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Scientists discover giant trench under Antarctic Ice

Scientists discover giant trench under Antarctic Ice

A massive ancient subglacial trough – deeper than the Grand Canyon – has been discovered […]

Fadiouth

A Unique Island Made Almost Entirely Of Clam Shells

Joal-Fadiouth is a small fishing village located at the far end of Petite Côte - a stretch of coast in Senegal. Joal is situated on the mainland and Fadiouth is an island just off the coast. A narrow, 400-meter wooden bridge links the two areas. Fadiouth is special - it is almost entirely covered with clam shells.

For centuries, the inhabitants of Fadiouth have been harvesting molluscs. They scoop out the meat and use the shells to construct almost everything, even the island itself. The millions of seashells accumulated over the years have been held strong by the roots of mangroves, reeds and giant baobabs.

Astronomical News

Sand Dunes Could Reveal Weather on Alien Worlds

Tracking weather conditions on other planets is no easy task, but if we start playing close attention to dune formation, we could develop a means to at least know which way the wind is blowing.

60 Billion Planets Could Harbor Life

For years, we've believed that around 2 billion planets in the galaxy are able to support alien life. But what if we were wrong? Anthony discusses how new knowledge of the 'Goldilocks Zone' could mean life on up to 60 billion planets.

Daily Comic Relief

Porcupines in box sparked bomb scare

A cardboard box abandoned near the house of a politician in Depok, West Java, Indonesia, sparked a bomb scare on Wednesday but police who rushed to the scene found the suspicious package contained only two porcupines.

An eyewitness, Samsuri, who said he was the first to notice the package lying in front of his house at 6:10am on Wednesday, alerted neighborhood security guards, who then summoned the police. The police dispatched the bomb squad from the nearby Kelapa Dua Mobile Brigade (Brimob) headquarters to the scene.

A notice attached to the box read, “Sorry to trouble you but could you please take the best care of what is inside this box because the owner already has too many of them. Thank you.” The writer gave his name as Alex Tutuarima. An X-ray examination showed the package contained no explosives.

Wary onlookers, with the recent killing of six terror suspects in nearby Tangerang still fresh in their minds, sighed in relief when a police officer announced the contents of the package. “When we opened it, we found two white porcupines,” said Sec. Insp. Paulus Silabok who led the bomb squad team. He said the police would seek the person who placed the box on the road.

Evolving Sound

Evolution Is Happening Right Before Your Eyes

Laci is joined by Catie Wayne from Animalist News to report on how evolution is happening in some species RIGHT NOW!

Humans Use Sound Cues to Read Dog's Emotions

Most dog owners can sense the difference between Fido's yip of joy and howl of discontent.

The Mangalitsa is a Sheep-Pig

The Mangalitsa is a rare breed of pig from Hungary. It’s the result of a Nineteenth Century experiment in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to breed a pig with very high fat content in order to produce large amounts of lard.
The breed faded in popularity and almost died out. The pigs take a full year to grow to 350 pounds—twice the time of more popular breeds. But in the 1990s, interest in the breed revived. There are now about 60,000 Mangalitsa pigs around the world, including some in the U.S.

The deep red meat consists of 50% fat, giving it a buttery flavor that is treasured by gourmands around the world. The lard is also prized by elite chefs who prefer to cook with it.

India scrambles to save tigers from deadly virus

 

India is scrambling to protect its beleaguered tiger population after several big cats tested positive for a virus common among dogs but deadly to other carnivores, experts said. In the last year, canine distemper virus has killed at least four tigers and several other animals across northern and eastern India, according to Rajesh Gopal of the government's National Tiger Conservation Authority.
The revelation is bad news for wild tigers — already endangered by rampant poaching and shrinking habitat as India undergoes breakneck development to accommodate the staggering growth of its 1.2 billion people. That same economic development and population growth means more people — and more dogs — are coming even closer to wildlife.
India will now test every tiger carcass it finds for the virus, Gopal said, while authorities also consider a massive campaign to vaccinate dogs against canine distemper.
"We cannot vaccinate every dog, of course. But even 50 percent of dogs in the zones around sanctuaries would help," Gopal said. He did not give details of the plans being considered. There is no vaccine for big cats.
The cases being found across such a huge swath of India, however, suggests the disease could already be running in the wild, experts said, though they agree much more research is needed.
"These are very disturbing finds," said Dr. A.K. Sharma, head scientist at the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, which performed the canine distemper lab tests. "The cases were quite distant from each other, and the latest was an area where there are no dogs. So it appears the virus is spreading."
Since two cubs tested positive in a zoo in the Bihar state capital of Patna a year ago, Sharma and his colleagues have found at least four more cases — a red panda in the northeast state of Manipur, a wild tiger in West Bengal, a zoo lion in Darjeeling and last month a wild tiger in the Dudhwa Tiger reserve in Uttar Pradesh.
"In the last case, forest guards said they saw the animal in a confused state before it died," he said.
Experts said there are likely more undetected cases, since testing for canine distemper has not been routine and few animals that die in the wild are ever found.
Canine distemper virus, a close relative of measles, is associated mostly with domestic dogs though it has infected — and ravaged — other carnivore populations.
It brought the U.S. black-footed ferret to the brink of extinction in the late 1970s. In Tanzania in 1994, an epidemic likely introduced by tourists' dogs wiped out at least a third of the 3,000-strong African lion population in Serengeti National Park.
The possibility of a disease like canine distemper hitting the world's last population of wild Asiatic lions was a major consideration in last year's Indian Supreme Court's decision ordering Gujarat state to safeguard the species by transferring some lions to a second, faraway sanctuary.
While dogs can often recover from the disease, other animals including tigers, lions and leopards suffer fever, seizures and delirium before they die. There is no known cure.
Some experts said it was pointless to try to limit the disease, given how closely millions of Indians live alongside wildlife. Instead, the country should focus on other, proven threats like poaching, prey loss to hunting and human encroachment into forests.
"Thinking we can control this is totally unrealistic. We have to live with it now, and assess whether it's really serious yet," said Ullas Karanth, the Bangalore-based Asian science director of Wildlife Conservation Society. "What South Africa has done, quarantining huge areas and creating disease-free spaces in the wild, is not feasible here."
India is home to more than half of the world's estimated 3,200 tigers. An ongoing tiger census should give an updated count in a year. Despite dozens of tiger reserves in place, their numbers have sunk from an estimated 5,000-7,000 in the 1990s, when their habitat was more than twice as large.
Illegal poaching remains a stubborn and serious danger, with tiger parts fetching high black market prices due to demand driven by traditional Chinese medicine practitioners. Deforestation and urban growth, meanwhile, bring the cats ever-closer to human settlements — and into conflict with villagers who will hunt any wild animals near their communities or livestock.
That tigers may now face another threat from disease is alarming, said Thopsie Gopal, an Indian expert in animal emerging infectious diseases who was not involved in the test cases.
"This is a serious situation," said Thopsie Gopal, who has no relation to Rajesh Gopal. "Maybe tigers are eating infected dogs, or maybe it is spreading in the wild."
He suggested India could resume its policy of vaccinating cattle against rinderpest, another virus similar to canine distemper. Increasing antibodies against rinderpest in the environment could help boost defenses against canine distemper, he said. "It might be too late, but might be worth trying," he said.
Indian experts also want to search living tigers for natural antibodies that could be used in creating a vaccine. But there are obvious challenges in capturing the reclusive and dangerous nighttime predators for blood tests.
"It would take a lot of funding and a lot of manpower," Sharma said. "We'll see if the government agrees."

