Lost medieval city found in Cambodia

A lost medieval city that thrived on a mist-shrouded Cambodian mountain 1,200 years ago has been discovered by archaeologists using revolutionary airborne laser technology, a report said.

Post holes on an old temple site

In what it called a world exclusive, the Sydney Morning Herald said the city, Mahendraparvata, included temples hidden by jungle for centuries, many of which have not been looted.

A journalist and photographer from the newspaper accompanied the "Indiana Jones-style" expedition, led by a French-born archaeologist, through landmine-strewn jungle in the Siem Reap region where Angkor Wat, the largest Hindi temple complex in the world, is located.

The expedition used an instrument called Lidar -- light detection and ranging data -- which was strapped to a helicopter that criss-crossed a mountain north of Angkor Wat for seven days, providing data that matched years of ground research by archaeologists.

It effectively peeled away the jungle canopy using billions of laser pulses, allowing archaeologists to see structures that were in perfect squares, completing a map of the city which years of painstaking ground research had been unable to achieve, the report said.

Sydney Uni Professor Damien Evans leads several teams of archaeologists in the Siem Reap region

It helped reveal the city that reportedly founded the Angkor Empire in 802 AD, uncovering more than two dozen previously unrecorded temples and evidence of ancient canals, dykes and roads using satellite navigation coordinates gathered from the instrument's data.

Jean-Baptiste Chevance, director of the Archaeology and Development Foundation in London who led the expedition, told the newspaper it was known from ancient scriptures that a great warrior, Jayavarman II, had a mountain capital, "but we didn't know how all the dots fitted, exactly how it all came together".

"We now know from the new data the city was for sure connected by roads, canals and dykes," he said.

The discovery is set to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.

The discovery of Thom Dab temple

Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney's archaeological research center in Cambodia, which played a key part in developing the Lidar technology, said there might be important implications for today's society.

"We see from the imagery that the landscape was completely devoid of vegetation," Evans, a co-expedition leader, said.

"One theory we are looking at is that the severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management led to the demise of the civilization ... perhaps it became too successful to the point of becoming unmanageable."

The Herald said the trek to the ruins involved traversing rutted goat tracks and knee-deep bogs after travelling high into the mountains on motorbikes.

Everyone involved was sworn to secrecy until the findings were peer-reviewed.


Evans said it was not known how large Mahendraparvata was because the search had so far only covered a limited area, with more funds needed to broaden it out.

"Maybe what we see was not the central part of the city, so there is a lot of work to be done to discover the extent of this civilization," he said.

"We need to preserve the area because it's the origin of our culture," secretary of state at Cambodia's Ministry of Culture, Chuch Phoeun, told AFP.

Angkor Wat was at one time the largest pre-industrial city in the world, and is considered one of the ancient wonders of the world.

It was constructed from the early to mid 1100s by King Suryavarman II at the height of the Khmer Empire's political and military power.

Large Iron Age houses discovered in Norway

Archaeologists from the science museum in Trondheim have located the foundations of two large houses from the Iron Age, close to one of the biggest burial grounds in Hallem, near Stiklestad in Trøndelag.

The Lofotr Viking Museum in Borg

"This rarely happens in Norway, and it is completely unexpected" says archaeologist Marte Mokkelbost. The archaeologists have discovered two so-called "long houses" that confirm that Stiklestad was an area inhabited by people who were both wealthy and in power during the iron age.

The burial grounds at Stiklestad is one of the largest collection of cemeteries in Norway. The houses were found very close by, and one of the houses is more than 50 meters long and eight meters wide.

Professor in archaeology at the University in Trondheim, Lars Stenvik, explains that the houses may have functioned as halls, and not merely used as residences. "We think that this has been an important center for the chiefs in the iron age, and maybe all the way back to nativity," Stenvik tells NRK.

The archaeologists are now using metal detectors to search the premises, and hope to find artifacts that may have belonged to the people who lived here. Already, they have seen signs that part of the flooring in the house is still intact. 

Stone Age Siberians may have rarely hunted mammoths

 Contrary to their hunting reputation, Stone Age Siberians killed mammoths only every few years when they needed tusks for toolmaking, a new study finds.

Excavated mammoth bones from Siberia’s Yana archaeological site suggest that people hunted mammoths mainly for ivory, which they used to make tools

People living between roughly 33,500 and 31,500 years ago hunted the animals mainly for ivory, say paleontologist Pavel Nikolskiy and archaeologist Vladimir Pitulko of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Hunting could not have driven mammoths to extinction, the researchers report June 5 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

On frigid tundra with few trees, mammoth tusks substituted for wood as a raw material for tools, they propose. Siberian people ate mammoth meat after hunts, but food was not their primary goal.

Several European and North American sites have yielded single mammoth carcasses lying amid stone tools. Such finds could reflect either hunting or scavenging. Finds at Siberia’s Yana archeological site provide an unprecedented window on the hunting and killing of mammoths over a long time period, says archaeologist John Hoffecker of the University of Colorado Boulder.

