Health care took a bigger bite out of Americans’ budgets in 2013 than in 2012, even though Americans spent less overall as their incomes decreased. A new report from the Department of Labor found that, in 2013, overall U.S. consumer spending declined .7 percent, after a 3.5 percent rise in 2012. Many constituent areas saw big drops (for example: clothes, 7.6 percent and entertainment, 4.7 percent), but spending in two areas rose despite the overall decline. The WSJ:Democrats have succeeded in holding down income growth, while increasing the costs of healthcare. Maybe we should stop calling it "Obamacare" and go to "Democratcare."
[...] spending continued to increase for health care and housing. Housing was the only major category to increase more quickly in 2013 than in 2012.
The data paint a grim picture of the health of the American consumer, with the average “consumer unit” (which includes families, single persons living alone, or couples who share expenses) reporting less income in 2013 than 2012. The data also add to evidence that many Americans are being squeezed by rising costs of health care and housing. [...]
Incomes are stagnating for many workers as the job market operates at diminished capacity, and even if overall inflation is low, the costs of life’s necessities continue to climb.
Supporters of Obamacare took a victory lap when the first premium numbers were released for 2015 and the increases weren’t quite so “scary” as first thought. But there’s a reason for that. AsUSA Today reports, premiums aren’t going up so much because policyholders are seeing big hikes to out-of-pocket expenses:I agree with the notion of a low premium-high deductible health insurance plan; it put the responsibility of not using health care frivolously on the user. However, keeping the premium high, and raising deductibles serves no one.
A report out today puts numbers behind what hit many workers when they signed up for health insurance during open enrollment last year: deductible shock.In other words, Obamacare isn’t “bending the cost curve” as promised. It’s simply shifting health care costs from one sort of expense to another. Instead of Americans paying more in premiums, they’re going to be paying more out of pocket. Which would be such a bad thing if the underlying problem – the skyrocketing cost of obtaining health care itself – didn’t remain.
Premiums for employer-paid insurance are up 3% this year, but deductibles are up nearly 50% since 2009, the report by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows.
The average deductible this year is $1,217, up from $826 five years ago, Nearly 20% of workers overall have to pay at least $2,000 before their insurance kicks in, while workers at firms with 199 or fewer employees are feeling the pain of out-of-pocket costs even more: A third of these employees at small companies pay at least $2,000 deductibles.
“Skin-in-the-game insurance” is becoming the norm,says Kaiser Family Foundation CEO Drew Altman, referring to the higher percentage of health care costs employees have to share.
The Washington Post’s Jason Millman also tells readers from around the country that their imaginations have not gotten the best of them — they really are paying more for health care, if your employer provides insurance coverage. . .Of course. Obamacare, first and foremost, is a redistributionist scheme for health care. The people who work for their health care pay for the health care of those who don't work, or work less.
Last week, we finally learned the prices for the new benchmark plans for Obamacare. The good news: Prices are falling slightly. The bad news: Contrary to optimistic early reports, that doesn’t mean that everyone’s costs are falling; consumers will have to be attentive to make sure that their costs don’t go up. The worse news: We won’t actually know what effect the Affordable Care Act is having on insurance prices until 2017, when a bunch of temporary subsidies for insurers expire.But Obamacare has been a good deal for the bureaucrats who implemented it, however badly.
The important thing to keep in mind is that when the “benchmark rate” goes down, that doesn’t mean that the cost of the old benchmark plan has fallen. It just means that whatever plan is now the second-cheapest "silver" plan on the exchanges is cheaper than whatever was the second-cheapest plan last year.
Jonathan Blum, described as "the top health official responsible for reforming Medicare under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform," has passed through the revolving door, becoming an executive vice president at insurance giant CareFirst, the Baltimore Business Journal reports.Time for Instapundit's revolving door tax.
Obamacare has proven a goldmine for the congressmen, congressional staff and administration officials who crafted the bill. Dozens of these public servants have since gone to work for the companies subsidized, mandated and regulated by the Affordable Care Act.