Why do some bugs squish and some bugs crunch?

The answer is cuticle — a protein that makes up the exoskeletons of many insects.

Sponges sneeze

In Evolutionary origins of sensation in metazoans: functional evidence for a new sensory organ in sponges, Danielle A Ludeman and her team at the University of Alberta document the heretofore unsuspected phenomenon of sneezing in freshwater sponges. When these sponges are stimulated with damaging sediment, they close their chimneys and inflate themselves to bursting, then abruptly "sneeze" out the irritants -- a process that unfolds very slowly (documented above in timelapse). I found out about this thanks to a fascinating interview (MP3) with the researcher on CBC Radio's As It Happens.

For their study, Ludeman and Leys used a variety of drugs to elicit sneezes in freshwater sponges and observed the process using fluorescent dye—all recorded using time-lapse video. Their efforts focused on the sponge’s osculum, which controls water exiting the organism, including water expelled during a sneeze.
Through a series of lab experiments, the pair discovered that ciliated cells lining the osculum play a role in triggering sneezes. In other animals, cilia function like antennae, helping cells respond to stimuli in a co-ordinated manner. In the sponge, their localized presence in the osculum and their sensory function suggest the osculum is in fact a sensory organ.
“For a sponge to have a sensory organ is totally new. This does not appear in a textbook; this doesn’t appear in someone’s concept of what sponges are permitted to have,” said Leys.

Sneezing sponges suggest existence of sensory organ

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

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Today in History

1624		Riots flare in Mexico when it is announced that all churches are to be closed.
1811		In a secret session, Congress plans to annex Spanish East Florida.
1865		Union troops capture Fort Fisher, North Carolina.
1913		The first telephone line between Berlin and New York is inaugurated.
1919		Peasants in Central Russia rise against the Bolsheviks.
1920		The Dry Law goes into effect in the United States. Selling liquor and beer becomes illegal.
1920		The United States approves a $150 million loan to Poland, Austria and Armenia to aid in their war with the Russian communists.
1927		The Dumbarton Bridge opens in San Francisco carrying the first auto traffic across the bay.
1929		The U.S. Senate ratifies the Kellogg-Briand anti-war pact.
1930		Amelia Earhart sets an aviation record for women at 171 mph in a Lockheed Vega.
1936		In London, Japan quits all naval disarmament talks after being denied equality.
1944		The U.S. Fifth Army successfully breaks the German Winter Line in Italy with the capture of Mount Trocchio.
1949		Chinese Communists occupy Tientsin after a 27-hour battle with Nationalist forces.
1965		Sir Winston Churchill suffers a severe stroke.
1967		Some 462 Yale faculty members call for an end to the bombing in North Vietnam.
1973		US President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action by US troops in Vietnam.
1973		Four of six remaining Watergate defendants plead guilty.
1975		The Alvor Agreement is signed, ending the Angolan War of independence and granting that country independence from Portugal.
1976		Sara Jane Moore sentenced to life in prison for her failed attempt to assassinate US President Gerald Ford.
1991		UN deadline for Iraq to withdraw its forces from occupied Kuwait passes, setting the stage for Operation Desert Storm.
1991		Britain's Queen Elizabeth II approves Australia instituting its own Victoria Cross honors system, the first county in the British Commonwealth permitted to do so.
1992		Slovenia and Croatia's independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is recognized by the international community.
2001		Wikipedia goes online.

Non Sequitur

This is what a true Martyr is

Tributes have been pouring in for a Pakistani teenager who was killed on Monday when he tackled a suicide bomber targeting his school in the Hangu area.