Mammoth bones appear in sufficient numbers at some sites in Europe to suggest that hunters there did seek more than ivory, says archaeologist Jiří Svoboda of Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. Whatever happened at Yana, many groups were probably interested in obtaining mammoth meat, fat, bones, tusks and skin, Svoboda says.

Since 2008, scientists have unearthed 1,103 bones from at least 31 mammoths at Yana. Radiocarbon measurements indicate that mammoth remains gradually accumulated there over 2,000 years.

Right shoulder blades from two mammoths contain pieces of stone spear points. An ivory splinter, possibly from a spear’s shaft, pierced one of these bones. Another shoulder blade and a thigh bone display holes made by spears. Angles of these wounds suggest that hunters struck mammoths from behind. “Yana people definitely attacked from the mammoth’s blind spot,” Nikolskiy says.
Most mammoth bones at Yana come from animals with slightly curved tusks that were the best size and shape for making hunting weapons, Nikolskiy and Pitulko propose.

Researchers have found five mammoth bones from the base of the animals’ tongues at a campsite not far from where remains were excavated. Meaty parts of the animals were probably consumed there, the investigators say.

While hunting was not the main cause of mammoths’ extinction in Asia and Europe, it may have been the last straw as warming temperatures shrank livable areas for the creatures. 

Daily Comic Relief

Study of oceans’ past raises worries about their future

The ocean the Titanic sailed through just over 100 years ago was very different from the one we swim in today. Global warming is increasing ocean temperatures and harming marine food webs. Nitrogen run-off from fertilizers is causing coastal dead zones. A McGill-led international research team has now completed the first global study of changes that occurred in a crucial component of ocean chemistry, the nitrogen cycle, at the end of the last ice age. The results of their study confirm that oceans are good at balancing the nitrogen cycle on a global scale. But the data also shows that it is a slow process that may take many centuries, or even millennia, raising worries about the effects of the scale and speed of current changes in the ocean.

Data from end of the last ice age illuminate the precarious nature
of global ocean chemistry

"For the first time we can quantify how oceans responded to slow, natural climate warming as the world emerged from the last ice age," says Prof. Eric Galbraith from McGill University's Department of Earth and Oceanic Sciences, who led the study. "And what is clear is that there is a strong climate sensitivity in the ocean nitrogen cycle."

The nitrogen cycle is a key component of the global ocean metabolism. Like the proteins that are essential to human health, nitrogen is crucial to the health of oceans. And just as proteins are carried by the blood and circulate through the body, the nitrogen in the ocean is kept in balance by marine bacteria through a complicated cycle that keeps the ocean healthy. The phytoplankton (microscopic organisms at the base of the food chain) 'fix' nitrogen in the shallow, sunlit waters of the ocean, and then as they die and sink, nitrogen is eliminated (a process known as 'denitrification') in dark, oxygen-poor pockets of the ocean depths.

Using sediment gathered from the ocean floor in different areas of the world, the researchers were able to confirm that as the ice sheets started melting and the climate warmed up at the end of the last ice age, 18,000 years ago, the marine nitrogen cycle started to accelerate. The ocean had stabilized itself in its new, warmer state, in which the overall nitrogen cycle was running faster, by about 8,000 years ago. Given the current dramatic rate of change in the ocean nitrogen cycle the researchers are not sure how long it will take for marine ecosystems to adapt.

"We are changing the planet in ways we are not even aware of," says Galbraith. "You wouldn't think that putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would change the amount of nitrogen available to fish in the ocean, but it clearly does. It is important to realize just how interconnected everything is."

This research was funded by: the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) through the Earth System Evolution Program

Huge Earth-Passing Asteroid 'Entirely New Beast'

Huge Earth-Passing Asteroid 'Entirely New Beast'

The asteroid that buzzed earth in May was completely unique, even primitive, a researcher says.

Save the bees

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And across the USA in cities such as:
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Today in History

455   Rome is sacked by the Vandal army.  
1815   Napoleon defeats the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny.  
1858   Abraham Lincoln, in accepting the repugican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, declares that, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."  
1864   The siege of Petersburg and Richmond begins after a moonlight skirmish.  
1907   The Russian czar dissolves the Duma in St. Petersburg.  
1910   The first Father's Day is celebrated in Spokane Washington.  
1925   France accepts a German proposal for a security pact. 1932   The ban on Nazi storm troopers is lifted by the von Papen government in Germany.  
1935   President Roosevelt's New Deal legislation is passed by the House of Representatives.
1940   French Chief of State, Henri Petain asks for an armistice with Germany.  
1952   Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl is published in the United States.  
1955   The U.S. House of Representatives votes to extend Selective Service until 1959.  
1961   Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union while in Paris.  
1971   An El Greco sketch, "The Immaculate Conception," stolen in Spain 35 years earlier, is recovered in New York City by the FBI.  
1977   Leonid Brezhnev is named president of the Soviet Union.

Non Sequitur

How a real leader deals with sexual harassment

While the United States Senate holds biased hearings in order to kill real reform to stop the sexual abuse of female service members, Australia’s Army Chief, Lieutenant General David Morrison shows how a real military leader deals with abuse and harassment.

