When One Receives a Political Email Full of Pure Bull Shit, You Know It Came From a repugican

In the world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), there exists a devastating hold called the “rear naked choke.” One of the combatants curls an arm under the chin and around the neck of the opponent. He then proceeds to slowly squeeze the neck hold tighter and tighter, cutting off the blood supply to the brain. The unlucky recipient of this submission hold then either taps out (2 taps), goes to sleep or if the hold is held too long, the loser could even die.
That’s what the House tea party, corporate and rich folks-dominated repugicans and Supreme Court are doing to our president and our government. They’ve got the legislative and court versions of a rear naked choke and they’re applying growing pressure with every issue. Unlike the highly trained and ethical MMA practitioners, the extremists in the House of Representatives and on the bench will ignore the taps and hope above all else to kill the opponent. And unlike MMA, there are no refs to stop the action when things get to the critical stage.
Voters are supposed to be the refs, but there are just enough damn fool gun nuts and religious zealots out there who never crack a book and will believe anything the multimillion dollar talk and TV whores tell them, to override any attempts at moderation.
Every week brings a new obscenity. So far in the youth of 2013, guns, sequester and voting rights have taken center stage. But remember, this is a steady squeeze. What’s to follow? The revival of defunding Obamacare, that’s what. The ebb and flow of the issue has been with us ever since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law by President Obama, March 23, 2010 and survived a June, 2012 Supreme Court test. There have been at least 34 repeal votes in the House. The extremists have been storming the gates of ACA since its inception with little to show for it.
I want to concentrate this effort on health care and the swirl of BS that’s being put out there to dismantle Obamacare.
Here’s the latest right-wing offensive on behalf of giant pharma and insurance interests. There’s a national email movement to demand the defunding of ACA. It’s spearheaded by Heritage Action for America (HAA), an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation; a wingnut septic tank initially funded by Richard Mellon Scaife whose inherited billion traces back to a great Uncle and who Forbes lists as making his money by “investments”.
Joseph Coors dropped a few bucks on Heritage as well. He’s the Coors Brewery guy. What are a million or so alcohol-related deaths among friends over time? Yeah, Joe Coors has added greatly to the quality of life in America. Ironically, booze contributes enormously to health care expenses. Again, how can we ever thank you, Joe?
But I digress. Recipients of the Heritage email were urged to “Call Your Representative: Defund Obamacare Now.” You’re told that stopping Obamacare is one of the most important battles during the remainder of the Obama Presidency. There’s more. “The damage has already begun; according to the Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare will force 7 million Americans out of their existing health insurance. If conservatives accept Obamacare, it will continue to ravage our health care system. The House must take the lead in this fight now.”
Wingnuts must use every legislative vehicle possible to defund, delay and ultimately repeal this law. Fortunately for us, there’s an opportunity to defund Obamacare this year. Congress will pass a bill to fund government operations in the next few weeks. “This continuing resolution is viewed as “must-pass” legislation, and is our bargaining chip to defund Obamacare.”
Wingnuts are then urged to call their Representative and push for defunding. The Representative’s name and DC phone number, plus a 4-point script is provided. The caller is then commanded to contact Heritage with a call report. “Ja mein fuhrer.”
This is nothing new; it’s been part of the organizational strategy since July of 2010. But Obamacare is still around and the more of ACA that gets implemented, the harder it’s going to be to poison the Obamacare well because it’s a hell of a plus for its citizen benefactors.
The 7 million number is pure bullshit having been debunked repeatedly by numerous sources. Mitt Romney’s campaign figure was 20 million. He claimed the number came from a March, 2012 study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Right after Romney came up with the 20 million figure, the folks at PolitiFact started digging.
Politifact got a copy of the study and started separating the politicized wheat from the chaff.
The limited CBO study was undertaken to estimate the impact of the health care law on the number of people obtaining health care coverage from their employer. No other sources of health care were covered in the study. CBO came up with a “baseline” estimate — its best guess. CBO settled on a range of 3 million to 5 million fewer non-elderly people obtaining coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022 (the email neglected to include the yearly span) than would have been the case before the law was passed. Including those with individually purchased policies means a decline of an additional 1 million to 3 million Americans.
Wildly varying estimates from CBO and other sources have put the decline number at anywhere from 500,000 to Romney’s 20 million. In fact the RAND Corp. estimated that roughly 4 million MORE individuals would be covered. But it doesn’t make any difference because unlike the email statement that, “Obamacare will force 7 million Americans out of their existing health insurance” ACA is not responsible for any snatching of insurance from the hands of those already covered. It fact, through state exchanges, it broadens choices of those losing employee insurance either intentionally (overpriced or lacking enough coverage) or because their employers don’t provide health insurance any longer or prices have skyrocketed.
There’s also the factor of an additional 9 million people covered by employers because of ACA due to subsidies that the repugicans never talk about – ever! There are also subsidies for exchange purchases and even mandated purchases. Expanded current government health programs are also an option. It should be noted that nearly 30 million more Americans will gain insurance through Obamacare.
The HHS Medical Expenditure Panel Survey taken back in ’07 found that 14% of the population switched insurance anyway. So it’s a moot point grounded in deception. Oh, did I mention the baseline CBO figure represents less than 2% of all folks covered by insurance? Another salient fact conveniently overlooked by Heritage.
H’mmmm, smell the aroma of typical repugican dissembling.

The truth be told

Speedometer top speed often exceeds reality

More flash than dash: Speedometers often show far higher top speeds than cars can travel