Aitzaz Hasan, 15, was with friends outside school when they spotted a man wearing a suicide vest.
Despite the pleas of his fellow students, he decided to confront and capture the bomber who then detonated his vest, his cousin told the BBC.
Aitzaz is being hailed as a hero in an outpouring of praise on social media.

More

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Why America needs stricter gun control

That it's time to stop blaming mental health for mass shootings

These stupid questions from christian education

That a man kills father's goat as sacrifice to god

Obama Calls Senate Democrats to the White House to Plan Their Next repugican Takedown

 

President Obama will be sitting down with Senate Democrats for a discussion about priorities, and odds are keeping the heat on repugicans in 2014.
Kasie Hunt, a political reporter for NBC News, tweeted that the White House has invited the Senate Democratic Caucus to meet with POTUS on Wednesday evening.
This comes as the Senate faces a vote on the Democrats plan to extend long term unemployment benefits, paid for by sequester cuts. Senate repugicans are opposing what they originally said they wanted, and a showdown is brewing. The AP also reported this story and speculated that the focus will be on, “The meeting comes as the White House is pressing members of the president’s party to hold off on a bill that would ratchet up sanctions on Iran…The president may also give lawmakers insight on his decisions for making changes involving the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.”
It is crack reporting like this that makes one wonder if the AP follows politics. Those issues will probably be discussed, but the focus of the meeting is likely to be on extending unemployment benefits, raising the minimum wage, and 2014 election strategy.
The 2014 priorities/strategy is likely to center around populist economic issues like job creation, extending unemployment benefits, and raising the minimum wage. The minimum wage bill is due to arrive on the Senate floor in late January/early February.
The president is also likely to discuss with Senate Democrats the priorities that he will outline in his State Of The Union address later this month. The White House will be looking to coordinate with the Democratic majority in the Senate to turn those priorities into legislative action.
Democrats have four powerful issues to use against repugicans in 2014. The Democratic focus should be on jobs, income inequality, raising the minium wage, and extending unemployment benefits for those who can’t find a job.
The White House may call this a meeting about priorities, but it is actually a 2014 strategy session. If the media can’t see this gathering for what it is, they are lazier and more clueless than could be imagined.

Explaining Socialism To A repugican

Nurse Pam

I was talking recently with a new friend who I’m just getting to know. She tends to be somewhat conservative, while I lean more toward the progressive side.
When our conversation drifted to politics, somehow the dreaded word “socialism” came up. My friend seemed totally shocked when I said “All socialism isn’t bad”.  She became very serious and replied “So you want to take money away from the rich and give to the poor?”  I smiled and said “No, not at all.  Why do you think socialism means taking money from the rich and giving to the poor?
“Well it is, isn’t it?” was her reply.
I explained to her that I rather liked something called Democratic Socialism, just as Senator Bernie Sanders, talk show host Thom Hartman, and many other people do. Democratic Socialism consists of a democratic form of government with a mix of socialism and capitalism. I proceeded to explain to her the actual meaning terms “democracy” and “socialism”.
Democracy is a form of government in which all citizens take part. It is government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Socialism is where we all put our resources together and work for the common good of us all and not just for our own benefit. In this sense, we are sharing the wealth within society.
Of course when people hear that term, “Share the wealth” they start screaming, “OMG you want to rob from the rich and give it all to the poor!”  But that is NOT what Democratic Socialism means.
To a Democratic Socialist, sharing the wealth means pooling tax money together to design social programs that benefit ALL citizens of that country, city, state, etc.
The fire and police departments are both excellent examples of Democratic Socialism in America.  Rather than leaving each individual responsible for protecting their own home from fire, everyone pools their money together, through taxes, to maintain a fire and police department. It’s operated under a non-profit status, and yes, your tax dollars pay for putting out other people’s fires. It would almost seem absurd to think of some corporation profiting from putting out fires.  But it’s more efficient and far less expensive to have government run fire departments funded by tax dollars.
Similarly, public education is another social program in the USA. It benefits all of us to have a taxpayer supported, publicly run education system. Unfortunately, in America, the public education system ends with high school.  Most of Europe now provides low cost or free college education for their citizens. This is because their citizens understand that an educated society is a safer, more productive and more prosperous society. Living in such a society, everyone benefits from public education.
When an American graduates from college, they usually hold burdensome debt in the form of student loans that may take 10 to even 30 years to pay off. Instead of being able to start a business or invest in their career, the college graduate has to send off monthly payments for years on end.
On the other hand, a new college graduate from a European country begins without the burdensome debt that an American is forced to take on. The young man or woman is freer to start up businesses, take an economic risk on a new venture, or invest more money in the economy, instead of spending their money paying off student loans to for-profit financial institutions.  Of course this does not benefit wealthy corporations, but it does greatly benefit everyone in that society.
EXAMPLE  American style capitalistic program for college: If you pay (average) $20,000 annually for four years of college, that will total $80,000 + interest for student loans. The interest you would owe could easily total or exceed the $80,000 you originally borrowed, which means your degree could cost in excess of $100,000.
EXAMPLE  European style social program for college: Your college classes are paid for through government taxes.  When you graduate from that college and begin your career, you also start paying an extra tax for fellow citizens to attend college.
Question - You might be thinking how is that fair? If you’re no longer attending college, why would you want to help everyone else pay for their college degree?
Answer - Every working citizen pays a tax that is equivalent to say, $20 monthly.  If you work for 40 years and then retire, you will have paid $9,600 into the Social college program.  So you could say that your degree ends up costing only $9,600. When everyone pools their money together and the program is non-profit, the price goes down tremendously. This allows you to keep more of your hard earned cash!
Health care is another example: If your employer does not provide health insurance, you must purchase a policy independently.  The cost will be thousands of dollars annually, in addition to deductible and co-pays.
In Holland, an individual will pay around $35 monthly, period.  Everyone pays into the system and this helps reduce the price for everyone, so they get to keep more of their hard earned cash.
In the United States we are told and frequently reminded that anything run by the government is bad and that everything should be operated by for-profit companies. Of course, with for-profit entities the cost to the consumer is much higher because they have corporate executives who expect compensation packages of tens of millions of dollars and shareholders who expect to be paid dividends, and so on.
This (and more) pushes up the price of everything, with much more money going to the already rich and powerful, which in turn, leaves the middle class with less spending money and creates greater class separation.
This economic framework makes it much more difficult for average Joes to ”lift themselves up by their bootstraps” and raise themselves to a higher economic standing.
So next time you hear the word “socialism” and “spreading the wealth” in the same breath, understand that this is a serious misconception.
Social programs require tax money and your taxes may be higher. But as you can see everyone benefits because other costs go down and, in the long run, you get to keep more of your hard earned cash!
Democratic Socialism does NOT mean taking from the rich and giving to the poor.  It works to benefit everyone so the rich can no longer take advantage of the poor and middle class.