 

Australia Chief of Army Lt. Gen. Morrison 

And mind you, when watching this video, the Australians are dealing with “‘explicit and repugnant’ emails and images demeaning women.” While the Americans are dealing with the actual sexual abuse of women. And guess whose response was stronger?

“Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues have no place in this army…. If that does not suit you, then get out.”
“It is up to us to make a difference. If you’re not up for it, find something else to do with your life. There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sister.”

Here’s more from the Australian Army about this matter.
This is an amazing video:

Reflections

Did you know ...

That Bachmann, Gohmert and Steve King admited to Glenn Beck's audience: "we're losing"

About the 11 most polluted rivers in the world

That there were some bizarre statements from the faith and freedom coalition conference

That chained CPI would severely affect seniors

Tell Lush: "Obamacare Won. Move to Costa Rica"

(Lush is still spouting all kinds of garbage.  Which reminds us - why is he still here?  Send him a message -- or another message -- and tell him, "Obamacare won, move to Costa Rica!")

Backstory:

Well, Lush Dimbulb is apparently going apoplectic over the Supreme Court upholding President Obama's health care law.
But here's the odd thing.  We don't understand why he's still around to complain, since Lush said earlier that if this law passed, he'd leave America, and move to Costa Rica:

If Democrats didn't have all the incentive they needed to pass health care reform already, then wingnut hate talk radio host Lush Dimbulb may have provided the final push they needed by vowing to flee the country if the reform bill is passed. Responding to a caller who asked him where he would go for health care if Congress enacts reform, Dimbulb replied, "I don't know. I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica." (Source)

Well, now that the Supreme Court has weighed in, and now that it's clear that health care reform will be implemented, we have just one thing to say to Lush:
"Adios!"
Send Lush a message.  Tell him the make good on his promise, and to start packing his bags.
(Oh, and to the good people of Costa Rica....um... sorry).
(P.S. - Don't tell Rush, but Costa Rica actually has universal health care).

Bill Clinton Eviscerates the Blind Stupidity of The tea party

And Does So Brilliantly

 

Former President Bill Clinton called out the tea party for discouraging bipartisanship by wanting people to check their brains at the door.
Video:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Transcript:

Alex Wagner: Do you think bipartisanship is dead? Governor Christie is going to speak at CGI America. He plays a boardwalk game with President Obama and it is a national issue. They go and tour the state of New Jersey after devastating storms He’s hand-in-glove with the president on recovery efforts and the Republican Party is furious. What is going to happen to Chris Christie when he comes — and again, is pledging to work with the efforts — work in hand with former Democratic president?

President Clinton: Well, it’s interesting. I think in the culture of the Northeast, if you’re a repugican and want to get elect and re-elected, bipartisanship is imperative. In sort of the way we’ve separated out our cultures, in the Deep South and some of the intermountain west, if you want to do that, you get creamed. I mean I saw that this repugican woman who was a third-generation I think owner of a general store that sold guns and had 100% NRA record was the chairman of the committee in the Tennessee legislature that referred a bill to committee, she basically killed the bill for the session that the NRA wanted that said you could carry your loaded concealed weapon anywhere and leave it in any parking lot. Any parking lot at all. And they ran pictures of her and her district with President Obama and beat her by 16 points in the primary. In other words, they’re basically trying to get everybody to check their brain at the door.
Bob English got beat in South Carolina because he said he realized he didn’t have to hate the president to disagree with him. And that global warming was real. Boy, those were non-starters. He gets beat more than 2 – 1 in the primary. So there are cultures in which this is happening.
But in the end, this constant conflict, this ideological war, is wildly ineffective at getting anything done. It won’t work in the modern world. So I think that where bipartisanship is possible, you just have to keep working on it. Congress cannot function. Part of this, to be fair, it is reapportionment. but a part of it is, look at the media. Why are you successful? Finally people think we’ve got an answer to Fox. Why are all these things being broken up in niche networks? We’re sorting ourselves out by what we believe. I tell everybody now it is America’s last remaining bigotry. We’re less racist, sexist, homophobic than we used to be. We just don’t want to be around anybody that disagrees with us.
Notice that Clinton mentioned two examples where more extreme wingnuts punished repugicans for daring to express bipartisan thoughts or defying the will of the NRA. The same closed mindedness also exists on the extreme left, but the difference is that the far left doesn’t primary Democrats who they feel run afoul of their agenda.

President Obama and congressional Democrats spent years reaching out to Republicans in a bipartisan way. Their efforts were regularly rebuffed by congressional Republicans who are terrified that any expression of bipartisanship will get them primaried.
The main reason why the far right has been able to kill bipartisanship is that the Republican Party has gotten smaller. Reagan’s big tent has been replaced with a one idea pup tent. Chris Christie stands out because he is one of the last of an endangered species. He is a Republican that will express the occasional bipartisan thought.
Too much ideological rigidity is a bad thing. I cringe every time Obama offers to compromise with Republicans and the far left goes on their tea partylike rant about how the president is caving. Politics shouldn’t viewed as the zero sum game that many see it as today. President Clinton understands the problem and the solution. The hard part is going to be getting the country back to where it needs to be.