The speedometer on the Toyota Yaris says the tiny car can go 140 miles per hour. In reality, the bulbous subcompact's 106-horsepower engine and automatic transmission can't push it any faster than 109. So why do the Yaris — and most other cars sold in the U.S. — have speedometers that show top speeds they can't possibly reach?
The answer has deep roots in an American culture that loves the rush of driving fast. The automakers' marketing departments are happy to give people the illusion that their family car can travel at speeds rivaling a NASCAR racer. And companies often use one speedometer type in various models across the world, saving them money.
But critics say the ever-higher numbers are misleading. Some warn they create a safety concern, daring drivers to push past freeway speed limits that are 65 to 75 mph in most states.
"You reach a point where it becomes ridiculous," says Larry Dominique, a former Nissan product chief who now is executive vice president of the TrueCar.com auto pricing website. "Eighty percent plus of the cars on the road are not designed for and will not go over 110 mph."
Last year, speedometer top speeds for new versions of the mainstream Ford Fusion and Chevrolet Malibu were increased from 120 or 140 mph to 160, which approaches speeds on some NASCAR tracks. The speedometer on the Honda Accord already topped out at 160. All are midsize family haulers, the most popular segment of the U.S. auto market, and like most new cars, have top speeds that seldom exceed 120 mph.
The Yaris got its 140 mph speedometer in a redesign for the 2012 model year, giving it the same top reading as the original 1953 Chevrolet Corvette sports car. Even the new Nissan Sentra compact has a 160 mph speedometer.
There are several explanations for the speedometers.
When people are comparison shopping, cars with higher speedometer readings appear to be sportier, and buyers favor them even though they have no intention of driving over 100. "People really want to see higher numbers," said Fawaz Baltaji, a business development manager for Yazaki North America, a large supplier of speedometers for auto companies. "It is indicative of a more powerful engine. There's a marketing pitch to it."
Although cars with high-horsepower engines can come close to the top speedometer speeds, most are limited by engine control computers. That's because the tires can overheat and fail at higher speeds. Tires now common on mainstream cars often can't go above 130 mph or they could fail. Many tires, especially on older models, have speed limits as low as 112. But that's still faster than most people will ever drive.
Automakers, in a push to cut costs, now sell the same cars worldwide and use the same speedometers in different cars all over the world. In China and Europe, governments require that the top number on speedometers be higher than a car's top speed. Cars sold in Europe, for instance, have faster top speeds than those sold elsewhere because they can be driven over 150 mph on sections of Germany's Autobahn. So to sell the same car or speedometer globally, the numbers have to be higher, said Kurt Tesnow, who's in charge of speedometer and instrument clusters for General Motors.
Also, some mainstream cars have some souped-up cousins that go faster and need higher speedometer numbers. A Chevy Malibu with a 2-liter turbocharged engine, for instance, can go 155 mph, far higher than the mainstream version. The little Toyota Yaris gets its speedometer from another Toyota model that's sold in other countries. "It's not that each speedometer is designed for that specific vehicle," said Greg Thome, a company spokesman.
In a similar vein, U.S. automakers can make engines that blow past 70 mph because they make cars for global drivers and speed limits vary around the world. And drivers like the security of knowing they could outrun a natural disaster, such as a tornado, if necessary.
The speedometer designs also reflect research that found most people like the needle to hit highway speeds at the top of the speedometer's circle, said Yazaki's Baltaji. So the common freeway cruising speed of 70 to 80 mph is right in the middle on a 160 mph speedometer, he said.
The rising speedometer numbers aren't surprising to Joan Claybrook, the top federal auto safety regulator under President Jimmy Carter. She's been fighting the escalation for years and says it encourages drivers — especially younger ones — to drive too fast. During her tenure, she briefly got speedometer numbers lowered.
"They think that speed sells," she said of automakers. "People buy these cars because they want to go fast."
Some drivers at dealerships Tuesday conceded that marketing the higher speeds could have worked on them — at least when they were younger.
Paul Lampinen, 36, of Ann Arbor, Mich., said he bought a Ram Pickup with a V-8 engine because he likes a powerful truck. The higher speedometer numbers could have influenced him when he was in his 20s, but they wouldn't work now, he said. "I don't want to pay any tickets," he said while getting his truck serviced at a Chrysler dealer in nearby Saline, Mich.
For years, most speedometers topped out at 120 — even though that was 50 mph over the limit in most states. Then, in 1980, Claybrook, who ran the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, limited speedometers to 85 mph, even though cars could go much faster.
The move, designed to end the temptation to push cars to their limits, drew outrage from gearheads nationwide. Some automakers got around the rule by ending the numbers at 85 but leaving lines beyond that to show higher speeds. The government also forced automakers to highlight 55 mph, which at the time was the fuel-saving national speed limit.
The limit was short-lived, overturned two years later by Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on a pledge to end onerous government regulations. Cars with 85 mph speedometers lingered for several years until they were redesigned and the maximum speeds for most returned to 120.
By the 2000s, however, the speedometer speeds crept higher. Even compact cars showed 130 or 140 mph. The 2014 Chevrolet Corvette speedometer and some Jaguar models now peak at 200.
Claybrook concedes there's no data to show the 85 mph limit saved lives, but she believes it did. She calls the ever-higher speedometer numbers immoral.
At present, the government has no plans to reinstate speedometer limits or regulate top speeds, saying there's no evidence to show it would prevent crashes. "Ultimately, drivers are subject to speed limits mandated by the states regardless of the top speed listed on a vehicle speedometer," NHTSA spokeswoman Lynda Tran said.

But Claybrook isn't satisfied. "To have a car register any more than the maximum speed limit is really a statement by the company: Drive faster. It's OK," she said. "It's encouraging people to violate the law."

Woman sues FedEx for mistaken marijuana delivery

A Plymouth, Massachusetts woman is suing FedEx claiming the company put her safety at risk and violated her privacy. A package containing several pounds of marijuana mistakenly arrived at the doorstep of Maryangela Tobin, a package she thought was a birthday present for her daughter. “There were candles, pixie sticks and peppermint, and something we thought was potpourri,” she said.
But the vacuum packed bags beneath were narcotics and Plymouth police called the company to flag the package saying the recipient could be a risk. But an hour later, Tobin says a man was knocking at her front door looking for the package, with two other men sitting in a vehicle in her driveway. She says FedEx gave away her address, and led the suspected dealers to her house.

YouTube link.

"I knew it was the person looking for the package, I was very nervous.” She walked to the front door and bolted it, slamming the front door in the process while she says the man repeatedly asked if FedEx had picked up the package. It was already in the hands of police, and now she believes the damage has been done, concerned whoever wanted the drugs knows where she lives.

“I feel like the safety of my daughters and myself was invaded and it makes things complicated. If you’ve ever been in a position of being so scared in your home and having something like that happen. I walk into my house first every time, my kids don’t,” she said. The suit claims FedEx disclosed the address “despite explicit Police advisory against such disclosures” and violated Massachusetts privacy laws.

Metropolis

Alcohol abuse ...

6K gallons of scotch accidentally flushed down drain

The night shift at a Chivas Brothers distillery screwed up this week and accidentally flushed about 6,000 gallons of Scotch whiskey down the drain, according to reports from Scotland.

Might be some one is out of a job right about now.

The Worst American Restaurants in Europe

You hear it all the time that international cuisine in America is not authentic, particularly when discussing Olive Garden and Taco Bell. Well, we know that, but the argument also comes up about the mom-and-pop ethnic restaurant on the corner. Turn that idea around, and you have to wonder whether other countries have "American" restaurants. Yes, they do -and they can say a lot about how the world views American food. CNN has reviews of the worst attempts at recreating the American dining experience in Europe. American Dream in Paris leads the list:

Rude service. A patronizing menu of “American” specialties. An interior that takes kitsch to a nauseating level, with an over-abundance of cheap tchotchkes throughout, and for some inexplicable reason, a basement dedicated to Japanese manga.

***

The fries taste stale and the shakes are sweet to the point of undrinkable. The menu full of overpriced blandness is served on dishes made to look like paper plates.

We get it. American food is often rightly mocked for being oversized, dripping in grease or just plain tasteless.

But to make an entire restaurant out of the joke isn't funny.

Have you ever been to any of the restaurants on this list? Or to any "American" restaurants in Europe? 

