Lie by omission

From Daily Kos...

It was four score and seven years ago on Thursday that repugican Speaker of the House John Boehner once again proved what a dishonest puke he really is, this time when quoting Abraham Lincoln on the danger of government debt:

    "[Government debt] is a system not only ruinous while it lasts, but one that must soon fail and leave us destitute," Lincoln warns his countrymen in Congressman Lincoln. "An individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow from -- so must it be with a government."

... but somehow Boehner managed to leave this part out:

    By this means a new national debt has been created, and is still growing on us with a rapidity fearful to contemplate -- a rapidity only reasonably to be expected in time of war. This state of things has been produced by a prevailing unwillingness either to increase the tariff or resort to direct taxation. But the one or the other must come.

John Boehner Confesses That He Rejected Obama’s Budget Offer Without Reading It

Politicians are wont to repeat, often excessively, a policy meme or buzzword in hopes it catches on and becomes part of the public’s lexicon as an identifying trait of a political party or particular candidate’s agenda. Whether it is to demonstrate consistency of intent, or just to drive a point home, offering the same policy recommendations as a be all, end all, fix for anything is why America is stuck in an austerity trance with little to no hope of recovering anytime soon. President Obama is a masterful tactician when it comes to reiterating propositions he knows repugicans will reject out of hand, and with news of his symbolic budget proposals due out next week, he is repeating the same plan he offered repugicans in the past and as sure as the Sun rises in the East, Speaker John Boehner rejected them immediately revealing he certainly did not have time to read them in their entirety.In the President’s last plan to avert the fiscal cliff, he called for major health care cuts by reducing payments to drug companies and hospitals,  recommended changing COLA measures tied to inflation which raises taxes and slowly cuts Social Security benefits for some recipients, replaced repugicans’ sequestration cuts, and proposed additional spending focusing on infrastructure improvements. His new budget proposal, which is strictly symbolic, is a nearly identical reiteration of his last offering with some incorporation of his policies in his State of the Union address. Liberals are rightly upset over the shift to chained-CPI for Social Security cost of living adjustments, but they were equally incensed when he offered them during fiscal cliff negotiations and their tantrums were wasted because as expected, repugicans rejected his entire plan.
The repugicans have reiterated their own rejection of the President’s plans because they include new revenue, spending on infrastructure to create jobs, and do not eliminate the New Deal programs they have lusted to demolish for 75 years. Critics of the President’s budget claimed that including cuts to Social Security would give repugicans a talking point that even Obama sees the necessity to reduce the deficit by slashing “entitlements,” and they have a point because Boehner said “it included only modest entitlement savings,” and that “if the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there’s no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes.” Boehner is not interested in shoring up Social Security or he would be first in line to lift the cap on earnings and put the Trust on track to solvency for several generations. The repugicans plainly want the program eliminated to create a permanent underclass of elderly Americans dependent on Wall Street for their retirement or die, and to seize the trillions in the Trust’s coffers to hand out as tax cuts for the rich.
There were other aspects of the President’s budget proposal that drove Boehner to reject it without reading it besides new revenue that are reiterations of repugican policies over the past four years. The repugicans hate the notion of spending to create jobs through infrastructure improvements, spending on education, and replacing their sequestration cuts with more measured reductions in other areas. the repugicans worked too hard to get the sequester cuts that for nine years and nine months will slash education spending, kill jobs, decimate anti-poverty programs, and hurt the economy to settle for any replacement short of imposing an enhanced version of Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget that piles on debt due to massive tax cuts for the rich. They also have stated in no uncertain terms that infrastructure repairs are off the table to maintain America’s pathetic standing as one of the poorest infrastructures in the developed and developing world, and the idea of putting Americans to work goes against everything repugicans have stood for over the past four years.
The President knows offering a carrot to repugicans in the hopes of a so-called grand bargain is an exercise in futility, but with the American people watching, he is shining a spotlight on repugican intransigence and allegiance to the rich. By offering an olive branch in the form of chained-CPI for Social Security, repugicans can no longer say the President is afraid of his base, or unwilling to meet repugicans half way to solve the nation’s phony deficit crisis, and their immediate rejection to compromise further portrays them as the real problem in Washington. Social Security and Medicare are extremely popular programs, and repugican insistence that they be eviscerated to give more tax cuts to corporations and the rich far exceed the President’s offer to change the COLA methodology. It is also worth noting, again, that the Center for America Progress, no wingnut belief tank, recommend chained-CPI as a revenue raising long term fix for Social Security, but with repugicans bound and determined to reject any proposal that fails to end Social Security and Medicare in their entirety, and rejection of any new revenue to create jobs and repair the decrepit infrastructure, or replace the job-killing sequestration cuts, it is doubtful there will be a grand bargain, or any bargain, between the President and repugicans. Besides, the President’s budget proposal is only symbolic because in America, Congress makes the budget and as long as repugicans run this country, any budget that does not kill jobs, kill safety nets, and end public education, is doomed to fail regardless who proposes it.

Obama Offers repugicans A Deal on Social Security That He Knows They’ll Never Accept

By tying his Social Security cuts to tax increases, President Obama has offered repugicans the same deal that he has been proposing for years. It is also a deal that will repugicans will never in a million years accept.
Reuters put the offer of cuts to Social Security in the lead, but the twist in in the paragraph below, “However, the president will only accept these spending cuts if congressional repugicans, for their part, agree to higher taxes, the official added. The President’s budget proposal is due to be laid out in full on Wednesday.”
The New York Times revealed that the President is using the offer of Social Security cuts to break the repugican resistance to tax hikes, “Congressional repugicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in repugicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1.”
The problem is that President Obama has been proposing this deal but repugicans have been turning down the deal for the last two years. What the White House is doing is a clever bit of political strategy. They are using something that repugicans really want (Social Security cuts) to force repugicans into making a choice on whether or not to defend raising taxes on the wealthy. The president knows that his budget is DOA, so he is using it to push his broad overall goal of raising taxes.
Obama is proving to be just as dug in on the tax issue as repugicans are.
Chained CPI is ridiculously bad policy. The left should be vigilant against President Obama’s infatuation with it. However, with Independent Bernie Sanders, Harry Reid, and a group of Senate Democrats promising that any deal that contains cuts to Social Security will not pass the Senate, I think chained CPI faces a difficult path to passage.
President Obama is playing the long game. His real motive isn’t to cut Social Security but to break the repugican will on tax increases.
This is why the 2014 election is so important. If Democrats take back the House and keep the Senate, President Obama won’t have to do a “grand bargain.” He will be able to push for a new stimulus and tax increases. By voting next year for candidates who promise to protect needed programs, you can do your part to protect Social Security.
President Obama has been playing a game with repugicans where he dangles Chained CPI out there  then takes it back.
I would suggest that what the President is doing is a carrot and stick tactic, but what Obama is really offering repugicans is a carrot and being whacked on the head with a spiked aluminum baseball bat.
If repugicans agree to raise taxes again, their cabal will be fractured and destroyed. They understand that taxes are the only issue holding them together. This is why Obama’s offer is dead in the water. It is also why some on the left need to stop looking at only one tree (Social Security) and examine the whole forest (the potential for long term victory.)
Be strong, be vigilant, and say no to Chained CPI, but also know that Obama doesn’t want to cut Social Security. The president is trying to break the repugican will on taxes.

