A 3,300-year-old cylindrical clay coffin complete with the
skeleton of a man buried with a gold scarab seal of Pharaoh Seti I, has
been unearthed in Israel.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Ancient Egyptian Mummy Found With Brain, No Heart
An ancient Egyptian mummy found with an intact brain, but no
heart, has a plaque on her abdomen that may have been intended to
ritually heal her.
Egyptian Coffin Holds Bronze Age Artifacts
Israeli archeologists have unearthed an ancient Egyptian
coffin complete with the skeleton of a man and several burial offerings.
Risque Women 1937
In 1937 two women caused a car accident by wearing shorts in public for the first time
Fashions of the Future as Imagined in 1893
Illustrations from a delightful piece called the “Future Dictates of Fashion” by W. Cade Gall and published in the January 1893 issue of The Strand magazine. On the premise that a book from a hundred years in the future (published in 1993) called The Past Dictates of Fashion has been inexplicably found in a library, the article proceeds to divulge this book’s contents – namely, a look back at the last century of fashion, which, of course, for the reader in 1893, would be looking forward across the next hundred years into the future. In this imagined future, fashion has become a much respected science (studied in University from the 1950s onwards) and is seen to be “governed by immutable laws”.The “fashions” look like a Renaissance costume ball of some sort, celebrating form over function to a ridiculous degree. Of course, the aim was humorous, but we can imagine it’s funnier now than it was when it was published. See “fashions” from the 1900s through 1993 at The Public Domain Review.
***
What is so ironic about these 'fashions' is that they were about as tacky as one could get and the actual fashions of the 1970s were about as tacky as you could get - gads, how did we ever make it out of that decade?!
What the well-dressed woman wore 200 years ago
A Dutch chintz jacket from 1810-1820.
For those who are unclear about what chintz is, this from the Wikipedia entry:
Chintz (from the plural of chint) was originally glazed calico textiles, initially specifically those imported from India, printed with designs featuring flowers and other patterns in different colours, typically on a light plain background. Since the 19th century the term has also been used for the style of floral decoration developed in those calico textiles, but then used more widely, for example on pottery and wallpaper. Chintz designs are mostly European patterns loosely derived from the style of Indian designs themselves reflecting, via Mughal art, decorative traditions in Islamic art such as the arabesque...
These early fabrics were extremely expensive and rare. By 1680 more than a million pieces of chintz were being imported into England per year, and a similar quantity was going to France and the Dutch Republic....
In contemporary language the word "chintz" and "chintzy" can be used to refer to clothing or furnishings which are vulgar or florid in appearance....
Coming Tomorrow
Coming Tomorrow
- 10 surprising facts about animal intelligence
- Ferns are old
- Oarfish in Baja
- Do animals have a sense of humor
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
The Daily Drift
Talk about stressing out ...!
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Today in History
| 69 | Defeated by Vitellius' troops at Bedriacum, Otho commits suicide. | |
| 556 | Pelagius I begins his reign as Catholic Pope. | |
| 1065 | The Norman Robert Guiscard takes Bari, ending five centuries of Byzantine rule in southern Italy. | |
| 1705 | Queen Anne of England knights Isaac Newton. | |
| 1746 | Prince Charles is defeated at the battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle fought in Britain. | |
| 1818 | The U.S. Senate ratifies the Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed U.S.-Canada border. | |
| 1854 | San Salvador is destroyed by an earthquake. | |
| 1862 | Confederate President Jefferson Davis approves a conscription act for white males between 18 and 35. | |
| 1862 | Slavery is abolished in the District of Columbia. | |
| 1917 | Vladimir Lenin returns to Russia to start Bolshevik Revolution. | |
| 1922 | Annie Oakley shoots 100 clay targets in a row, setting a woman's record. | |
| 1942 | The Island of Malta is awarded the George Cross in recognition for heroism under constant German air attack. It was the first such award given to any part of the British Commonwealth. | |
| 1944 | The destroyer USS Laffey survives horrific damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa. | |
| 1945 | American troops enter Nuremberg, Germany. | |
| 1947 | A lens which provides zoom effects is demonstrated in New York City. | |
| 1968 | The Pentagon announces the "Vietnamization" of the war. | |
| 1972 | Two giants pandas arrive in the U.S. from China. | |
| 1977 | The ban on women attending West Point is lifted. |
Rare Burmese ecosystems protected only on paper
![Myanmar's 'paper parks': A warning sign saying 'No blast fishing': In this Feb. 11, 2014 photo, a warning sign saying 'No blast fishing' stands in Ma Kyone Galet village, inhabited by Moken and Myanmarese fishermen, on Bocho Island in Mergui Archipelago, Myanmar.]({"default":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/b3/2b96427956a74caab795992a4ca427/_h366_w650_m6_otrue_lfalse.jpg","fill":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/b3/2b96427956a74caab795992a4ca427/_h338_w600_m6_otrue_lfalse.jpg","snap":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/b3/2b96427956a74caab795992a4ca427/_h210_w320_m6_otrue_lfalse.jpg"})
In
this Feb. 11, 2014 photo, a warning sign saying 'No blast fishing'
stands in Ma Kyone Galet village, inhabited by Moken and Myanmarese
fishermen, on Bocho Island in Mergui Archipelago, Burma.