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PS: They're not all bad. Here's a list of the best American restaurants in Europe. More

Iceland Tests Meat Pies for Horsemeat, Finds No Meat of Any Kind

When officials in Iceland began hearing about horsemeat being secreted into beef products around Europe, they decided to run tests to ensure the same thing wasn't happening in Iceland.
Icelandic meat inspector Kjartan Hreinsson says his team didn't find any horsemeat, but one brand of locally produced beef pie left it stumped: it contained no meat at all. [...]
Hreinsson said it appeared to be some kind of vegetable matter. He said the mystery pie was traced to a firm in western Iceland and the case had been handed to municipal authorities.

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Mom Made Peruvian Government Hunt for Her Son After He Went Missing From Facebook

Most moms fret in worry when they don't hear from their children in a while, but 25-year-old Garrett Hand's mom really takes it to a whole 'nother level. She got the Peruvian government to start a manhunt for her "missing" son when he didn't update his Facebook page for a few weeks:

In November, 25-year-old Garrett Hand and his 25-year-old girlfriend Jamie Neal flew from their California home to South America for a four-month bike trip. Before the couple left, they informed their friends and family that, for some of their trip (as they traveled through jungles and rainforests), they would be out of cellphone and Internet range.
In January, they passed out of cellphone range. In February, Garrett's mom demanded the Peruvian government launch a full-scale search for the couple, whom she believed to be missing.
What they actually were, was "having a blast."
The couple's last communication with their families (and access to their bank accounts) occurred on January 25. In late February, Garrett's mom called Peru and demanded they put Garrett on the phone to talk to her right this instant, or else they'd be in big trouble, mister.

Caity Weaver of Gawker has the full story: Here.

Paleolithic screw waterskin stoppers

These are the most delightful tools I have ever seen. They are from the Perigordian IV, which is 30 000 BP to 28 000 BP.  They are called 'goat skin corks' which have a hand cut screw thread!

As an archaeologist this doesn't surprise me too much although one doesn't expect to find a screw thread in the Palaeolithic ..

They are from two different sites, but the same time period. My bet is that both were made at one site, and traded to another. No two people come up with an intellectual leap like that independently, at the same time. It had to have been made by the same artisan or group of artisans, for sure. What is interesting, however, is that this was invented, but never became popular except in one general area at one time, about 30 000 years ago...

The one on the left is from Roc de Combe-Capelle, and on the right from Fourneau du Diable. They are both in the Dordogne area, about 90 kilometres apart.

Notice that they are both right hand threads, showing that right handedness in humans has been around for a long time - though we knew that anyway because of the differences in arms on the right and the left of skeletons...

The material of both is ivory. Hard to work, but it would be very durable...

Did a Comet Really Chill and Kill Clovis Culture?

Did a Comet Really Chill and Kill Clovis Culture?

A comet proposed to have crashed into North America almost 13,000 years ago didn't do so, according to new research.

Random Photos

The 12 Deepest Lakes In The World

The deepest lakes in the world are not necessarily the largest lakes on the planet in terms of surface area but the lakes which hold the largest volumes of water. Some of these lakes are great tourist attractions and others are heavily used for commerce and most are used for both. Outdoor activities like hiking and fishing are popular in and around most of the these lakes and some of them have hotels, resorts and spas along their shores.

Volcano aerosols, not pollutants, tamped down recent Earth warming

Volcano aerosols, not pollutants, tamped down recent Earth warming

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain [...]

Astronaut Snaps Photo of Mount Etna Erupting

Astronaut Snaps Photo of Mount Etna Erupting

Astronaut Chris Hadfield snapped a spectacular photo of Italy's Mount Etna volcano streaming ash toward the sea early Thursday morning.

Big Meteorite Discovered in Antarctica

Big Meteorite Discovered in Antarctica

Meteorite hunters at the bottom of the world bagged a rare find this southern summer: a 40-pound (18 kilogram) chunk of extraterrestrial rock.

Past Antarctic Warming Linked to Greenhouse Gas

Past Antarctic Warming Linked to Greenhouse Gas

Rising carbon dioxide levels may have caused Antarctic warming in the past.

With you there, buddy

Old friends

 

Old friends

Were horses domesticated in prehistoric Arabia?

No-kill wolf ban spurs nonlethal options

 

As long as wolves have been making their comeback, biologists and ranchers have had a decidedly Old West option for dealing with those that develop a taste for beef: Shoot to kill. But for the past year, Oregon has been a "wolf-safe" zone, with ranchers turning to more modern, nonlethal ways to protect livestock While the number of wolves roaming the state has gone up, livestock kills haven't — and now conservation groups are hoping Oregon can serve as a model for other Western states working to return the predator to the wild.
"Once the easy option of killing wolves is taken off the table, we've seen reluctant but responsible ranchers stepping up," said Rob Klavins of the advocacy group Oregon Wild. "Conflict is going down. And wolf recovery has got back on track."

The no-kill ban has been in place since September 2011. That's when the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it planned to kill two members of the Imnaha wolf pack in northeastern Wallowa County for taking livestock. Conservation groups sued, arguing that rules allowing wolves to be killed to reduce livestock attacks did not comply with the state Endangered Species Act. The Oregon Court of Appeals stepped in, prohibiting wolf kills while the two sides work to settle, although ranchers who catch wolves in the act of killing livestock may still shoot them.

At the end of 2012, wolf numbers in the state had risen to 46 from 29 in 2011, according to state fish and wildlife officials. Meantime, four cows and eight sheep were killed last year by two separate packs, while 13 cows were killed by one pack in 2011.

Wallowa County cattle rancher Karl Patton started giving nonlethal methods a try in 2010, after he fired off his pistol to chase off a pack of wolves in a pasture filled with cows and newborn calves. State wildlife officials provided him with an alarm that erupts with bright lights and the sound of gunshots when a wolf bearing a radio-tracking collar treads near. He also staked out fladry at calving time. The long strings of red plastic flags flutter in the wind to scare away wolves. The flags fly from an electrically charged wire that gives off a jolt to predators that dare touch it.

The rancher put 7,000 miles on his ATV spending more time with his herd, and cleaned up old carcasses that put the scent of meat on the wind. And state wildlife officials text him nightly, advising whether a wolf with a satellite GPS tracking collar is nearby.
"None of this stuff is a sure cure," said Patton, who worries the fladry will lose its effectiveness once wolves become accustomed to it. Such measures also can't be used in open range.
Seen as a scourge on the landscape, wolves were nearly wiped out across the Lower 48 by the 1930s. In 1995, the federal government sponsored the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. They eventually spread to Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington and California.
With wolf numbers approaching 1,800, the federal government dropped Endangered Species Act protection in 2011 in the Northern Rockies, eastern Oregon and eastern Washington, and turned over recovery management to the states.
While ranchers are not happy with the wolf comeback, the wider public is. A 2011 survey for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife found 74.5 percent of Washington residents believe it acceptable for wolves to recolonize their state.
Wolf advocates hope the Oregon experiment can spread elsewhere, especially Idaho, which had 746 wolves in 2011. In 2012, hunters and wildlife agents killed 422 wolves, compared with 296 for 2011. Sheep and cattle kills, meantime, went up from 192 in 2011 to 341 in 2012.
Idaho Fish and Game biologist Craig White said it "raised eyebrows" on both sides of the wolf debate when the livestock kills rose even as more wolves were killed. Previously the trend had been for livestock kills to go down as wolf kills went up. The state plans to continue killing wolves until elk herds — their primary prey and a popular game animal — start increasing, he said.
The Idaho numbers show "you can't manage wolves using conventional wisdom and assumption," said Suzanne Stone of Defenders of Wildlife in Idaho. "Using these old archaic methods of managing predators by just killing them is not working."
In "no-kill" Oregon, ranchers disagree. Wallowa rancher Dennis Sheehy puts bells on his cattle to help scare away wolves. He also spends more time with his herd, and cleans up old bone piles. Nevertheless, he believes a kill option should always be on the table for wolves that prey on livestock. The 2011 ban, he said, "really upset people around here."
Patton has never lost a cow while using the fladry and alarms. But two were killed on the open range and one in a large pasture where such protection measures are impractical. He has also found tracks showing wolves crossed the fladry and walked among his cows without, for some reason, attacking them.
He still believes the only way to deal with wolves that attack cattle is to kill the whole pack.
"It's frustrating, more than anything, because we have our hands tied," he said. "You can kill a man (who) comes into your house to rob you. Wolves are more protected than people."