Cancer Patients Facing Death Thanks to the repugican Sequester

While wingnuts whine about White House tours and look for praise over the great sacrifice of ending their tax payer subsidized haircuts, Americans are feeling the pinch of sequester in their ability to survive.For some people the sequester means making ends meet harder and yes they are suffering in ways that doesn’t matter to the corporatists in the repugican cabal. As noted, repugicans in Tennessee call their version of a starve the poor policy an incentive to improve school performance.
Even before the Sequester, people on Medicaid were more likely to have chronic illnesses simply because there is a long established nexus between poverty and chronic health problems.  Policies like the one in Tennessee will only increase illness and do nothing to improve school performance.
As Gallup‘s data shows, the poorest among us continue to be prone to chronic health problems.

It isn’t surprising that as poverty goes up illness trickles down much faster than prosperity.
According to a study  in Kentucky released in February:

“While changes in our healthcare delivery system may provide more healthcare opportunities for low income Kentuckians, these results show how vital a strong economy, and jobs that pay well, are to our population’s health.”

Before the repugican cabal’s policies gave us the great recesson, Steven Wolf conducted a similar study in Virginia.  In 2006, he warned:

“More than half remained uninsured specifically because they simply couldn’t afford it, the CDC said. Research consistently highlights the negative link between reduced income and worsening health — as salaries drop, individuals tend to be more stressed, and generally lead less-healthy lifestyles.
These people are going to develop diseases at a higher rate and the health care system is going to feel the brunt of it,”

Simply put,  there is a nexus between poverty and chronic health issues. There is also a nexus between jobs that provide a living wage and having a healthy way of living.  I refuse to call it a healthy lifestyle, because that infers that people in poverty actually have the luxury of choosing expensive nutritious foods over affordable less nutritious ones.  It suggests that there is enough flexibility in the resources of someone who lives in poverty to not only get nutritious foods but enough of them.  People who are starving are less likely to exercise. Contrary to the repugican cabal’s rhetoric, living in poverty means constant stress be it worrying about feeding the kids or if you’ll have a roof over your head next week.
Cuts to Medicaid mean that someone who is most in need of medical care will fall through the holes in the safety net that only got larger with the sequester. It’s bad enough that people who suffer from chronic ailments directly related to poverty will fall through these holes.  However, the suffering that comes with Sequester doesn’t end there.
The Washington Post reports that cancer clinics are turning away thousands of cancer patients because of the Sequester.  This isn’t limited to one or a few states.  It’s happening across the country.
Oncologists say that because of the Sequester cuts to Medicaid they can’t administer expensive and lifesaving chemotherapy and stay afloat at the same time. They have to choose between providing patients with life-saving chemotherapy and staying in business to at least save someone’s life.
For patients, this means trying to get the treatment they need to survive at a hospital.  Granted it’s more expensive, which is ironic since the alleged objective of cutting spending is to reduce costs.

One study from actuarial firm Milliman found that “chemotherapy delivered in a hospital setting costs the federal government an average of $6,500 more annually than care delivered in a community clinic.”

Even if the twisted logic of making things more expensive actually cuts spending, there is the added problem that since most Medicare patients receive their treatments at oncology clinics instead of hospitals, it’s doubtful that hospitals will have the ability to take these patients on.
There is no way around it.  This means there are cancer patients who simply won’t get treatment.  I lost both of my parents to cancer, but I remain forever thankful that they had access to treatment for cancer along with the depression and cluster of other things that are part of the package. They didn’t have to hunt for a hospital to treat them because some lawmakers were too cheap and greedy to give a damn about the people they were hired to represent. There is no diplomatic way to express the contempt I have for politicians who place a higher priority on handouts to corporations and people who not only have more than they will ever need, but more than their children and grandchildren will ever need than on the lives of parents, grandparents or children who don’t have enough to provide the bare necessities of life. To my way of thinking, this isn’t merely bad policy. It’s criminal.  It amounts exterminating people simply because they are poor, or at least not rich enough to buy a corrupt politician.
There is no way around it.  While repugicans whine about cuts to small portions of the handouts they and their friends get it isn’t as if their lives depend on traveling by private jet or getting a subsidized haircut. It isn’t as if paying some taxes will mean a difference between survival and a shorter life expectancy for the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and others who think the world revolves around them.
The same cannot be said about cuts that literally take the food out of children’s mouths.That only perpetuate the social, economic and health consequences of increased poverty or the inevitable death of a cancer patient because chemotherapy wasn’t accessible.
There is nothing moral about it and there’s nothing about it that resembles the christianity that wingnuts claim to believe in.

This American Life's report on kids and disability claims riddled with factual errors

A couple weeks ago, I listened to Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America an interesting program on the supposed rise in disability claims produced by Planet Money and aired on This American Life (where I heard it). The program raised some interesting points about the inaccessibility of certain kinds of less-physical jobs to large numbers of people, but it also aired a lot of supposed facts about the way that parents and teachers conspired to create and perpetuate disability classifications for kids.
Many of the claims in both half of the report are debatable, and many, many more and simply not true. A Media Matters report called This American Life Features Error-Riddled Story On Disability And Children systematically debunks many of the claims in the story, which NPR has modified slightly since posting online (though NPR and Ira Glass continue to stand behind the story).

FACT: Medical Evidence From Qualified Professionals Is Required To Determine Eligibility
Government Accountability Office: "Examiners Rely On A Combination Of Key Medical And Nonmedical Information Sources." A Government Accountability Office report found that disability determination services (DDS) examiners determined a child's medical eligibility for benefits based on a combination of school records and medical records, and that if medical records in particular were not available, they were able to order consultative exams to review medical evidence:
DDS examiners rely on a combination of key medical and nonmedical information sources -- such as medical records, effects of prescribed medications, school records, and teacher and parent assessments -- in determining a child's medical eligibility for benefits. Several DDS officials we interviewed said that when making a determination, they consider the totality of information related to the child's impairments, rather than one piece of information in isolation. Based on our case file review, we estimate that examiners generally cited four to five information sources as support for their decisions in fiscal year 2010 for the three most prevalent mental impairments.
[...]
If such evidence is not available or is inconclusive, DDS examiners may purchase a consultative exam to provide additional medical evidence and help them establish the severity of a child's impairment. [Government Accountability Office, 6/26/12]

The Media Matters report cites high-quality sources like the GAO throughout, and makes an excellent case for a general retraction of this report by NPR. I hope that they, and Glass, will reconsider their endorsement of this report.

