Haunted Battlefields

The world has been plagued by wars for hundreds of years and each battle also causes mass causalities. Due to these deaths and injuries, many battlefields remain very active with ghosts and spirits. Here are the most haunted battlefields.

Enterovirus D68 Worse Than Ebola?

Is Enterovirus D68 Worse Than Ebola?

Enterovirus is currently causing panic in the United States. What exactly is enterovirus D68, and just how much should we be worried? Tara is here to explain.

Cancer curing berry found in Queensland, Australia

Scientists have been surprised by the rapid cancer-fighting properties of a berry found only in Far North Queensland.
An eight-year study led by Dr Glen Boyle, from the QIMR Berghofer medical research institute in Brisbane, found a compound in the berry could kill head and neck tumors as well as melanomas.
An experimental drug derived from the berry, EBC-46, has so far been used on 300 animals, including cats, dogs and horses.
Dr Boyle said in 75 per cent of cases, the tumor disappeared and had not come back.

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It's a fact ...

In 1910, France banned kissing on French railways because it could cause delays. 

Cave Paintings in Indonesia Redraw Picture of Earliest Art

The dating discovery recasts ancient cave art as a continent-spanning human practice.

Cave paintings on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were found more than 50 years ago, but until now the dates of origin were not known. The art shown here has not been dated, but is stylistically similar to other art in the area now found to be around 40,000 years old.

A hand painted in an Indonesian cave dates to at least 39,900 years ago, making it among the oldest such images in the world, archaeologists reported Wednesday in a study that rewrites the history of art.

The discovery on the island of Sulawesi vastly expands the geography of the first cave artists, who were long thought to have appeared in prehistoric Europe around that time. Reported in the journal Nature, the cave art includes stencils of hands and a painting of a babirusa, or "pig-deer," which may be the world's oldest figurative art.

"Overwhelmingly depicted in Europe and Sulawesi were large, and often dangerous, mammal species that possibly played major roles in the belief systems of these people,"  says archaeologist and study leader Maxime Aubert of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.

The finds from the Maros cave sites on Sulawesi raise the possibility that such art predates the exodus of modern humans from Africa 60,000 or more years ago.

"I predict that even older examples of cave art will be discovered on Sulawesi, and in mainland Asia, and ultimately in our African homeland," says human origins expert Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who was not on the study team.

The oldest dated hand stencil in the world (upper right) and possibly the oldest figurative depiction in cave art—a female babirusa (a hoglike animal also called a pig-deer)—were found in Leang Timpuseng cave in Sulawesi, an island east of Borneo.

Oldest Art

Since the 1950s, scholars have reported hundreds of hand stencils and images of animals in caves on Sulawesi, which were assumed prehistoric but thought to be no more than 12,000 years old, dating to a hunter-gatherer migration to the island.

In the new study, the researchers investigated mineral layers less than 0.4 inches (10 millimeters) thick covering images in seven caves, and in some cases sandwiching them. Trace amounts of radioactive uranium in these mineral layers reveal when water carried the minerals over the cave wall. Finding the ages of these deposits narrows down the time when the images were painted.

The age discovered for the oldest hand stencil in the cave—39,900 years old—is therefore merely the minimum age of the minerals coating the image, meaning the art could be thousands of years older.

A red disk painted in Spain's El Castillo cave is at least 40,800 years old according to the same dating method, making it the oldest known cave art, and a hand stencil there is 37,300 years old. The Sulawesi cave paintings rival these finds in age and appear to belong to a tradition that persisted there as recently as 17,000 years ago.

"We've been shown here that our views have been too 'Euro-centric' about the origins of cave painting," says archaeologist Alistair Pike of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. "Absolutely this changes our views, and is going to make us ask a lot of questions about the causes rather than the origins of cave art."

Maxime Aubert, right, and a team member work inside one of the limestone caves on Sulawesi where ancient cave art was found.

Out of Africa?

In 1880, prehistoric paintings found inside Spain's cave of Altamira galvanized experts and began the study of cave paintings. Hundreds more such sites have turned up in Europe in the past century.

