Landscapes of Kirghizia

It usually happens that tourists do not expect much from Kirghizia but once they come there they are

often impressed by its beauty and diversity. Time flies so fast and they want to see more and more.

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Awesome Pictures

Were Dinosaurs Destined to Be Big?

Testing Cope’s Rule

In the evolutionary long run, small critters tend to evolve into bigger beasts—at least according to the idea attributed to ...

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A Dinosaur Named Sauron

A dinosaur discovered through a fossil found in Morocco has been named Sauron, after the Lord of the Rings character. Paleontologists Andrea Cau, Fabio Dalla Vecchia, and Matteo Fabbri of Italy’s Museo Paleontologico di Montevarchi described the dinosaur as best they could. Only a small part of the skull was found, but it was enough to determine that this dinosaur did not belong to a known species.

While the rest of the dinosaur remains unknown, after reanalyzing the frontal the paleontologists decided that it was truly unique enough to merit establishing a new name. The subtly-domed dinosaur is now known as Sauroniops pachytholus–the genus name a tribute to the demonic Sauron of the Lord of the Rings series, and the species name for the thick dome on the dinosaur’s head.

The dinosaur and human skull are illustrated for scale, not to suggest the dinosaur's diet. More

Man who allegedly battered girlfriend with 4-foot python denies charges

A 34-year-old West Springfield, Massachusetts, man who allegedly battered his girlfriend with a four-foot python during a domestic altercation has denied the charges against him in Springfield District Court.
Keith Paro was held in lieu of $2,500 cash bail at his arraignment on Friday. Police Capt. Daniel Spaulding said that during the attack threw a set of temporary stairs at the woman.

YouTube link.

He also allegedly damaged home furnishings, stole items, and threw the snake into a hot tub before leaving the scene.  The woman suffered minor injuries, including an injury to her knee from the temporary stairs, Spaulding said. The snake did not survive.

Police charged Paro with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (snake), assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (stairs), malicious destruction of property over $250, domestic assault and battery and cruelty to animals. A pre-trial hearing was set for Nov. 27.

Chihuahua's owner fended off coyote attack with rolled-up newspaper

Tucker is a senior citizen in dog years, and his diabetic condition has taken away his sight. But the 12-year-old Chihuahua proved to be tough as nails on Thursday when he survived an attack by not one, but two coyotes outside his home near Antioch, Illinois. “He is a survivor,” said Tucker’s owner, Dawn McCarty. “He’s like a cat with nine lives.”

But she added that the pre-dawn incident happened so quickly and unexpectedly that Tucker likely would not have survived if he hadn’t been tethered. “To see my little guy in the mouth of a coyote - it was terrifying,” McCarty said. “And I think of my neighbors who let their dogs out in the morning ... This is not a rural area. We back up to a park, and everybody thinks it’s safe.”

McCarty said she found out otherwise seconds after starting her morning routine. “I got up about 5 o’clock, let my dog out in the back yard, hooked him to his leash and went out my front door to get my newspaper,” she said. “All of a sudden, I hear him yelping, so I ran around to the back and there was this coyote who had him by the back leg.”

McCarty said she then made use of the only weapon in her possession. “I took my newspaper and kind of held it out like a sword, and I shooed it away - I beat the coyote away,” she said, adding that she then saw a second coyote standing within a few feet. “They were big - bigger than a German shepherd. They both took off when I started yelling and swinging the paper.”

There's a news video here.

Rare white lion cub nursed by dog

A rare white lion cub has been born at China's Quanzhou Amusement Park.

The animal was born to brown yellow African lions, but is white because of a rare color mutation. Manager Zheng Yundong said he was shocked at the discovery. He said: "At first I was surprised as the chance to have a white lion is quite small.

YouTube link.

"Someone said it is a throwback, while some others said it is an evolution." A mother dog is acting as the lion cub's wet nurse after its own mother failed to produce enough milk of her own.