A few weeks back, I wrote here about taxing the revolving door that takes people back and forth between the federal government and the various industries that federal government agencies regulate. My proposal was to put a surtax -- 50%, say, or maybe 75% -- on the post-government earnings of federal officials in excess of their government salaries for the first five years: Leave a federal job paying $100,000 a year for an industry job paying $600,000 a year, and you'd pay a $250,000 surtax. After all, with folks leaving the Obama administration, as they left previous administrations, for salaries several times what they earned in the public sector, and with excessive entanglement between government and business a growing problem, why not use the power of the IRS to modify behavior?Democrats looking for reelection in fall are desperately trying to avoid being tainted by their votes for the beast:
The politically divisive legacy of ObamaCare has vulnerable Democrats trying to downplay their past support of the legislation ahead of Election Day – by criticizing the president’s execution of the law or by sidestepping the issue altogether.Obama is a lame duck. No one gets to vote on him again. "Democratcare" is has a nice ring to it, as well as the ring of truth: Watch 'em Burn:
Lately, Democrats in tough Senate races have been slamming President Obama for breaking his pledge that everyone could keep their health plans and doctors "no matter what." Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, locked in a race with Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, says of Obama in a recent ad: "This is a promise you made. This is a promise you should keep."
Landrieu previously offered legislation requiring people be allowed to keep their plans and doctors and not be forced into ObamaCare, though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to schedule a vote on it.
Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina sponsored similar legislation, which she noted during a recent debate, saying "as soon as this came to my attention last fall, I immediately sponsored legislation allowing those plans to become permanent." Hagan, though, nevertheless voted against a 2010 Republican effort, which the White House threatened to veto, to limit such cancellations.
Other Democrats are trying to sidestep the issue by talking health care without even mentioning the president or the Affordable Care Act.
Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who is running against Rep. Tom Cotton in a very tight race, talks in a new ad about when he was diagnosed with cancer and wanted an experimental surgery his health insurance didn't want to pay for.
"No one should be fighting an insurance company while you're fighting for your life,” he said. “That's why I helped pass a law that prevents insurance companies from canceling your policy if you get sick, or deny coverage for preexisting conditions." Not once did he say “ObamaCare” or the “Affordable Care Act.”
Don Shomette was about 10 years old in when he first encountered the “ghost fleet” of Mallows Bay.
He was aboard a jon boat with his father and brother, coming down the Potomac River from a shoreline campsite in the mid-1950s. It was a gray morning. The water was churning and visibility was poor. On the river, they met an old waterman setting out crab pots who asked if they were trying to find the ghost fleet.
“I’ll never forget it,” Shomette said. “The fog was so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Then this big brown bow comes rising out of the mist right in front of us.”
This is one place in the Bay I haven't seen yet that's still on my list. I hear the fishing is pretty good in there. I wonder if there are Snakeheads?
The big wooden vessel was one among hundreds of ships whose remains still rest in the relatively shallow waters of Mallows Bay, on the Maryland shore of the river about 30 miles south of Washington, DC.
Most are historic wooden steamships created for service in World War I, but many others lie among them — including schooners, workboats, barges, and what may be a longboat from the Revolutionary War.
The impression it made on young Shomette has lasted a lifetime, spurring him to research, paddle and promote the site to historians, archaeologists and outdoor enthusiasts.
“There’s still a sense of discovery here,” Shomette said.
Shomette is part of a team whose efforts may establish a national marine sanctuary at Mallows Bay. If they succeed, Mallows Bay would be the first national marine sanctuary in the Chesapeake Bay region and earn a place among the 13 sanctuaries that exist nationwide.
National marine sanctuaries protect marine areas of special national significance. They are valued for their ecosystems, cultural assets — typically shipwrecks — or both. Conservation is an important goal, but sanctuaries may still include recreational uses like boating and fishing and provide educational programs for visitors.
Also in today's Live at Five, in the little section "Famous for Being Famous" was an item on two of my "favorite" singer subjects: Katy Perry Slams Unnamed Mean Girl After Rumor Of Taylor Swift Feud. Ah, the perfect lead in for the 6 AM eye opener...In the early hours of Tuesday, Sept. 9, Katy Perry took to Twitter to warn her 56.7 million followers of an unnamed mean girl — less than 24 hours after fresh speculation began of a supposed feud between Perry and Swift.
"Watch out for the Regina George in sheep's clothing…" Perry, 29, tweeted without context on Tuesday, referencing the lead character and ultimate mean girl, played by Rachel McAdams, who faced off against Cady Heron, played by Lindsay Lohan, in the hit 2004 comedy Mean Girls.
The cryptic words followed widespread chatter that there is tension between the "This Is How We Do" performer and Swift, 24.And to Taylor Swift, not as amply endowed as Katy, at making a valiant effort to revive the popularity of the mini-skirt. And pretty decent legs, too!
The drama started when the "Shake It Off" singer gave a revealing cover story interview for the new issue of Rolling Stone, and at one point during the sit-down, spoke tantalizingly of issues she has with another famous female artist.