The repugicans Have Hit a New Record Low as Confidence In Congress Falls to 10%

Didn't think it was possible for them to sink any lower but they consistently do so ...

For a government to be nominally effective in a democracy, the public has to have a minimal amount or faith or belief that their representatives and leaders act in a right, proper, or competent way in serving the people who elected them. The idea of effective government in America was dealt a crushing blow when repugicans plotted on Inauguration night in 2009 to oppose and obstruct anything the newly installed President proposed, and after teabaggers helped repugicans win a majority in the 2010 midterm elections, government has all but failed to serve the people. It is no wonder then, that confidence in Congress has steadily declined as repugicans have openly obstructed President Obama’s attempts to create jobs, grow the economy, and advance policies to serve the people whether it is consumer protections, effective social programs, or national security.
In a new poll released Thursday, the American people’s confidence in Congress fell to 10% and it represents the worst showing for any societal institution in the history of the Gallup poll, and is three percentage points below last year’s numbers and the fourth year in a row Congress is the least trusted institution in America. Over the past four-and-a-half years, Americans have demanded that both parties compromise and work to solve the nation’s problems in a bipartisan manner, and yet regardless Democrats and President Obama perpetually cede ground to repugicans on issues near and dear to liberals, repugicans have made no attempts to compromise or accept any concessions including on policy issues they proposed.
Congressional stagnation and ineffectiveness cannot be assigned to Democrats, and it is not just a liberal point of view because when repugicans created the debt ceiling crisis in 2011 that resulted in S&P downgrading America’s credit rating for the first time in history, they blamed repugican intransigence on the shrub-era tax cuts and expressed no confidence that with repugican obstructionism Washington could govern the nation effectively. Last year, two long-time political scholars, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, argued that congressional dysfunction was solely the fault of wingnut radicals within the repugican cabal who engaged in “policy hostage-taking,” and they repeated their assessment again six weeks ago reiterating their charge citing Congress’ failure to make progress on gun control despite support for background checks from 90% of the American public. It is also noteworthy that Ornstein and Mann agree with this column’s assertion that mainstream media and media fact-checkers add to the problem by indulging in “false equivalency” pretending both parties are equally to blame.
What Mann and Ornstien claimed for the second time in a year is that repugican intransigence and opposition to anything President Obama supports was “symptomatic of a legislative branch reduced to dysfunction, partisan ravings and obstruction.” In fact, Senator Pat Toomey (r-PA) remarked that repugicans shut down discussion on background checks for gun purchases that many repugicans supported because “there were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done.” It is no wonder the people have little confidence in Congress and doubtless why government is at a standstill, or as Thomas Mann succinctly put it, “the repugican House is a formula for inaction and absolutist opposition politics, not for problem solving.” But that is the point; repugicans are not in Congress to solve problems, and despite their three-year assertion that jobs and the economy are their primary focus, they have spent the lion’s share of their time restricting women’s reproductive health choices, investigating phony scandals surrounding the Benghazi attack and IRS doing its job, voting over thirty times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as a investigating a variety of imagined slights dreamt up by House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa.
There have even been House repugicans obstructing bipartisan Senate bills that typically garner universal support for legislation such as the Violence Against Women Act and Transportation bills that were either already funded or have minimal impact on spending, and the goal is always obstruction for the sake of obstruction. Besides the VAWA, the farm bill currently under debate was passed in the Senate last year, and because House repugicans demanded harsher cuts to the SNAP program (food stamps) the bill expired and has to be passed again in the new session of Congress. Last month House repugicans voted to cut $20.5 billion from SNAP which would take food stamps away from 2 million Americans and hundreds-of-thousands of children, but extremists in repugican ranks are balking on those Draconian cuts and insisting on even slashing funding deeper to fall in line with Paul Ryan’s budget that calls for $135 billion in food stamp cuts, as well as privatizing Medicare, 14.9% tax cut for the rich, and 15% tax increase on the poor. The great majority of Americans support increased funding for SNAP, tax increases on the wealthy, and strengthening social programs and safety net spending, so repugicans cannot claim their intransigence is acting on behalf of the majority of Americans.
The repugicans have accomplished teabagger goals of shutting down Congress and prevented; a jobs agenda, a budget, a deficit reduction deal, gun safety measures, tax reform, minimum wage increase, and likely will prevent comprehensive immigration reform, but they did give Americans a sequester cutting education, national defense, safety nets, and infrastructure improvements. As Robert Reich noted, it has fallen to individual states to take action and depending on which party controls a state’s legislature, it is either a curse or a blessing for residents as left-leaning states like California, Maryland, and Colorado voted to raise taxes on the wealthy and helped fund education, healthcare for the poor, and still have a long-term budget surplus. However, residents in states lurching farther to the right like Kansas and Wisconsin are suffering higher taxes on the poor, horrific job losses, massive education and healthcare cuts, and very generous tax cuts for the rich and corporations. If repugicans in Congress demonstrated any willingness to govern other than bringing government to a halt, beleaguered residents in red states would be spared abject devastation of out of control wingnut ALEC extremism.
It is seriously amazing that there are 10% of Americans who have confidence in Congress and doubtless they are extremist wingnuts and teabaggers hopeful repugicans continue neutering government, or optimistic souls who believe sanity and reason will win the day and repugicans will actually work for the good of the people. However, after over four-and-a-half years of obstruction, job killing, and hostage taking crises, and a population falling deeper into poverty, there is nothing whatsoever to be confident about except more dire effects of repugicans intent on bringing governance to a halt. It is noteworthy though, that repugicans act decisively and with great resolve when their wealthy and extremist supporters demand action, but that is likely the same 10% who still have confidence in Congress and sadly they are driving the direction of the nation.