"The mother lion can only produce milk one day after giving birth, and if the cub doesn't suck milk for eight hours, we have to take it under our wing," explained Mr Zheng. White lions are not classed as a separate subspecies.

Young blackbirds died from alcohol poisoning

Young blackbirds found dead at a primary school in Cumbria suffered from alcohol poisoning, according to an investigation. Animal health specialists were called to examine a dozen birds found in the playground, many with trauma injuries. Post-mortem analysis revealed that one of the birds had a large amount of pure alcohol in its liver. Scientists suggest the birds sustained their injuries in flight because they were intoxicated by fermented berries.
A local wildlife sanctuary cared for a further bird found in the area, which they described as unsteady on its feet, using its wings to support itself and leaning on the walls of its enclosure. The bird made a full recovery and was released after two weeks of care. When Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) researchers analyzed the dead blackbirds they found all the birds had eaten berries from a nearby rowan tree.

Tim Harrison, development officer of the British Trust for Ornithology's (BTO) Garden BirdWatch explained: "Generally speaking, birds that have a lot of fruit in their diet are more efficient at metabolizing alcohol and are better adapted at eating fruit that has higher alcohol concentrations."  He continued: "There are anecdotal reports of birds acting 'drunk' but these tend to be very rare". But damaged berries were also recorded on the ground where the birds were discovered.

Scientists explained that the berries on the ground were damaged and would have been vulnerable to yeast infestation. This would have precipitated fermentation and subsequent alcohol production. According to Paul Duff and colleagues at the AHVLA, who carried out the post-mortem analysis on the dead blackbirds, the berries found in the birds' guts smelled of fermentation - the chemical process of sugars breaking down into alcohol.  Tissue samples sent for analysis partially confirmed the scientists' suspicions when one revealed high concentrations of ethanol, pure alcohol, in the liver of an affected bird.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

A female Lockheed employee works on a P-38 Lighting - Burbank, CA - 1944

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Today in History

644		Umar of Arabia is assassinated at Medina and is succeeded as caliph by Uthman.
1493		Christopher Columbus discovers Guadeloupe during his second expedition.
1677		William III and Mary of England wed on William's birthday.
1760		Following the Russian capture of Berlin, Frederick II of Prussia defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Torgau.
1791		General Arthur St. Clair, governor of Northwest Territory, is badly defeated by a large Indian army near Fort Wayne.
1798		Congress agrees to pay a yearly tribute to Tripoli, considering it the only way to protect U.S. shipping.
1842		Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Todd in Springfield, Ill.
1854		Florence Nightingale and her nurses arrive in the Crimea.
1863		From the main Confederate Army at Chattanooga, Tennessee, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's troops are sent northeast to besiege Knoxville.
1918		Austria signs an armistice with the Allies.
1922		The U.S. Postmaster General orders all homes to get mailboxes or relinquish delivery of mail.
1922		The entrance to King Tut's tomb is discovered.
1924		Calvin Coolidge is elected 30th president of the United States.
1924		Nellie Tayloe Ross and Miriam Ferguson are elected first and second women governors (Wyoming and Texas).
1946		The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is established.
1952		General Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected 34th president of the United States.
1956		Russian troops attack Budapest, Hungary.
1979		At the American Embassy in Teheran, Iran, 90 people, including 63 Americans, are taken hostage by militant student followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. The students demand the return of Shah Mohammad Reza Pablavi, who is undergoing medical treatment in New York City.
1980		Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th president of the United States.
1992		Carol Moseley Braun becomes the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
1995		Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
2008		Senator Barack Obama of Illinois elected 44th president of the United States, the first African American to hold that position.

Non Sequitur

Two prominent meteor showers to light up night sky starting Monday

Starting Monday and continuing for the next two weeks, two prominent meteor showers will be lighting up the night sky with flashes of fireballs and shooting stars.