This American Life Features Error-Riddled Story On Disability And Children 

The Human Costs of the War on Social Security and Medicare

With friends like the repugican cabal, seniors don’t need enemies.  Americans work their entire lives to provide for their families. Throughout that period we  contribute to Medicare and Social Security in the name of providing a safety net for the golden years of our lives.  Yet, the repugican cabal continues to call these programs “entitlements” as if they were an undeserved handout (unlike the bonuses that executives get for destroying our environment, the economy or both.)
We already know about the despised Ryan plan that seeks to replace Medicare with coupons that won’t come anywhere near covering the costs of premiums, co-pays and all those other wonderful goodies that come with the private health care “system.”
It’s bad enough that corporatists seek to line insurance providers pockets with policies that really amount to a Ponzi scheme.  The trend is toward creating a monopoly of high deductible plans. In other words, it’s about paying premiums to insurance companies simply because they exist while paying for more of our healthcare needs as if we didn’t have any insurance.
As noted by Wendal Potter:  corporate health insurance isn’t about providing people with options to suit their needs, nor is it about providing the security that comes with insurance.

Even in 2008, the last year I worked for an insurance company, my colleagues in the sales division were encouraging employers to go “total replacement,” which means eliminating all choices except high-deductible plans. Insurers have long used proprietary “studies” supposedly proving that making people pay more out of pocket for medical care will “incentivize” them to lead healthier lives.

It is about increasing profits by shifting more of the costs for previously insured healthcare to the consumer.  In other words, you pay for healthcare insurance, plus you pay the costs for your healthcare yourself.  There are corporatists who will tell you that the more you pay out of pocket, the more likely you are to live a healthier life style.  Of course, you’re not supposed to notice that earning enough to feed your family, have shelter etc. would also contribute to living a healthier life style.  However, I digress.  This is more of the same mindset that sees healthcare generally and health insurance especially as just another business.
I guess that’s why hospitals inflate costs for over the counter items  It doesn’t have a thing to do with increasing profits. It’s all in the name of promoting a healthy lifestyle. That’s as truthful as the claim that voter suppression is about preserving election integrity.
Except when factored in with other corporatist policies, a healthier life is the impossible dream at any age and more than impossible for seniors. True enough, part of leading a healthier life means making responsible choices like staying away from smoking. It also means having enough nutritious food to eat and having shelter from the elements -  both things are increasingly elusive to Americans stuck in low paying jobs, let alone people who want but can’t get work. For seniors, it means going hungry for longer periods, as they see a bigger cut of their income going to healthcare costs.
Even if we went with the notion that high deductibles will encourage people to make healthy life style choices, I don’t understand how anyone can accept a “system” in which the purpose of healthcare “insurance” is profit, rather than providing healthcare from which we would have a healthier (and more productive) society.
If people who don’t earn enough to lead healthier lives are charged more for lacking the financial resources to lead healthier lives, that means more people will be less healthy. We don’t need to try this out to see where it leads.  We only need to look at what poverty does to life expectancy in developing countries, or look to the correlation between increased poverty and illness along with the effects on life expectancy in this country compared to the days when we had a vibrant middle class.
Obamacare does improve the situation since insurance companies are now prohibited from discriminating against people with “pre-existing conditions” albeit with premiums costing 3 times more than a “normal” person.  Naturally this goes with insurance policies that operate on the premise of denying as many healthcare services as possible. Combine that with a high deductible healthcare plan, and the reality is that access to healthcare will only exist on paper.
Yes, it means that young people can continue on their parents’ insurance until they are twenty-six.  Given that more young people are working for minimum wage and without benefits, they won’t have to pay insurance companies for the benefit of paying their healthcare costs out of pocket.
This is the system that Paul Ryan’s coupons would partially buy for seniors.  In other words, seniors would see a reduction in their income thanks to the chained CPI  and more of that money will go to health “insurers” that only provide “insurance” with hefty deductibles.
I’ll grant that of the possible ways to steal Social Security to line the pockets of corporate America, the chained-CPI appears to be the most benevolent.  However, the chained CPI is a sleeping zombie that penalizes people for having the audacity to live longer.  The cuts get deeper, meaning less money for the increasingly high costs of coupon care, plus the increasing cost of paying for the healthcare costs aren’t insured under healthcare “insurance”.  It also means that seniors, especially women, will go hungry more days per month as they get older.  After all, silly Americans, if you’re lucky enough to live to be a senior, you’ll see that you are not “entitled” to food or access to “the best healthcare system in the world.”
As noted by JOHN WOJCIK of People’s World 

The “Chained CPI” is touted as taking into account that seniors cut back when prices rise.”They are actually saying,” Johnson wrote, “that because people have to cut back to cat food, then they should only be getting enough to pay for cat food. The elites love the ‘Chained CPI’ because it helps keep the government from raising taxes on the rich to pay back what was borrowed from Social Security and used to give tax cuts to the rich.

The chained CPI will hit every senior hard, but especially women. According to the National Women’s Law Center, the chained CPI means if you’re 70 you’ll go hungry 1 day a month, but if you commit the crime of living until you’re 95 you’ll be rewarded with hunger 13 days out of every month.
When you combine cuts to social security with the private health insurance system, and hospitals padding costs for basics like aspirin and gauze pads, seniors will have much more to worry about than if the Air traffic controller will be there to guide their private jet, or if they have to pay full price for a haircut.
Robert Reich explains:

Even Social Security’s current inflation adjustment understates the true impact of inflation on the elderly. That’s because they spend 20 to 40 percent of their incomes on health care, and health-care costs have been rising faster than inflation. So why adopt a new inflation adjustment that’s even stingier than the current one?

If the best healthcare system in the world doesn’t get you, the chained CPI eventually will. You’ll be glad to know, however, that your sacrifice means the corporate elite will be able to build more sweatshops.

Widespread, illegal debtors' prisons in Ohio

A new ACLU report called The Outskirts of Hope (PDF) documents the rise of illegal debtors prisons in Ohio. A majority of municipal and mayors' courts (an unregulated and rare system of courts only permitted in two states) surveyed by the ACLU routinely imprison people for their inability to pay fines, a practice banned in both the US and state constitution. 20 percent of the bookings in the Huron County Jail are "related to failure to pay fines."

Taking care of a fine is straightforward for some Ohioans — having been convicted of a criminal or traffic offense and sentenced to pay a fine, an affluent defendant may simply pay it and go on with his or her life. For Ohio’s poor and working poor, by contrast, an unaffordable fine is just the beginning of a protracted process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants, and even jail time. The stark reality is that, in 2013, Ohioans are being repeatedly jailed simply for being too poor to pay fines.
The U.S. Constitution, the Ohio Constitution, and Ohio Revised Code all prohibit debtors’ prisons. The law requires that, before jailing anyone for unpaid fines, courts must determine whether an individual is too poor to pay. Jailing a person who is unable to pay violates the law, and yet municipal courts and mayors’ courts across the state continue this draconian practice. Moreover, debtors’ prisons actually waste taxpayer dollars by arresting and incarcerating people who will simply never be able to pay their fines, which are in any event usually smaller than the amount it costs to arrest and jail them.

The report documents heartbreaking cases, like Samantha Reed and John Bundren, a couple with a nine-month-old who were both ordered to pay fines they can't afford. John diverts whatever seasonal/part time wages he earns to Samantha's fines so she can look after their baby, while he goes to jail for ten-day stretches for failure to make payments. They are effectively indigent, but are not given access to counsel when they appear in court over their debts.