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Today in History

1776
Americans begin shelling British troops in Boston.
1781
Maryland ratifies the Articles of Confederation. She is the last state to sign.
1797
The Directory of Great Britain authorizes vessels of war to board and seize neutral vessels, particularly if the ships are American.
1815
To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declares war on Algiers.
1836
Texas declares independence from Mexico on Sam Houston's 43rd birthday.
1853
The Territory of Washington is organized.
1865
President Abraham Lincoln rejects Confederate General Robert E. Lee's plea for peace talks, demanding unconditional surrender.
1867
The first Reconstruction Act is passed by Congress.
1877
Rutherford B. Hayes is declared president by one vote the day before the inauguration.
1889
Congress passes the Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.
1896
Bone Mizell, the famed cowboy of Florida, is sentenced to two years of hard labor in the state pen for cattle rustling. He would only serve a small portion of the sentence.
1901
Congress passes the Platt amendment, which limits Cuban autonomy as a condition for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
1908
An international conference on arms reduction opens in London.
1908
Gabriel Lippman introduces the new three-dimensional color photography at the Academy of Sciences.
1917
Congress passes the Jones Act making Puerto Rico a territory of the United States and makes the inhabitants U.S. citizens.
1923
In Italy, Mussolini admits that women have a right to vote, but declares that the time is not right.
1930
Novelist D.H. Lawrence dies of tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Vence, France, at the age of 45.
1943
The center of Berlin is bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs are dropped in a half hour.
1945
MacArthur raises the U.S. flag on Corregidor in the Philippines.
1946
Ho Chi Minh is elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1951
The U.S. Navy launches the K-1, the first modern submarine designed to hunt enemy submarines.
1955
Claudette Colvin refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous arrest for the same offense.
1956
France grants independence to Morocco.
1965
More than 150 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes bomb two bases in North Vietnam in the first of the "Rolling Thunder" raids.
1968
The siege of Khe Sanh ends in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there are still in control of the mountain top.
1973
Federal forces surround Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which is occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who are holding at least 10 hostages.
1974
A grand jury in Washington, D.C. concludes that President Nixon was indeed involved in the Watergate cover-up.
1978
Czech pilot Vladimir Remek becomes the first non-Russian, non-American in space.
1981
The United States plans to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.

Non Sequitur

The True-Life Horror that Inspired Moby-Dick

In November of 1820, a seafaring expedition went all wrong when a whale repeatedly attacked and sank the whaling ship the Essex. The young captain, George Pollard Jr. and the crew were stranded on three 20-foot boats for months. A few of them survived.

Pollard had told the full story to fellow captains over a dinner shortly after his rescue and to a missionary named George Bennet, and to Bennet it seemed like a confession. Certainly, it was grim: 92 days and sleepless nights at sea in a leaking boat with no food, his surviving crew going mad beneath the unforgiving sun, eventual cannibalism and the harrowing fate of two teenage boys, including Pollard’s first cousin, Owen Coffin. “But I can tell you no more—my head is on fire at the recollection,” Pollard told him. “I hardly know what I say.”

The story of the Essex crew inspired Herman Melville to write a novel about a whale hunter, which was not well received and only sold a few thousand copies in his lifetime. Read the whole story at Smithsonian's Past Imperfect blog.

Did you know ...

That raising the minimum wage is a step towards economic freedom

About the neo-confederate supreme court

That under gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin private sector job growth has slowed markedly

A CEO convicted of money laundering sentenced to 7 days in jail, but a higher court rejected the sentence and sent it back for reconsideration

