The Twisted Trees Of Slope Point

Slope Point is the southernmost tip on New Zealand's South Island. The airstreams loop the vast circumpolar Southern Ocean unobstructed for 2000 miles and then they smash into land here.
They are so persistent and so violent that the trees are perpetually warped and twisted into these crooked, windswept shapes.

Quake-Causing Hotspot Hides Under Eastern U.S.

Quake-Causing Hotspot Hides Under Eastern U.S.

A 100-million-year-old hotspot hiding in the underbelly of North America could have sparked some whopper quakes and sprinkled the continent with diamonds.

Realgar

"Realgar, α-As4S4, is an arsenic sulfide mineral, also known as "ruby sulphur" or "ruby of arsenic"... name comes from the Arabic rahj al-ġār (رهج الغار, "powder of the mine"), via Catalan and Medieval Latin...

Realgar most commonly occurs as a low-temperature hydrothermal vein mineral associated with other arsenic and antimony minerals. It also occurs as volcanic sublimations and in hot spring deposits...

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."

Last Days On Mars

Last Days On Mars: Blood, Gore and Bacteria

A new trailer for an upcoming movie set on Mars is stacked full of grit and, apparently, alien microbes.

Astronomical News

Voyager 1 Radio Glow Glimmers in an Interstellar Ocean

This is the first image of the first ever man-made radio signal being transmitted from interstellar space.

NASA Discovers Giant Black Holes by Accident

A powerful NASA telescope has found not one, but 10 supermassive black holes. And it did so by accident! Trace explains what exactly black holes are and why the discovery is so awesome.

When the Veneras Challenged Venus' Hellish Atmosphere

In the early space age, even before President Kennedy kicked off the race to the moon, the United States and the Soviet Union had begun exploring our closest planetary neighbors.

Origins of Life Found in Smashing Ice

Origins of Life Found in Smashing Ice

For the first time, smashing ice and other comet-like ingredients together have led to the creation of amino acids in the lab.

Random Photos

Mosasaur fossil proves the early lizards swam like sharks

Prehistoric mosasaur lizards didn’t slither like eels. Instead, these late Cretaceous sea monsters swam like sharks, scientists say.

ERMNH HFV 197 reveals, for the first time in a mosasaur, the soft tissue outline of a tail fin, to demonstrate that mosasaurs are convergent with ichthyosaurs and whales in the development of a semilunate propulsive surface for enhanced locomotor efficiency [Credit: Johan Lindgren and Stefan Solberg]

Mosasaurs ruled the oceans about 98 million to 66 million years ago. Most paleontologists have argued that these reptiles, which grew up to 33 feet long, had tapered, whip-like tails similar to those of snakes, their closest living relatives. Others thought the downward bend in mosasaur fossils’ tail regions suggested they had shark-like fins. But without a clear picture of these tail fins, they couldn’t say for sure.
Now, an analysis of a mosasaur fossil with unusually well-preserved soft tissue impressions reveals that these reptiles had crescent-shaped tail fins, making them speedy swimmers that would have chased down their prey much like modern-day sharks.   
Scientists discovered the 6-foot-long juvenile specimen encased in a limestone boulder in Amman, Jordan, in 2008. They cut and hauled slabs of the fossil to the Eternal River Museum of Natural History in Amman, where they sat on display until Johan Lindgren examined them three years later.
Lindgren, a paleontologist at Lund University in Sweden, saw a faint outline in the rock surrounding the skeleton’s tail, indicating a soft tissue impression.
“I had a gut feeling that this was something special,” said Lindgren, who led a group that published the findings Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
So the researchers chipped  away the remaining sediment, revealing imprints of chevron-shaped scales and dense fiber bundles. Sure enough, the impressions formed a broad, crescent-shaped outline of a fin around the skeleton’s tail bones.
“It was amazing, just mind-blowing,” Lindgren said.
He and his colleagues then compared the skeleton’s dimensions to those of  modern-day marine animals. The mosasaur’s body proportions most closely resembled those of sharks, suggesting that these reptiles had a similar streamlined shape and bilobed tail fin that allowed them to quickly chase their prey over long distances. On the other hand, a serpentine shape would have limited them to short, occasional bursts of speed typical of predators who ambush their food.
The discovery is consistent with earlier fossil evidence of mosasaurs eating squid and large fish, which they could catch only if they had a body shape designed for efficient swimming, said Takuya Konishi, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta in Canada.
“If you want to be a very good swimmer, you need to have a streamlined shape” with a bilobed tail fin, said Konishi, who wasn’t involved in the study.
The tail fin is “a mechanism that really works,” said Anne Schulp, a paleontologist at the Maastricht Natural History Museum in the Netherlands, who wasn’t involved in the study.  “It’s exciting to see it show up time and time again in the evolution of very different species.”
The new finding may not offer a complete picture of the mosasaur’s body shape, since it represents only one specimen among 70 species of mosasaur, Konishi said.  And since it was a juvenile, its fin probably differed slightly from those of adults, Lindgren added.
So far, paleontologists have discovered thousands of mosasaur fossils and will probably unearth many more in the future, Schulp said. The new findings remind scientists to “take a very careful look” at these specimens, he said. Imprints are hard to spot, which may partly explain the lack of soft tissue evidence until now.
“We have to keep our eyes peeled,” he said.

