September 02, 2010

Bufo Fowleri out










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Location:W Main St,Manchester,United States

You Can Shave The Baby

Classic WTFery: Shave the Baby! - Picture Is Unrelated - WTF Pictures and Videos

Suspicious Fire Ignites Houston Voting Fraud Scandal

Suspicious Fire Ignites Houston Voting Fraud Scandal - Christopher Helman - Southwest Bureau - Forbes


We have a voting scandal brewing here in Houston. On Friday a warehouse fire destroyed nearly all of Harris County’s 10,000 electronic voting machines. Suspicious? Absolutely.

Last week came allegations from Harris County voter registrar Leo Vasquez that Houston Votes had engaged in potentially fraudulent activity, including falsifying government documents and submitting multiple voter registrations for the same people. This means that in at least one reported case, a single person was registered to vote six times.

Vasquez compared the irregularities to those pinned on the ACORN group during the 2008 election cycle. “Houston Votes is the voter registration machine of the ‘Texans Together Education Fund.’ Houston Votes and Texans Together have effectively emerged as our area’s new ‘ACORN’ organization,” Vasquez reportedly said last week.

Fred Lewis, the president of Texans Together, told the Houston Chronicle that the allegations were baseless and that Vasquez should be investigated for trying to suppress voter registration.

Trainwreck: AZ Governor Jan Brewer blows her opening remarks during televised debate

You might remember her as the governor who signed into law the draconian anti-immigrant legislation.


Trainwreck Alert | Talking Points Memo

Another Gulf Coast oil platform has exploded

Early reports suggest no leakage.

Coast Guard: Platform on fire in Gulf; 13 workers rescued – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

An oil production platform has exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana, with 12 people overboard and one missing, the Coast Guard said Thursday morning.

Rescue attempts are under way for at least 12 people, Coast Guard spokesman John Edwards told CNN. 13 people were on board the production platform total, Edwards said, noting 12 have been accounted for, but one person was missing.

The accident took place 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana on the Vermilion Oil production platform 380, which is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy.

The Coast Guard has multiple helicopters, an airplane and several Coast Guard cutters en route. It's unknown if there are any injuries.

Video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop

YouTube - Video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop

This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.

September 01, 2010

Armed gunman storms Discovery Channel. takes hostage

As you would expect from a crazy, violent, loner his demands are very weird. People are rushing to label him an "eco-terrorist" or to blame his actions on those who fearmonger against immigrants. He doesn't fit comfortably in either group, to be sure.

Note that something about this is making the Free Republic people freak out and delete a whole lot of comments.

Think Progress -- Purported Eco-Terrorist Angered Over ‘Immigration Pollution And Anchor Baby Filth’

This is James Lee in 2008, protesting outside the Discovery Channel headquarters.


This afternoon, a gunman entered the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, MD and appears to have taken at least one person hostage. Among his various bizarre, eco-related demands, one relates directly to immigration. The alleged hostage-taker, James Jay Lee, calls for the elimination of “anchor baby filth” and “immigration pollution”:

Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

Apple launching new social network, "Ping"

Questions abound. Will it be a Facebook killer? Will it suffer under the same Puritanical no-sex rules that the app store has?

Apple - iTunes - Ping: Social Network for Music

How Darwin and Hooker terraformed an island

Darwin's best-kept secret


Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens - where Hooker's father was director - shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.

The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The "cinder" would become a garden.

So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.

Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot.

Back in England, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution were busily uprooting the Garden of Eden.

But on a green hill far away, a new "island Eden" was being created.


Dr. Cliff Dowman Explains A Marxist Take on The Economic Crisis

Wonky but fascinating.

Dr. Cliff Dowman Explains A Marxist Take on The Economic Crisis.

Vanity Fair's profile of Sarah Palin is a must-read

Sarah Palin the Sound and the Fury | Politics | Vanity Fair


Sarah Palin’s connection with her audience is complete. People who admire her believe she is just like them, and this conviction seems to satisfy their curiosity about the objective facts of her life. Those whose curiosity has not been satisfied have their work cut out for them. Palin has been a national figure for barely two years—John McCain selected her as his running mate in August 2008. Her on-the-record statements about herself amount to a litany of untruths and half-truths. With few exceptions—mostly Palin antagonists in journalism and politics whose beefs with her have long been out in the open—virtually no one who knows Palin well is willing to talk about her on the record, whether because they are loyal and want to protect her (a small and shrinking number), or because they expect her prominence to grow and intend to keep their options open, or because they fear she will exact revenge, as she has been known to do. It is an astonishing phenomenon. Colleagues and acquaintances by the hundreds went on the record to reveal what they knew, for good or ill, about prospective national candidates as diverse as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Al Gore, and Barack Obama. When it comes to Palin, people button their lips and slink away.