Why taxes have to go up

That univision beat NBC in February sweeps

House repugicans Congratulate Themselves On Killing a Million Jobs

It is customary to give one’s good wishes, or praise, when something special or pleasant has happened to someone, or for a particular achievement they persevered and worked hard to accomplish. For eight long years, shrub repugicans ran up the deficit with two unfunded wars, an unfunded Medicare prescription plan, and then bailed out banks as the economy tanked, and witnessed their handiwork eviscerate millions upon millions of Americans’ jobs and had the temerity to run against Barack Obama promising more of the same economic malfeasance. Apparently, they wanted the nation to give them a hearty “job well done” and “please continue” taking the economic life out of the people in 2008. After President Obama bailed the country out of the shrub repugican economic disaster, they swept into power in the House and directly proceeded attempting to return to their old ways of killing jobs and retarding growth, and yesterday they finally accomplished their goal.
Doubtless, repugicans are congratulating themselves for allowing the dreaded sequester to take effect knowing full well that in the first year of a ten year plan, about a million Americans will lose their jobs, the economy will contract, and hundreds-of-thousands of children, seniors, and the poor will be kicked off safety nets, because that has been their goal for four years. However, repugicans cannot expect many Americans not in the upper 1% of income earners to congratulate them for finally imposing their precious Draconian austerity on America, and with little options to avoid the certain economic hardship most American families are going to feel, it safe to say repugicans will be cursed from one end of the nation to the other and they deserve much worse. If they had a conscience, or morality, repugicans might be bothered that the people are going to pay for the repugican cabal’s austerity economic strategy, but they will collect their bloated salaries, and corporate contributions, and hit the talk shows to tell Americans that killing jobs and retarding GDP growth was the best way to build a vibrant economy; for the wealthy and their corporations.
One might be inclined to excuse the feckless repugican drive to send the nation back into a recession if there were no living examples of the devastation austerity wreaks on a recovering economy, but after most European nations suffered slow or no growth and double dip recessions as a result of severe austerity measures, and reduced GDP growth in the fourth quarter in America on account of spending cuts, they cannot be excused. Their austerity measures served one purpose and one purpose only; damage the economy and make the people suffer to protect the rich and for re-electing President Obama.
The repugicans did pass a bill in the House to replace the sequester in the last session of Congress, but it would have kept all the domestic cuts and replaced the defense cuts with yet more domestic cuts to anti-poverty programs. The repugicans hate programs that combat poverty, so they must be celebrating the sequester cuts to WIC, food stamps, meals on wheels, Head Start, and reduced school lunch programs, but they will not be getting kudos from half-a-million working-poor families deciding how to provide their hungry children with at least one daily meal. Seniors too, will not be singing the repugican cabal’s praises as their food stamps dry up and those luxuries like Meals on Wheels stop bringing food to shut-ins, but they can rest assured repugicans fought diligently to  continue big oil subsidies, corporate tax breaks, and tax loopholes for the richest 1% of Americans while complaining America’s broke and cannot afford to assist the generation that built the infrastructure the wealthy depend on to post record profits as middle class families face declining wages and job losses.
While most Americans are desperately looking for ways to survive another repugican economic onslaught, a million workers nervously await notice their job was eliminated due to spending cuts, and as 11,000 special education teachers await pink slips, and tens-of-thousands of others began receiving notices their jobs face elimination, it is safe to say educators and students will not be sending congratulatory notes to repugicans. The list of affected Americans includes 99% of the population in some way or another, and any American can peruse a comprehensive list to see precisely how they will be affected by austerity-drunk repugicans responsible for reductions in law enforcement, healthcare, disaster relief, aviation safety, and regulators keeping the food and medicine supply safe. One thing is assured, repugicans succeeded in adversely affecting every American negatively and they are quite pleased with themselves, but if they expect to be congratulated for deliberately and with malice aforethought damning Americans to unnecessary harm, they will be disappointed at the silence.
The repugicans know, and promised faithfully in 2010, that creating jobs was the surest way to maintain President Obama’s economic recovery, and yet over two full years later, they have not created one job and deliberately attempted to kill millions, and on Friday they succeeded with the sequester. They may be congratulating each other, but they owe their success, in part, to Progressives and Liberals who sat home during the 2010 midterm elections to punish the President for not exceeding the authority of his office and not waving a magic wand to repeal DADT, DOMA, or close Guantanamo without Congressional approval, and although many liberal and professional left pundits took pride in “teaching Obama a lesson,” they are to be congratulated for handing the House to teabaggers and repugicans running on a pro-poverty platform. Good job!
Yesterday President Obama said, “At a time when our businesses have finally begun to get some traction, hiring new workers, and bringing jobs back to America, we shouldn’t be making a series of dumb, arbitrary cuts to things that businesses depend on and workers depend on like education and research and infrastructure and defense,” but the President was not being honest. “We” didn’t make dumb arbitrary cuts, repugicans did, and in all honesty, they were not “dumb” or “arbitrary.” They were calculated cuts repugicans yearned, and fought, for from the day the President took office and they were imposed because repugicans love poverty and hate the poor, thrive on ignorance and hate education, love the rich and hate taxing them, but most of all, they hate America and only traitors congratulate America’s enemies, but a Secular Humanist damns them to their proverbial Hell, and may they rot there for eternity.

Aerial photography ban proposed for all but government

AGBeat: "Neal Kurk (r), member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives since 1986 has recently sponsored HB 619-FN to make aerial photography illegal in their state."

The proposed bill states:

A person is guilty of a class A misdemeanor if such person knowingly creates or assists in creating an image of the exterior of any residential dwelling in this state where such image is created by or with the assistance of a satellite, drone, or any device that is not supported by the ground. This prohibition shall not apply where the image does not reveal forms identifiable as human beings or man-made objects. In this paragraph, “dwelling” means any building, structure, or portion thereof which is occupied as, or designed or intended for occupancy as, a residence by one or more individuals.

This bill would forbid you from tossing a camera two feet into the air with the shutter-timer feature activated. And Kite aerial photographers will have to switch to pole cams, I guess.

US Trade Rep orders Canada to comply with the dead-and-buried ACTA treaty, Canada rolls over and wets itself

Do you remember ACTA? It was a broad, Internet-destroying copyright treaty, negotiated with unprecedented secrecy (even Congress and the European Parliament were not allowed to know what was going on in the negotiations -- though CEOs of beer and fertilizer companies were kept apprised on a running basis). Well, ACTA died when the people of the world rejected it, marching by the thousands in the streets, and governments refused to ratify it.

But now it's back. The US Trade Representative gave marching orders to Canada's Harper government, and it has introduced a bill that would force Canadians to obey the provisions in ACTA, even though ACTA no longer exists. From EFF's Maira Sutton:

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) posted its 2013 Trade Policy Agenda and 2012 Trade Policy Report, which covers all of its ongoing negotiations over trade agreements. It reports that the US is working with Japan and other negotiating parties “to ensure that ACTA can come into force as soon as possible,” and encourages Canada “to meet its [ACTA] obligations.”
Canada did not miss a beat to satisfy this demand. The Canadian government introduced a bill today to make Canada compliant with provisions of ACTA, paving the way for its eventual ratification. Among the provisions outlined within the 52-page bill are increased criminalization of copyright and trademark law as well as a new authority for Canadian customs officials to seize and destroy goods they can determine to be “counterfeit or pirated goods” without any judicial oversight.

US Trade Office Calls ACTA Back From the Dead and Canada Complies

Chad says soldiers in Mali kill al Qaeda's Belmokhtar

 

Chadian soldiers in Mali have killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the al Qaeda commander behind a bloody mass hostage-taking at an Algerian gas plant in January, Chad's military said on Saturday.

His death would be a major blow to Islamist rebels in northern Mali who have been pushed into their mountain strongholds by French and African forces.

"On Saturday, March 2, at noon, Chadian armed forces operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base (...) The toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar," Chadian armed forces spokesman General Zacharia Gobongue said in a statement read on national television.

Belmokhtar claimed responsibility for the seizure of dozens of foreign hostages at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria in January in which more than 60 people were killed.
The report of his death comes days after Chad's President Idriss Deby said soldiers in Mali had killed another leading al Qaeda commander in the Sahara, Adelhamid Abou Zeid.

French officials said they could not confirm the killing of either Abou Zeid or Belmokhtar.

Chad is among several African nations that have contributed forces to a French-led military intervention in Mali aimed at ridding its vast northern desert of Islamist rebels who seized it nearly a year ago following a coup in the capital.
Western and regional nations are worried that al Qaeda will seek to use the zone as a launchpad for international attacks and strengthen ties with homegrown African Islamist groups like al Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria.
In a speech on Friday, French President Francois Hollande said the operation in Mali was in its final stage.
"Terrorist groups have taken refuge and are hiding in an especially difficult zone," he said. "Information is out there. I don't have to confirm it because we must reach the end of the operation."
A U.S. official and a Western diplomat, however, said the reports about Abou Zeid's death appeared to be credible.

Journalists took secret money for critical pieces about Malaysian opposition candidate

The government of Malaysia hired a US PR firm to pay wingnut journalists to write articles critical of a opposition leader running on a pro-democracy platform for The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The National Review, The San Francisco Examiner, Red State, and The Washington Times. The writers who took the money then wrote for their usual places, but didn't disclose that they were getting money from a third party to criticize Anwar Ibrahim.