Off a remote, glimmering beach backed by a lush
tropical forest, Julia Tedesco skims the crystalline waters with mask
and fins, looking for coral and fish life.
"There is almost nothing left down there," the
environmental project manager says, wading toward a sign planted on the
shore reading "Lampi National Park."
Some 50 meters behind it, secreted among the tangled growth, lies the trunk of an illegally felled tree. Nearby, a trap has been set to snare mouse deer. And just across the island, within park boundaries, the beach and sea are strewn with plastic, bottles and other human waste from villagers.
The perilous state of Lampi, Burma's only marine park, is not unique. Though the country's 43 protected areas are among Asia's greatest bastions of biodiversity, encompassing snow-capped Himalayan peaks, dense jungles and mangrove swamps, they are to a large degree protected in name alone. Park land has been logged, poached, dammed and converted to plantations as Burma revs up its economic engines and opens up to foreign investment after decades of isolation.
Of the protected areas, only half have even partial biodiversity surveys and management plans. At least 17 are described as "paper parks" — officially gazetted but basically uncared for — in a comprehensive survey funded by the European Union.
So rangers rarely see a tiger in the 21,891-square-kilometer (8,452-square-mile) Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve. It's the world's largest protected area for the big cats, but has been overrun by poachers supplying animal parts for traditional medicines in nearby China.
And Burma's first nature reserve, the Pidaung Wildlife Sanctuary set up in 1918, has been "totally poached out and should be degazetted," says Tony Lynam, a field biologist for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
Inaugurated in 1996, Lampi fit squarely into the paper park category until possibly last year, when six rangers from the Forestry Department were finally assigned to protect this 79-square mile (204-square-kilometer) marine gem. It had been, and still largely remains, a do-as-you-please place.
Local residents and staffers with Italian Instituto Oikos, the group Tedesco works for, say dynamite fishing persists even within earshot of the ranger station. They say Thai and Burmese trawlers encroach into no-fishing areas, and that natural forest on one park island, Bocho, is being converted to rubber, encouraged by government policy.
Without any management plan in place, four settlements in the park and a fifth within a proposed buffer zone have grown dramatically and now total about 3,000 people, many of them Burmese migrants from the mainland. Blast fishing has become so intense that the Burma navy sent four vessels to the area in January in an attempt to curb it.
Despite the ongoing depredations, the park retains an incredible variety of natural life, according to a report by Oikos and the Burmese non-government group BANCA.
Its evergreen forests harbor 195 plant species, including trees soaring as high as 30 meters (98 feet), and many of the park's 228 bird species. Sea life ranges from dugongs — large mammals similar to manatees — to 73 different kinds of seaweed. Nineteen mammal species, seven of them globally threatened, are at home here, including macaques seen on rocky headlands hunting for some of the 42 crab species. There's even a wild elephant, lone survivor from a herd earlier transported from the mainland.
These wonders have sparked a recent push by tourism developers into the once isolated Mergui archipelago where Lampi is embedded amid some 800 stunning, mostly uninhabited islands. Tedesco says that a Singapore company has already been granted permission to build a hotel within the park "even before a management plan is in place."
She says the onset of possible mass tourism carries risk, but also potential benefits.
Pressure from scuba diving outfits and divers was largely responsible for halting blast fishing in many marine areas of neighboring Thailand, where some parks have curbed illegal activities by providing tourist-related income to the local culprits who once carried them out.
Tedesco says the Moken, the sea nomads who have inhabited the Mergui archipelago for centuries, would make ideal nature guides.
"We need community participation to preserve the parks," says Naing Thaw, director of Myanmar's Forestry Department.
He says the government intends to expand the protected areas from 5.6 percent of the country to 10 percent by 2020, adding eight more reserves. But he says authorities face "material, human resources and financial constraints" in turning demarcated areas into viable havens for wildlife and natural habitat.
Plans are underway for a major infusion of funds from foreign donors to focus on upgrading more than half a dozen parks. Inland wetlands, estuaries and marine areas, which contain Southeast Asia's largest remaining coral reefs and some of the world's most important biodiversity, and underrepresented in Myanmar's parks, and environmentalists are pushing more of them to be protected.
Before the civilian government took over, foreign conservation funding amounted to roughly $1 million a year. It is expected to reach up to $3 million in 2014 and jump to more than $20 million with major players like Norway and the U.N. Development Program coming in.