Said artist is the subject of a song called "Bad Blood," which is featured on Swift's upcoming album, 1989. Explaining the song's inspiration, she told Rolling Stone, "For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not. She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, 'Are we friends, or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?'… She did something so horrible. I was like, 'Oh, we're just straight-up enemies.' And it wasn't even about a guy! It had to do with business. She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I'm surprisingly non-confrontational — you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It's awkward, and I don't like it."
While Swift mentioned that the feud wasn't about a boy, she and Perry both famously dated John Mayer, and Rolling Stone notes that when "pressed," Swift said there was a personal aspect to the drama, "but I don't think there would be any personal problem if she weren't competitive."Really, neither of them do much for me in terms of music, although a few of Katy's hits have been a bit catchy. I liked Taylor before she switched to pop. As somebody else once said: "At some point you've made enough money".
When a crew of biologists from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources hauled a gill net out of the Marshyhope Creek in late August, what they hauled in was more than the catch of the day: It may have been the catch of their careers.
One of the nets contained two “ripe” — ready to spawn — Atlantic sturgeon. One was a 7-foot 3-inch, 154-pound female. The other was a 5-foot 2-inch, 70-pound male. The female was filled with black eggs, and the male was leaking sperm.
. . .
The recent catch ended more than two years of frustration for the biologists. Fishermen have reported seeing sturgeon jumping in the Marshyhope for several years. Last fall, one landed in the boat of two anglers.
But crews from the DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had — until Aug. 28 — failed to net any sturgeon. The previous week, in fact, Stence and his crew saw one jump only about 40 feet from their boat, but they were unable to net it.
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| Not Marshyhope Creek (note mountains) |
Actual proof of spawning would require finding recently spawned “young of year” fish in the river. Right now, Stence said, no surveys exist in the vicinity of the Marshyhope that would catch young of year sturgeon. Now, with evidence that suggests potential spawning activity, the fishery service will consider starting one, he said.People very occasionally hook big sturgeon in the bay. Whether or not they are fish that spawn locally, or wandering migrants from remaining viable populations isn't really well known.
It’s also unknown where the sturgeon came from. They could be remnants of a native Maryland population that has gone undetected for decades. It is possible, some have suggested, that they are James River fish that have wandered up the Bay. Another possibility is that they stem from a small batch of juvenile Hudson River fish that were released in the Nanticoke in 1996.
Those questions could be answered in coming weeks. The biologists took DNA samples of both sturgeon for analysis.
We guess leaving Europe to sign up with the ISIS head choppers wasn’t the best idea, nor was expressing your thoughts about wanting to go home. Now they’ll probably be losing their heads. Oh well.That ought to help recruiting in the west.
They were stripped of their weapons and marched as “traitors” to a punishment centre in the Syrian city of Raqqah, the so-called capital of the self proclaimed ISIS caliphate. They are now said to be “mistreated on a daily basis”.
As well as the Brits, there are three Frenchmen, two Belgians and two Germans, according to German magazine FOCUS.
The apparently timid volunteers are believed to have grown sick of the brutality of their fanatical leaders and the discomforts of living in a war zone.
Focus, which is renowned in Germany for its strong links with the country’s BND intelligence service, said: “In the eyes of ISIS they are considered traitors who deserve death.”
It is understood that their crazed captors may entertain ransom offers for them, but it is unclear whether any channels of communication have been opened with either their families or the governments of their home countries.
Britain, anyway, has a policy of not paying terrorist ransom demands for hostages.
Western intelligence services estimate some 3,500 Europeans are now fighting for ISIS, which is threatening to behead British aid worker David Haines, 44, in neighbouring Iraq within days.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.Two days ago, the Daily Caller posted something I happen to know a little about: Lax Security At Nuclear Power Plant Outside Washington
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
The threat against nuclear power plants is real, experts say: the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists initially considered attacking a nuclear power reactor, according to the 9/11 Commission report.The point of the article, and video, is that the employee parking lot at Calvert Cliffs, is essentially unguarded; anyone can go in and out without being challenged (most of the time).
Lyman, the nuclear terrorism expert, said: “I think it’s kind of foolish to allow such lax controls over the owner-controlled area.”
Asked about a hypothetical meltdown at Calvert Cliffs, Lyman said the Fukushima disaster showed that a reactor meltdown could warrant evacuations 25 or 35 miles away, and could threaten radiation exposure to people who live 50 miles or more away, which in this case would include the 3.6 million people who live in Washington, D.C. and surrounding suburbs. . .
The company that runs the conservative Breitbart.com news site says the IRS has selected the network for an audit, in a move company executives suggest is politically motivated.Breitbart should start the process of discovery to find out which democratic congressman demanded their audit. I wonder how many hard drives can be made to explode.