Behind The Smoke and Mirrors, the repugicans Have No Plan To Extend Unemployment Benefits

The repugicans claim they will offer a wingnut policy to fight the war on poverty. They don't have one right now, except to say NO to anything …

 

The Senate is set to vote on the Democrats’ unemployment benefit extension, which means that repugicans will be finding new ways to avoid voting yes on something that used to be bipartisan (repugicans voted five times to extend unemployment under the shrub), while trying to stick within their talking points of not alienating the vulnerable out loud.
The repugicans claim they are going to offer a conservative policy to fight the war on poverty. They don’t have one right now, except to say NO to anything that the Democrats offer, including paid for extensions of unemployment benefits.
This is becoming rather predictable from repugicans. After all, for years they’ve been claiming they were going to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare, but then it turned out that they had no replace plan. They ran on “replace” but they had no replace.
This should have been big news, but apparently the media doesn’t find policy very interesting. It’s all a he said/she said scenario, and the loudest whinger wins. So don’t expect them to tell you what’s behind door number 2, the repugican cabal’s War on Poverty. The repugicans will think about actual policy tomorrow. All they know is they are against any actual solutions presented to them, and they must keep moving the goal post without admitting that they just can’t offer any help to the unemployed because it might help Obama.
Yes, like Scarlet O’Hara, repugicans will think about policy tomorrow. Only tomorrow never comes.
“Tomorrow” they will think about a policy to help the poor that their far right party will allow. This policy can’t include any kind of social safety net like food stamps or welfare or unemployment or affordable health insurance because all of these things are the work of the Socialist Devil himself, according to the repugican cabal base. And this is an election year. They mustn’t do anything to rouse the rabid beast.
The repugican cabal War on Poverty is also just like the repugican job plan. Their alleged jobs plan is Keystone XL, which is just another plan to provide welfare to oil companies, passed off as a jobs bill. Keystone might help a few people temporarily — it will not create more than 2,500 temporary jobs for two-years — but this doesn’t make it a failure since it was designed to help the oil companies, not the poor/jobless/vulnerable. Additional repugican “jobs plans” include overhauling the No Child Left Behind education law and repealing the Affordable Care Act, both of which will help corporations. It will trickle down, repugicans say.
Someday it will trickle down. Sure, millions have died waiting, but one fine day, it will finally trickle down. Have faith.
As we await the vote on unemployment today, the question the alert are asking is: If repugicans vote no on unemployment benefits, what is their plan?
The repugicans said they couldn’t support unemployment benefits because they weren’t paid for, and then Reid came up with a way to pay for them and now repugicans are busy moving the shell around, ducking and dodging from the fact that they have no plan. According to Sen. John McCain (r-AZ), The repugicans are opposing the Democratic proposal because the extension is too long, “We’re very much opposed to that length of extension. There’s room for compromise but a year is just too long.”
Once again, the party of no has no plan.
The repugican cabal can’t legislate. They are too dysfunctional to legislate, assuming that legislating was their goal. But even though they are being paid to legislate, passing actual working legislation is not the goal of repugicans.
The repugicans have admitted their goal, and it hasn’t changed. The goal is to obstruct everything Obama does and to hold the economy hostage until they get back into power, so they can hand unregulated goodies back to the top 2%.
So there is no repugican plan for the War on Poverty, except to keep finding less insulting ways to blame the poor, while offering lame excuses for their failure to act until they can get the reins back into the hands of the very people who caused this economic collapse.