Bernie Sanders Strikes a Blow for Privacy With New Bill To Limit the Patriot Act

Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation that would put strict limits on the domestic surveillance powers of the FBI and NSA.
In a statement, Sen. Sanders said, “We must give our intelligence and law enforcement agencies all of the tools that they need to combat terrorism but we must do so in a way that protects our freedom and respects the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches.”
The legislation puts limits on what records can be search, and requires agencies to have reasonable suspicion based on specific information in order to obtain a warrant. There would be no more data mining through open ended court orders, and agencies would have to have reasonable suspicion to justify searches for each record or document. The bill would increase congressional oversight, and eliminate the presumption that anyone who is known to a suspect is relevant to an investigation.
Sen. Sanders is proposing a return to sanity. There is absolutely no justifiable reason for the open ended surveillance powers in the Patriot Act. It has been 12 years since 9/11. It is time to look past the hysteria that allowed a horribly flawed piece of legislation to be passed, renewed, and renewed again.
Bernie Sanders is doing something that his critics on the right are too afraid to do. He is challenging the status quo. Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden have let this story devolve into an agenda driven circus. The reason why I have been critical of the motives of both of these men is because Sen. Sanders’ legislation was exactly what I wanted to see. Glenn Greenwald is moving back to the fringe where he belongs, and I don’t care if Snowden is hiding out on the moon. The real issue here has always been the Patriot Act.
Greenwald over hyped his story, and completely missed the real value of what he was reporting. What the NSA is doing isn’t a scandal. It isn’t proof that Obama is the root of all evil. It is a great opportunity to demonstrate what the Patriot Act continues to do to our liberties.
Congress is full of national security cowards. Sen. Sanders is serving with people who recently voted to protect rapists in the military, because they didn’t want to take sexual assault investigation out of the chain of command. This legislation has zero chance of ever being passed, but this could be the most significant legislative effort to limit the Patriot Act that the country has ever seen.
The con men, the media whores, and the wanna be martyrs will continue to spin this and stumble down the wrong path. Real change will have to come from Congress, and Bernie Sanders took the first important step towards victory in the battle to restore our liberties.
(You can read the bill here in PDF.)

Alan Grayson to offer “Mind Your Own Business Act” to stop NSA spying

Alan Grayson has written an amendment that he will soon introduce in the House of Representatives that deals with the relentless and endless NSA spying on Americans. He’s calling it the “Mind Your Own Business” Act — and he’s looking for your support. Yes, this is a petition, but yes, it will also be a bill before the House.There’s also a nice “what the NSA is doing” section in this post, an explanation in easy-to-digest form. Check it out.

Cong. Alan Grayson

The petition

First, the petition. In order to raise a fuss in Congress about NSA spying on Americans, we have to raise a fuss in the country. There are lots of ways to do this, but a very practical way is to agitate for an actual bill before Congress that our representatives will then have to vote on. That is, raise a fuss in the country that puts Congress on the line.
So here’s the petition to get support for a bill before the House. Click this link or the image below to go to the petition page:

Do you agree? If so, help out. It’s pretty easy to take one step, and lots of people taking one step is what we need.

The Act itself

Like a lot of Grayson’s legislation, the Act itself is pretty simple.

Seems clear and to the point, don’t you think?