Breitbart News Network, a California-based company which runs several conservative websites, says the IRS recently audited its 2012 financial information.
"The Obama administration's timing on this is exquisite, but try as they might through various methods to silence us, we will only get more emboldened,” Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, said in a written statement.
The audit comes as the agency faces sustained complaints that it targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny as they sought nonprofit status, before the agency ended the practice last year.
Since the practice was made public – by the IRS itself and the inspector general’s office – other conservative groups have come forward claiming they were subjected to unwarranted scrutiny by the agency.Lois Lerner was not available for comment.
In this case, it remains unclear whether the apparent audit of Breitbart News is anything out of the ordinary. The IRS conducts audits of tens of thousands of businesses every year.
The agency said in a statement: "Federal privacy laws prohibit the IRS from commenting on specific taxpayer situations. The IRS stresses that audits are based on the information related to tax returns and the underlying tax law -- nothing else. Audits are handled by career, non-partisan civil servants, and the IRS has safeguards in place to protect the exam process."
A Justice Department spokesman apparently accidentally called the office of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa last week and, according to Issa, asked to release documents about the IRS targeting scandal to “interested reporters” before Issa had the chance to share them.But I'm quite sure the DOJ investigation of the IRS targeting will be fair and nopartisan.
Then the “audibly shaken” spokesman seemed to realize what he had done and tried to back off his request, the California Republican congressman said.
Issa detailed the staffer’s awkward mistake in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, saying he had “serious concerns” about the incident. The letter was first reported by Breitbart News. Issa, whose committee is investigating the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups, said it was clear the spokesman was attempting to reach the office of Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the committee. Issa said he believes this sort of collaboration happens regularly.
A snail once thought to have been among the first species to go extinct because of climate change has reappeared in the wild.Another global warming prediction busted.
The Aldabra banded snail, declared extinct seven years ago, was rediscovered on Aug. 23 in the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles. The mollusk, which is endemic to the Aldabra coral atoll - a UNESCO World Heritage Site - had not been seen on the islands since 1997, said the Seychelles Islands Foundation.
Conservationists are celebrating the banded snail's reemergence.An interesting comparison, but I doubt a world shattering antibiotic is going to be found in them. But maybe, just in case, we should grab the 7 specimens found, grind them up and test them. Or maybe they're simply delicious!
"Could we live without this little snail? Almost certainly," said Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecology professor at Duke University. "But we simply do not know what species are going to do for us in an economic sense. Probably from the time that somebody baked the first loaf of bread, a housewife said, `I hate bread mold and I wish it would disappear forever.' And of course we know the scientific name of bread mold is penicillin."
After all his complaints about Republican obstruction this year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed frustration last night after Republicans helped guarantee a floor vote on a measure he supports.Bwahaahaa! Perfect.
The Nevada Democrat has accused Senate Republicans of chicanery for voting to advance to the Senate floor a Democratic constitutional amendment allowing Congress to regulate all campaign speech and spending.
After Monday's bipartisan 79-18 vote, Reid vented to reporters that Republicans were trying to "stall" the Senate, indicating that he never intended for the campaign finance amendment by Sen.Tom Udall, D-N.M., to go to a real floor debate.
Politico reporter Burgess Everett writes that many Republicans voted to advance the amendment Monday in order “to foul up Democrats’ pre-election messaging schedule, freezing precious Senate floor time for a measure that ultimately has no chance of securing the two-thirds support necessary in both the House and Senate to amend the Constitution.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid’s relentless attacks on the billionaire Koch brothers are having an unforeseen impact: spurring other wealthy Republican donors to give more money to groups that keep their supporters’ names secret.Since democrats have made a point of attacking Republican donors (see Wisconsin's John Doe investigations for a particularly egregious example), it's only a rational thing to do.
Several prominent pro-Republican advocacy groups say they are benefiting from a burst of cash as some donors — fearful of harsh public attacks such as those aimed at the Kochs — turn away from political committees that are required by federal law to reveal their contributors.
Glynn, 46, was riding with her husband in Chicago's Erickson Woods when they were caught in a fast moving storm around 3 p.m. in the afternoon.Mother nature is not your friend. Respect her and don't give her unnecessary opportunities to kill you.
Foust, who was riding ahead of his wife, heard Glynn shout that they should take cover seconds before a tree was uprooted and crashed into her and her bike. The actress, who had been wearing a bicycle helmet, died in Evanston North Shore Hospital on Saturday, Sept. 6, from her injuries.