As site after site was found in Europe, the view emerged that modern people must have arrived there from Africa and undergone a cultural shift as they competed with Neanderthals for prey and for caves.

Instead, the newly discovered cave painting suggests that art may have been universal among early modern people, including those who left Africa and traveled across southern Arabia to Indonesia and Australia within the past 50,000 years.

Cave art may have left Africa with early modern humans, the study authors suggest, or possibly it sprang up independently among different groups. The earliest examples of other kinds of art are even older, such as decorative perforated shell beads and pigments that date to more than 75,000 years ago.

"Certainly making hand stencils seems a universal human practice," Pike says. Hands are seen in caves and archaeological sites worldwide, even one in Argentina dating to 9,000 years ago. "Children love to make handprints, even today."

Or art may have served as a kind of social glue. Modern humans migrating out of Africa and facing new habitats, predators, and competition might have needed to travel in larger groups, spurring a need for art as part of the cultural fabric. "One way to display rituals and symbols is with cave art," he says.

The Panel of Hands in El Castillo cave in northern Spain contains a red disk, center, that is dated to be older than 40,800 years, making it the oldest cave art in Europe. The hands and red disks were made by blowing or spitting paint onto the wall.

Santa Maria ... No

UN investigators have found proof that a shipwreck found off northern Haiti in 2003 could not be the Santa Maria, the lost flagship from Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.
Uncesco said a team of experts who explored the site at the request of the Haitian government determined the wreckage was from a more recent vessel for reasons that included the discovery of copper nails and spikes at the site. The Santa Maria would have used components of iron or wood, the agency said.

Wooden-Handled Flint Knife Found in Denmark

A 3,000-year-old flint knife complete with its wooden handle has been uncovered in southern Zealand. “A dagger of this type has never before been found in Denmark,” Anders Rosendahl of the Lolland-Falster Museum told The Copenhagen Post. The knife dates to the Bronze Age, but when the supply of metal could not keep up with demand, artisans crafted tools from old materials with new designs. Similar knives have been found in Germany. Further study of the rare knife could link the two regions. To read about a recently unearthed Bronze Age ceremonial site, see "4,000-Year-Old Ritual Site Discovered in Poland."

Ocean Acidity

Climate Change Has Raised Ocean Acidity by a Quarter

Ocean acidification has risen by a quarter since pre-industrial times as a result of rising carbon emissions, casting a shadow over the seas as a future source of food

Astronomical News

Swirling Cloud at Titan’s Pole is Cold and Toxic

Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Cassini mission have discovered that […]

Clear Skies and Water Vapor Found on Exoplanet

Astronomers using data from three of NASA’s space telescopes — […]

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

First off - no one with any brains wants a Twinkie ... Twinkies and Cockroaches are the only two things that will survive a nuclear blast, but you get the message ...!

 

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Today In History

19		Germanicus, the best loved of Roman princes, dies of poisoning. On his deathbed he accuses Piso, the governor of Syria, of poisoning him.
732		At Tours, France, Charles Martel kills Abd el-Rahman and halts the Muslim invasion of Europe.
1733		France declares war on Austria over the question of Polish succession.
1789		In Versailles France, Joseph Guillotin says the most humane way of carrying out a death sentence is decapitation by a single blow of a blade.
1794		Russian General Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov crushes the rebel Polish army at Maciejowice, Poland.
1845		The U.S. Naval Academy is founded at Annapolis, Md.
1863		The first telegraph line to Denver is completed.
1877		Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer is buried at West Point in New York.
1911		Revolution in China begins with a bomb explosion and the discovery of revolutionary headquarters in Hankow. The revolutionary movement spread rapidly through west and southern China, forcing the abdication of the last Ch'ing emperor, six-year-old Henry Pu-Yi. By October 26, the Chinese Republic will be proclaimed, and on December 4, Premier Yuan Shih-K'ai will sign a truce with rebel general Li Yuan-hung.
1911		The Panama Canal opens.
1933		At Rio de Janeiro, nations of the Western Hemisphere sign a non-aggression and conciliation treaty. President Roosevelt adopts a "good neighbor" policy toward Latin America and announces a policy of nonintervention in Latin American affairs at the December 7th International American Conference at Montevideo, Uruguay.
1941		Soviet troops halt the German advance on Moscow.
1953		The Mutual Defense Treaty between the US and South Korea signed.
1966		U.S. Forces launch Operation Robin, in Hoa Province south of Saigon in South Vietnam, to provide road security between villages.
1970		The Quebec Provincial Minister of Labour, Pierre Laporte, is kidnapped by terrorists.
1971		The London Bridge, built in 1831 and dismantled in 1967, reopens in Lake Havusu City, Arizona, after being sold to Robert P. McCulloch and moved to the United States.
1973		Spiro Agnew resigns the vice presidency amid accusations of income tax evasion. President Richard Nixon names Gerald Ford as the new vice president. Agnew is later convicted and sentenced to three years probation and fined $10,000.
1985		An Egyptian plane carrying hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise ship is intercepted by US Navy F-14s and forced to land at a NATO base in Sicily.
2008		Orakzai bombing, Afghanistan: members of the Taliban drive an explosive-laden truck into a meeting of 600 people discussing ways to rid their area of the Taliban; the bomb kills 110.