She manages to be at once a closed book and a constant noisemaker. Her press spokesperson, Pam Pryor, barely speaks to the press, and Palin shrewdly cultivates a real and rhetorical antagonism toward what she calls “the lamestream media.” The Palin machine is supported by organizations that do much of their business under the cover of pseudonyms and shell companies. In accordance with the terms of a reported $1 million annual contract with Fox News, Palin regularly delivers canned commentary on that network. But in the year since she abruptly resigned the governorship of Alaska, in order to market herself full-time—earning an estimated $13 million in the process—she has submitted to authentic, unpaid interviews with only a handful of journalists, none of whom have posed notably challenging questions. She keeps tight control of her pronouncements, speaking only in settings of her own choosing, with audiences of her own selection, and with reporters kept at bay. (Despite many requests, neither Palin nor her current staff would comment for this article.) She injects herself into the news almost every day, but on a strictly one-way basis, through a steady stream of messages on Twitter and Facebook. The press plays along. Palin is the only politician whose tweets are regularly reported as news by TV networks. She is the only one who has been able to significantly change the course of debate on a major national issue (health-care reform) with a single Facebook posting (in which she accused the Obama administration, falsely, of wanting to set up a “death panel”).

The War in Iraq is over, but what was it for?

On NPR yesterday, after Obama's speech, they had a bunch of NeoCons and conservative politicians critique the speech. No balance, of course, this is NPR after all and all of their political commentary comes from the Right these days. But I was struck that Douglas Feith--one of the architects of the war in Iraq--complained that Obama didn't spend enough time in the speech talking about what we gained from the war, what the successes were.

It's appalling.

Billions wasted. American credibility destroyed. Our economy nose-dived. Thousands of American troops dead. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. And for what? Hussein is dead, but the country is in shambles. America is broke, but many multi-national corporations have been enriched due to support & rebuilding contracts (Halliburton, Blackwater, etc).

Joe. My. God.: The Iraq War May Be Over, But Don't Forget The Lies That Got Us There

Trailer: Burlesque the movie

Starring Christina Aguilera, Cher, and Kristen Bell. It looks like Showgirls 2010 meets the burlesque revival. But I have always had a soft spot for Aguilera and this looks pretty fun.

CEOs at companies that laid off the most workers were paid the most

Perverse incentives.

Think Progress -- REPORT: CEOs At Top 50 Companies That Laid Off Most Workers Raked In Millions In Compensation


“I’m afraid that this year’s report will raise just about everybody’s blood pressure,” lead author Sarah Anderson said. Indeed, the report found that “CEOs of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home nearly $12 million on average in 2009.” Those CEOs’ combined compensation totaled $598 million, while at the same time, their companies eliminated 531,363 jobs despite reporting a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009.

More staggering is the level of executive pay, according to IPS:

[A]fter adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.

American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s.

Shareholders file class action lawsuit against American Apparel

Pwned! San Francisco Law Firm Barroway Topaz Drops the Hammer on American Apparel -- San Francisco Citizen

As here, today, in the 415, where the San Francisco law office of Barroway Topaz Kessler Meltzer & Check, LLP right there at 580 California Street has just announced such a suit.

What’s the beef? Well:

“…the Company failed to disclose and misrepresented the following material adverse facts which were known to defendants or recklessly disregarded by them: (1) that they had made “diligent efforts” to comply with labor and employment regulations, when in fact they had not done so; (2) that they failed to disclose to investors, and made false statements regarding facts surrounding the Company’s illegal hiring practices and its effect on the Company’s operating costs and margins; (3) that they failed to disclose or indicate that the Company lacked adequate internal and financial controls; (4) that they failed to disclose that, as a result of the foregoing, the Company’s financial statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times; and (5) that they failed to disclose that, as a result of the foregoing, their statements regarding the Company’s prospects were false and misleading at all relevant times.”

Photo Gallery: The Oval Office gets a makeover

It no longer features grandma couches that smell like Bush's flopsweat. Instead it looks like Crate & Barrel tastefully co-opted the place. And for the record, the remodel was paid for by a non-profit, not by taxpayer money,

Check Out the Fancy Oval Office Makeover!

