinson was in fact sworn in as President Pro Tempore on Monday before either Taylor or Dallas took the oath, so in theory, he was President for a few minutes.
The Biggest Threat to America is the repugican cabal’s Domestic Wingnut Right Wing Extremists
The 2009 Homeland Security report cited the repugican Great Recession and resulting economic climate, along with the election of an African American man as President, as the primary drivers fueling the resurgence of domestic anti-American terror groups. At the time, the DHS-commissioned report drew special attention to the fact that “extremist right-wing groups posed more of a threat than Islamic extremists,” and repugicans objected loudly prompting Secretary Janet Napolitano to withdraw that report because as Americans have come to realize, repugicans cannot handle the truth. However, a new study from West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center evaluates the risks from domestic terror groups titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right,” that isolated three categories that represent the John Birch iteration and anti-American sentiment inherent in the repugican cabal.
The report identified and examined the background ideologies and methods of the Racist White Supremacy Movement,christian Fundamentalist Movement, and Anti-Federal Government Movement Americans have learned make up the core of the repugican cabal’s legislative agenda that, as the report points out, poses an existential risk to the United States. What the report discovered was that each of the groups will use violence against their targets to emphasize their ideologies regardless if it is racial minorities, abortion clinics, or government agencies, and the past two years reveal their agenda and ideology is synonymous with the repugican cabal.
One need look no farther than the recent repugican campaign leading up to the general election to identify the terror groups’ deep-seated ideology founded in racism, religious extremism, and anti-government agenda, and why the result of the election increased the spectre of violence and calls for race war, violence against the federal government, and attempts to impose christianity on all facets of government and the people. It is tempting to cite the recent gun control measures as the reason for increased calls for violent intervention to transform America into a collection of theocratic Aryan states, but it is more likely the result of the American electorate rejecting the racist, extremist christian, and anti-government agenda promised by repugican candidates from Willard Romney down to state and local level representatives identified as repugicans or teabaggers.
During the repugican presidential primary and leading right up to the general election, candidates decried President Obama’s practice of stealing money from white Americans to give to African Americans “who just want more free stuff.” Romney, particularly, utilized a Ku Klux Klan slogan and portrayed President Obama as a foreigner who did not understand what it meant to be an American, and claimed the President pacified muslim’s and degraded christians and their favorite nation, Israel. Nearly all repugican candidates diligently pushed extremist christian agendas against women and gays by promising to repeal Roe v. Wade, defund Planned Parenthood, ban contraception, and criminalize same-sex marriage that are part and parcel of the fundamentalist christian agenda. All repugicans campaigned to weaken and defund all aspects of the federal government except defense, and promised to give states sovereignty over the federal government regardless the Supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution.
The West Point report examined the three terror groups, racists, fundamentalist christians, and anti-federal government advocates as individual threats in their own right, but combined, they represent everything the repugican cabal promised to impose on the nation if they prevailed in the general election. It is impossible to segregate the right-wing extremists into separate groups when their combined ideologies fall under the aegis of repugican dogma, and the government cannot address any of the groups’ threats without first addressing why, and where, they got the idea their extremist agenda would garner legislative support, without which they will resort to violence.
The repugicans began pushing the extremists’ agenda on the first day of the 112th Congress, and if one examines every proposal and piece of legislation proposed by repugicans in Congress and state legislatures over the past two years, they will find some ideological aspect of the three extremist groups’ cited in the West Point report, and since their chance at imposing their radical agenda through repugican legislation failed in the general election, as the study clearly stated, they will use violence to achieve their aims.
The repugicans cannot possibly deny their, and the three violent extremist groups, agenda are nearly identical, and to shift attention away from the repugican cabal’s culpability, one repugican said the Combating Terrorism Center was guilty of “perpetuating the left’s myth that right-wingers are terrorists,” but since repugicans promote racial bigotry, christian fundamentalism, and anti-federal government rhetoric and legislation, the myth is the repugican cabal is not promoting domestic terrorism. The uncontestable proof is that besides pushing legislation supported by the three extremist terror groups, not one repugican has denounced calls for violence against racial minorities, women, gays, or the government because the right-wing extremists and repugican ideology are one and the same.