New York pet cemeteries to allow human remains be buried alongside beloved family pets

Pet owners can now spend eternity in the dog house. A new regulation unveiled by the state this month will allow pet cemeteries in New York to accept the cremated remains of human beings hoping to be buried forever beside their beloved family pets. The new rules resolve a two-year-old dispute that began when the state refused to allow the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Westchester to accept the ashes of a former NYPD officer who wanted to spend his afterlife with his three Maltese pups.

The police officer’s niece, upstate attorney Taylor York, took on her uncle’s cause and battled the state to allow the burial. “People do get a sense of comfort from knowing they can lie for eternity with their beloved pet, that they can be loved and protected in the afterlife just as faithfully as when they were alive,” York said. York’s campaign began when her uncle, retired NYPD officer Thomas Ryan, died in 2011 and New York Department of State barred the Hartsdale Cemetery from accepting his ashes.

 The 117-year-old Hartsdale cemetery, which claims to be the oldest final pet resting place in the country, had been interring cremated human remains since the the 1920s and had already buried the remains of Ryan’s wife, Bunny, beside the couples three Maltese dogs, DJ 1, DJ 2 and DJ 3. “They didn’t have any children,” York said. “Each (Maltese), was their pride and joy.” But when it came time for Ryan to rest beside his wife and dogs, the state said no, asserting that state law prohibited Hartsdale from handling human remains.
After an intense campaign from York and other Hartsdale patrons, the Department of State relented in late 2011 and allowed the cemetery to accept human remains - but the six other pet cemeteries across the state were still prohibited from putting granny in the ground next to Fluffy or Fido. Now, this month’s rule change will allow New York pet owners from every corner of the state to play fetch for eternity with loved ones of any species or breed - as long as pet cemeteries don’t charge a fee for a human burial and don’t advertise their human burial services.

Questions from Kids ...

Why Don't Fish Get Water In Their Eyes?

The function of a fish's eye evolved to suit its watery habitat.

Blobfish Wins Ugliest Endangered Animal Competition

The Ugly Animal Preservation Society began as a science-themed comedy night and devised its mascot campaign to draw attention to 'aesthetically challenged' threatened species. Biologist and TV presenter Simon Watt, president of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, said he hoped the campaign would draw attention to the threats facing these weird and wonderful creatures.

The winner of the campaign for the Ugliest Endangered Animal is the blobfish, a deep-sea fish that inhabits the deep waters off the coasts of mainland Australia and Tasmania, as well as the waters of New Zealand.

Zoo Animals Love New Nearly Indestructible Toy

A new toy that withstands animal teeth and major squashing is a hit at zoos across the country.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Small minds are everywhere ...!

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 193 countries around the world daily.
 

 The Constitution ... !