What the NSA is doing

There’s a lot being written about what the NSA has apparently been caught doing. Chris Hayes has excellent segments on it; Marcy Wheeler is doing wonderful analysis.
But there’s an easy and obvious bottom line. The NSA believes that in order to do its job, it has to have access to all data. Period. All data. It got stopped (ostensibly) in the 1970s from attempting to do that, but after 9/11 it got permission to restart.
Remember, the goal is all data. So the story we get from Edward Snowden is that the NSA, as part of its All Data mission, has reportedly stuck an exit pipe deep in the servers of Microsoft, Facebook, Google (yes, Google, whose motto is “Don’t be evil”), Yahoo and others you deal with daily (that’s you, friendly fake-hipster Apple) — and they’re vacuuming up, to the best they can … All Data. This is disputed, but if this attempt is more limited than the reports, they’re still trying. They want it all to the extent they can get it.
The NSA’s not looking at All Data though, just Some Data. You can’t look at All Data. But they’re storing All Data forever; that’s what that Utah Data Farm is for. That way, when someone (you? your child?) gets onto someone’s radar as a suspect — or as someone who is two degrees of separation from a suspect — they can go back through All Data looking for something that incriminates you (or your child).
Or worse, if Doctor Evil ever comes to the White House, s/he will tell the NSA to go back to All Data and look for ways to blackmail opponents (as evil Dick Nixon seems to have attempted) — or in the very-worst-case world, to kill them. (Think political assassination has never reached these shores? Think it can’t? Fine, but stay off of small planes, just in case … and yes, I’m half-joking.)
In other words, with the power to lock down opposition with access to total surveillance, plus a citizenry fully comfortable with a militarized public-private police force guarding your compliance — think city cops, private cops and Occupy — you’ve now got all your dictatorial ducks in a row. NSA collecting All Data is one of those ducks.

Disrupt the NSA; support the Mind Your Own Business Act

It’s a pain to have to keep acting up to take back power, but there it is. Our ancestors said the same about food — it’s a pain to have to keep going out to find it. But there it is.
The good news for you — this world offers a lot of ways to act against power, and this is one of the easiest. Support Grayson’s pushback bill against the NSA and let’s see if we can force Congress to choose a side — Fourth Amendment privacy, or collection of All Data — in a rather public way.
Who know? Could work. We won’t now till we try, right?

World Wage Normalization?

Unemployment Falls But New Jobs Pay Low Wages

by Egberto Willies

While it is great to see the unemployment rate starting to fall, that the new jobs being created are low wages is a sinister outcome caused by 30 years of bad policy. The American Plutocracy has sacrificed the working middle class. They’ve done it by exporting labor to slave labor countries. They’ve supported policies that kept unemployment high (no substantial government support for creating jobs while private sector refuses to). Supply and demand then bring down  wages as the supply of the unemployed explodes. Of course this provides huge profits for the few.
This was captured well in a last year New York Times story “Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds“. A prescient statement in the article is:

“The overarching message here is we don’t just have a jobs deficit; we have a ‘good jobs’ deficit,” said Annette Bernhardt, the report’s author and a policy co-director at the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and advocacy group.
The report looked at 366 occupations tracked by the Labor Department and clumped them into three equal groups by wage, with each representing a third of American employment in 2008. The middle third — occupations in fields like construction, manufacturing and information, with median hourly wages of $13.84 to $21.13 — accounted for 60 percent of job losses from the beginning of 2008 to early 2010.

The job market has turned around since then, but those fields have represented only 22 percent of total job growth. Higher-wage occupations — those with a median wage of $21.14 to $54.55 — represented 19 percent of job losses when employment was falling, and 20 percent of job gains when employment began growing again.

Lower-wage occupations, with median hourly wages of $7.69 to $13.83, accounted for 21 percent of job losses during the retraction. Since employment started expanding, they have accounted for 58 percent of all job growth.

The occupations with the fastest growth were retail sales (at a median wage of $10.97 an hour) and food preparation workers ($9.04 an hour). Each category has grown by more than 300,000 workers since June 2009.

Sadly the story continues 9 months since the release of the article. All research is showing that the problem now may be systemic as old paradigms in wages die, specifically wage stickiness.

First off, a new paper by a trio of researchers confirms some old news: Adjusted for inflation, wages began stagnating for both men and women 10 years ago. Men’s wages have actually decreased slightly since 2000, while women’s wages, which had been rising steadily for decades, flattened out nearly to zero. But it could have been worse. Economists have long known that there’s a floor to wages because employers don’t like to reduce nominal wages. If you make $10 per hour, they won’t cut your wage to $9 per hour. They’ll just hold it at $10 and let inflation eat it away. This phenomenon is called wage stickiness.
But in “Wage Adjustment in the Great Recession,” these researchers have found that wage stickiness, which is driven mostly by social convention, not economic law, might be dying out. During the Great Recession, employers were increasingly willing to cut nominal wages. Among hourly workers, the usual number who experience wage cuts is around 15 percent. That had risen to 25 percent by 2011. Among nonhourly workers, the number rose from about 25 percent to nearly 35 percent. Increasingly, it seems, wage stickiness isn’t acting as a barrier against wage losses. [source]

These problems won’t be solved with governmental austerity. These problems won’t be solved with the benevolence of the private sector. This problem won’t be solved by a capitalist market. After-all, under the current paradigm the economy is functioning as it should, maximization of profits for the owners of capital. The market cares not if it is at the expense of human beings manifested as policy driven decline in wages, war, or otherwise. Only with an engaged population that demands a paradigm shift, that demands an economy that works for all will things change.

Man found with bag of cocaine between his toes says it wasn't his

A man found with what he said was a bag of cocaine between his toes said the drugs did not belong to him.

Martin Perez, 33, made the statement after 2:20 am on June 2 after being taken to the St. Lucie County jail in Fort Pierce, Florida, on an aggravated battery charge.