Did you know ...
That 5 people accidentally shot at 3 gun shows on gun appreciation day
That corporations spread the flu
That corporations spread the flu
Montreal computer science student reports massive bug, is expelled and threatened with arrest for checking to see if it had been fixed
Ahmed Al-Khabaz was a 20-year-old computer science student at Dawson
College in Montreal, until he discovered a big, glaring bug in Omnivox,
software widely used by Quebec's junior college system. The bug exposed
the personal information (social insurance number, home address, class
schedule) of its users. When Al-Khabaz reported the bug to François
Paradis, his college's Director of Information Services and Technology,
he was congratulated. But when he checked a few days later to see if the
bug had been fixed, he was threatened with arrest and made to sign a
secret gag-order whose existence he wasn't allowed to disclose. Then, he
was expelled:
Shame on them.
“I was called into a meeting with the co–ordinator of my program, Ken Fogel, and the dean, Dianne Gauvin,” says Mr. Al-Khabaz. “They asked a lot of questions, mostly about who knew about the problems and who I had told. I got the sense that their primary concern was covering up the problem.”The thing that gets me, as a member of a computer science faculty, is how gutless his instructors were in their treatment of this promising student. They're sending a clear signal that you're better off publicly disclosing bugs without talking to faculty or IT than going through channels, because "responsible disclosure" means that bugs go unpatched, students go unprotected, and your own teachers will never, ever have your back.
Following this meeting, the fifteen professors in the computer science department were asked to vote on whether to expel Mr. Al-Khabaz, and fourteen voted in favour. Mr. Al-Khabaz argues that the process was flawed because he was never given a chance to explain his side of the story to the faculty. He appealed his expulsion to the academic dean and even director-general Richard Filion. Both denied the appeal, leaving him in academic limbo.
“I was acing all of my classes, but now I have zeros across the board. I can’t get into any other college because of these grades, and my permanent record shows that I was expelled for unprofessional conduct. I really want this degree, and now I won’t be able to get it. My academic career is completely ruined. In the wrong hands, this breach could have caused a disaster. Students could have been stalked, had their identities stolen, their lockers opened and who knows what else. I found a serious problem, and tried to help fix it. For that I was expelled.”
Shame on them.
Snow in Russia
So, you think you have snow ... 
Moscow
got a snowstorm that left a ten-inch-thick blanket of snow. They have
12,000 snow removal trucks, but they couldn't keep up with the tons of
snow in the big city. Meanwhile, Norilsk, the northernmost city in the
world (of at least 100,000 people), is digging out from under ten feet of snow! Yes, there are more pictures. More
A happy note: Finding A 10 tops new simple pleasures test
Men were most affected by finding money, while other joyful
experiences include playing with puppies and pictures of smiling babies
The scale also permitted scores down to minus 100 for nasty experiences,
with badly played violin music reckoned one of the worst, on minus 56.
Guerrilla indie feature film shot at Walt Disney World
"Escape From Tomorrow" is an indie movie screening at Sundance that was
shot, seemingly without permission, at Walt Disney World. The film
sounds pretty good, though the reviewer who saw it thinks it'll never
get wide release, due to the risk-aversion of distributors and
exhibitors:
See, the entire film is set inside the property at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and a fair amount of the film appears to have been actually shot on the property, during business hours, without anyone's permission. It is largely stolen feature film, and while they were careful to change all the music so they're not playing anything in the film that they could get sued over, they are still including tons and tons of familiar Disney iconography. Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pluto, Donald Duck… all the costumed characters appear. We see huge chunks of the "Snow White" ride, portions of the "Winnie The Pooh" ride, material shot inside the Haunted Mansion. There's an entire sequence built around waiting in line for the Buzz Lightyear ride. They go to Epcot, and Spaceship Earth is prominently featured and even blown up at one point. It feels like someone saw "Eraserhead" and said, "Hey, why don't we get that guy to shoot an infomercial for the Magic Kingdom to get more families to come?" and this is the oh-so-not-what-they-wanted result. It is a magnificent, impossible nightmare.