"The most critical intervention is to expand the marine protected area to protect it not only from tourism but more serious impacts such as bottom trawling and blast fishing before emerging vested interests render the designation of marine protected areas impossible," says Frank Momberg, based in the country for Flora and Fauna International.
Last month, the group said it hoped the formation of a new park in Kachin state would help save a primate species discovered by scientists just four years ago. At most, 330 snub-nosed monkeys survive in the northern frontier area, and they are threatened by illegal logging.
Foreign
experts working with Burmese are impressed by the high level of
dedication and professionalism by some in the government, especially
given the powerful forces they must challenge to guard depredation —
generals, government cronies, Thai and Chinese dam builders.
Lynam, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, works with elephant protection in several parks and says patrols he has accompanied have caught villagers hauling timber out of parks who confessed to working for the local police and forest rangers. Even some Buddhist monks are involved, he says, with logs "donated" by illegal loggers who split the profits with log-laundering monasteries.
He sees the accelerating infusion of foreign funding for the parks, and the general environment, as a two-edged sword.
"As the resources are made available, I think you are going to see some very good parks emerging in five to 10 years. There's lots of hope," he says. "But foreign money can also help empower the powerful guys who abet corruption. I've seen it in other countries.
Lynam says a lot of foreign money intended for conservation will be "going through the system and into somebody's handbag, but even if a fraction of it is used it will be a great help."
A number of international environmental groups have already set up operations and more are eager to come in.
"We know the experiences of other countries that have so-called opened up, like Vietnam, where most of the mangrove swamps were lost in a decade. We can see the dangers of what could also be lost in Burma in the next 10 years or so," says Robert Mather, Southeast Asian head of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
"It's a moment in time with golden opportunities to save something that is still out there."
Some 50 meters behind it, secreted among the tangled growth, lies the trunk of an illegally felled tree. Nearby, a trap has been set to snare mouse deer. And just across the island, within park boundaries, the beach and sea are strewn with plastic, bottles and other human waste from villagers.
The perilous state of Lampi, Burma's only marine park, is not unique. Though the country's 43 protected areas are among Asia's greatest bastions of biodiversity, encompassing snow-capped Himalayan peaks, dense jungles and mangrove swamps, they are to a large degree protected in name alone. Park land has been logged, poached, dammed and converted to plantations as Burma revs up its economic engines and opens up to foreign investment after decades of isolation.
Of the protected areas, only half have even partial biodiversity surveys and management plans. At least 17 are described as "paper parks" — officially gazetted but basically uncared for — in a comprehensive survey funded by the European Union.
So rangers rarely see a tiger in the 21,891-square-kilometer (8,452-square-mile) Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve. It's the world's largest protected area for the big cats, but has been overrun by poachers supplying animal parts for traditional medicines in nearby China.
And Burma's first nature reserve, the Pidaung Wildlife Sanctuary set up in 1918, has been "totally poached out and should be degazetted," says Tony Lynam, a field biologist for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
Inaugurated in 1996, Lampi fit squarely into the paper park category until possibly last year, when six rangers from the Forestry Department were finally assigned to protect this 79-square mile (204-square-kilometer) marine gem. It had been, and still largely remains, a do-as-you-please place.
Local residents and staffers with Italian Instituto Oikos, the group Tedesco works for, say dynamite fishing persists even within earshot of the ranger station. They say Thai and Burmese trawlers encroach into no-fishing areas, and that natural forest on one park island, Bocho, is being converted to rubber, encouraged by government policy.
Without any management plan in place, four settlements in the park and a fifth within a proposed buffer zone have grown dramatically and now total about 3,000 people, many of them Burmese migrants from the mainland. Blast fishing has become so intense that the Burma navy sent four vessels to the area in January in an attempt to curb it.
Despite the ongoing depredations, the park retains an incredible variety of natural life, according to a report by Oikos and the Burmese non-government group BANCA.
Its evergreen forests harbor 195 plant species, including trees soaring as high as 30 meters (98 feet), and many of the park's 228 bird species. Sea life ranges from dugongs — large mammals similar to manatees — to 73 different kinds of seaweed. Nineteen mammal species, seven of them globally threatened, are at home here, including macaques seen on rocky headlands hunting for some of the 42 crab species. There's even a wild elephant, lone survivor from a herd earlier transported from the mainland.
These wonders have sparked a recent push by tourism developers into the once isolated Mergui archipelago where Lampi is embedded amid some 800 stunning, mostly uninhabited islands. Tedesco says that a Singapore company has already been granted permission to build a hotel within the park "even before a management plan is in place."
She says the onset of possible mass tourism carries risk, but also potential benefits.