Today is Constitution Day  
 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our readers today have been in:

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Lo Prado, Chile

San Miguel De Tucuman and Buenos Aires, Argentina

Torreon, Mexico City, Mexico

Waterloo, Joliette, Montreal, Sioux Lookout, Ottawa, Byward Market and Collingwood, Canada

Zeanuri, Madrid and Barcelona, Spain

Nuremberg, Kerpen and Berlin, Germany

Udaipur, New Delhi, Bangalore, Kottayam, Mumbai, Bhopal, Erode, Thiruvananthapuram, Pondicherry, Kolkata and Hyderabad, India

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Roubaix and Rouen, France

Managua, Nicaragua

Moscow, Russia

Melbourne and Sydney, Australia

Ravenna, Ivrea, Rome, Bologna and Bari, Italy

Belgrade, Serbia

Kiev and Zhovti Vody, Ukraine

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Berea, South Africa

Papeete, French Polynesia

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Bangkok, Thailand

Dublin, Ireland

Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Sandsli, Bergen, Myre and Oslo, Norway

Roskilde, Denmark

Karachi and Islamabad, Pakistan

Manila and Makati, Philippines

Riga, Latvia

Kista and Stockholm, Sweden

Nottingham and Over, England

Vilnius, Lithuania

Taipei, Taiwan

Singapore, Singapore

Jakarta, Indonesia

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Muscat, Oman

Petah Tikva, Israel

Today in History

1630		The town of Boston is founded by John Winthrop as an extension of the colony at Salem. It is named after the town of the same name in Lincolnshire, England.
1787		The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia approves the constitution for the United States of America.
1796		President George Washington delivers his "Farewell Address" to Congress before concluding his second term in office.
1862		The Battle of Antietam in Maryland, the bloodiest day in U.S. history, commences. Fighting in the corn field, Bloody Lane and Burnside's Bridge rages all day as the Union and Confederate armies suffer a combined 26,293 casualties.
1868		The Battle of Beecher's Island begins, in which Major George "Sandy" Forsyth and 50 volunteers hold off 500 Sioux and Cheyenne in eastern Colorado.
1902		U.S. troops are sent to Panama to keep train lines open over the isthmus as Panamanian nationals struggle for independence from Colombia.
1903		Turks destroy the town of Kastoria in Bulgaria, killing 10,000 civilians.
1916		Germany's "Red Baron," Manfred von Richthofen, wins his first aerial combat.
1917		The German Army recaptures the Russian Port of Riga from Russian forces.
1939		With the German army already attacking western Poland, the Soviet Union launches an invasion of eastern Poland.
1942		British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meets with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in Moscow as the German Army rams into Stalingrad.
1944		British airborne troops parachute into Holland to capture the Arnhem bridge as part of Operation Market-Garden. The plan called for the airborne troops to be relieved by British troops, but they were left stranded and eventually surrendered to the Germans.
1947		James Forestall is sworn in as first the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
1957		The Thai army seizes power in Bangkok.
1959		The X-15 rocket plane makes its first flight.
1962		The first federal suit to end public school segregation is filed by the U.S. Justice Department.
1976		The Space Shuttle is unveiled to the public.
1978		Egypt and Israel sign the Camp David Accords.
1980		Nationwide independent trade union Solidarity established in Poland.
1983		Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America; relinquished crown early after scandal over nude photos.
2001		The New York Stock Exchange reopens for the first time since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers; longest period of closure since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
2006		Alaska's Fourpeaked Mountain erupts for the first time in at least 10,000 years.
2011		Occupy Wall Street movement calling for greater social and economic equality begins in New York City's Zuccotti Park, coining the phrase "We are the 99%."

Non Sequitur

Did you know ...