It is not possible that this film exists. It is not possible that they shot long scripted sequences on the actual rides. It is not possible that I just saw a film in which it is suggested and then shown that the various Disney princesses all work as high-priced hookers who sell their wares to wealthy Asian businessmen. It simply cannot be true.
I grew up in Florida, and I have been going to Walt Disney World my entire life. I worked at that park. I've been there as a child, as a teenager, as an employee, and as a parent. I've done Disney sitting on my father's shoulders, and I've done the Disney parks with my kids sitting on my shoulders. It is a huge part of my DNA, and I can tell you that there is no way Randy Moore pulled off what I saw tonight. It is a film that should not exist by any rational definition.
Postal Children
After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service with stamps attached to their clothing. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail.
An ancient riverbed - on Mars
London, Jan 18: New astonishing pictures by the European Space Agency have revealed a 1500 km long and 7 kilometre wide river that once ran across Mars... The agency’s Mars Express imaged the striking upper part of the remnants of Reull Vallis river on Mars with its high-resolution stereo camera...
This sinuous structure, which stretches for almost 1500 km across the martian landscape, is flanked by numerous tributaries, one of which can be clearly seen cutting in to the main valley towards the upper (north) side.
The new Mars Express images show a region of Reull Vallis at a point where the channel is almost 7 km wide and 300 m deep. The sides of Reull Vallis are particularly sharp and steep, with parallel longitudinal features covering the floor of the channel itself.
These structures are believed to be caused by the passage of loose debris and ice during the “Amazonian” period – which continues to this day – due to glacial flow along the channel. The structures were formed long after it was originally carved by liquid water during the Hesperian period, which is believed to have ended between 3.5 billion and 1.8 billion years ago.
Martian Underground Could Contain Clues to Life’s Origins
Minerals found in the subsurface of Mars, a zone of more than three miles below ground, make for the strongest ...The "Orion bullets'
Cosmic bullets pierce the outskirts of the Orion Nebula some 1500 light-years distant in this sharp infrared close-up. Blasted out by energetic massive star formation the bullets, relatively dense, hot gas clouds about ten times the size of Pluto's orbit, are blue in the false color image. Glowing with the light of ionized iron atoms they travel at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second, their passage traced by yellowish trails of the nebula's shock-heated hydrogen gas. The cone-shaped wakes are up to a fifth of a light-year long.
'Cosmic bang' hit Medieval Earth
'Cosmic bang' hit Medieval Earth
A gamma-ray burst - the most powerful explosion known in the
Universe - may have hit the Earth in the 8th Century, a study suggests.
Tractor Beams 'Pull' Tiny Particles Backward
Tractor Beams 'Pull' Tiny Particles Backward
Jan 21, 2013 09:13 AM ET
//
A laser moves tiny spheres of polystyrene floating in water.
In space opera, it's not uncommon for the hero's ship to be
snagged by a tractor beam that pulls him towards the enemy -- think of
the famous scene in Star Wars where Darth Vader's Death Star captures
Hans Solo's spaceship, the Millennium Falcon in an invisible grasp.
Scientists have now made a real tractor beam, that while not capable of
snaring spacecraft yet, is able to tug on tiny particles.
Pavel Zemanek and his colleagues at the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic built a laser that moves tiny spheres of polystyrene floating in water. Changing the way the light is polarized changes the direction the spheres move. They also found that at certain sizes, the spheres arrange themselves into neat rows as they move, bound by the light itself.