Chris Christie Caught With His Hand In the Sandy Relief Fund Cookie Jar

 

Things just keeping getting worse and worse for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. As he is dealing with the firestorm over Bridgegate, and seeing his Presidential ambitions of 2016 slip away, another scandal is brewing to start this week off. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is investigating Christie’s use of Sandy relief funds to see if there was any improper use.
Out of the money that was sent to New Jersey in the wake of the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, $25 million was earmarked for marketing. That means that the state was able to utilize this money to help promote the state’s tourism and hopefully bring much needed revenue to seaside resort towns that suffered severe damage. The marketing campaign brought up some questions, leading Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) to send a letter to HUD requesting an investigation.
Pallone is concerned that Christie was utilizing the marketing campaign as a de facto reelection advertising blitz. The winning bidder on a series of commercials focused its ads on Christie and his family. This advertising company charged $4.7 million for its ads. Meanwhile, another company sent in a much lower bid ($2.5 million) but did not feature the governor in its ads. The ads ran over the spring and summer, providing Christie with an unfair advantage during his reelection campaign as he was given a large-scale marketing campaign at the expense of the taxpayers.
This goes beyond the display of egotism and the political shell game that Christie played. With people still struggling more than a year after the storm hit, every single dollar matters. Christie wasted over $2 million so he could get free advertising to boost his image during an election season. While Christie was making a big deal about House repugicans dragging their feet on Sandy relief aid, he was planning on using the funds to do whatever it took to improve the Christie brand.
HUD’s investigation will take several months, but they saw enough smoke to feel that there might be a fire somewhere. If it is revealed that Christie improperly used Sandy relief funds, it will potentially damage the governor more than Bridgegate. One of the reasons Christie’s popularity was so high in the state in 2013, leading to an easy reelection, was his response to Sandy. New Jersey residents had a sense that Christie cared about them deeply and wanted to go beyond politics to get relief for and rebuild the Jersey Shore.
This shows that Christie only saw opportunity in a devastating event and crassly used money sent to help the people of New Jersey to further his own political ambitions. Combine this with Bridgegate, and Christie is complete toast when it comes to 2016. These past weeks have shown us the true face of Chris Christie. He is nothing more than a vengeful, petty political animal who has no problem misusing public funds for his own personal ambitions while gladly seeking retribution against anyone who gets in his way.

Wingnut Group Claims Lying Is Free Speech, Supreme Court To Decide

Randa Morris

Two wingnut groups are challenging a law in the state of Ohio, that is meant to keep people from giving false statements in political ads.

Two wingnut groups are challenging a law in the state of Ohio, that is meant to keep people from lying in political ads. The two groups, the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) and the tea party group, Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), claim that Ohio’s False Statement Law violates their First Amendment right to free speech. After the case was tossed out in the Ohio Courts, the groups filed suit in Federal Court. On January 11, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case, a decision which could bring an end to the Ohio False Statement Law.

Ohio’s False Statement Law protects the state’s voters.

Ohio’s False Statement Law protects the state’s voters from the kinds of dishonest tactics that the right wing uses all the time. The law currently makes it illegal to “post, publish, circulate, distribute, or otherwise disseminate a false statement concerning a candidate, either knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard for whether it was false or not, if the statement is designed to promote the election, nomination, or defeat of the candidate.”

SBA List didn’t like it when their billboards got shut down.

During the 2010 elections, SBA List wanted to advertise a false statement about Democratic candidate Steven Driehaus. The statement, which the group wanted to place on billboards, claimed that Driehaus voted in favor of tax payer funded abortions, when he voted for the Affordable Care Act. This was an obvious lie, since the ACA does not use taxpayer money and federal law clearly prohibits the use of public funds for abortion.
Driehaus filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Committee (OEC). The OEC has limited powers. Under Ohio law they are allowed to investigate complaints and rule on False Statements. They may also refer cases for prosecution, if warranted. In this case, not only was there was no referral for prosecution, but the OEC never ruled on the statement, except to say that the complaint warranted further investigation.
SBA List did not run their false political ads in Ohio because the company that was going to rent billboard space to the group, backed out. This had nothing to do with the OEC or the False Statement Law, but happened because Driehaus contacted the company, personally.

COAST is afraid to lie, because the OEC might catch them.

The second group that joined the federal suit, COAST, has never had any dealings with the OEC. The group jumped on board the SBA List suit, claiming that the fear of having to prove their statements true before a government agency, kept them making similar untrue statements. So, this group is basically saying that they were afraid to lie, because another group got caught lying, and so that’s just not fair to them.

The Supreme Court could find Ohio’s False Statement Law unconstitutional.

Maybe not surprising, even though lower courts dismissed the case as baseless, the Supreme Court agreed to hear it. Given the courts track record on decisions of this nature, Ohio’s False statement Law will probably be found unconstitutional.
Reading through the documents filed with the Supreme Court, it’s hard to find any real justification for the federal lawsuit. It seems the case is being used by these right wing groups as an excuse to attack the OEC, which basically does little more than report to the voters on the truth about political statements. Of course, if they were forced to tell the truth, republicans would never win another election. Since lying is all they have left, it makes sense that they want to get rid of this law. The question is, will the Supreme Court help them do it?

The repugican Deregulation Culture to Blame For Water Poisoning West Virginia Chemical Spill

Freedom Industries knew the 70 to 80 year-old tanks were in desperate need of replacement and did not want to spend the money to repair them because regulations…