When Perez arrived, officials asked whether he had any drugs or weapons. He said he didn't. Deputies, however, discovered a bag of white powder between his toes. Perez said it was cocaine, but said it wasn't his.

In addition to the aggravated battery charge, Perez was arrested on charges including cocaine possession and smuggle contraband/introduce into detention facility.

Brothers' dispute over missing macaroni cheese and spilled beer ended with stabbing

A fight over missing macaroni cheese and spilled beer ended with a stabbing in Deltona, Florida, this week.

Randy Zipperer, 49, was arrested on charges of aggravated battery and obstructing an officer without violence after he allegedly stabbed his brother on Tuesday, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office said. His brother, Edward Zipperer, 47, had a small puncture and cut on his abdomen. Deltona Fire Rescue treated him on the scene and he didn't want to go to the hospital.

The brothers live together and a witness told deputies the older sibling regularly pulls out knives during arguments. In this case, the witness said, Randy Zipperer became upset because he could not locate his macaroni cheese and when his younger brother tried to help, Edward Zipperer accidentally spilled his other brother's beer.

The elder brother got a knife from the kitchen and began swinging it at his younger brother sometime before 10pm. Deputies discovered blood in the house and found a six-inch kitchen knife with what looked like dried blood on the tip. Randy Zipperer apologized after deputies arrived. He said he accidentally "poked him a little with the knife."

"Tang Sucks"

A generation of Americans grew up thinking that the instant drink powder Tang was developed for the space program. That isn't true, but Tang was used during John Glenn's historic Mercury flight and then during the Gemini missions, which forever linked the drink with astronauts.
But last night, during an awards show on Spike TV, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin revealed the truth about the legendary drink by saying "Tang sucks." NPR responded with a poll in which the majority of the respondents agree (so far). The comments reveal some fondness for Tang with vodka, often called a Cosmonaut, which probably has more to do with nostalgia than taste. For those too young to remember the hype about Tang, or who have never consumed it, imagine SunnyD without the 5% orange juice or the water.

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Why Cut Down That Tree in Your Yard?

Instead, Carve It into a Dragon. Redditor Aboiement writes that his neighbor "paid an artist to sculpt a dragon into a tree that had to be cut down." Wonderful! And it's better than a guard dog. No one will dare try to rob a house protected by a dragon.

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Extreme Small Boats And Yachts

Summer is all around us and the prospect of boarding a neat boat for a breezy cruise seems mighty fine and dandy. Here's a collection of small boats and yachts and some vintage 'boating dream' advertisements.

The rivers of America

Nelson Minar created a massive map of the United States' rivers.

Swedish workers dig up 400-year-old soldier

 A man in southern Sweden was shocked to uncover a human skeleton just 20 centimetres under the ground near a public beach, remains that archaeologists believe belong to a fallen soldier from the Danish occupation of Sweden in the early 1600s.

Close-up of skull

"All the lads thought it was really exciting," Ronny Gustavsson, head of the Kalmar municipality service project, told The Local.

Gustavsson was on the scene soon after the workers found the bones while digging for a beach extension project in the area. While the digger itself crushed a hole in the skeleton's skull, Gustavsson says the bones have weathered the centuries well.

"Besides the hole in the head it's in pretty good condition - all the fingers and toes were in place. The guys all thought it was a real thrill to see."

In line with Swedish law, the workers called the municipality, which in turn contacted the Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet), which sent archaeologist Stefan Larsson to the scene to find out more.

"We haven't done the full analysis yet, but an osteologist took a quick look and believes it to be a young male in his early 20s," Larsson told The Local.

"I must admit the whole thing was quite fun for me - I'm an old-fashioned archaeologist. Usually, there is a long procedure involved in this kind of thing with a lot of paperwork, but this all went very quickly."

The full skeleton

Larsson is convinced the skeleton belongs to a soldier, which was a surprise to experts as the area was not previously known to have any war graves.

"This particular bloke was laid out quite neatly, with his hands over chest, a straight body, and in a surprisingly shallow grave. What was also surprising was that there were pot shards with the body that were dated to early 17th century, from the time of the Danish siege in 1611."

The Kalmar War raged between 1611 and 1613, with much of the fighting taking place in Kalmar itself, on the far south-western coast of Sweden.

Other bones from earlier times were found further beneath the soil, although these have been left alone as the building was given the green light to continue.

As for the identity of the skeleton, Larsson can't say for sure if he was a Swede or a Dane, but added that if the county authorities allow it, the team can continue its analysis.

"Maybe can find out from the pottery and the skeleton analysis where he is from, but this can be costly - it's up to the authorities to decide what happens next.

"Any other bodies out there will remain undisturbed."

Good Question

Physics Question

What if Superman punched you in the face?

(Video Link)

If Superman didn't pull his punch and hit you at full force, what would you experience? I mean besides a bad day.  Well, Jake Roper says that you'd feel 190,000,000,000,000,000 joules impact your body. That would be like 2,800 times the power of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Obviously such a punch would negatively impair your lifestyle. The temperature of such an impact would reach 143,999,999,999.540.3 °F. Roper says, "You'd be liquefied at the atomic level."
So don't tug on his cape.