Pressure from scuba diving outfits and divers was largely responsible for halting blast fishing in many marine areas of neighboring Thailand, where some parks have curbed illegal activities by providing tourist-related income to the local culprits who once carried them out.
Tedesco says the Moken, the sea nomads who have inhabited the Mergui archipelago for centuries, would make ideal nature guides.
"We need community participation to preserve the parks," says Naing Thaw, director of Myanmar's Forestry Department.
He says the government intends to expand the protected areas from 5.6 percent of the country to 10 percent by 2020, adding eight more reserves. But he says authorities face "material, human resources and financial constraints" in turning demarcated areas into viable havens for wildlife and natural habitat.
Plans are underway for a major infusion of funds from foreign donors to focus on upgrading more than half a dozen parks. Inland wetlands, estuaries and marine areas, which contain Southeast Asia's largest remaining coral reefs and some of the world's most important biodiversity, and underrepresented in Myanmar's parks, and environmentalists are pushing more of them to be protected.
Before the civilian government took over, foreign conservation funding amounted to roughly $1 million a year. It is expected to reach up to $3 million in 2014 and jump to more than $20 million with major players like Norway and the U.N. Development Program coming in.
"The most critical intervention is to expand the marine protected area to protect it not only from tourism but more serious impacts such as bottom trawling and blast fishing before emerging vested interests render the designation of marine protected areas impossible," says Frank Momberg, based in the country for Flora and Fauna International.
Last month, the group said it hoped the formation of a new park in Kachin state would help save a primate species discovered by scientists just four years ago. At most, 330 snub-nosed monkeys survive in the northern frontier area, and they are threatened by illegal logging.
![Myanmar's 'paper parks': A Myanmarese illegal logger]({"default":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/5e/c5b0adbf4ff419bd4da4f86535d46/_h0_w305_m6_otrue_lfalse.jpg","fill":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/5e/c5b0adbf4ff419bd4da4f86535d46/_h0_w282_m6_otrue_lfalse.jpg","snap":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/5e/c5b0adbf4ff419bd4da4f86535d46/_h0_w141_m6_otrue_lfalse.jpg"})
In
this Feb. 12, 2014 photo, a Myanmarese illegal logger smokes a
cigarette at one of the illegal logging camps on army-controlled Jar
Lann Island in Mergui Archipelago, Burma.
Lynam, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, works with elephant protection in several parks and says patrols he has accompanied have caught villagers hauling timber out of parks who confessed to working for the local police and forest rangers. Even some Buddhist monks are involved, he says, with logs "donated" by illegal loggers who split the profits with log-laundering monasteries.
He sees the accelerating infusion of foreign funding for the parks, and the general environment, as a two-edged sword.
"As the resources are made available, I think you are going to see some very good parks emerging in five to 10 years. There's lots of hope," he says. "But foreign money can also help empower the powerful guys who abet corruption. I've seen it in other countries.
Lynam says a lot of foreign money intended for conservation will be "going through the system and into somebody's handbag, but even if a fraction of it is used it will be a great help."
A number of international environmental groups have already set up operations and more are eager to come in.
"We know the experiences of other countries that have so-called opened up, like Vietnam, where most of the mangrove swamps were lost in a decade. We can see the dangers of what could also be lost in Burma in the next 10 years or so," says Robert Mather, Southeast Asian head of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
"It's a moment in time with golden opportunities to save something that is still out there."
NY's Forbidden Island
Since 1869, still-born babies, the homeless, the poor and the
unclaimed have been stacked one upon the other, three coffins deep, on
Hart Island.
Meet The 'Goblins' of Goblin Valley State Park In Utah, USA
Nature can be really weird, and sometimes it invites you to bask in its
oddness in strange, compelling ways. One such natural wonder is the
Goblin Valley State Park, a truly unique scenery that won't just meet
you but will also surround you with its goblin-like hoodoos.The 'goblins' are the result of years of soft sandstone erosion. In some parts, close rock formations form a maze-like playground that may excite the explorers at heart.
Guelta d'Archei
Sahara's Famous Water Source
The Guelta Archei is a hidden treasure in the Sahara due to its scenic beauty and function. Located in the Ennedi Plateau, in north-eastern Chad, south-east of the town of Fada, this wetland serves as a popular rest stop for nomads who've been traveling the desert for days.
Dos Ojos
DOS OJOS (TWO EYES)
Yucatan, Mexico
This cavernous cenote with double entry points—hence the moniker "Two Eyes"—is so incredible it was featured in the IMAX flick Journey Into Amazing Cavesand an episode of Discovery Channel's Planet Earth.
It's perfect for snorkellers, and though you have to be experienced to
scuba dive there to begin with, you'll also need to be seriously brave
to surface in the system’s bat cave—which, not surprisingly, earns its
name by being inhabited by bats.see more caves here.