Among the long list of things repugicans hate, rules or directives made and maintained by the government to protect the health and safety of the population rank nearly as high as their hatred for women, taxes, equal rights, democracy and the U.S. Constitution. Americans have heard repugicans talk about regulations a lot more than usual over the past couple of weeks to revive their thirty year contention that gutting regulations is one-half of their strategy to create jobs updated in 2014 to wipe out poverty, create full employment, and end income inequality. The idea that eliminating regulations will create jobs and end poverty is nearly as absurd as Marco Rubio’s assertion that marriage is the be all, end all solution for poverty borne of income inequality, low wages, and lack of jobs.
The Heritage Foundation sums up the repugican cabal’s stance on regulations, regardless their intrinsic protective value, as “government meddling in virtually every aspect of American life.”  It is code for regulations that prohibit big business from having a free hand to inflict harm on the people in the pursuit of unrestricted profits are “government meddling.” Over the past five years the nation has seen the effects of deregulation, or regulation violations, firsthand whether it was the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas, a West Virginia mine explosion, and a chemical spill last Thursday that gave West Virginia residents another up-close-and-personal view of deregulation’s effects.
On Friday, officials said up to 5,000 gallons of an industrial chemical used in coal processing leaked from a ruptured chemical storage tank owned by Freedom Industries into the Elk River just upstream of the intake pipes used by the largest water utility in the state, West Virginia American Water. It turned out that the chemical spill was larger than originally estimated (7,500 gallons) and it has kept over 300,000 West Virginians without safe water for four days as of Sunday. On Saturday the president of West Virginia American Water Company said it would likely still be “several days” before tap water in the nine affected counties would be safe for anything besides flushing toilets. Water company president Jeff McIntyre said, “We don’t know that the water is not safe, but I can’t say it is safe,” but one can assume that since at least 122 people went to local hospitals reporting nausea and vomiting, with 5 being admitted at two hospitals, the water is not safe.
The ruptured chemical holding tank, and “inch wide holes in a retaining wall,” should have failed an inspection if one were conducted, but the Department of Environmental Protection officials said the owners of the tank that ruptured, Freedom Industries, are “exempt from inspections or permitting because the company only stores chemicals, and does not produce them.” The chemicals were produced by Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. According to one county official, the ruptured tank was part of a decades-old Pennzoil refinery “dating back to the 1930s or 1940s,” and Charleston’s mayor believes the chemicals went through the holes in the retaining wall after leaking from the ruptured tank. It is highly probable that since the inch-wide holes in the retaining wall were big enough for anyone to see, Freedom Industries knew the 70 to 80 year-old tanks were in desperate need of replacement and did not want to spend the money to repair them because regulations did not require them to.  The tragedy in West Virginia is precisely the deregulation and getting “government out of the way” Republicans are fighting for under the guise of ending poverty and creating jobs, but it underscores why regulations, particularly environmental regulations, need to be strengthened; not eliminated.
West Virginia’s Governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, vowed that he was going to “look into tighter regulation of chemical storage facilities,” but with repugicans in deregulation mode, pushing to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, and fighting to rollback regulations on businesses, looking into tighter regulations is about all Tomblin will be allowed to do. The repugicans are in no mood to strengthen regulations on a company with a name like Freedom Industries that provides chemicals to the dirty coal industry, or any other industry for that matter. It is contrary to their ideology that companies, particularly dirty energy companies, should be required to spend one penny to protect the environment or a water supply serving over 300,000 Americans.
The chemical spill prompted President Obama to declare a federal emergency on Friday, and FEMA had brought in 1.4 million liters of water for residents with an additional 1.6 million liters expected to come in over the course of the weekend. Around the region schools were closed, restaurants locked their doors, hotels refused reservations, and store shelves were quickly stripped of bottled water. Traffic was congested as drivers waited to fill jugs from tankers delivered by the National Guard leaving repugicans with only one question to answer. Which domestic program or demographic they will impose cuts on to pay for the emergency relief efforts or reimburse businesses? There is not the slightest chance that repugicans will hold a company named Freedom Industries serving the dirty energy sector accountable to lift a finger or spend one penny to compensate victims of the spill.
The repugicans have always loathed regulations, particularly those affecting their big-money donors’ ability to conduct business without regard for the health and safety of the people. The repugicans do hate regulations that affect their donors, but they champion regulations that control women and deny gays’ equal protection under the Constitution because they are bible regulations.  Suffice it to say that where the health and safety of the population is concerned, repugicans never met a regulation they did not hate passionately and work tirelessly to eliminate and they are not about to change just because 300,000 West Virginians were left without water. They still call for gutting regulations after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion claimed 29 lives, the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 workers, and the West Fertilizer explosion in Texas killed 15 and injured 160, so they will be unfazed over a preventable tragedy that only sent over 122 people to the hospital because they were giving speeches calling for the end of regulations the same day President Obama declared a federal emergency in West Virginia.

The West Virginia chemical spill is just one example of a much bigger problem

Over the weekend, we wrote here about a chemical spill in West Virginia that's dumped upwards of 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol into the Elk River just a mile upstream from the West Virginia American Water intake system, contaminating local water supplies. Since she posted, there have been some more updates on this story, including some interesting chemical sleuthing from a couple of great writers.
First off, what is 4-methylcyclohexane methanol? It's used in coal washing, a process that it would be reasonable to think of as "a good thing", because washing coal is what removes a lot of the sulfur that would otherwise contribute to acid rain. Basically, while we'd all prefer we didn't burn coal, if we're going to burn it, we want it to be washed. To do that, coal is crushed fine and dumped into a bath of frothy, foamy water. Relatively light coal floats and sticks to the foam. Relatively heavy sulfurous rock sinks. 4-methylcyclohexane methanol is one of the chemicals that can be used to make the froth.
This could explain why there hasn't yet been any news of major fish kills associated with the spill, writes hydrologist Anne Jefferson at the Highly Allochthonous blog. This stuff is chosen for the job it's meant to do because it's light and floats on water. Meanwhile, because it's winter, most of the fish are hanging out deeper in the water.
But that doesn't mean it's safe and everything is cool. In fact, the big problem with 4-methylcyclohexane methanol is that there doesn't seem to be a well-documented safety profile on it, one way or the other. Deborah Blum, a journalist and author who writes extensively about chemicals, poisons, and toxicology, tried to track down the safety data on 4-methylcyclohexane methanol and had a damn hard time doing so.