The payments to conservative American opinion writers — whose work appeared in outlets from the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner to the Washington Times to National Review and RedState — emerged in a filing this week to the Department of Justice. The filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act outlines a campaign spanning May 2008 to April 2011 and led by Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, who received $389,724.70 under the contract and paid smaller sums to a series of wingnut writers.
Trevino lost his column at the Guardian last year after allegations that his relationship with Malaysian business interests wasn't being disclosed in columns dealing with Malaysia. Trevino told Politico in 2011 that "I was never on any 'Malaysian entity's payroll,' and I resent your assumption that I was."
According to Trevino's belated federal filing, the interests paying Trevino were in fact the government of Malaysia, "its ruling party, or interests closely aligned with either." The Malaysian government has been accused of multiple human rights abuses and restricting the press and personal freedoms. Anwar, the opposition leader, has faced prosecution for sodomy, a prosecution widely denounced in the West, which Trevino defended as more "nuanced" than American observers realized. The government for which Trevino worked also attacked Anwar for saying positive things about Israel; Trevino has argued that Anwar is not the pro-democracy figure he appears.

Covert Malaysian Campaign Touched A Wide Range Of American Media

What do a prosthetic leg, a bra and an ass have in common?

Police found cocaine in prosthetic leg, morphine in bra and hypodermic needle hidden in ass during traffic stop 

A Charlotte County man was arrested on drug charges on Tuesday after deputies said he was found with a small bag of cocaine in his prosthetic leg. One woman who was traveling with him was also arrested after authorities said she had morphine and Hydromorphone pills hidden in her bra and a second woman was reportedly found with a hypodermic needle hidden in her ass.
A Charlotte County Sheriff's deputy stopped a car in Port Charlotte for not having brake lights. The car was driven by Alexis Ann Clancey, 20, of Englewood, and carried Bradley Jordon Greus, 23, and Donald Carlo Acquarelli, 25, of Port Charlotte, and Teal Lee Thomson, 22, of Rotonda. Deputies searched the vehicle and asked Greus if he had anything hidden in his prosthetic leg. Greus said he had a small bag of cocaine in it and handed it to a deputy.

Deputies found a plastic bag with pills in Thomson's bra. Clancey said she had a Hydromorphine pill in her wallet left on the driver's seat. While searching Acquarelli, Clancey jumped in the car, grabbed her wallet, quickly pulled out a pill and swallowed it. Deputies attempted to stop her from swallowing but were unsuccessful. Authorities said they found five hypodermic needles with a liquid that tested positive for opiates. Clancey also told deputies she had another hypodermic needle hidden in her bottom; she was removed from the patrol car and produced a needle from her ass and gave it to the deputy.

The four were arrested and taken to the Charlotte County jail. Greus and Acquarelli were both charged with possession of cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia. Thompson was charged with possession of morphine, possession of hydromorphone and possession of drug paraphernalia. Clancey was charged with possession of opiates, possession of drug paraphernalia and resisting an officer.

Nepalese police crackdown against long hair sparks outrage

Police authorities in Kathmandu are facing flak from residents following a drive targeting youths and a few girls for having long hair and wearing earrings.
On Monday police detained 711 people including three girls as part of a campaign to bring down incidents of theft, looting and other criminal activities. But instead of taking action based on past records of those detained, the main criterion behind the action was the length of their hair and their appearance.

After rounding them up from all corners of the city the police took down names, fingerprints and photos of the detainees before handing them over to their parents and guardians. Some unlucky ones also had their hair cut by the police in presence of their guardians and were warned not sport long hair in future.

“Is it against the law that I want to keep my hair long? Are we being ruled by the Taliban,” said one unidentified youth who was forced to cut his hair short. The police action has sparked an online outrage with many accusing the authorities of trampling on personal liberty of residents and some demanding an apology from Inspector General of Nepal Police, Kuber Singh Rana.

Iran bans Buddhist statues from stores in its capital

Buddha statues have joined Barbie dolls and characters from "The Simpsons" TV cartoon as banned items in the backward nation.

Iran bans Buddhist statues from stores in its capital

Random Celebrity Photo

Gene Tierney, 1944

British sell French wine to pay off drinks tab

Belinda Goldsmith at Reuters: "Britain's government is selling vintage French wine at around 5,000 pounds a bottle ($7,500) in a bid to make its wine cellar self-funding."

Beef Rainbow

I would've answered "fleshy deliciousness" (sorry, vegetarians!). That, or magic. But the folks at the USDA spoiled the fun by explaining it with science.
From Taylor Orci's post over at The Atlantic:

According to the USDA, "When light hits a slice of meat, it splits into colors like a rainbow." This is something called a "diffraction grating," essentially what happens when light waves bend or spread around a surface and create a pattern. It's the same thing that happens to make rainbows on the surface of a DVD. It's understandable that folks mistake diffracted light as a sign of spoilage, especially since the main color created by meat diffraction gratings is green. There is a reason why in Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, the central conflict of the protagonist is his strong apprehension against eating green meat.

More

Six Things Worse Than Horse Meat In Your Burger

An unintended hunk of horseflesh is one of the less alarming things that the meat processing industry can put in your ground beef. What about drugs, chemicals, pesticides, poop, bugs and germs?

Random Photo

Budget cuts force Yellowstone to delay opening

 

During the first full week of March every year, the mountain passes of Yellowstone National Park rumble with the sounds of hulking snow plows operated by two dozen, mostly seasonal workers. This month, the plows will be silent. The costly and complex road-clearing operation that was scheduled to start on Monday will be postponed this year because of the U.S. government's across-the-board budget cuts known as the "sequester," which took effect on Friday.
Park managers have to trim $1.75 million from Yellowstone's $35 million annual budget, which will delay the opening of most entrances to America's first national park by two weeks. Park managers will give more details on Monday.

Local tourism industry leaders are not happy with the decision. A delay in the park's traditional early May opening and other service reductions could mean millions of dollars in lost tourism and tax revenues for small, rural towns in Montana and Wyoming.

"I think it's counterproductive, and I expect a lot of people to be raising hell," said Mike Darby, whose family owns the Irma Hotel in downtown Cody, Wyoming, at the east gate of Yellowstone.

Built in 1902 by frontier showman Buffalo Bill Cody, the hotel is decorated with bison heads and hunting rifles. The business survives the lean winter months by drawing local customers to its restaurant and Silver Saddle Lounge, where cowboys meet for a beer on weekends.
A two-week delay in Yellowstone's opening means Cody will miss out on more than 150,000 visitors spending an estimated $2.3 million, according to figures released by the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce. Similar shortfalls in four other gateway towns around the park could put total losses from a two-week delayed opening at more than $10 million.

Beyond Yellowstone, the National Parks Conservation Association has warned that a $110 million cut to the National Park Service budget will result in job losses and reduced services at the country's 398 national parks.