New Human Body Part Discovered

The newest addition to human anatomy is just 15 microns thick, but its discovery will make eye surgery safer and simpler. Harminder Dua, a professor at the University of Nottingham, recently found a new layer in the human cornea, and he's calling it Dua's layer.

Dua's layer sits at the back of the cornea, which previously had only five known layers. Dua and his colleagues discovered the new body part by injecting air into the corneas of eyes that had been donated for research and using an electron microscope to scan each separated layer.

Human News

Medici Children Suffered From Rickets

The Medici children were malnourished and led a prolonged indoor life, a new study finds.

Daredevils Through History

Daredevils don't perform stunts simply for the attention of the crowd; they do it to push the boundaries of what is possible.

'Escape Tunnel' Found at Nazi Death Camp

Traces of an escape tunnel are uncovered at the site of an infamous Nazi death camp in Poland.

You May Have Already Eaten the First Known Fluorescent Vertebrate

Your hovercraft may not be full of them, but there's a good chance that you've already eaten one:

The Japanese eel, Anguilla japonica, a freshwater species, is known as unagi in Japan, where it's an extremely common ingredient in the cuisine. It's grilled, served in sushi, and given many more preparations. The chemists, who primarily study food, were investigating how light interacts with the oily flesh of the eel, and noticed something odd: when hit with a blue light, the eel positively glows.
In a paper in the current issue of Nature the researchers describe how they isolated and identified the specific protein responsible for the fluorescence. After examining it, they noticed that it's very different from the proteins that cause fluorescence in other lifeforms. It shines brightly even with low oxygen levels, for one thing, and it also requires a substance called bilirubin, which is found in bile.

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Random Photo

Prehistoric-Looking Horses Roaming China's Plains Again

Prehistoric-Looking Horses Roaming China's Plains Again

The horses bear a striking resemblance to those depicted in European cave paintings with short necks, spiky manes and a yellow hue.

Fab Abs?

Fab Abs? Ancient Fossil Fish Had Em!

An ancient fish fossil shows surprising signs of having abdominal muscles, previously thought to have only developed in land animals.

Jersey Devil ...

or … something else?

Is this the elusive Jersey Devil as some Redditors have speculated? Perhaps it's the dreaded Chupacabras? Or a bastard cousin of the Montauk Monster? The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation claims it's just a furless squirrel. But then, that's what they'd want us to think.

"Mystery Solved" 

Meet Nastygirl ...

... Germany's most beautiful cow

A doe-eyed look would not have won over judges at a contest in Germany this week: it was for cows only. The bovine beauties, 250 of them, even had their own hairdressers at the annual German Holstein Show in Oldenburg: "That way one can display the veins better," said stylist Astrid Ostkämper. There's more from Spiegel.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

General Lee and Traveler

Carolina Naturally is read in 192 countries around the world daily.

The Beauty of Nature ...

Today is Natural Photography Day 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Today in History

1184   King Magnus of Norway is defeated by his rival, Sverre.  
1215   King John signs the Magna Carta.  
1381   The English peasant revolt is crushed in London.  
1389   Ottoman Turks crush Serbia in the Battle of Kosovo.  
1607   Colonists in North America complete James Fort in Jamestown.  
1752   Benjamin Franklin and his son test the relationship between electricity and lightning by flying a kite in a thunder storm.  
1775   George Washington is named Commander in Chief by Congress.  
1779   American General Anthony Wayne captures Stony Point, New York.  
1836   Arkansas is admitted into the Union as the 25th state.  
1846   Great Britain and the United States agree on a joint occupation of Oregon Territory.  
1849   James K. Polk, the 11th president of the United States, dies.  
1862   General J.E.B. Stuart completes his "ride around McClellan."  
1864   The Battle for Petersburg begins.  
1866   Prussia attacks Austria.  
1877   Henry O. Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  
1898   The U.S. House of representatives approves the annexation of Hawaii.  
1916   President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America.  
1917   Great Britain pledges the release of all Irish captured during the Easter Rebellion of 1916.  
1920   Three African Americans are lynched in Duluth, Minnesota, by a white mob of 5,000.  
1928   Republicans, convening in Kansas City, name Herbert Hoover their candidate for President.  
1932   Gaston Means is sentenced to 15 years for fraud in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.  
1940   The French fortress of Verdun is captured by Germans.  
1944   U.S. Marines begin the invasion of Saipan in Pacific.  
1947   The All-Indian Congress accepts a British plan for the partition of India.  
1958   Greece severs military ties to Turkey because of the Cyprus issue.  
1964   The last French troops leave Algeria.  
1977   The first general election in Spain since 1936 results in victory for the UCD (Union of Democratic Centre).

Non Sequitur

Promising test for spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis

Promising test for spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis

A medical test previously developed to measure a toxin found in tobacco smokers has been adapted to measure the same toxin in people suffering from spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, offering a potential tool [...]