24 Unusual Beaches You've Never Heard Of Before
Here are the most offbeat seaside destinations you'll find on Earth.
Into the Deep
Seeking Life in Ocean Trench
by Becky Oskin
A fish investigating a baited camera on the Atlantic's deep seafloor.
Scientists plan to
explore one of Earth's coldest, deepest ocean trenches starting
Saturday, the first stop in a three-year examination of the ocean's most
mysterious depths.
The Kermadec Trench
dives 32,963 feet (10,047 meters) deep offshore of New Zealand in the
Pacific Ocean. Waters flowing into the trench from Antarctica make the
gorge one of the coldest ocean canyons on Earth, according to a
statement from the National Science Foundation.
The team will explore life in the trenches by collecting DNA and
exploring the deep-sea habitat with remotely operated vehicles such as
the National Science Foundation's Nereus ROV and the University of
Aberdeen's Hadal-Lander, based in Scotland.
Research teams have explored Kermadec before with ROVs and cameras,
finding strange marine creatures such as massive, shrimp-like
crustaceans called amphipods that live 4 miles (6 kilometers) beneath
the sea surface.
The new
expedition, slated to kick off Saturday (April 12), is the first step in
an international collaboration designed to systematically study and
compare life in deep ocean trenches and neighboring seafloor plains.
"We know relatively little about life in ocean trenches, the deepest
marine habitats on Earth," Tim Shank, a biologist at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution, one of the participating organizations, said
in the statement.
Snailfish snapped at nearly 23,000 feet (7,000 meters) depth in the northern Kermadec Trench.
Creatures that survive and
thrive in ocean trenches, under immense pressures and without light,
feed on each other as well as food and nutrients that flow into the
trenches on currents.
"The
challenge is to determine whether life in the trenches holds novel
evolutionary pathways that are distinct from others in the oceans,"
Shank said.
Scattered mostly around the Pacific Ocean margin, deep ocean trenches mark subduction zones,
where one of Earth's tectonic plates dives underneath another tectonic
plate. The sinking plate pushes downward from the surface of the Earth,
creating a deep valley, or trench.
The researchers' work will be chronicled from aboard ship on the expedition website.
Should We Close The Ocean To Save Fish?
Overfishing is a growing problem that could mean no more fish
for us. Would closing the ocean for a few years stop this trend? Trace
discusses one idea.
The Cherry Blossoms of Tokyo
The Sustainability Treehouse Reminds Us What's Worth Protecting
You can find out more about the great educational facility (and see more pictures of the striking property) over at Homes and Hues: The Sustainability Treehouse Educates While It Excites
Constantine
Algeria's City Of Bridges
Amazon drought, fire lead to sharp increases in tree mortality
Chinese Pollution Changing North American Weather
The brutal weather in the U.S. Midwest this winter has, in
part, coal-burning power plants in China, a new study finds.
Arctic Ozone Hole Looking Good
A global ban on the chemicals that caused the Antarctic ozone hole was successful in staving off one in the Arctic.
Search for lost plane shows our Oceans are full of crap
Before Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing, sea trash was not a global headliner.But as hundreds of objects sighted off the Australian coast as possible aircraft debris turn out to be discarded fishing equipment, cargo container parts, or plastic shopping bags, a new narrative is emerging in the hunt for the missing plane: There’s more garbage out there than you think. Most of it is plastic.
Arctic Sea Ice Peak Is 5th Lowest on Record
Study: Arctic Getting Darker, Making Earth Warmer
Despite a
late-season boost from the cold weather patterns similar to those that
blasted England with terrific storms in February, Arctic sea ice is
still on a long-term decline, according to the National Snow and Ice
Data Center.
The Arctic ice cap
expands every winter and shrinks every summer, in response to changing
temperatures, sunlight and weather conditions. The sea ice hit its
annual peak on March 21, covering 5.76 million square miles (14.91
million square kilometers), the NSIDC reported last week. That's the
fifth-lowest maximum extent since satellite record keeping started in
1979.
But until mid-March, researchers monitoring the icy blanket's annual growth thought the sea ice would be even smaller this year.
This
winter, the Arctic ice cover was hovering significantly below long-term
averages through the beginning of March, the NSIDC said. But ice pack
surged toward the Barents Sea north of Norway and the Bering Sea between
Alaska and Russia in mid-March, driven by strong winds. The surface
winds were kicked up by an low-pressure weather system in the eastern
Arctic and North Atlantic associated with a positive phase of the Arctic
Oscillation, the NSIDC said. The Arctic Oscillation is an atmospheric
circulation pattern over the northern polar region that affects the jet
stream. It causes stormy conditions over the North Atlantic when it is
in a positive, low-pressure phase. [Video: Arctic Sea-Ice Continues To Thin]
In
the past decade, the Arctic ice-cap extent has bobbed back and forth
among top 10 record lows, all the while continuing an overall steady
decline that started in the 1970s. Since 1978, the winter Arctic ice cap has shrunk
by 12 percent per decade, the NSIDC said in a statement. The lowest
winter maximum on record occurred in 2011, when the sea ice extended
5.65 million square miles (14.63 million square km).