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Pre-Sandy climate warnings: North America will have world’s most extreme disasters

Now that the worst of Hurricane Sandy has passed — the actual storm, not the cleanup — I thought it would be good to review this. It’s recent, but pre-Sandy. Joe Romm at ThinkProgress (my emphasis; note that Romm is the “I” in the passage below):

NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather
Two new studies make a strong case that global warming is driving an intensification of high-pressure anomalies that in turn make North American weather more extreme. They add to a growing body of scientific observation and analysis on the connection between man-made climate change and extreme weather — and disasters [do click].
So I can say, not coincidentally, Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company is releasing a report next week based on its natural catastrophe database — the most comprehensive of its kind in the world — that concludes:

• Global warming is driving an increase in weather-related disasters
• “North America is the continent with the largest increases in disasters.“

And so I can also say, not coincidentally, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported Tuesday in its “State of the Climate” for September that the Climate Extremes Index for the period January-through-September was over the highest ever — and over twice the average value — since record-keeping began in 1910.

NOAA is the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Romm mentions a NOAA “State of the Climate” chart. Here it is:

Note that the binomial smoothing curve (the green line) also jumps abnormally high in 2012, yet does a great job of smoothing through all of the previous disasters — the droughts of the 1930s for example don’t cause the same jump.
This is not good. Sandy is not a one-off, but a “one-of,” as in one of many. Batten down.

Loss of Arctic sea ice

The NOAA report above ties the coming extreme weather to the rapid disappearance of Arctic summer sea ice, and Romm includes a chart of that as well. Here’s that chart (click to big):

I know climate scientists need to be conservative — science is conservative — but I’ll say it again. When it comes to climate predictions, we’ve been consistently wrong to the slow side. This thing is coming faster than anyone imagined.
And one more time for this warning as well. We’ve had near-total “climate silence” during this year’s presidential ad campaign (sorry, sparkling intellectual debate). This will the last year that such a conversation can be had, in my view. In 2016, if my estimates are correct, we won’t have enough turning radius to make a change in time.
Crash-conversion from carbon will he heard if we start now, but doable. Crash-conversion from carbon will be almost impossible if we don’t start until 2017. Remember, my deadline for a baked-in 3°C increase — making James Hansen’s mass extinction scenario unavoidable — is roughly 2022.
(Nevertheless, I predict that 2016 will be the year each candidate advertises their “climate concern” — it will be the meme of the campaign, just like advertising their “struggling middle class concern” is the meme of this one. What do I mean by “meme”? I mean what’s meant by slogans like “More taste” and “Improved formula”. You know — words.)

One more chart — disaster costs

Just to round this off, let’s look at pre-Sandy disaster costs. This is the NOA chart for disaster costs from 1980–2011.

It’s that green spike on the right you’re interested in. That’s the total number of billion-dollar disasters (left scale). I want to see what Sandy does to this thing; it won’t be pretty. That red total-costs line (right scale) should shoot right up.
Here’s a thought. There will be a huge price to pay for all this damage, and all the damages to come. Instead of taking it out of general funds, how about we make a special assessment — in the range of many billions — from the pockets of the Climate Criminals whose pockets these disasters are lining? You know, people like Ace Climate Criminal — Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, or the King and Queen of climate crime, David and Charles Koch, in that order.
Let’s start by unlining their pockets — I think I hear some climate cash jingling in there. After all, if the climate crime profits are theirs, so should be the costs.
And here’s another thought. If newly-minted executive assassinator Obama can kill by executive order, let him tax by executive order. There’s gotta be a way, like a drone-strike on David Koch’s bank account? (OK, that’s not politically practical; I get that. Killing by executive order isn’t a bridge too far for most Americans, but taxing … now that’s over the line.)