Jail cracks down on banana and orange-peel smoking

Inmates inside the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn, Maine, are losing their peels. After discovering that some inmates were smoking dried banana and orange peel, administrators have ordered kitchen staff to peel bananas before they're served to inmates. The jail has halted the purchase of oranges.

Inmates have been using smuggled lighters or jury-rigged electrical outlets to spark their fruity cigars. Because smoking is not allowed in jails, any smoking material is considered contraband.

"It's been a problem for six or eight months," said Lt. Jeff Chute, the jail's assistant administrator. "It started with bananas." During a routine check, guards discovered a tobacco-like smell and traced it to the charred peels. "They're doing it to get some kind of high, but all my research says there is none," Chute said. "It doesn't work."

When the supply of bananas stopped, smokers turned to oranges. "These inmates have all day, every day, to think this stuff up," Chute said. Any inmate found to be smoking fruit - or anything else - faces punishment that could include seclusion or loss of good time credits on a sentence.

Knee-driving man caught texting with both hands in car with drugs and a 3-year-old in backseat

Two Mississippi men were arrested for drug possession after police in Alabama caught one of them "double texting" - sending messages with a phone in each hand - while driving, police said.

Dandre Moore, 19, and Dartavious Moore, 22, had a car loaded with pot and pills and a 3-year-old toddler in the backseat when they were pulled over while driving through George Wallace Tunnel in Mobile on Tuesday.

Dandre was behind the wheel "double texting and driving with his knees," Mobile police spokeswoman Lori Myles said. Police searched the car and found a prescription bottle with nearly 400 pills of oxycodone, another bottle containing pills of Xanax, $5,000 in the glove compartment and an ounce of marijuana in Moore's underwear.

The Moores were booked into Mobile County Metro Jail. The toddler was released along with two women who were also in the car. Dandre boasted to officers that he'd been "double texting" while driving since he was 15.

Hundreds of vehicles lit up remote Peruvian airstrip for emergency night-flight

Their lights blaring in the night, hundreds of vehicles lined an unlit airstrip in a jungle region of Peru so an emergency medevac plane with three very sick patients could take off.

All three survived after the 300-odd drivers of motorcycles, cars and auto rickshaws heeded a call on Wednesday night from a radio station to race to the 800-metre airstrip in Contamana, in one of Peru's poorest regions.

The airstrip is not equipped for nocturnal flights because it has no lights. The patients were a woman and her newborn, both with serious problems after delivery, and a man with a tropical disease.

YouTube link. BBC news link.

"We have always been people with a heart," said Adolfo Lobo, the radio presenter who put out the call for help. Contamana, a town of 26,000, has a hospital with no equipment for emergency situations and the airport is rudimentary.

The Human Tower Festivals Of Catalonia

Every year in Catalonia, Spain, there are festivals in which people come together to build colorful - and ridiculously tall - human towers that are supported by nothing but the participants' strength, balance, and courage. These towers are called castells, which means ‘castles’ in Catalan. Here are some beautiful photographs of this tradition.

The Curious Tale of Mexico's Most Peculiar Pottery

The tiny town of Ocumicho in the Mexican state of Michoacán is the source for the increasingly popular ceramic diablitos, or devils, in peculiar and even ridiculous scenes. They can be traced back to one artist who designed many of them in the 1960s.  

The women of Ocumicho built molds of various base shapes, which were then differentiated with smaller clay embellishments, like spouts or handles, and finished with colorful glazes. By the 1950s, Ocumicho craftswomen mostly produced bird-shaped whistles and figurine banks, which they would sell at the local markets.

“But there was this one pivotal character named Marcelino Vicente,” says Orr. “Marcelino was the last of 11 or 12 children, all boys,” she continues, “and many townspeople claim that his mother wanted a baby girl, so she dressed him in girl’s clothing. Growing up, he was also really interested in what was considered ‘women’s work,’ which was making pottery, and was totally mocked by the men for doing this. He was a little bit of a renegade.”

Ocumicho was an extremely poor and isolated village, so it was highly unusual for individuals to step out of the prescribed gender roles. Claudia B. Isaac, who analyzed the gender division in Ocumicho in 1996, wrote that, “Although no one I spoke with directly verified that Marcelino was gay, many talked disparagingly of his reluctance to fulfill traditional male roles.”

Despite their prejudices, the town’s female potters recognized Vicente’s gift for working with clay, and he progressed from small whistles and banks to larger sculptural pieces featuring the devil characters he grew so fond of. These diablitos were an unlikely icon in such a conservative religious community; most locals associate the devil with bad luck, and are reluctant to bring diablitos into their homes. Yet when Vicente finally took his wares to the tianguis, and spread them out on a blanket for sale, the wacky diablitos were a hit.

Vicente's story did not end happily, but his assistants and fans continued making the diablitos. They became his legacy, and the signature artworks of the village of Ocumicho. Read the whole story and see more diablitos at Collector's Weekly.

Awesome Picture

Strong Hints Of Dark Matter Detected By Space Station

Dark matter is a type of matter hypothesized to account for a large part of the total mass in the universe. Dark matter cannot be seen directly with telescopes; evidently it neither emits nor absorbs light or other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. Instead, its existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation, and the large-scale structure of the universe.

Physicists announced last Wednesday that they have discovered the most convincing evidence yet of the existence of dark matter. Members of an international team gathered at Nasa in Washington and Cern in Switzerland to report their findings, which come from a $2bn particle detector mounted to the International Space Station.

The Most Ridiculous Scene in Jurassic Park

What do paleontologists think about the movie Jurassic Park? Like most professionals seeing a movie that's close to home, they spot a lot of inaccuracies, but are overall pleased to have a movie about their subject. Paleontologists can deal with the fantasy of viable dino DNA, and they can forgive the dinosaurs without feathers, but what really makes them cringe is the odd depiction of what they actually do.

In the most outrageous scene in the story, a field crew quickly brushes sand off a Deinonychus skeleton as if the dinosaur were a dusty curio.

I wish that digging dinosaurs were as easy as Jurassic Park made it look. I really do. The “raptor” fossil—called Velociraptor in the film, but really a Deinonychus to paleo pedants such as myself—that Grant and Sattler’s team exposes is buried under the thinnest coating of sand. And the complete, articulated skeleton is so sturdy that one of the field assistants can stick his grubby hands right into the dinosaur’s nasal cavity and flick out the sand. Watch the scene carefully. It’s the only time I know of that someone picking a dinosaur’s nose has ever been shown in a feature film.

Recovering dinosaur bones from the earth is a exacting, painstaking (yet rewarding) process. Brian Switek tells us what it's really like at Slate.

Stilt Fishing

In Tangalle, Sri Lanka, fishermen sit on benches out in the surf. Kimberley Coole, a travel photographer, caught beautiful pictures of these men at work. You can view more photos of them and other scenes from Sri Lanka at the link.