Gigantic jellyfish defends seas from tiny, jerk jellyfish

Zoologger: Death by world's longest animal - life - 01 September 2010 - New Scientist



The lion's mane jellyfish is the largest jellyfish known and a contender for the longest animal of all time. Its bell can be 2.5 metres across, and its tentacles can stretch over 30 metres – about the same length as a blue whale. This is 10 metres longer than the tentacles of the famous Portuguese man-of-war – which in any case is not a true jellyfish but a hydrozoan.

Now Aino Hosia of the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway, and Josefin Titelman of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have found that captive lion's manes will readily prey on sea walnuts – transparent animals of the comb jelly type and a voracious invaders of the world's oceans – and may help to control their numbers in the wild.

The sea walnut is native to the western Atlantic, but has now spread to the North Sea and even to the chill waters of the Baltic. It feeds on tiny plankton, devastating their populations – and in turn it brings about crashes in the numbers of fish that depend on the plankton for food. Like many species invading new territories, it had been thought to have avoided significant predation – but no longer.

Things You Think - Music by Ben Folds, Lyrics by Nick Hornby, Peformed by Folds and Pomplamoose

Hornby (High Fidelity) wrote all the lyrics on Ben Fold's next album. Via Waxy.

YouTube - Ben Folds, Nick Hornby, & Pomplamoose VideoSong!!!!

Via Waxy: Illegal Art - STAY FREE'S ILLEGAL ART COMPILATION CD

The .mp3s can be downloaded, buy if you support sampling you can buy a copy from Illegal Art for $9. Via Waxy.

Audio

STAY FREE'S ILLEGAL ART COMPILATION CD

01 Negativland - U2: Special Edit Radio Mix (5:46)
02 Biz Markie - Alone Again (2:52) *
03 People Like Us - Swinglargo (5:20)
04 Culturcide - They Aren't the World (4:30) *
05 The Evolution Control Committee - Rocked by Rape (4:28)
06 Beastie Boys - Rock Hard (4:53) *
07 Dummy Run - f.d.(1:23)
08 John Oswald - black (2:01)
09 Corporal Blossom - White Christmas (3:19)
10 Tape-beatles - Reality of Matter (2:37)
11 Public Enemy - Psycho of Greed (3:11)
12 The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony (4:35) *
13 Wobbly - Clawing Your Eyes Out Down to Your Throat (1:21)
14 De La Soul - Transmitting Live from Mars (1:07) *
15 Buchanan and Goodman - The Flying Saucer (4:18) *
16 The JAMs - The Queen and I (4:50) *
17 Elastica - Connection (2:20) *
18 Steinski and Mass Media - The Motorcade Sped On (4:26) *
19 Invisibl Skratch Piklz - white label edit (5:30) *
20 Xper.Xr - Wu-chu-tung (1:43)
21 Boone Bischoff - Happy Birthday To You (0:28)

* used without permission

LINER NOTES

Music has always been a craft of borrowing. In traditional, or folk, music, melodies and lyrics were handed down from generation to generation. At every stage, musicians would change the tune or substitute words at will, adapting songs to their own situations.

Like their predecessors, the artists featured here have drawn from the music around them--whether by borrowing a guitar riff or taking a digital sample--to create something new. But unlike their folk ancestors, they all run the risk of getting sued....

For our culture to be a space for free expression and for creativity to flourish, audio artists must be able to build on bits and pieces of preexisting music. While the "fair use" doctrine allows artists to appropriate other works, it does so only in cases of commentary or parody. Fair use doesn't apply to the majority of "second-takers," those artists who reuse sounds without directly referring to the original.

Most of these tracks would never have existed if the artists had adhered to copyright law. Many other works might never be heard unless we act soon to grant artists the right to create them.

August 31, 2010

As long as the Tea Party has an enemy they have no need for policy

This is easily the best and clearest look at the soul of the Tea Party--of its motivating force--as I've ever seen. Make sure and read the part after the jump.

the bomb bag • Restoring Honor (and Christ (but mostly Christ))

You know, I always saw the Tea Party as racist. How could you not? And they declared over-and-over again that they weren’t racist and that we were being reverse racists for claiming that they were racists. Well…I still think they’re by-and-large racist but I don’t they they want to bring us back to 1963 or 1861 or 1776. After listening to the speeches and observing the people and seeing their tears and hearing their cheers I think what they really want, at the end of the day, is a Theocracy.

A Theocracy.

The only thing more dangerous than 100k racists wanting to “take the country back” is 100k zealots who want to establish a Theocracy. Who honestly believe that fundamental Christianity should be the foundation of every decision this country makes.