"We used a relatively simple setup easily adaptable to any optical microscope and found that it works!" Zemanek told Discovery News via email. In fact Zemanek said it was so simple, one could build the tractor beam setup. All you'd need is a good microscope, a laser, tiny styrofoam balls and distilled water.
This kind of 'tractor beam' can't be scaled up to spaceships – the laser power needed to do that would end up vaporizing the intended target. But the beam could be used to assemble parts in very small robots, move around tiny particles in laboratory experiments and advance medical diagnostics.
"NASA also is actively investigating possible uses of optical tractor beams for sampling comet tails and planet surfaces. What the present paper makes clear is that tractor-beam technology also opens new avenues for lab-on-a-chip material processing that could be very useful for medical diagnostics and related applications," said David Grier, a professor of physics at New York University. Grier wasn't involved in this study.
Scientists have known for a century that light exerts pressure. About a decade ago, theoretical calculations showed that a particle could move against the direction of a light beam, but no one had demonstrated it in the real world without using a complex arrangement of lenses and mirrors.
Zemanek and his team got it to work using laser beams and a simple setup.
Pavel Zemanek and his colleagues at the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic built a laser that moves tiny spheres of polystyrene floating in water. Changing the way the light is polarized changes the direction the spheres move. They also found that at certain sizes, the spheres arrange themselves into neat rows as they move, bound by the light itself.
"We used a relatively simple setup easily adaptable to any optical microscope and found that it works!" Zemanek told Discovery News via email. In fact Zemanek said it was so simple, one could build the tractor beam setup. All you'd need is a good microscope, a laser, tiny styrofoam balls and distilled water.
This kind of 'tractor beam' can't be scaled up to spaceships – the laser power needed to do that would end up vaporizing the intended target. But the beam could be used to assemble parts in very small robots, move around tiny particles in laboratory experiments and advance medical diagnostics.
"NASA also is actively investigating possible uses of optical tractor beams for sampling comet tails and planet surfaces. What the present paper makes clear is that tractor-beam technology also opens new avenues for lab-on-a-chip material processing that could be very useful for medical diagnostics and related applications," said David Grier, a professor of physics at New York University. Grier wasn't involved in this study.
Scientists have known for a century that light exerts pressure. About a decade ago, theoretical calculations showed that a particle could move against the direction of a light beam, but no one had demonstrated it in the real world without using a complex arrangement of lenses and mirrors.
Zemanek and his team got it to work using laser beams and a simple setup.
Two laser beams intersect and their photons kick back tiny spheres, moving the spheres up toward the light source.
The effect worked because the particles were small enough to scatter photons of light. The photons got pushed ahead of the particles and since the photons had momentum, the particles got a slight kick backwards.
Grier, who has himself experimented with tractor beams (http://physics.nyu.edu/grierlab/conveyor7c/) , noted that this is the first time anyone has shown that the pulling force was due to the scattering and that you could use it to manipulate objects this way. "It's just a beautifully clear demonstration," he said.
By changing the polarization of the light beam, the scientists could move objects in any direction. Zemanek's team found something else, though: the particles sorted themselves by size, with larger ones going to the left and smaller ones going to the right.
The sorting happens because how the light scattered by the particle depends on its size. At a given wavelength small particles will scatter light more than large ones. The light scatters in several directions, and at certain specific particle sizes, Zemanek said the tiny spheres acted like lenses, with some of the light making a kind of focus on one side.
The areas of focused light created a zone where the light's potential energy was at a minimum. This was a "well" where nearby particles would tend to fall. "It's like the cups for eggs in a carton." Zemanek said. A sphere would fall into the well, and as one was pulled along, it drags another behind it. Meanwhile other spheres fell in line, provided they were the same size.
Zemanek noted that if one were assembling a tiny robot, this would be a good way to move the parts around to where they are needed. Since the movement is done with light, it doesn't mater if the particles are metallic or not, or if they are susceptible to electric fields.