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Lack of pet adoptions blamed on black dog discrimination

Black dogs are so unpopular in Saskatchewan, Canada, they're being sent to British Columbia for a better chance of being adopted. Debbi Lehner, manager of the Prince Albert SPCA in Saskatchewan, says black dogs are often passed over for adoption in favour of lighter-coloured animals.

"They just pass right by them," said Lehner. "We do get some comments: 'No, I don’t want a black dog.' A lot of times reasons aren’t given, that's just their preference." Black dog syndrome, or black dog bias, is a phenomenon recognized by some veterinarians and dog shelters.

It's believed some potential owners might find lighter-colored dogs more attractive. Some might also associate the color black with misfortune, similar to the common superstition surrounding black cats. Noted dog psychologist Stanley Coren said black dog bias is rooted in culture and based on our human psychological response to color. "Black is associated with the notion of strong, perhaps violent, perhaps evil," he said.

Lori Chortyk, spokesperson for the Vancouver SPCA, says black dog syndrome is less of a problem in B.C., but black animals in general will often stay in shelters longer than potential pets of any other color. "We really try to help people look past color or any other physical trait and really look at what is the personality that is going to match best in your home?" Chortyk said. The SPCA says potential pet owners should base their decisions on the temperament of the animal, rather than on color and looks.

Video.

Icefish Bleeds Clear Blood

The ocellated icefish you see above has a very unique blood: it's totally transparent. Discovery News tells us:

The reason, say experts at Tokyo Sea Life Park, is that the Ocellated Ice Fish has no hemoglobin, making it unique among vertebrates the world over.
Hemoglobin is the protein found in every other animal with bones. It is what makes blood red and is the agent that carries oxygen around the body. [...]
Researchers believe the fish can live without hemoglobin because it has a large heart and uses blood plasma to circulate oxygen throughout its body.

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Eyeball on Tadpole's Tail

Do eyes have to be in the head for them to work? Not according to this strange research by Michael Levin of Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology! His team implanted an ectopic eye in the tail of a tadpole and found that it works just fine:

For the experiment, the team surgically grafted “eye primordia” from donor tadpole embryos onto host embryos, 95 percent of which grew eyes on their tails.
The team then used red and blue LEDs to condition the tadpoles to associate red light with a mild electric shock.
Consequently, both tadpoles with normal eyes and those with ectopic eyes developed an aversion to red light and learned to avoid red-lit areas—meaning that the tadpoles with tail “eyes” could see. In contrast, a control group of eyeless tadpoles did not learn to avoid red light.
The spine is known to transmit all kinds of sensory information throughout the body, but the 64,000-eyeball question is how the brain recognizes the signals from the far-flung ectopic eyes for what they are. [...]
“What is really interesting is how the brain knows it is visual data,” said Levin

NatGeo's Weird & Wild Blog has the story: Here.

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Today in History

1199		English King Richard I is killed by an arrow at the siege of the castle of Chaluz in France.
1789		The First U.S. Congress begins regular sessions at Federal Hall in New York City.
1814		Granted sovereignty in the island of Elba and a pension from the French government, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates at Fountainebleau. He is allowed to keep the title of emperor.
1830		Joseph Smith and five others organize the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Seneca, New York.
1862		Confederate forces attack General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, Tennessee.
1865		At the Battle of Sailer's Creek, a third of Lee's army is cut off by Union troops pursuing him to Appomattox.
1896		The Modern Olympics begin in Athens with eight nations participating.
1903		French Army Nationalists are revealed to have forged documents to guarantee a conviction for Alfred Dryfus.
1909		Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson become the first men to reach the North Pole.
1917		The United States declares war on Germany and enters World War I on Allied side.
1924		Four planes leave Seattle on the first successful flight around the world.
1938		The United States recognizes Nazi Germany's conquest of Austria.
1941		German forces invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
1965		President Lyndon B. Johnson authorizes the use of ground troops in combat operations

Non Sequitur

Cyprus’ big depositors warned to get out before deposit confiscation

A quick follow-up to this post about deposit confiscation in the event of another bank bailout. It turns out there’s another element I should have anticipated, and didn’t.

Deposit confiscation + Corruption at high levels = Insiders get out ahead of time

It’s one of those “of course” realizations, isn’t it? This will happen 101 times out of 100, anywhere in the world.

A thought experiment

Let’s say that depositors in the First Bank of Bloated Greed NY (an imaginary bank) — and only those depositors — were due for a “haircut” (confiscation) to pay for a bailout because the bank put too much of its money (meaning “your money”) in Greek sovereign debt, or “Whale trade” derivatives, or catfood futures. And lost.
Let’s say there are $500 million in deposits at FBBG and instead of going to the taxpayers for the bailout, the FDIC decides to tax (confiscate) all deposits at that bank over the $250,000 guarantee (because rules allowing the confiscation of smaller deposits haven’t been decided on yet).
Those are large deposits indeed, and many of the men and women behind them are likely connected. How many of these depositors would be warned to get out by friends in the know? I’d guess that somewhere between 50% and 80% of the depositors would be tipped off eventually. They can’t tip off 100%, since that would spoil the show, so someone has to decide which schmucks should never be warned. (“How about these guys? They gave to the Green party last time.”)

In Cyprus, many big depositors were warned to get out

That’s apparently what happened prior to deposit confiscation in Cyprus. People who knew people who “knew” were told to get out. Zero Hedge (some added emphasis):

List Released With 132 Names Who Pulled Cyprus Deposits Ahead Of “Confiscation Day”
With every passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer the Cyprus deposit confiscation “news” was the most unsurprising outcome for the nation’s financial system and was known by virtually everyone on the ground days and weeks in advance: first it was disclosed that Russians had been pulling their  money, then it was suggested the president himself had made sure some €21 million of his family’s money was parked safely in London, then we showed a massive surge in Cyprus deposit outflows in February, and now the latest news is that a list of 132 companies and individuals has emerged who withdrew their €-denominated deposits in the two weeks from March 1 to March 15, among which the previously noted company Loutsios & Sons which is alleged to have ties with the current Cypriot president Anastasiadis.

Whew. That’s a lot of tipping off for a small country. Do click those links. The Russians were left a back door — they couldn’t take their money from the main Cyprus banks, but they could make withdrawals at the branches in London. Clicking through the Russia link, we find this from Reuters:

The two banks at the centre of the crisis – Cyprus Popular Bank, also known as Laiki, and Bank of Cyprus – have units in London which remained open throughout the week and placed no limits on withdrawals. Bank of Cyprus also owns 80 percent of Russia’s Uniastrum Bank, which put no restrictions on withdrawals in Russia. Russians were among Cypriot banks’ largest depositors.

That had to be deliberate. Now the Greek-language paper Sigma has broken a story about a list of depositors who were obviously warned, given the timing of their withdrawals, and has photos of the list; click to see it. The Zero Hedge writer closes:

So, ironically enough, in answer to our question from last week, “So Who Knew“, the answer appears to be everyone.

Why do you care? I’ll answer with a question. What are the odds that New York bankers and regulators are less corrupt than the family of the Cypriot president? Would you take those odds with money on the line?