Hero Teacher Sends Hungry First Graders Home With Backpacks Full Of Food

Marvin Callahan is a true hero. Callahan has been a teacher for more than 20 years, and lives in New Mexico. Two years ago, Callahan began a program to help feed hungry kids in his class. Using money out of his own pocket, he began stocking snack items for kids who were hungry.“At least, if I couldn’t do anything else, I could at least have food available at school, and my kids could have something to eat,” Callahan told NBC News.
New Mexico has been the highest ranking state for child hunger for the past two years in a row. The problem is widespread through the United States, with three-quarters of teachers reporting that children are showing up to school hungry. Low income families usually have the opportunity for kids to eat lunch and breakfast at school for a reduced or free price. No Kid Hungry conducted a study that found that only about 9.8 million kids of the 20 million kids in the U.S who participate in the free lunch program participate in the free breakfast program. This means kids often only get one meal a day. But what do kids do when they go home and there is no food to eat? Kids told Callahan that they did not want to go home on the weekends because they had no food at home to eat.
“It’s hard for me to go home some weekends when the kids are saying, ‘I don’t want to go home because I don’t have anything at home,'” Callahan told The Huffington Post. “We decided we were going to do something. We got some people together, discussed how we were going to do this, and got some ideas together about what a backpack program would look like.”

So Callahan teamed up with the Comanche school counselor Karin Medina and created a program where they would provide hungry kids a backpack of food to take home on weekends. The program does not have much funding outside of what the Comanche faculty put into it out of their own money. They do receive help from the local community with their project from local organizations and businesses. Retired teachers and other students volunteer to help with the task of feeding an estimated 37 families.Callahan and other Comanche faculty are now looking into setting up a program to provide in need students with warm winter coats and other necessities.

Kay Hagan Wins Debate Amid Her repugican Opponent’s Multiple Blunders

Kay Hagan solidified her lead when she won Tuesday night’s debate.  She was well prepared and assertive.  Unlike her opponent, Hagan answered moderator George Stephanopolis’ questions and stood by her record. This debate delved into the issues with more depth than occurred during the pair’s first debate, further emphasizing that Hagan is clearly more qualified to represent North Carolinians in the Senate.

Hagan successfully cut through Tillis’ teabagger shrieking points and his attempts to spin the radical wingnut agenda he ushered through the legislative assembly as its leader.

She did a masterful job of discrediting Tillis’ record on education.  According to WRAL’s fact checkers.

“The 7 percent teacher pay raise claim has been questioned on several fronts, and some teachers did see sub-1 percent raises. And there is evidence to support that per-pupil spending, particularly when you look at things like textbook funding, hasn’t kept up with student population growth.”

Hagan discredited the radical wingnuts' debunked shrieking point that Common Core was imposed on the states by the Federal Government when she said,  “The Common Core was not put together by the Department of Education in Washington. It was put together by governors and by states.”