For example, the U.S. spending cuts could lead to a 20 percent reduction in spring student education programs at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, affecting 2,400 students; a two-week delay in the reopening of Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road, which could cost $1 million in lost revenue daily to surrounding communities and concessions; and a delay in the opening of the Grand Canyon National Park's East and West Rim Drives, according to the NPCA.

"It's alarming that this very avoidable threat could become a reality. From Yellowstone to Cape Cod, the Grand Canyon and Great Smoky Mountains, our national heritage and local economies are at risk," NPCA President Tom Kiernan said in a statement on Thursday.
GRIZZLY BEARS

Yellowstone and neighboring Grand Teton National Park each attracts roughly 3 million annual visitors who come to see grizzly bears, geysers and wide-open spaces. The two parks generated a total of $766 million in tourism spending in 2011, supporting 11,438 jobs, according to a Michigan State University analysis released last month.

If the budget cuts roll on through the summer, local business owners fear that families may decide to vacation elsewhere, which could mean disastrous losses in local tax collections for gas, food, lodging and merchandise.

"They could end up losing more in taxes over the season than what they saved with budget cuts," Darby said. "It's ridiculous."

Some tourism leaders in Wyoming are working on their own plans to raise money to plow the roads at Yellowstone, in an effort to honor the spring opening dates that many families have already planned their vacations around.
With a budget focused largely on fixed costs like fuel and salaries for key employees, there are no easy cuts to be made in Yellowstone's operating expenses.
"We really do have very few places that we can go" to cut costs, said Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash. "Our workforce is made up of a lot of seasonal employees, so that's certainly a major area where we can make changes."
Plowing more than 300 miles of high-altitude paved roads in Yellowstone takes weeks, and burns through as much as $10,000 worth of diesel fuel each day.
Waiting for warmer weather to help clear some of that snow is expected save about $250,000 in plowing costs, Superintendent Dan Wenk told Darby and other gateway community business leaders this week in a conference call to outline planned cuts.
A further $1 million in savings will come from not hiring replacements for some departing permanent workers. Wenk expects to save an additional $500,000 by reducing the seasonal workforce and through travel and training reductions.
In Jackson, Wyoming, at the southern boundary of Grand Teton National Park, business owners are pushing to get the word out that the parks and surrounding areas will be open for business this summer, despite the cuts.
But budget cuts mean that three popular visitor centers in Grand Teton will not open at all this summer, said park spokeswoman Jackie Skaggs.
Since many maintenance workers and other seasonal employees carry out double duties as on-call firefighters, paramedics or search-and-rescue workers, payroll reductions will mean fewer emergency responders in the park this summer.
"We will do our best not to allow those reductions to impact the safety of our visitors and employees," Skaggs said. "But the reality is our response capabilities will be reduced."
In staunchly conservative Wyoming — where legislators just cut most state agency budgets by 6.5 percent despite virtually no state debt and more than $15 billion in savings — the across-the-board federal cuts are raising questions.
Residents who depend on tourism for a living are already complaining to the state's all-Republican congressional delegation, which is on record as supporting the cuts if it means the alternative is raising taxes.
"I'm sorry, but in how this is affecting us, it doesn't seem to me like it's fiscally responsible," Darby said. "Somebody needs to refigure this, or we need to get better advocates."

Milan's Vertical Forest Towers

Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) is an ambitious eco project in Milan, Italy, designed by architect Stefano Boeri. The project is comprised of two towers with giant cantilevered staggered balconies that permit fairly big trees to be accommodate, since there is a minimum of two storeys over every balcony. Basically, it's a vertical forest in the heart of a blooming metropolis.

The Forest Towers have a height of 364 feet (111 meters) and 256 feet (78 meters) and will host more than 900 trees on terraces. The structure was completed in the first quarter of 2012 and the project is currently proceeding with the construction of facades and facilities.

Poo as Radiation Shielding

Bazillionaire Dennis Tito's Inspiration Mars mission to send a man and a woman to the Red Planet has got 99 problems, but radiation from cosmic rays ain't one. Why? Because it's just been solved ... by poo.

... their greatest health risk comes from exposure to the radiation from cosmic rays. The solution? Line the spacecraft's walls with water, food and their own faeces.
"It's a little queasy sounding, but there's no place for that material to go, and it makes great radiation shielding," says Taber MacCallum, a member of the team funded by multimillionaire Dennis Tito, who announced the audacious plan earlier this week.
McCallum told New Scientist that solid and liquid human waste products would get put into bags and used as a radiation shield – as well as being dehydrated so that any water can be recycled for drinking. "Dehydrate them as much as possible, because we need to get the water back," he said. "Those solid waste products get put into a bag, put right back against the wall."

More

Going To Mars In 2018

A Concept Is So Crazy It Just Might Work

Millionaire space tourist Dennis Tito and his partners have had to tell questioners repeatedly that they're not 'crazy' to think they can launch a man and a woman to Mars and back - but if the Inspiration Mars Foundation's 'Mission for America' succeeds, it may well be because it's just crazy enough.

The plan doesn't involve landing on Mars. It will be a 501-day non-stop Mars flyby. The rocket and crew capsule will be ready to launch on January 5, 2018, when the planets literally align. A launch on or around that date would result in a straightforward, no-fuss trajectory that would come within 100 miles of Mars' backside, and bring the spacecraft back to Earth on May 21, 2019.

Twnety-Seven Beautiful Sunsets

Sunsets are amazing and beautiful. Here are 27 sunset pictures.

Five mental disorders share genetic links

The largest genetic study of mental illnesses to date finds five major disorders may not look much alike but they share some gene-based risks. The surprising discovery comes in the quest to unravel what causes psychiatric disorders and how to better diagnose and treat them.

The disorders — autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia — are considered distinct problems. But findings published online Wednesday suggest they're related in some way.

"These disorders that we thought of as quite different may not have such sharp boundaries," said Dr. Jordan Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the lead researchers for the international study appearing in The Lancet.

Huge study: 5 mental disorders share genetic links

How Many Languages is it Possible to Know?

Graham Cansdale is a professional translator at the European Commission in Brussels. He is considered fluent in the 14 languages he uses in his work, but he has studied other languages. Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti was a linguist who died in 1849; he was said to have known between 40 and 72 languages. Is this even possible?

There are millions of people, even in the mostly monolingual US, who speak more than one language at home. Competence in three languages is not unusual, and we've all heard stories of grandmas and grandpas who had to master four or five languages on their way from the old country to the new. In India it is common for people to go about their business every day using five or six different languages. But what about 10, 20, 30, 100 languages? What's the upper limit on the number of languages a person can know?

Michael Erard, in his fascinating book Babel No More, travels around the world in search of hyperpolyglots, people who study and learn large numbers of languages. He sheds light on the secrets of their success, and explains why it can be hard to put an exact number on language knowledge.

Mental_floss introduces us to seven hyperpolyglots, although how many languages they know depends on the meaning of "know," as there are different levels of fluency. Of course, only a polyglot would really understand how different those levels are. More

Where Does Our Sense Of Time Come From?

In 1905, Albert Einstein published his theory of Special Relativity - showing that wristwatches of two observers in motion relative to one another will measure time differently. Since then, our human concept of time has gotten slippery. It's no longer possible to think of time as ticking along at a constant rate since the universe was born, separate from our own human perceptions.