The middle class — always the last to know, always the first to be fleeced. Sometimes I think it’s why they keep us around.

Fear of the youth vote, now in North Carolina

In November, repugicans won stole complete control of government in North Carolina. They have the governorship, veto-proof majorities in both legislative chambers and control of the elected Supreme Court. Now North Carolina repugicans have set about the business of using their new majority to maintain their majority.
Using means now familiar in other states, North Carolina repugicans are proposing several ways of making it harder to vote. But one of the tactics is new to me. repugican State Senator Bill Cook wants to make voting harder for college students in particular, and to do that, he's pushing a bill that ties students' voter registration to their parents' taxes. If the student registers to vote at their college address, the parents would get a tax hike. They could no longer claim the student as a dependent, so the family would pay more in taxes.
The local offshoot of the tea party poll-rigging group (un)true the vote sounds excited about the prospects. The Beaufort Observer quotes this statement from the *Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina:

We've gotten a bill into the Senate that Progressives are going to hate almost more than they hate Voter ID.
If other states pick up this legislation, it will shift the landscape of college town voting all across the nation and may even put "college states" like Massachusetts back into play because so many students use the same-day registration rules to vote in that state.

Here's the thing: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled back in 1979 that college students have the right to register and vote where they go to school. What North Carolina repugicans are proposing to do, then, essentially requires a student's parents to pay more if the student exercises that right.
Back in February, an Indiana repugican proposed revoking the right for students to register at their colleges. After college Democrats and repugicans in Indiana joined in pushing back, the sponsor promised to amend her bill so that it would be constitutional, by which she meant dropping the idea.
For now, North Carolina repugicans are going for it. Cook sent around a statement saying that his proposals will be appreciated by anyone who considers voting "a sacred duty." Also, he says, the new restrictions will save money. In addition to making families pay more if their students vote at school, Cook and his repugican colleagues want to cut early voting nearly in half and reduce the number of places for early voting to one, which is a recipe for longer lines. They want to eliminate all voting on Sundays, and no longer allow you to both register and vote on Election Day. They also want to require new ID you never had to show before and that thousands of people do not have (the former Democratic governor vetoed the proposal in 2011).

North Carolina repugicans Attempt to Violate the Constitution by Proposing an Official State Religion

A lifelong Spanish citizen and wise man raised and educated in the United States, George Santayana, once wrote that “Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them,” and although he only lived in America for 39 of his 89 years, it is quite likely he was talking about America. This month marks the 152^nd anniversary of the beginning of America’s Civil War, and across the South there are repugicans who failed to learn the lessons of America’s deadliest  conflict and are following the précises steps the Confederacy took prior to seceding from the Union. Over the course of President Obama’s term, several states have threatened to defy federal laws and floated secession and violence against implementation of the Affordable Care Act, gun safety measures, and environmental protections to name a few.
The idea of nullifying federal laws that contradict repugican and wingnut fantasies is gaining momentum with the re-election of an African American man as President,  and was proposed as a state law in North Carolina this week. The latest denial of the legitimacy of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution focuses on the Separation Clause in the 1^st Amendment, and is another attempt by theocrats to install Christianity as the state religion. The repugicans in the state’s legislature are proposing an official state religion by exempting North Carolina from following the Constitution and several court decisions upholding the separation of church and state. They claim states are sovereign entities free to ignore the Constitution and the framers’ intent that the government is forbidden from “making laws respecting the establishment of a religion.”
The repugican bill is in response to a lawsuit stopping county officials from opening meetings with a christian rite, and is troubling because three months ago another repugican introduced a constitutional amendment allowing residents to carry concealed weapons for the sole purpose of “fighting federal tyranny.” The North Carolina bill specifically cites the Tenth Amendment they claim gives the state authority to defy the Constitution, and prohibits the federal government and courts from enforcing the 1^st Amendment’s prohibition on state-sponsored religion. In Section 2 of the bill, it says “The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.” It is noteworthy that North Carolina also disqualifies any resident from serving in public office if they do not believe in god, in spite of a 1961 Supreme Court ruling that strictly prohibits christian-imposed bans on public servants who do not acknowledge the existence of a supreme being.
The idea of repeating the Confederacy’s “nullification” frenzy was the focus of two teabaggers in Mississippi who proposed legislation in January creating a permanent committee to negate federal laws repugicans did not like and refused to follow. The Mississippi law was first discussed as a means to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act in the state, but gained support at the prospect of gun registration that teabaggers claimed was the federal government “telling us we can’t have guns.” In January, Wyoming proposed nullifying federal laws and jailing federal law enforcement agents for five years and a $50,000 fine if they attempted to enforce gun safety laws that Texas, Virginia, Missouri, and Kansas followed with nullification and threats against federal law enforcement officials.
The North Carolina bill is especially troubling because with the rejection at the polls of extremist rhristian delusions advocated by repugicans spouting anti-women’s rights rhetoric on religious grounds instilled desperation in the theocratic crowd intent on ruling according to biblical edicts. The religion bill is the first blatant attempt to impose christianity on a state’s population, and like every other nullification attempt will be struck down in the courts, but the bill’s sponsors and backers claim states, local governments, and school districts have the right to impose christianity under the Tenth Amendment.  One of the bills co-sponsors is the legislator who introduced the “concealed carry” amendment giving North Carolinians the right to use lethal force to “fight federal tyranny” that is code for the Constitution’s Separation Clause.
For the past year, repugican-misled states, wingnuts, and gun-nuts have made provocative statements insinuating rebellion, revolution, and Civil War against the federal government unless their demands were met. Just a little over a year ago the Virginia repugican cabal sent out a newsletter threatening a revolution if President Obama was re-elected in November, and after the massacre in Newtown, gun-nuts grew enraged at the prospect of gun registration laws despite nine out of ten Americans support the proposal. Gun-nuts are dangerous indeed, but religious gun-nuts armed to “fight federal tyranny” on behalf of their right to impose religion on every citizen, including students, should raise red flags and frighten the life out of every  American whether they are religious or not. History is riddled with violence, civil wars, and crusades to impose religion on populations, and if any American thinks it cannot happen in the United States, then they too are “failing to learn the lessons of history,” and “are doomed to repeat them” by ignoring a real and present danger in North Carolina that, unfortunately, is not the most religious state in the Union.
With all the threats of secession, violent revolution, and armed citizens to “fight government tyranny,” America is entering a dangerous period that the nation last visited nearly 152 years ago. It is important to note that the so-called government tyranny religio-nut extremists, gun-nuts, racists, and anti-government advocates cite as worthy of nullification, secession, and armed rebellion are legally passed laws, Supreme Court rulings, and Constitutional amendments and nothing resembling tyranny. The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause is quite clear, and the First Amendment’s Separation Clause is unambiguous, but with North Carolina officially proposing the establishment of a state religion, and a constitutional amendment allowing residents to carry concealed weapons for the sole purpose of fighting federal tyranny, it is just a matter of time before well-armed religious maniacs open fire. The Civil War began after several states enacted nullification laws, and with religious gun-nuts infected with racial animus and hatred for non-believers, federal law enforcement agents, and judges for supporting the Constitution, the prospects of a second Civil War demonstrate that not only are wingnuts ignoring the lessons of history, it appears they are doomed to repeat them in the name of religion.