At this point, another source – yes, I was making a complete pest of myself — sent me a copy of a 2011 Material Safety Data Sheet. “Caution,” it said. “Product can cause skin and eye irritation. Vapors, especially upon heating, can cause irritation to the eyes and respiratory tract.” The safety data sheet was strong on not inhaling the compound – which could cause headaches, breathing difficulty and nausea – and on wearing protective gear in case of an accident.
But here was what caught my attention:
Exposure guidelines: None established for products or components
Decomposition: Unavailable
Ecological information: There is no data available for the product

The real problem here, Blum points out, is much bigger than this one spill. It's the fact that we continue to use many industrial solvents without knowing much (if anything) about what their risks really are and what levels of exposure are safe. Nobody has invested the time or money into learning what should be vital information. (This is where I'd also like to take a moment to suggest that you go read Dan Fagin's book Tom's River. It's about the social, psychological, and health effects of the sort of intentional chemical dumping that happened with abandon throughout much of the 20th century. It will give you a really good idea of why it's important to know more about these chemicals ahead of time. Establishing what the health risks are after the dumping has already occurred turns out to be nigh on impossible, especially if the risks are long-term things like cancer, rather than short-term things like, say, skin rashes.)
Meanwhile, it's becoming clear that the spill also has connections to major lapses in regulatory oversight. As Ana Marie Cox writes in The Guardian, this spill should be a much bigger political deal than Bridgegate.
 

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Stolen Triumph

Russia Revisits Pivotal Role in World War I

by Christian Neef

 

At the beginning of World War I, Russia was a member of the Triple Entente, which went on to win the conflict. By then, however, the Russian czarist empire had vanished and the war was swept under the historical rug. Putin is now bringing it back.  More

• Continent at War: The Front Lines of WWI

Cardboard doctors and nurses boosted sales of fruit

Lifesize cardboard cutouts of doctors and nurses in a supermarket caused a spike in sales of fruit, a study found. Customers bought more fresh, frozen and canned fruit during a five-week trial at a Morrisons’ store in Salford, Manchester, according to researchers.

In the first study of its kind in the UK, the lifesize images of real doctors and nurses who work in the area were positioned in the supermarket together with Let’s Shop Healthier messages inside and outside the shop.
The study by the National Obesity Forum found that over a 15-week period, volume sales of fresh fruit in the store were 20 per cent higher, while frozen fruit sales were up by 29 per cent and canned fruit purchases were up by 5 per cent.

Why was marijuana outlawed to begin with?

"This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others." — Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA).

India is polio-free

It's been three years since India had a case of polio. There are now only three countries where polio is still endemic: Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Ziggy

Human News

Ultrasound Can Give Humans Super Senses

By directing ultrasound to a specific brain area, researchers were able to improve people's ability to discriminate between sensory inputs.

Babies Are Sinister Geniuses

Babies might come off as cute and innocent, but are they actually evil geniuses out to manipulate and control us? Laci and Anthony uncover some new findings about how babies might just know more than we thought they did.

How Fiction Makes Our Brains Better

Merriam-Webster declared 'science' the 2013 word of the year. But can reading something other than data and facts, say a work of fiction, help improve brain function? Anthony explains the possible benefits reading fiction can have.

Lost Remains of Slain Ancient Queen Unearthed

Lost Remains of Slain Ancient Queen Unearthed

Georgian Queen Ketevan was executed for refusing to become a member of a powerful Persian ruler's harem.

Ancient Map Could Warn of Active Volcano

Ancient Map Could Warn of Active Volcano

A volcanic eruption -- and new geological finds -- suggest a volcano depicted in ancient art may still be active.

Daily Comic Relief

Man rescued deer from frozen river

Jared Maitino and his brother-in-law recently visited their favorite fishing spot on the Chagrin River at Woodland Park in Eastlake, Ohio, a place littered with deer. “We noticed it was frozen over. We didn’t think it would be frozen over, because we had a few warm days, and we looked down and we’re like ‘we can’t fish’,” Maitino said.

“As we were getting ready to leave, I noticed that there was a deer that broke through the ice, and it was struggling to get out of the water,” Maitino said. Jared quickly sprang into action. He raced back to his truck, grabbed some ratchet straps and headed back toward the river. Jared was wearing a Go Pro Camera, something he wears all the time when fishing.

“I have a chest pack so whenever I hook a fish, I turn it on,” he said. “I thought if I’m going to go down there and save this thing, I might as well get it on film.” The video from Jared’s camera shows him making a lasso with the ratchet straps. “When I initially tossed it, it didn’t make it around both ears like I thought it would so I just kind of pulled it a little bit tighter. It cinched up and as it cinched up, I noticed that I could actually get a good pull on the deer and I just started pulling,” he said.

YouTube link.

He pulled the deer out of the water and onto the shore. “I was just hoping that it wasn’t going to come right at us, that’s the only thing I wasn’t hoping for,” Maitino said. The deer ran off into the woods, and Jared is being called a hero by his friends. “I don’t consider myself a hero,” he said. “Everybody keeps saying you’re a hero, but if I would have saved a human then I thought maybe I’d be more of a hero, but it was still cool though.”

Pug puppy snatched in violent raid at terminally ill man's home

A three-week-old pug has been snatched in a violent burglary at a Nottingham home after it was advertised for sale. Alfie's owner Terry Hayes, who is terminally ill with emphysema, was knocked to the ground during the raid in Beechdale. Police believe the raid on Wednesday was a "one off" but urged people selling pedigree dogs to be cautious.