On
the other hand, the proportion of so-called multiyear ice was higher
this year than in 2013: About 43 percent of this year's ice was more
than a year old, compared to only 30 percent last winter. Still, much of
that multiyear ice is only two years old, left over from the relatively
cool 2013 Arctic summer melt season. Only 7 percent of the multiyear
ice is older than 5 years, half of the amount present in February 2007.
California 'Big One' May Not Be So Big After All
New simulations show up to 70 percent less ground shaking in a
major Southern California earthquake than previously thought.
Where do tectonic plates come from?
Well, kids, you see, when one chunk of Earth's crust loves another
very much, they slam together and one chunk is forced underneath of the
other. A new study suggests that this process of subduction is sufficient to explain the formation of the tectonic plates we know today.
The geology of Westeros
This Stanford project imagines 500 million years of planetary evolution on the planet of Game of Thrones, using a combination of book details and the principles of Earth-based geologic physics. Also dragons and White Walkers.
Geologic Wonder
In a new image taken from orbit, the Grand Canyon is visible slicing through the Kaibab Plateau.
Realgar
Specimen from Heritage Auctions.
Its name comes from the Arabic rahj al-ġār (رهج الغار, "powder of the mine"), via Catalan and Medieval Latin, and its earliest record in English is in the 1390s...
Realgar, orpiment, and arsenopyrite provide nearly all the world's supply of arsenic as a byproduct of smelting concentrates derived from these ores...
Realgar is poisonous. The ancient Greeks, who called it "sandaracha", knew that it was poisonous. It was used to poison rats in medieval Spain and in 16th century England.
Coming Tomorrow
Coming Tomorrow
- Hitler Married A Jew
- A woman living in the 1930s
- The untold story of the first woman to fly around the world
- A Red Jolly Roger
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
The Daily Drift
Carolina Naturally is read in 197 countries around the world daily.
Library ladies ... !
Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is
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La Paz, Bolivia
Bogota, Colombia
Cancun, Mexico
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Santiago De Los Caballeros, Dominican Republic
Lima, Peru
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Managua, Nicaragua
Europe
Mostar and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, Denmark
Santa Cruz De Tenerife, Madrid and Malaga, Spain
Kiev and Kharkiv, Ukraine
Ryazan, Moscow, Vladivostok and Kazan, Russia
Piraeus, Greece
Hurth, Leipzig, Frankfurt Am Main, Reutlingen, Dresden, Mannheim, Muenchen and Ansbach, Germany
Dublin, Ireland
Reykjavik, Iceland
Ruse, Bulgaria
Sheffield, London and Rugby, England
Rome, Treviso, Ravenna and Alessandria, Italy
Magenta, France
Palmela, Portugal
Kista and Stockholm, Sweden
Espoo, Finland
Szczecin and Warsaw, Poland
Vinicne, Czech Republic
Kirkkale and Ankara, Turkey
Bucharest, Romaina
Riga, Latvia
Asia
Srinagar, Bangalore, Thiruvananthpuram, Bhubaneshwar, Jodhpur and Mumbai, India
Tehran, Iran
Colombo and Kandy, Sri Lanka
Binjai, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Denpasar and Padalarang, Indonesia
Erbil, Iraq
Cheras and Klang, Malaysia
Seoul, Korea
Tokyo, Japan
Faisalabad, Pakistan
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Africa
Bizerte and Tunis, Tunisia
Lagos, Nigeria
Al Jizah, Egypt
Johannesburg, South Africa
The Pacific
Manila, Philippines
Sydney, Australia
Today in History
| 1755 | English lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson publishes his Dictionary of the English Language. | |
| 1784 | The first balloon is flown in Ireland. | |
| 1813 | U.S. troops under James Wilkinson siege the Spanish-held city of Mobile in future state of Alabama. | |
| 1858 | At the Battle of Azimghur, the Mexicans defeat Spanish loyalists. | |
| 1871 | 'Wild Bill' Hickok becomes the marshal of Abilene, Kansas. | |
| 1861 | President Lincoln mobilizes Federal army. | |
| 1865 | Abraham Lincoln dies from John Wilkes Booth's assassination bullet. | |
| 1912 | With her band playing on the deck, the ocean liner Titanic sinks at 2:27 a.m. in the North Atlantic. | |
| 1917 | British forces defeat the Germans at the battle of Arras. | |
| 1919 | British troops kill 400 Indians at Amritsar, India. | |
| 1923 | Insulin becomes generally available for people suffering with diabetics. | |
| 1923 | The first sound films shown to a paying audience are exhibited at the Rialto Theater in New York City. | |
| 1940 | French and British troops land at Narvik, Norway. | |
| 1945 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt is buried on the grounds of his Hyde Park home. | |
| 1948 | Arab forces are defeated in battle with Israeli forces. | |
| 1952 | President Harry Truman signs the official Japanese peace treaty. | |
| 1955 | Ray Kroc starts the McDonald's chain of fast food restaurants. | |
| 1959 | Cuban leader Fidel Castro begins a U.S. goodwill tour. | |
| 1960 | The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizes at Shaw University. | |
| 1971 | North Vietnamese troops ambush a company of Delta Raiders from the 101st Airborne Division near Fire Support Base Bastogne in Vietnam. The American troops were on a rescue mission. | |
| 1986 | U.S. warplanes attack Libya. |
Did you know ...