Yet, another repugican, holier-than-thou official, guilty of hypocrisy

From Huffington Post...

Dale Peterson, an Alabama repugican state official famous for flaunting his rifle in campaign ads promising to be tough on crime, was arrested Wednesday and charged with shoplifting a can of cashews. The arrest, first reported by Yellowhammer.com, marked the second time in six months that Peterson has been accused of stealing.

His new arrest occurred at a Sam's Club, where police said employees watched Peterson eat a can of cashews in the store, then place the empty can back on a shelf. Store security guards confronted Peterson on his way out. He was released from custody after posting $1,000 bond.

Peterson was charged in October with stealing paper towels and beer from a Walmart. Employees said he pushed his way through the checkout line without paying for the items in his cart, according to police. Peterson later said the incident was "a mistake."

Peterson's arrests are noteworthy in part because he made national news in 2010 for his tough-talking stance on crime during an unsuccessful run for Alabama agriculture commissioner. In a campaign ad that quickly went viral, Peterson suggested his opponents were "thugs and criminals," and accused them of "stealing yard signs in the dark," and "bragging about receiving illegal money on Facebook."

Hey, repugicans, I hate to insult you - but your representatives are stupid

From Daily Kos...

I know this has been covered before, but I just have to ask the question:

    Building managers and legislative staffers have sought to reassure some concerned Tennessee lawmakers that recent renovations at the state Capitol did not install special facilities for Muslims to wash their feet before praying.

    "I confirmed with the facility administrator for the State Capitol Complex that the floor-level sink installed in the men's restroom outside the House Chamber is for housekeeping use," Legislative Administration Director Connie Ridley wrote in an email. "It is, in layman's terms, a mop sink."

Exactly how screwed up do you have to be to assume that a new map sink in your capitol building was, in fact, a secret advancement of Sharia law?

  But, repugican Sen. Bill Ketron, r-Murfreesboro, confirmed that he had spoken to Humphrey about whether there were religious reasons for the new sink after the issue was raised by Rep. Judd Matheny, r-Tullahoma. […]

    Matheny and Ketron were the main sponsors of a 2011 bill that sought to make it a felony to follow some versions of the Islamic code known as Shariah law.

Holy janitorial accessories, Batman, some of our state legislators have way, way too much time on their hands.

Did you know ...

Do wingnuts even want to win?

That U.S. medical costs top other developed nations

That the majority of U.S. rivers and stream polluted by fertilizer

About the hoax of closing schools to save money

Exxon bypasses the government and controls the no-fly zone over the Arkansas oil spill

The Federal Aviation administration (FAA) has had a "no fly zone" in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since april 1 at 2:12 pm and will be in place "until further notice," according to the FAA website and it's being overseen by ExxonMobil itself. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon's permission. - steve horn's daily kos

Missouri bill lets pharmacies refuse to stock drugs

 Pharmacies in Missouri would be shielded from requirements to stock specific drugs, such as emergency contraception, if legislation passed Thursday by the Senate ultimately becomes law.The measure, which was sent to the House by a 24-9 Senate vote, was touted by its sponsor as a way to protect the rights of business owners.
“You go into a clothing store, and they can stock whatever they want to. I just want to make sure that pharmacies have the same right to do that,” said sponsoring Sen. David Sater, a Republican pharmacist from the southwest Missouri town of Cassville. “It’s a freedom of doing business.”
Although the legislation doesn’t specifically mention birth control, Sater said his measure was prompted by efforts elsewhere to require pharmacies to fill particular prescriptions such as emergency contraception.
Some Democrats said that’s why they opposed the legislation.
“I understand the business side of this … that it’s important that pharmacies be able to stock those drugs that they are going to be using,” said Senate Minority Leader Jolie Justus, D-Kansas City. But “there are a few of us who have concerns that this might be used by folks to not stock birth control, or what’s commonly known as Plan B.”
The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills that prevents ovulation if taken within a few days after sex. Because a prescription is required for those younger than 17, it is sold from behind pharmacy counties at a cost of around $35 to $60 a dose.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that tracks laws on reproductive health, five states have laws requiring pharmacies or pharmacists to fill valid prescriptions, though courts in two of those states have ruled that the law cannot be enforced against pharmacies that refuse to dispense emergency contraception.
A greater number of states have laws specifically allowing pharmacies or pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception.
Missouri law currently is silent on the topic.

Vader Finds the Lack of US Border Patrol's Effectiveness Disturbing

Vader, of course, is the sophisticated airborne radar system developed to track the Taliban in Afghanistan and now used along the US border with Mexico.
Vader, which stands for Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar (what? What did you think it was named after?), recently showed that US Border Patrol agents caught fewer than half of people sneaking into the United States illegally:

According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States. [...]
The radar is sharp enough to detect and track individuals on foot from a Predator five miles overhead. It uses a synthetic aperture radar to collect high-contrast black-and-white images and to follow scores of moving targets in real time. The processed signals are transmitted from the drone to a ground station, where the figures are displayed as moving dots on a detailed map.
"It's a match made in heaven for border security," said a former U.S. law enforcement official.
He said the radar had helped Border Patrol agents watch migrants and smugglers gathering on the Mexican side of the border before they start trekking north. But not all of the agents are happy to get a precise head count for the first time of how many people they are missing.
"The rank-and-file guys are afraid it will make them look bad," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the program are not public.

Force choking would probably improve morale! Brian Bennett of the Los Angeles Times reports: Here.  

Society news

The great fall: World population to stop growing in 2050

Global population data spanning the years from 1900 to 2010 have enabled a research team from the Autonomous University of Madrid to predict that the number of people on Earth will stabilize around the middle [...]

Graduate glut spells underused skills and dissatisfaction for many

Graduates are taking up jobs that don’t fully use their skills and as a result are causing high turnover for employers, claims new research published today in the journal Human Relations, published by SAGE. The [...]

Montreal police arrest young woman for instagramming photo of anti-police mural

Jennifer Pawluck, a 20 year old woman from Montreal, was taken into police custody yesterday and questioned after she posted a photo of a graffiti mural on her Instagram. The mural showed a caricature of a Montreal police spokesman called Cmdr. Ian Lafrenière, with a bullet hole in his head.
After she posted the image to Instagram, police came to her house and took her in for questioning, releasing her several hours later. The police say that there are secret reasons they detained her, beyond taking a picture of graffiti and posting it, but they won't say what they are.
Pawluck participated in the mass student demonstrations in Montreal and was part of the ensuing mass arrests. She will have to appear in court on April 17, and is barred from going with a kilometer of police HQ and from communicating with Cmdr Lafrenière. She has not been charged.

Lafrenière is the head of the service's communications division and frequently appeared in the media during the student protests.
Pawluck said that when the picture was taken, she didn’t know who Lafrenière was, but she found the image interesting.
Montreal police confirmed that a young woman was arrested at her home Wednesday and brought to the police station to be questioned by investigators. They did not name Pawluck.