Studies have borne out the idea that we all perceive time differently. For example, in 2001, two scientists at University College London conducted research showing that our internal clocks don't always match either. Everyone's sense of time is different and, at least in part, dependent on what our senses are telling us about the external world.

Atlantis Found!

Atlantis Found: Giant Sphinxes, Pyramids In Bermuda Triangle

Two scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, working off the coast of Cuba and using a robot submersible, have confirmed that a gigantic city exists at the bottom of the ocean. The site of the ancient city — that includes several sphinxes and at least four giant pyramids plus other structures — amazingly sits within the boundries of the fabled Bermuda Triangle.

Atlantis found in Bermuda Triangle

Two scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, working off the coast of Cuba and using a robot submersible, have confirmed that a gigantic city exists at the bottom of the ocean. The site of the ancient city — that includes several sphinxes and at least four giant pyramids plus other structures — amazingly sits within the boundries of the fabled Bermuda Triangle.

According to a report by arclein of Terra Forming Terra, Cuban Subsea Pyramid Complex, the evidence points to the city being simultaneously inundated with rising waters and the land sinking into the sea. This correlates exactly with the Atlantis legend.

The disaster may have occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. As the Arctic icecap catastrophically melted it caused sea levels to rise quickly around the world, especially affecting the Northern Hemisphere. Coast lines changed; land was lost; islands (even island continents) disappeared.

Arclein observes: “At the time uplifted portions of the Mid Atlantic Ridge subsided also including Lyonese and the home islands and land mass around the Azores. Even if that had not happened, this subsidence was amply large enough

This would have produced an orthogonal pressure forcing subsidence to either East or West. Since the ridge between Cuba and Yucatan is the natural point of weakness between the Gulf subsidence basin and the Caribbean subsidence basin, it naturally subsided deeply. The driver for all this was the hydrostatic changes brought about by both the original crustal shift of 12,900 years ago that I have called the Pleistocene Nonconformity and the slow uplift of the Hudson Bay Basin brought about by the ending of the Ice Age.”

Cuban missile crisis stops research

According to journalist Luis Mariano Fernandez the city was first discovered decades ago, but all access to it was stopped during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. (http://www.luismarianofernandez.com/AtlantidaEnCuba4.html) To view in other languages, use the google translate tool bar.

The U.S. government discovered the alleged place during the Cuban missile crisis in the sixties, Nuclear submarines cruising in the Gulf (in deep sea) met pyramid structures. They immediately shut down the site and took control of him and the objects, in order that it will not come to Russians hands.”

The science team of deep ocean experts, archaeologists and oceanographers found ruins of ancient buildings 600 feet below the ocean. They say the city is Atlantis.

Look carefully, in the muky water a giant pyramid is visible( http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/riseearth/Atlantis_02.jpg )

Pyramids and sphinxes bigger than Egypt’s

Evidence that the island of Cuba is the vestige of a once mighty culture is supported by Zalitzki’s discovery on the island of extremely ancient symbols and pictograms identical to those seen on the underwater structures.

A second giant pyramid photographed by the ROV ( http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/riseearth/Atlantis_01.jpg )

Using exploration submersibles, they discovered amazingly huge pyramid structures similar to (but larger than) the pyramids in Giza, Egypt. They estimate the Atlantis pyramids are constructed with stones weighing many hundreds of tons.

Speaking with a scientist about the possibility that the ruins are indeed Atlantis, Fernandez reports the expert replied:
“…in the Yucatan cultures today is possible that what still remains of the aborigines of those places perhaps the Olmecs or some very primitive civilization of Yucatan, the northern part of Central America—originated according to them on an island that sank by a cataclysm. This island is called Atlanticú.”
That too fits the stories about the sudden demise of the wondrous Atlantis.

Atlanticú. Atlantis. The aboriginal natives still call it that in their history.

During an interview about the exploration of the mega-city, Fernandez asked lead scientist Pauline Zalitzki about the civilaztion that built it.

“When we published the first news of this finding,” she said, “the University of Veracruz was interested in our work and we had recorded images of these structures on the seabed. Specifically, the Institute of Anthropology of the University excavations invited me. They were doing [studies] on parts and ruins of the Olmec civilization.

The Olmecs and other native peoples all have primary morphology marking the arrival of this continent. This mean coming from the direction of Cuba, and had to occur in a very large earthquake where their land sank. Morphologies indicate that they belong to three families who were saved. One of these families came to the coast of Veracruz, which are supposedly the Olmec. Others came to Central America and traveled to the Pacific coast, and these families created the civilization of the Americas as we know it today, because they distributed all their knowledge.

When these anthropologists saw underwater images of this city, and saw some stone monoliths, some symbol, and inscriptions, they identified with Olmec motifs. They were very surprised.” (
http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/riseearth/Atlantis_06.jpg )

The Olmecs devolved from the survivors of Atlantis, a much superior culture destroyed aft the end of the Ice Age flooding. The world was reshaped and a super-civilization destroyed, remembered for millennia only in legend and a passing refernce by the philosopher Plato.

But Atlantis was real, is real: scientists Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki have found it.

Sonar images of mega-structures on the seabed ( http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/riseearth/Mega_structure.jpg )

Another image of an Atlantean mega-structure ( http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/riseearth/inverted22.jpg )


http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/06/giant-crystal-pyramid-discovered-in-bermuda-triangle-2301051.html

Crystal Pyramid Discovered In Bermuda Triangle 2012 HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMK8TRKzT84

UNDERWATER CITY OFF OF CUBA PART 1:
http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/113007/Underwater_City_Off_of_Cuba_Part_1_The_Discovery/

UNDERWATER CITY OFF OF CUBA PART 2:
http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/113008/Underwater_City_Off_of_Cuba_Part_2_An_Update/

Before Google erased Atlantis from Google Earth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtkyTxs_EE0

Google erased Atlantis from Google Earth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VSldnaSOUk

Why the cover up?
Try it out yourself and see.

Read More:
http://www.riseearth.com/2012/10/atlantis-found-giant-sphinxes-pyramids.html

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?54701-Atlantis-Found-Giant-Sphinxes-Pyramids-In-Bermuda-Triangle

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread920705/pg1

http://www.realistnews.net/Thread-atlantis-found-pyramids-more-in-bermuda-triangle-update


http://www.secretsofthefed.com/atlantis-found-giant-sphinxes-pyramids-in-bermuda-triangle/

Dailymail, Britain's Atlantis Found:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167731/Britains-Atlantis-North-sea--huge-undersea-kingdom-swamped-tsunami-5-500-years-ago.html#ixzz1zYTOZeX0

B.C.

Giant Centipedes

(YouTube link)

The bite of this centipede can be very painful. It grows up to eight inches long. It is very fast. It eats mice, lizards, and the occasional bat. And it has a cousin in the United States. Sweet dreams, everyone! You can follow future episodes of the Three-Minute Species series at YouTube.

Animal Pictures