Mr Hayes' wife Gina said the puppy, which was still being weaned, could die soon if it is not found. The family had placed an online advertisement for a litter of puppies and Mrs Hayes received a text from a woman who wanted to view them. She answered her door in Fremount Drive to a woman and a man on Wednesday evening.

The man, wearing a balaclava, then "burst in" and tried to put Alfie's mother Pebbles in a black holdall. Mr Hayes, 57 tried to hit the burglar with his walking stick, Mrs Hayes said, but he was pushed to the floor and was later taken to hospital. While Mrs Hayes tried to help her husband, the burglar put Alfie in the bag and fled.

Son Tony said the family were "absolutely devastated". Mrs Hayes said: "Puppies depend on their mum until they're five or six weeks old. If these people don't know what they are doing, the puppy will die soon." Det Sgt Mike Ebbins, of Nottinghamshire Police, said that pedigree breeds, especially pugs, fetch 'quite a sum'.  "At the moment locally this seems to be a one-off," he said.

Dickhead pays shitloads to murder endangered African black rhino

A permit to hunt an endangered African black rhino sold Saturday night for $350,000 at a Dallas auction held to raise money for conservation efforts but criticized by wildlife advocates.
Steve Wagner, a dickhead for the Dallas Safari Club, which sponsored the closed-door event, confirmed the sale of the permit for a hunt in the African nation of Namibia. He declined to name the buyer dickhead.
Ben Carter, executive dickhead of the Safari Club, has defended the auction. He said all money raised will go toward protecting the species. He also said the rhino that the winner will be allowed to hunt is old, male and nonbreeding — and that the animal was likely to be targeted for removal anyway because it was becoming aggressive and threatening other wildlife.

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The Real Moby Dick

Do Whales Really Attack Humans?

The revenge of a whale or an accidental tragedy? Do whales really attack humans intentionally? Sperm whales are relatively placid mammals and very few incidents in modern times suggest otherwise. They mainly feed on squid and rarely attack, apparently only when mistaking other mammals for seals or prey.

In his 1839 book about the natural history of sperm whales, Thomas Beale, a surgeon aboard a whaleship, described them as 'a most timid and inoffensive animal readily endeavoring to escape from the slightest thing which bears an unusual appearance.' But Dr Richard Bevan, a zoologist and lecturer at Newcastle University, suggests that a sperm whale may remember if it was previously attacked.

Giant squid caught by net fisherman off Japan

Giant squid caught by net fisherman off Japan Rare capture of fabled sea creature, at a depth of about 300 feet, measures 12 feet and weighs 330 pounds; and this one is no hoax

by Pete Thomas

Images showing the giant squid being studied and captured are video screen grabs

A story published Thursday about a monstrous radioactive squid discovered on a Southern California beach was an obvious hoax.
But this past week off Japan, an actual giant squid was captured in a fisherman’s net and died after it was hauled to the surface.
The squid in the hoax story was said to be 160 feet long and its immense size was blamed on radiation being leaked into the Pacific in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“Alarms sound over radioactive gigantism,” screamed a headline above a story that featured a photoshopped image and quoted experts who do not exist.

giant squid image is a video screen grab

Though some believed the story, fabricated by the Lightly Braised Turnip website, it was easily debunked.
But the capture of an actual giant squid Wednesday off Sadogashima Island is more believable, even though squid captures are exceedingly rare.
According to the Japan Times, the male specimen measured about 12 feet and weighed about 330 pounds. The accompanying Japanese-language video shows the creature on display and being measured by scientists (footage of the squid being pulled to the boat begins at the 1-minute mark).
Giant squid are elusive creatures that occupy the dark ocean depths. They’re believed to have spawned sea monster myths among ancient mariners, and have been featured as predatory beasts in novels and films.
They can measure to about 40 feet and weigh nearly a ton.
According to the Smithsonian Ocean Portal, a giant squid was first recorded live in 2006 by Japanese scientists who used a baited hook to haul up a 24-foot squid.
In 2012, scientists from Japan’s National Science Museum and a Discovery Channel film crew filmed a giant squid in its natural habitat for the first time.
It was enticed to within view of a submersible camera by the use of glowing lowers designed to mimic sea jellies, which are said to signal squid that other food is nearby.
The capture on Wednesday was by a fisherman named Shigenori Goto, who told the Japan Times that it was found in a net used to catch buri yellowtail at a depth of 310 feet.
According to the video description, the collosal cephalopod is being studied at the Fisheries Ocean Research Institute in Niigata Prefecture.
Almost assuredly, some people will associate this rare catch with the Fukushima disaster.

Bird catching fish

Fierce fish catch swallows in flight

African tigerfish have been filmed catching swallows in flight by scientists. BBC Nature

• Ambush predator videos, news and facts

Animal News

Great Whites Could Be Longest-Lived Sharks

Great white sharks can live to be 70 years or more and might be the oldest sharks on earth.

Tourists Chipping Away at Sea Shells

The tongue-twisting woman who sold seashells by the seashore may have damaged the coastal ecosystem.

'Fishimal' Was Part Fish, Part Limbed Animal

An animal that looked like both a fish and an animal represents the transition from fish to land dwellers.

Hybrid Dolphin: Neat Curiosity or Bad Omen?

The first naturally occurring marine mammal hybrid -- a sleek dolphin -- could mean that love prevails in the ocean, or that species are in jeopardy.

Animal Pictures