You want some fresh eggs? Why not rent-a-chicken

You need to support the living wage bill

That children who are read to are less violent

U.S. poverty rates higher than in peer countries

That a computer program uses twitter to map the 'mood' of the nation

This library book overdue for 59 years

Why The Founding Fathers Would Have Despised Today’s “tea party”

Every 4th of July, without fail, I’ll see a few nutjobs come out with their “America, love it or leave it” or “This is America, speak English” stickers and such. Despite the ridiculous irony that their stickers, t-shirts and flags are made in China or a Bangladeshi sweatshop, there’s something else they’re entirely unaware of. The fact is, the Founding Fathers would have hated the tea party – misspelled signs and all.
Yes, you heard that right, they would have despised the ammo-hoarding sycophants of AM Hate-talk radio for a number of reasons, and would have likely lined them up in front of a firing squad or fitted them for a noose if this was the 18th century.
First of all, the original Tea Party was a protest of being forced to pay taxes on imported goods for which there was no competition. The East India Trading Company had the cozy relationship with the British government that allowed them to have a monopoly on tea and other items. Imagine Walmart being the only store from which you could buy and they dictated both cost and taxes on everything. The real Tea Party wasn’t about mentally unstable rants about oppressive government and imagined muslim takeovers, it was about actual oppressive government in which there was no representation for the colonists.
In the modern United States, we do have representation and theoretically, everyone can vote. The American Revolution used bullets because ballots weren’t available and the East India Tea Company had too much power in government. Now we have ballots and so-called “patriots” are trying to take away voting rights, talking about using bullets if they don’t get what they want, and supporting corporate power in government via Citizens United. You know, the opposite of what the Founding Fathers and the real Tea Party were all about.
Still don’t believe the Founding Fathers would have brought out the army against the tea party? Consider this. In the 1790′s, some settlers in the western portion of Pennsylvania didn’t want to pay taxes on whiskey they produced and destroyed the home of a tax official in protest. In response, George Washington sent out the state militia (you know, that “well-regulated militia” in the 2nd Amendment) to put down what is now known as The Whiskey Rebellion. This set the precedent for states enforcing the laws set by the Federal government, not the states making laws like Arizona has done in violation of Federal statutes and then complaining when the Supreme Court strikes them down. The main participants on the rebel side were arrested and tried for treason, not given celebrity status on Faux News.
So, to people like Ted Nugent and all the other “I’m gonna overthrow the government but I was too chickenshit to fight in Vietnam” people who like to wrap themselves in Chinese-made American flags, stop pretending the Founding Fathers would have liked you and supported your corporate-funded “grassroots” cause. They would have tarred and feathered you before running you out of town on a rail – if you were lucky.

Bob Woodward Says repugicans Are Using Extortion and Blackmail to Defund The Affordable Health Care Act

 

In a rare lucid moment, Bob Woodward has accused the repugican cabal of trying to blackmail and extort Obama into defunding the Affordable Health Care Act,

Woodward said, “This is really serious. Back in 2011, when the crisis visited them, the Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner was running around and saying if we don’t fix this, we could trigger a depression worse than the 1930s. And when I talked to Obama about this, he said, it was the most intense three weeks of his presidency. More than Osama Bin Laden and so forth. so — and the repugicans are out here, a group of them in the House essentially using extortion and blackmail methods to say, if we don’t defund the Affordable Health Care Act we’re not going to do the routine things of government.”
If even a blind squirrel finds a nut, then I guess this is visually impaired squirrel, meet nut. When even noted Sean Handjob fan boy Bob Woodward can see that repugicans are using blackmail and extortion in their attempt to defund the Affordable Health Care Act, things are really going badly for the repugican cabal.
The same Bob Woodward who was a fixture on Faux News when he had an anti-Obama book to sell has changed his tune a bit now that he is not trying to convince the brainwashed, Republican voting, white haired masses to plop down a bit of their Social Security checks on his latest book.
The shocking thing is that Woodward is correct. The repugicans are using blackmail and extortion in their attempt to defund the Affordable Health Care Act. The repugicans can try to dodge this description, but when a group of repugicans are running around threatening to wreck the economy if the Affordable Health Care Act isn’t defunded, it is virtually impossible for the repugican cabal to claim that they aren’t trying to blackmail the president into taking away healthcare for 30 million Americans.

If the death panel lie fits, wear it.