Grier said that the future work should focus on extending the range of the tractor beams to more than the micrometer scales. He noted that right now it seems that the object to be moved has to be smaller than the diameter of the beam. "Whether or not that's right, or how stringent a limit it sets, remains to be seen," he said.
The work was published in the Jan. 20 issue of Nature Photonics.
The Lincoln Futura
Via Wiki: “The Lincoln Futura was a concept car designed by the Lincoln division of Ford Motor Company. It was built by Ghia entirely by hand in Italy at a cost of $250,000 and displayed on the auto show circuit in 1955. In 1966 the car was modified by George Barris into the Batmobile, for the 1966 TV series Batman.”The Futura Concept Car, 1954.
Quadruple DNA Helix
'Quadruple helix' DNA in humans
Cambridge University scientists say they have seen
four-stranded DNA at work in human cells for the first time and wonder
if it might provide a target for the development of novel anti-cancer
treatments.
Balasubramanian's group has been pursuing a four-stranded version of the molecule that scientists have produced in the test tube now for a number of years.Jonathan Amos of BBC has the post: Here.
It is called the G-quadruplex. The "G" refers to guanine, one of the four chemical groups, or "bases", that hold DNA together and which encode our genetic information (the others being adenine, cytosine, and thymine).
The G-quadruplex seems to form in DNA where guanine exists in substantial quantities.
Darwin's Neon Orange Golf Balls
If
you're wondering what in the world are those neon orange balls growing
on a beech tree, you're in good company. See, it was Charles Darwin himself
who first encountered the strange balls when he landed in Tierra del Fuego
during his voyage on the HMS Beagle.Turns out, the neon-colored balls known as "beech orange" are actually a fungus named Cyttaria darwini (yes, named after the biologist in his honor). But that's not the strangest thing about the fungus. Turns out, you can make an alcoholic drink out of them!
Darwin himself noted they made up a substantial portion of the diet of the natives of Terra del Fuego and grew “in vast numbers on the beech trees”. He observed that the women and children collected their beech oranges when “tough and mature”, and that they had a “mucilaginous, slightly sweet taste, with a faint smell like that of a mushroom.”Jennifer Frazer of Scientific American's The Artful Amoeba blog has the post: Here.
Another South American group — the Araucans of Chile — discovered and capitalized upon the happy fact that Cyttaria harioti contains up to 15% fermentable sugars and that, like grapes, come naturally coated with the yeast Saccharomyces. This would be the same Saccharomyces that has made the fortunes of Fleischman’s, Budweiser, and half of France.
After drying, grinding, and mixing beech oranges with warm water and allowing nature to take its course, the Araucans enjoy an alcoholic beverage called chicha del llau-llau made from the ripe fruiting bodies, according to Bryce Kendrick’s The Fifth Kingdom.
Darwin was on his course-of-western-history-altering Beagle cruise when he was probably captivated by the odd appearance of Cyttaria darwini, the 'beech orange,' in Tierra del Fuego. This fungus grows in association with the southern hemisphere genus Nothofagus, the 'southern beeches,' and it is not subtle in going about it.
The evolution of white fur and an animal sex scandal
Up north — in Canada and other places where snowy winters are
reliable (and reliably heavy) — you find more animals whose fur comes in
various shades of white. This is true even for species that are brown
or black further south. The difference is obvious. But how does it
happen? Carl Zimmer presents two possible paths to paleness — random mutation, and fortuitous cross-species mating. In related news: Golden retrievers are probably getting it on with Canadian coyotes.
The Merfolk?
Grandpa Fish:
Another possibility is that Merfolk were inspired by fish with roughly
human-looking faces. This little fish, for instance. As for what this fish is, I don't know. I couldn't even find the origin
of the image. It's just one of those floating around the Internet. Could
even be a photoshopped hoax for all I know. But it makes a certain
point: Some fish can look humanoid. That would be enough to get superstitious sailors started.
Woman hurt after dead horse falls on top of her
A woman is in the hospital after a horse died and fell on top of her at a park in Bucks County.
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