Bottom line

We really can stop this disaster. I wouldn’t be writing about it if it were hopeless — I’d be doing something more productive. We just have to up our game. My suggestion includes a full-on focus on the real perps — the megalomaniac climate CEOs and their enablers in political office, the media, and the faux-science world. And after the current frenzied ad campaign (sorry, exercise in democracy) winds down, I’ll have much more to say, and hopefully to do, about it.
In the meantime, stay optimistic, stay focused, and stay informed. We may be near a tipping point, but we’re not there yet. Now is the time your help is needed most.

The truth be told

Christie throws Mitt under Bus

He knows which way the wind is blowing

Christie's effusiveness is hurting Romney: Team Romney must feel like Christie is throwing Mittens
under the bus, says John Cassidy at The New Yorker. It's understandable that Christie would be more
concerned about his constituents than politics in a moment like this, but he has "heaped praise on Obama's
handling of the storm" for three straight days. Romney's flaks must be "apoplectic," and wondering,  "Isn't this guy ever going to shut up?" "Romney has a Christie problem and a FEMA problem."

Christie is governor in a blue state Obama will win easily. You have to wonder whether Christie is  "working a political angle here." Perhaps "he's prioritizing his 2013 election over Romney's campaign."

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As long as Mittens gets thrown under someone's damn bus, I don't care who does it or what their motives were.

NJ Red Cross piqued at Romney for sending Sandy donations they don’t want

Well.It seems the Red Cross wasn’t entirely pleased to receive Mitt Romney’s busload of donated food and supplies that the Red Cross’ own Web site says they not only do not need, but such supplies actually impede the organization’s disaster relief.
From the Cincinnati Enquirer we learn that the Red Cross issued a passive-aggressive statement about Romney’s “gift” yesterday:

Agency officials told The Enquirer they are grateful for help, but don’t want people – including political candidates – sending supplies. They would rather have donations of money and blood.

“We are not asking for material donations,” said Laura Steinmetz, spokeswoman for the South Jersey Region of the organization. “Financial donations allow us to quickly and efficiently meet the needs of the people in a disaster. It’s far more expensive for us to receive the donated goods, sort them, warehouse them and transport them. So our financial donations are much more cost effective.”

That’s “Red Cross”-speak for: Stop it.
We reported earlier in the week on how Mitt Romney’s Hurricane Sandy “relief” rallies were actually not-very-well-camouflaged Romney political rallies mean to take political advantage of the disaster that had just befallen NYC and the entire east coast of the United States.

Note that that woman must have gotten that Obama t-shirt at the non-partisan disaster relief rally.

Romney even had his staff buy $5,000 worth of “donations” that were then handed to attendees to then hand back to Romney for the cameras.  It never occurred to Romney to ask attendees to give money, or blood – the two things the Red Cross wants – rather than things they don’t want.  (And as a reader noted, if you have the money to buy food to donate, then you have the money to donate in and of itself.)
Of course, it did occur to Romney that his donations were counterproductive.  But “relief” wasn’t the point of these campaign rallies, was it. After all, if you really want to help someone in need, you give them what they need, not what looks best at your photo opp.
Speaking of looking good at photo opps, Paul Ryan’s “hurricane relief” events, held at Romney campaign offices, were no better.
Reminiscent of Ryan’s infamous visit to a closed soup kitchen where he donned an apron and washed already-clean dishes for the cameras, then immediately left, only to have Romney/Ryan voters to try shut down the soup kitchen for good, Ryan actually had his staff stop their hurricane relief effort until he could arrive for a photo opp, since a PR photo was apparently more important than getting help to the disaster victims as quickly as possible.
In Romney-land, everything is an opportunity, even death and destruction.  After all, it was Mitt Romney himself on the infamous 47%-tape who called the Iran-hostage crisis the kind of “opportunity” that he “will work to find a way to advantage.” Who calls the Iran-hostage crisis an opportunity?  Who talks like that?
I’ll tell you who.  Financial vultures who live off of the destitution of others.  That is Mitt Romney’s background, buying and selling companies, regardless of whether he had to destroy them in order to make money.  In the soul-less world of Wall Street, greed is good.  And so is treating a national crisis as an opportunity, just as Mitt Romney did with the attack on our consulate in Libya. Our ambassador and three other Americans were barely dead before Mitt Romney jumped up and tried to claim as much political advantage as he could.
I’ll ask again: What kind of person gives the Red Cross donations that the organization keeps telling them not to give? I’ll tell you who. Remember this guy?  The London trader who dreams of a market crash and another recession so he can rake in the bucks?