Tillis’ attempt to attack Hagan for the Obama Administration’s policy on ISIL was disastrous because it allowed Hagan to point out that he had no solutions.

Once again, Tillis has waffled. He has told the News & Record he had no idea what he would do. He has not articulated one thing, whether he would arm and train the moderate Syrian rebels, what his plan would be.

In direct contrast, to Hagan’s direct answers, Thom Tillis spent most of his time evading the questions George Stephanoplis asked, Twice, Stephanopolis asked Tillis when he would part company with the repugican leadership in the Senate.  Both times Tillis tried to avoid answering the question, giving Hagan an opportunity highlight his evasiveness when she asked him, “You want to ask him your question again?”

He was obviously unprepared since among other things, Tillis placed Hagan on the Foreign Affairs committee.  In fact, Hagan serves on the armed services committee.

Tillis was simply no match for Kay Hagan. That was evident when Tillis tried to attack Hagan’s support of the president’s policies in this exchange.

Tillis: “I assume you’re proud you voted with him 96 percent of the time, I think it’s fair to make this election about his policies.”

Hagan: “One hundred percent of the time Speaker Tillis’ policies have hurt North Carolina,” she said. “He’s gutted education, killed the equal pay bill, no Medicaid expansion.”

During the discussion on marriage equality, Tillis said the state would continue to defend its ban on marriage equality, though he didn’t say why.  However, he tried the wingnuts' favorite go to tactic of fear mongering.

“I also think we’re in a dangerous time in this country where the president has appointed liberal activist judges and Sen. Hagan has confirmed them, and they’re literally trying to legislate from the bench,”

That also backfired because it gave Hagan a chance to point out that Tillis’ defense of the marriage ban is an attack on individual freedom.

I don’t think anybody, including the government, should tell people who they should love.”

Tillis proved to be no match for Hagan during their discussion on jobs.  When Senator Hagan pointed to a bill she worked on with John McCain that would give tax breaks to companies that come back to the U.S. and hire Americans tried another attack that backfired badly.

 “Sen. Hagan’s solution is spending more money,” Tillis said. “It’s very simple: Government needs to get out of the way. We need to get our spending under control and we need to reduce our regulations.”

Hagan blasted Tillis with the results of policies he and repugicans in the General Assembly passed.

“He’s sending our teachers to Texas, our film industry to Georgia, and Medicaid dollars to 28 other states. That’s his failed economic policy.”

Throughout the debate, Hagan proved able to stand her ground, but more importantly, she proved that she cares about the issues that concern North Carolina’s voters, Tillis proved that he didn’t even care enough about North Carolina’s concerns to adequately prepare for this important debate.

PBS science reporter: Faux's Ebola coverage is 'a level of ignorance we should not allow'

Miles O'Brien, the science correspondent for PBS Newshour, lamented on Sunday that he was embarrassed at some of the coverage of Ebola on Faux News that had a "racial component," and seemed intended to scare viewers.

On the Sunday edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, host Brian Stelter looked back at the last week's coverage of Ebola on Faux News. In one case, Faux News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck seemed almost disappointed when an expert downplayed the threat of the disease in the United States.
"We've heard the words 'Ebola in America,' a lot the past few days," Stelter noted. "It's technically true. There is a case of Ebola here in America. But to say Ebola is here, doesn't that sort of inflame people's fears?"
"It borders on irresponsibility when people get on television and start talking that way when they should know better," O'Brien explained. "They should do their homework and they should report in a responsible manner."
"Unfortunately, it's a very competitive business, the business we're in, and there is a perception that by hyping up this threat, you draw people's attention," he added. "That's a shame to even say that and I get embarrassed for our brethren in journalism."
Stelter also pointed to Faux News host Andrea Tantaros, who had warned viewers that West Africans might come to the U.S. infected with Ebola, and then go to a "witch doctor" instead of the hospital.
"We could digress into what motivated that and perhaps the racial component of all this, the arrogance, the first world versus third world statements and implications of just that," O'Brien remarked. "It's offensive on several levels and it reflects, frankly, a level of ignorance which we should not allow in our media and in our discourse."