Instagram anti-police pic sharing tied to Montrealer's arrest

Man Arrested for Driving under the Influence of Awesome Music

Police in Bristol, UK pulled over a man who was driving erratically. They thought Aaron Cogley was drunk, but according to his defense attorney, the suspect was "carried away because of the intoxicating effects of drum and bass music." This Is Bristol reports:

After hauling him out of his vehicle it transpired he was neither drunk nor on drugs but intoxicated by the top tunes blaring from his stereo, Bristol Crown Court was told. [...]

Mr Hollier said Cogley headed from Marlborough Street into Dighton Street, "cut up" a motorist and rounded a corner so sharply the whole van rocked on its chassis.
Mr Hollier told the court Cogley then drove slowly through two sets of red lights in Stokes Croft before swerving from lane to lane as he headed towards Montpelier Station. Police rushed the vehicle and Cogley was arrested and breathalysed, but blew a zero reading.
Mr Hollier said: "When asked about it he said he was listening to drum and bass and was in a hurry."

Mr. Cogley has been convicted and sentenced to community service, fined and banned from driving for a year.
Stay safe, kids. Don't listen to early 80s Madonna while operating machinery. You won't be able to maintain self-control.

More

Deejays suspended for "dihydrogen monoxide" April Fools joke

From the "How big of an idiot do you have to be to not know this ..." Department:

Jim Leftwich says: "Two Deejays for "Gator Country 101.9" warned that 'dihydrogen monoxide' was coming out of peoples' water faucets. Georgians panicked. The DJs were 'suspended indefinitely.'"

FYI: 'Dihydrgeon Monoxide' is water
UPDATE: They're back on the air!

Studios regret sending Google a list of every pirate site on the Internet for publication

The movie studios send a lot of takedown notices to Google, demanding that the search engine remove links to sites and files they don't like. Google publishes all the notices they receive, and this has Fox and other studios upset. Now, they're sending takedown notices demanding removal of their takedown notices.

Thai's break Hula-Hoop record

 

The world record for most number of people simultaneously hula-hooping was recently broken at Thammasat University stadium, near Bangkok. The Thai crowd broke the previous record, held by Taiwan, with a new record of 4483 people hula-hooping for 7 minutes. The event was organized by the public health ministry to promote exercise and good health.

Exhaled breath is unique fingerprint

Exhaled breath is unique fingerprint

Scientists report that compounds present in breath are unique to individuals - a "breathprint" - and could be exploited in a range of medical applications.

• Breath test 'spots stomach cancer'
• Sniffer dogs detect lung cancer

A Bornean Tribe's Last Stand Against Corporate Greed

The Penan Peace Park

The Penan tribe of Sarawak, Borneo have been losing their rainforest to loggers and plantations for decades. The Penan Peace Park project offers them new hope. More

Vintage Railway Scenes From The Glory Days Of Train Travel

Throughout the Victorian period and the early part of the 20th century, railways were a source of great civic pride and prestige for both private citizens and the companies controlling them.

And while newer networks tend to be more environmentally friendly than their forebears, the march of progress and modernisation has brought utilitarian trains and often soulless, unimaginative architecture. This article looks at 20 classic railway scenes across the world, spanning the past 180 years. 

The Tunnel That Saved Bosnia

In the aftermath of the Cold War, Bosnia became a red-hot battleground teetering on the edge of destruction—until one man and his family dug their countrymen to freedom.

In 1990, Communism was falling apart. The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse, Eastern European nations were peeking out from behind the Iron Curtain, and people were literally dancing on the remains of the Berlin Wall. But the end of the Cold War wasn't all blue jeans and Bruce Springsteen. In some parts of the world, Communism was preserving order in extremely volatile areas. This was especially true in Yugoslavia, a federation of Slavic peoples—including Serbians, Bosnians, Croats, Albanians, and Macedonians—created after World War II.

When the Communist government in Yugoslavia fell in 1990, war broke out along ethnic lines. Primarily, that meant the Serbs fighting the Bosnians, Croats, and Albanians. The war crimes perpetrated by the Serbs against the Bosnians were so brutal that the United Nations declared them genocide in 1992.

At the center of all this madness was the picturesque Bosnian city of Sarajevo. Filled with gorgeous alpine mountains and graceful valleys, Sarajevo had wowed the world in 1984 when it hosted the Winter Olympics. For decades, Sarajevo had served as an important example of Bosnians living together peacefully with Serbs and Croats. But all of that ended on April 5, 1992. Serbian tanks rolled across Bosnia and opened fire on Sarajevo. Then the Croatian army, which also wanted control of the city, did the same. Suddenly, Sarajevo's citizens were being attacked from all sides. It was the beginning of a disastrous four-year siege.

Tunnel Vision

As bombs rained down on Sarajevo, Serb snipers hid in the hills while Serb tanks blocked every road leading out of the city. The people of Sarajevo were trapped and starving, living in their basements and rationing their last cans of food. The city would have fallen if not for one man—Bajro Kolar.

Kolar was a typical middle-class family man living in Butmir, a tiny community in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza. His house had the strategic advantages of being beyond Serb lines, as well as being close to the Sarajevo airport, which made it perfect for hoarding fresh supplies. When the Bosnian army approached him with the idea of building a tunnel from his cellar into a garage in Sarajevo, Kolar didn't hesitate to say yes.

In early 1993, Kolar, his wife, his son, and about 200 soldiers began burrowing through nearly 2,500 feet of soil—digging every inch by hand. The tunnel was less than 5 feet high, so miners had to crouch low with their picks and shovels. They reinforced the walls with wood and steel beams, like an old-fashioned coal mine, and even laid a railway track on the floor. Working in eight-hour shifts, the diggers completed the tunnel that July.

Saving a City

The Sarajevo Tunnel was the Trojan Horse of the Bosnian War. Historians estimate that more than 1 million trips were taken through the shaft, allowing the import of about 20 million tons of food. Machine guns and crates of ammunition also flowed through the Tunnel, helping the Bosnian army defend itself against the well-armed Serbs.

There was nothing romantic about the Tunnel, though. Dark, dirty, and cold, the passage was so narrow and crowded that a one-way trip could take as long as two hours. And the constant explosions outside vibrated through the walls and threatened the support beams. It was miraculous that no part of the passage ever collapsed.

Among those who passed through the tunnel was Alija Izetbegovic, then-president of Bosnia. For the sake of his country, Izetbegovic needed to make appearances on both sides of the Serb lines, and the Tunnel was the only dependable route. But it wasn't easy. At one point, Izetbegovic was wheelchair-bound, and he had to roll through the corridor on its primitive railway tracks.

When the war ended, the Tunnel's story became international news, and the Kolars were showered with honors. Today, the house serves as a museum, and it's easy to find. The locals eagerly give directions, and taxis and tour buses make regular visits. While the Western press has given the landmark many names—the Tunnel of Life, the Tunnel of Hope—in Bosnia, all you have to say is Tunnel (pronounced TOO-nell), and everyone knows what you're talking about.