Here’s the short transcript of what the London trader said:

BBC: Can you pin down exactly what would keep investors happy, make them feel more confident? TRADER: That’s a tough one.  Personally, it doesn’t matter. I’m a trader.  I dont’ care about that stuff… We don’t really care how they’re gonna fix the economy, how they’re gonna fix the situation.  Our job is to make money from it.  And personally, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years.  I have a confession, which is, I go to bed every night, I dream of another recession, I dream of another moment like this.
BBC: Why?
TRADER: Because, people don’t seem to maybe remember, the 30s Depression, the Depression in the 30s, wasn’t just about a market crash.  There were some people who were prepared to make money from that crash.  And I think anybody can do that.  It isn’t just for some people in the elite.  Anybody can make money, it’s an opportunity.
BBC: If you could see the people around me, jaws have collectively dropped at what you just said.

It’s an opportunity. Where have I heard that before?

Silver to Scarborough: Wanna Bet?

Political polling guru Nate Silver just offered to bet MSNBC's Joe Scarborough $1,000 that Obama will win re-election.  Scarborough, you may recall, criticized Silver's math earlier this week, saying that "Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue ... they're jokes."

He was specifically talking about Silver's FiveThirtyEight website, which shows Romney with just a 1-in-4 chance of becoming president. 

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If you vote for Obama you will "put your own soul in jeopardy," says Bishop David Ricken of The catholic Diocese in Green Bay, WI

Bishop David Ricken of the catholic Diocese in Green Bay, WI went for the hard sell in a letter to his Brothers and Sisters in christ. Here's an excerpt:

I would like to review some of the principles to keep in mind as you approach the voting booth to complete your ballot. The first is the set of non-negotiables. These are areas that are “intrinsically evil” and cannot be supported by anyone who is a believer in god or the common good or the dignity of the human person.
They are:

1. abortion
2. euthanasia
3. embryonic stem cell research
4. human cloning
5. homosexual “marriage”
These are intrinsically evil. “A well-formed christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program that contradicts fundamental contents of faith and morals.” Intrinsically evil actions are those which have an evil object. In other words, an act is evil by its very nature and to choose an action of this type puts one in grave moral danger.
But what does this have to do with the election? Some candidates and one party have even chosen some of these as their party’s or their personal political platform. To vote for someone in favor of these positions means that you could be morally “complicit” with these choices which are intrinsically evil. This could put your own soul in jeopardy.

Read His entire letter here
Is Bishop Ricken going to start paying taxes? From the ACLJ's "Political Speech & Non Profit Tax Issues":

In exchange for the receipt of tax-exempt status, I.R.C. § 501(c)(3) absolutely prohibits churches and other tax-exempt organizations from campaigning for or against a candidate for public office. If a church participates or interferes, directly or indirectly, in any political campaign for or against any candidate for public office by publishing and distributing certain written material or making oral statements regarding the candidate, then a church can lose its tax-exempt status for violating the campaigning ban. I.R.C. § 1.501(c)(3)-1(c)(3)(iii). Quite simply courts have interpreted 501(c)(3) to ban any degree of participation or intervention in a campaign for public office. Ass’n of the Bar of N.Y. v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue, 858 F.2d 876, 879 (2d Cir. 1988).

But maybe warning someone that they will put their soul in jeopardy if they vote for Obama isn't considered participating in a political campaign?

The Truth Hurts