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The repugicans Get Busted for Using ISIL to Cover Up Their Record of Failure

Desperate repugicans have turned to their old standby, the shrub safety net -- terror. But they keep getting busted because they are resorting to lies …

House repugicans can’t very well run on their record or discuss policy, and they finally realized that they can’t run against Obamacare either. It turns out that people don’t want to die just because they can’t afford medical care. Insert repugican cabal shocked face here and never mind that you pay for their very good healthcare insurance.

So repugicans have turned to their old standby, the shrub safety net — TERROR.

But they keep getting busted because they are resorting to lies in order to scare you into voting for them. It’s odd that they run on terror when the biggest terrorist strike in our history happened under their pretender, but then they figure they can use the mere idea that it might happen again to convince you to vote repugican. In truth, if preventing terrorism were your thing, you’d be voting for Democrats, who have done plenty more to prevent actual terrorism and whose president actually got Osama, and who never sold you a pack of lies about WMD.

Perhaps the most offensive move to date was in Arizona, where Wendy Rogers, who is challenging Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, “is using part of an ISIS execution video in a new political advertisement to attack her opponent’s national security record. The ad begins with a clip featuring a member of the Islamic State holding a knife as he stands over American journalist James Foley kneeling in the desert sun, moments before he is beheaded.”

We are to believe that somehow if she were elected, this would not have happened. This from the cabal that is pro-enhanced interrogation techniques that experts say only give terrorists more ammo with which to recruit new members.

Rogers’ ad runs:

“Terrorist threats are growing. Are we secure? Are we protected?” says an announcer as other images of the Islamic State group are shown. “Keeping us safe and secure is Congress’ job. Kyrsten Sinema hasn’t done her job. … She’s allowed her liberal agenda to get in the way of our safety.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did a round up of the latest busts of the inaccurate fear-mongering:

The ads from the national repugican congressional coven have been called misleading,” “significant distortions,” “misleading to the point of being false,” a “stretch,” The repugican “spin,” and attempts “to take advantage of global volatility and the understandable fear surrounding it for [repugican] electoral purposes.” And now, their nationally touted candidates are taking it one step further by using footage of the tragic beheading of journalist James Foley.

This is the equivalent of the Romney glee over Benghazi, as repugicans rub their hands together in pleasure at the thought of a beheading of an American just because they can use it to distract voters from their failed records.

Let’s see. According to repugicans, whose rash, scatter-shot budget cuts are responsible for a lack of security around the world and at home, only they can keep you safe from an event like 911, which happened on their watch. Of course, we wouldn’t have been in Iraq to create ISIL in the power vacuum we left behind after the shrub signed SOFA agreement to leave had the shrub and the repugican cabal not lied to the public about Weapons of Mass Destruction.

But don’t think, patriots, just FEEL THE FEAR and vote Republican!

And remember, it’s patriotic in repugicanese to politicize every tragedy that comes down the pike, including a virus that is killing people. Wingnuts have now renamed Ebola “Obola”, as if it’s Obama’s fault.  It’s as if the whole Anthrax thing never happened under the shrub, when we were told it was unpatriotic to blame anyone for the danger we found ourselves in — but don’t open any envelopes from someone you don’t know. Never mind that the shrub White House said the Antrhax came from inside the country and thus was more under their purview than a virus making its way around the world is under Obama’s, but wave that flag or else get Dixie Chicked.

The repugicans have managed to convince themselves that it will be harder for terrorists to infiltrate a country divided and a government in chaos due to massive, unplanned budget cuts. Let us not forget that as a special bonus, they go out of their way to inflame said terrorists and then run screaming in the other direction while pointing their fingers at Obama when it works.