That on average, 22 veterans commit suicide each day
That teacher's strikes are spreading across the land
The the Koch brothers are about to become even more famous
About how deficit hawks are pitting millennials against seniors to attack social security
That Wal-mart admits its profits come from food stamps
About sexual harrassment from uber
What procrastinators should know about tax time
That an extreme anti-gay group will host an evening with Erick Erickson
You can watch the united states grow before your very eyes
Why liberals are more intelligent than wingnuts
Atheists pass out humanist literature after christians hand out bibles in school
Why the government should provide public access to the internet
About the marijuana effect on elections
How to write good
You can watch cyber-attacks in real-time
About lying to the food pantry
That the stock market is rigged
About Amazon's dirty secret
Just how difficult is it to make ends meet with a low-wage job?
About the multi-tenacled Koch-topus
That the
IRS labels large televangelist group qualified as a cult
What #cancelcolbert tells us about double standards
That California truckers get $2.2 million in wage theft case
But there's still plenty of wage theft in silicon valley
And thanks to the anti-vaxxers, mumps is spreading in Ohio
Are you worried about heartbleed? Here's a list of the passwords you should change right now
That private equity is an infection that's destroying the world
That the repugican cabal wants to stop the study of climate change
That climate change is destroying monarch butterfly
That a 5 year-old discovers flaw in x-box security
Walmart Finally Admits What Liberals Have Been Saying for Years
... Demand is What Creates Jobs
Towards the end of my tenure with Sam’s they were aggressively cutting hours. They were taking it to such extreme measures that we literally didn’t have people working on the floor to help customers out, we would have two cashiers and were lucky to have someone working in carts. They were limiting how many hours per week people were allowed to be scheduled and they were doing this to not only cut pay but reduce the amount of benefits they had to pay out to part-time employees.
Full-time employees weren’t spared either. In fact, I helped make the schedule some weeks and I was often told to keep every full-time employee between 32-34 hours. I was routinely told to keep part-time employees between 20-24, but even then if they felt we could cut hours – we did. Some people were only being scheduled 4-8 hours per week.
Walmart has realized that by cutting hours in their stores, rendering them incapable to keep up with demand, they’re losing billions of dollars. This has prompted them to announce that they will be adding hours to address complaints the company has received from customers, with the primary complaint being shelves that weren’t stocked.
In other words, demand is forcing them to create jobs or add hours to existing employees.
By the company agreeing at their annual meeting that they need to add hours to address the issue of empty shelves, they’re essentially admitting that demand is the driving force behind job creation. In fact, you could take it a step further and say that this is basically them admitting that trickle-down economics has nothing to do with job creation.
They wouldn’t be creating these jobs (or adding hours) unless demand dictated that they needed to. Only when their revenue took a hit did these greedy executives admit that they needed to reverse course on their massive labor cuts. If they hadn’t lost around $3 billion in revenue they would probably be pushing for deeper cuts to their labor force – not expanding it.
Job creation is almost entirely driven by demand. And by Walmart deciding to add hours back to their labor force after losing billions due to their massive wage cuts – that’s exactly what they’re admitting.
The Feds Have Their Chris Christie Smoking Gun as David Wildstein Spills The Beans
Christ Christie's (r-NJ) prosecutor just got David
"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" Wildstein to start spilling
the beans …
Bad news for Chris Christie — and very good news for the citizens of New Jersey: Esquire has learned from sources close to the investigation that David Wildstein, the former Port Authority operative who helped plan and execute the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk, is now cooperating with Paul Fishman, the federal prosecutor investigating the soon-to-be-ex-governor and his minions for criminal conduct. Fishman has also increased the number of investigators at work on the case, and has begun presenting evidence and witnesses to a grand jury in Newark.Wildstein had previously refused to testify, taking refuge under the 5th Amendment.