Just when I thought that all hope was lost, Bob Woodward had a rare lucid moment. It is sad to see how far one half of the team that will always be remembered for setting the modern high mark in journalism has fallen. Woodward will likely continue to pander to the wingnuts, because the only thing that the man seems to care about is selling his books. But when even Bob Woodward calls the efforts to defund the Affordable Health Care Act extortion and blackmail, the repugican cabal is seriously screwed.

McCain Says He Will Write Op-ed for Pravda – Pravda Says, Say What?

Senator John McCain was not happy about Vladimir Putin’s op-ed Wednesday in the New York Times. He said the other day he was “offended” by Russia, and he was not happy about Putin’s plan for Syria.
He told Jake Tapper on The Lead that he hoped negotiations between the U.S. and Russia succeeded, but now that they have, he’s upset that they did. He and Lindsey Graham (r-SC) say the deal is an “act of provocative weakness on America’s part.”
Hell, even China gave the OK to the U.S.-Russia deal.
So what’s McCain’s problem? Sure he’s grumpy, and he seems to have nearly as many positions as Rand Paul. And while he presents President Obama as being confused and weak, he seems rather confused himself.
Take his attempt to write an op-ed for Pravda in a sort of revenge stroke for Putin’s op-ed. But the New York Times is an independent American newspaper. It is not owned or operated by the government, the repugican cabal, or the Democratic Party. Pravda, on the other hand, is the official organ of the Communist Party, established in 1912 even before the October Revolution put the Communists in power in 1917.
One problem is that McCain forgot to tell Pravda anything about his plans.
The other is that on Friday his spokesperson, Brian Rogers, said McCain had accepted an offer from Pravda to write an op-ed response to Putin’s. Time Magazine and Politico both were taken in and carried the announcement on Friday.
But Pravda made no such offer.
Pravda knew nothing about it. Boris Komotsky, Pravda’s editor, took to the party’s website to answer, in a piece titled Sen. John McCain wants to answer? saying, “There is only one Pravda in Russia, it is the organ of the Communist Party, and we have heard nothing about the intentions of the repugican senator.”
Oh dear.
First Secretary of the Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov opined via the party’s website in a piece titled, GA Zyuganov – John McCain: “If you support the position of the Communist Party on Syria, then publish your article that “it is surprising that McCain did not bother to inform either the leadership of the party or the editors of Pravda.”
Zyuganov stressed, that neither Pravda nor the Communist Party was in negotiations with McCain to publish an op-ed to answer Putin.
Oh, oh dear.
It turns out that The Cable, Foreign Policy’s website, in its attempt to set up the deal, did not contact Pravda. They contacted pravda.ru, a website which has nothing to do with Pravda or with the Communist Party (Joshua Keating at The Slate calls it “whose content is a kind of cross between WorldNetDaily and the National Enquirer”) instead of gazeta-pravda.ru, which is where you will find THE Pravda.
McCain, who is so up-in-arms over Obama supposedly making the U.S. appear weak and foolish, has done just that with his Pravda faux pas.
Zyuganov says, sure McCain can write something for Pravda. But he has to follow the party line to do so.

Our answer to McCain is this: if you support the position of the Russian Communist Party on Syria, then we will publish your article.

But the Communist view is that Syria is Russia’s ally and that the U.S. is “trying to destroy our last ally in the Middle East, Syria. And one of the most rapacious hawks calling for direct aggression is Senator John McCain.”
John McCain, Zyuganov says, is a “russophobe.”
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Well, that’s only fair. It’s true. And John McCain is an Obamaphobe who wanted to do some grandstanding of his own.
Unfortunately for McCain – or as McCain would put it – for the United States, McCain’s attempt to get some petty revenge on Putin has backfired.
The Russians can laugh, the Communists no doubt have laughed, and even we liberals can laugh. But that doesn’t change the fact that people like McCain occupy positions of power and authority in our national government, and that it is precisely these sorts of schoolboy antics that got us into two wars that lasted a decade apiece the last time the repugicans were in charge.
Be afraid world. Be very afraid.