Mike Huckabee Says wingnuts Shouldn’t Have to Accept ‘Ungodly’ Constitutional Laws

by Allen Clifton

It’s hard to believe that once upon a time I thought Mike Huckabee was a fairly level-headed wingnut. I’m not exactly sure of the year, but I remember using him as an example of a repugican who I didn’t think was all that bad.
Wow, how times have changed.
Now I’ll admit, I’ve never been the biggest Mike Huckabee follower. But I don’t ever remember him being this radical just a few years ago. Maybe he was and I just didn’t notice it – who knows.
Recently, while speaking with Vision America’s Rick Scarborough, Huckabee continued the usual wingnut nonsense about our Constitution being based on “godly” principles and how laws should be based on the bible.
He said, “We have people who say ‘well, the courts have ruled on abortion, we just have to live with it,’ or ‘the courts have ruled on same-sex marriage, we just have to live with it.’ And I would suggest, no we don’t! We shouldn’t just accept things that are ungodly and that will cause us to have to stand before dog with bloody hands.”
Yes, that’s Mike Huckabee telling conservatives that if our justice system doesn’t side with their radical wingnut religious delusions, they shouldn’t accept those rulings.
Whenever a wingnut brings up the issue of christianity and our Constitution, I just go back to the one fact they can’t dispute: The words “christianity” or “christian” don’t appear in our Constitution even once. 
These men were supposedly such devout christians, so enamored with the idea of creating a christian nation according to people like Mike Huckabee, yet they didn’t include any mention of christianity in our Bill of Rights?
For those words to not be present anywhere in our Constitution wasn’t by accident, it was by design.
But people like Huckabee continue to hope for a nation that they wish existed, but never has. And that’s really the root of the problem when dealing with conservatives. They base their ideology on what they wished the United States was, instead of what it actually is. They want this country to be based on christianity, even though our Constitution clearly states that we are not to formally establish any kind of religious rule over Americans.
Yet that’s exactly what repugicans continue to try to do.
Because when it’s all said and done, wingnuts believe in a version of the United States that never has actually existed – and hopefully never will.

Scott Brown (a repugican, of course) equates child tax credits, oil industry subsidies

by Steve Benen

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) faced off against Scott Brown (r-Mass.) in a New Hampshire debate last night, and choosing the most amazing part is surprisingly difficult.

We could, for example, start with Brown’s odd boast that he’s pro-contraception – a position he says he’s held “since I was 18 years old” – despite the fact that he agrees with the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling. Or maybe we should kick things off with the fact that Brown has now changed his mind, once again, about whether he believes in climate change.

But for my money, the real treat was hearing Scott Brown talk about taxpayer subsidies to the oil industry.

Shaheen argued that the already shrinking deficit could be even smaller by closing some existing tax loopholes, including billions of dollars in tax breaks the extraordinarily profitable oil industry receives but doesn’t need. “There’s real money there, and if you add it up, you begin to see the impact it would have,” the Democrat said.

The repugican, running in a new state two years after being rejected by his previous state, didn’t quite see it that way.

Brown wasn’t buying it, however, saying that going after “fraud, waste and abuse” was a better idea. He also lumped all loopholes into one great big category, and suggested they should be left alone. […]

“What’s a loophole? Well, the investment tax credit is a loophole. The R&D tax credit is a loophole, the child care tax credit, the homeowner interest deduction,” he said.

Wait, did Brown really equate the child care tax credit with oil-industry subsidies? Why, yes, actually he did.

I suppose at a certain level, this was a step in the right direction for the Republican. Two years ago, running in Massachusetts, the then-senator argued publicly, “Oil companies don’t get subsidies…. I’m positive.”

Regrettably, Brown had no idea what he was talking about. Not only do oil companies receive subsidies, but Brown voted to protect them.

Two years later, the former senator has apparently evolved a bit – he no longer denies the subsidies’ existence, but rather, thinks they’re effectively the same thing as child tax credits and the home-interest mortgage deduction. I imagine a New Hampshire family struggling to get by might be annoyed by the comparison – ExxonMobil doesn’t need the taxpayer subsidy, but the child tax credit will probably make a real difference in that household – but Brown doesn’t appear to care.

As for the repugican’s belief that the key to deficit reduction is tackling “fraud, waste, and abuse,” that’s probably the laziest cliche in American politics. Brown doesn’t want to raise taxes; he doesn’t want to close loopholes; and he can’t identify spending cuts.

Brown’s answer was the equivalent of a student asked to give a report on a book he hasn’t read.