Raab notes that lawyers for both star witnesses (Bridget Kelly and David Wildstein) “said their clients would cooperate with investigators in exchange for immunity from prosecution.”
David Wildstein is the person who responded to the email, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” with “Got it” and he is also the person who in January of this year accused the repugican of knowing about Bridgegate, a charge Christie vehemently denies.
The New York Times explained in January that Wildstein said the order to close the bridge was a Christie junta’s order and said he had evidence that tied Christie to the closure:
In a letter released by his lawyer, the official, David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who was appointed with the governor’s blessing at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge, described the order to close the lanes as “the Christie junta’s order” and said “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” three weeks ago.In other words, smoking gun Wildstein is going to testify.
This is super bad news for Christie, because not only is this a federal investigation, but it is, as of April 4th, a criminal probe, after the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey convened a grand jury to investigate the George Washington Bridge scandal.
It’s looking like Chris Christie exonerating himself with lawyers he hired is not working out as well as he had planned. The revenge of those tossed under the Christie bus continues.
Court sides with MoveOn over Jindal
Bobby Jindal’s (r) junta in Louisiana picked an unusual fight
recently, taking MoveOn.org to federal court, accusing the progressive
activist group of violating trademark rules when it put up billboards
criticizing Jindal’s opposition to Medicaid expansion.
So far, that hasn’t turned out well for the Republican governor: a federal judge ruled that the Baton Rouge-area billboard is legally permissible.
In his original court filings, [Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne] said the national liberal organization improperly mimicked his office’s trade and tourism branding in its satirical billboard posted just outside of the state capital. But U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick disagreed Monday, siding with MoveOn.org in stating the group’s free speech rights trumped the state’s case.“The State has failed to demonstrate a compelling reason to curtail MoveOn.org’s political speech in favor of protecting of the State’s service mark,” Dick said in her ruling. She added “irreparable injury” would not be caused to Louisiana’s tourism campaign if the ad remained in place.
For those who haven’t been following this dispute,
Louisiana is one of several red states that refuse to adopt Medicaid
expansion, despite the fact that the policy would bring coverage to
nearly a quarter of a million low-income residents. It led MoveOn.org to
put up a billboard that reads, “LOU!SIANA Pick your passion! But hope
you don’t love your health. Gov. Jindal’s denying Medicaid to 242,000
people.”
The Jindal junta wasn’t pleased – “Louisiana: Pick
Your Passion” is the slogan tied to the state’s tourism campaign, and it
doesn’t want the phrasing appropriated by a progressive group targeting
the governor. MoveOn.org responded that its political speech is
intended as satire and is therefore covered by the First Amendment.
Yesterday, a federal court agreed, offering the governor a reminder about what free speech is.
And by all appearances, he needed the refresher.
For me, the thing about this controversy that’s always seemed
interesting isn’t trademark law, about which I know very little, but
Jindal’s reversal about the importance of championing free speech.
As we’ve discussed
before, it was just December when Phil Robertson, one of the stars of a
reality-television show called “Duck Dynasty,” made a series of
offensive comments during an interview. A&E, the network that airs
the reality show, decided to suspend him over his bigoted remarks.
Jindal immediately leapt to Robertson’s defense. For a
private business to suspend an employee, the governor said, was an
affront to the “First Amendment.”
As a constitutional matter, this was gibberish, but the far-right
governor dug in anyway, positioning himself as a free-speech absolutist –
Americans must be able to communicate whatever message they please,
without exception or consequence.
“The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with,” Jindal said. “This is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their views.”
Except it’s MoveOn.org mocking Jindal’s position on Medicaid,
at which point it’s a less-free country and there are limits on those
expressing their views? When a television network suspends an employee,
it’s an outrageous First Amendment violation, but when a state
government tries to restrict political speech on a billboard, that’s
fine?
The irony, of course, is that the Jindal junta’s
lawsuit brought vastly more attention to the billboard than it ever
would have received if the governor and his team had ignored it.
Jindal’s goal was to have fewer people see MoveOn.org’s message, but he
achieved the opposite.
Founding Father 'enthusiast' Allen West's book filled with fake Founding Father quotes
by Tom Boggioni
A review of former congressman and Founding Father enthusiast Allen West's new book has turned up a wide assortment of fake quotes attributed to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other famous historical figures.
.
According to the Palm Beach Post, West's "Guardian of the Republic," which outlines his political philosophy and his "warrior code," includes many quotes that have been described by historians as erroneous.
.
"Thomas Jefferson said it first: 'A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it away,'" West wrote.
.
According to researchers at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia, while that quote has appeared on coffee cups and t-shirts, it doesn't appear in any of Jefferson's writings. So many fake quotations have been attributed to the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, that the foundation felt compelled to create a "Spurious Quotations" list.
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Three other fake Jefferson quotes in West's book appear on the foundation's list.
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