This goes beyond the idea of having an official State Religion, something that is in-and-of-itself dangerous. Having a theocracy would put us on the same list with a handful of other countries, including Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban.

What happens to Jews and Muslims under this proposed theocracy? What happens to the non-believers? Forced conversions? Stonings? Or maybe a more “diplomatic” solution, like increased taxes or segregation or deportation.

*via Kevin Church*

Army boot camps to add yoga, cut back on the running

The Tao of Boot Camp : Lawyers, Guns & Money

That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.

This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan.
. . .
The rationale for the changes are the general levels of ill-fitness the Army sees in large percentages of new recruits. Youth raised on sugary sodas and saturated fat lack the bone density and endurance to safely train the old way. As I discussed last November when the DOD released its report “Too Fat to Fight,” this public health problem is also a national security problem and I concur with our generals that it ought to be solved by stronger federal intervention into – and funding for – healthy food in public schools.

What has caused the bedbug resurgence?

Bedbugs Crawl, They Bite, They Baffle Scientists - NYTimes.com


Ask any expert why the bugs disappeared for 40 years, why they came roaring back in the late 1990s, even why they do not spread disease, and you hear one answer: “Good question.”

“The first time I saw one that wasn’t dated 1957 and mounted on a microscope slide was in 2001,” said Dini M. Miller, a Virginia Tech cockroach expert who has added bedbugs to her repertoire.

The bugs have probably been biting our ancestors since they moved from trees to caves. The bugs are “nest parasites” that fed on bats and cave birds like swallows before man moved in.
. . .
Why the bugs disappeared for so long and exploded so fast after they reappeared is another question. The conventional answer — that DDT was banned — is inadequate. After all, mosquitoes, roaches and other insects rebounded long ago.

Much has to do with the bugs’ habits. Before central heating arrived in the early 1900s, they died back in winter. People who frequently restuffed their mattresses or dismantled their beds to pour on boiling water — easier for those with servants — suffered less, said the bedbug historian Michael F. Potter of the University of Kentucky.

Early remedies were risky: igniting gunpowder on mattresses or soaking them with gasoline, fumigating buildings with burning sulfur or cyanide gas. (The best-known brand was Zyklon B, which later became infamous at Auschwitz.)

Oakland extending school days by three hours for some middle schools

2 Oakland schools extend school day to 9 hours


School became a full-time job for sixth-graders at two Oakland middle schools where students clocked in on the first day of school Monday at 8 a.m. and headed home at 5 p.m., about three hours later than other students in the district.

The new nine-hour school day might sound like an adolescent nightmare, but district officials hope that more time in class will help boost the test scores of students at United for Success Academy and Elmhurst Community Preparatory School, both considered by the state to be among the 188 worst schools in California.

But keeping students in class an extra three hours won't come cheap, costing the district up to $2,400 more per school year for each of the 270 or so sixth-graders attending the schools. A nonprofit organization will run the extended program.

Photo: Hurricane Earl as seen from space

One of the astronauts took this picture. In space, because that's where astronauts live, and posed it to his twitter feed. We live in very odd times.

Joe. My. God.: Hurrican Earl Via Twitternaut

Obama is a Radical Christian Muslim

1:20-ish is the moneyshot.

Look At This Fucking Teabagger - tytnation: Glenn Beck Rally Attendee Exposed

Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" Rally: Interviews with Participants

AKA Glenn Beck's WhiteStock.

Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Honor' Rally - Interviews With Participants

August 30, 2010

PZ Myers -- Speaking Truth to Absurdity

onegoodmove: P.Z. Myers - Speaking Truth to Absurdity

Focus on the Family fighting anti-bullying measures in our schools

Her argument is basically, "If you don't let kids abuse gay kids for being gay, then gay kids might think being gay is okay"? And that's pretty damn evil.

Focus on Family says anti-bullying efforts in schools push gay agenda - The Denver Post


Public schools increasingly convey that homosexuality is normal and should be accepted, Cushman said, while opposing viewpoints by conservative Christians are portrayed as bigotry.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the national Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, agrees with a big part of that statement.

"Yes, we want LGBT students afforded full respect," she said.

GLSEN says its agenda is to ensure safe schools and acceptance for all students, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, race, national origin or ability.

"Bullying is a serious public health crisis in this country, according to no less an authority than the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services," Byard said.

Better Book Titles

A blog devoted to retitling popular books.

Better Book Titles

Kate Beaton expands Nancy Drew covers

Hark, a vagrant: 278