Glynn played an ER doctor in NBC's Chicago Fire and has appeared in episodes of Boss and Early Edition.
Task force looking for ways to control invasive blue catfishA draft report from a task force that spent more than a year looking for ways to deal with the large, voracious — and rapidly expanding — blue catfish population acknowledges that the invasive species has likely become a permanent resident of the Bay, and says action is needed to prevent “irreversible” harm to the ecosystem.
Chief among its recommendations is an expanded commercial fishery that might control the population and create a new product for watermen.
The task force’s draft report recommends a range of actions, such as identifying sensitive areas, such as high-quality spawning grounds, where extra efforts against the predators might protect high priority species such as shad.
OK. Shad are seasonal migrants, catfish are resident. Make a concentrated effort to clear out the kitties before the shad and herring move in and you might make a difference.It questioned whether states should continue to promote catfish trophy fisheries, and said efforts should be ramped up to warn the public about the ecological impacts of invasive catfish and dissuade anglers from moving them into new areas.
The report was completed by the Invasive Catfish Task Force — a group of state, federal and university biologists assembled by the state-federal Bay Program’s Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team to identify actions to control blue and flathead catfish, neither of which are Bay watershed natives.
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| Not bikini weather |
It noted that eradication of an invasive species is “rarely feasible or cost-effective once a species has become widely dispersed in an open aquatic system like Chesapeake Bay.” As a result, the report focused its recommendations on actions that would help control the population and limit its expansion.
The primary control method it proposes is to promote a commercial blue catfish fishery that would give watermen a new product to market while removing invasive fish. While this is already under way, the report says it may require new investments, such as new or expanded processing facilities, to maximize harvest.
Promoting a fishery, though, tacitly acknowledges that the goal is not to rid the Bay of an invasive fish, but to manage it, especially if fishermen begin buying gear to target catfish, and seafood processors invest in new facilities to handle a wave of new fish.In other words, once the "invasive" catfish gets a market, it also gets a lobby. Wombat-socho must have skipped the Redskins's game to post "Rule 5 Sunday: The Man Who Saved Britain" at The Other McCain.
“Once you open a fishery like that, you are probably in it for the long haul,” Vogt said. “Then the challenge is to come up with a framework that gets fishing pressure where we are reducing the ecological impact, but also sustains this new economy that has developed around the catfish. That’s a tough one.”
The deceased king was accompanied to the afterlife by two obviously personal favorite knives, both double-edged daggers in form, pretty close 3000-year-old equivalents of the Randall Model 2 Fighting Stiletto.Brother Ted would be so jealous.
What is most interesting though is that King Tut’s personal daggers were made in the Bronze Age of other metals. One knife is made of gold, hardened with copper. The American custom knife-maker Buster Warenski (1942-2005) took it as a personal challenge and successfully completed in 1987 a replica. That project required five years of work and used 32 ounces of gold.
The second knife is made of iron, at a time in which the forging of primitive iron weapons was a new technology invented by the Hittites. Even in the future, when the Greeks would be besieging Troy, Achilles and the other heroes would still be armed with bronze swords and bronze-tipped spears. It’s good to be the king. Tutenkhamun possessed, and got to take with him into his tomb, the superb iron-bladed knife seen above. Modern analysis has determined that it was forged from meteoric iron, and though it lacked the complete rust-and-stain-resistance of the gold blade, it undoubtedly took a better edge and remained sharper longer. In 1300 B.C., iron would have been rarer and more expensive than gold. I think this knife may have been intentionally made with a ricasso, a flat, unsharpened area above the grip, which would allow the user to hold the blade farther forward for precision cutting.
Stephen Hawking seems to have turned into the man with the sandwich board that says: "The end is nigh." Not only has he warned us that aliens might destroy us, but he's also been worrying that artificial intelligence might do the same.Which is a good reason to cut back funding for physics even more.
Now he's perceiving a threat that might not merely put an end to Earth, but to the whole Universe. As the UK's Sunday Times reports, Hawking is worried about the God particle. This, discovered by physicists during experiments within CERN's Large Hadron Collider, is a vital ingredient to explaining why things in our world have mass.
However, in a preface to a new book called "Starmus" -- a collection of lectures gives by famous scientists and astronomers -- Hawking worried that the Higgs Boson might become unstable. He wrote: "The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100bn gigaelectronvolts (GeV)."
What might this lead to? Hawkins explained: "This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn't see it coming."
Before you prepare your loved ones for an evacuation to some distant star, Hawking did offer some hope with, it seems, a wry smile: "A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate."
A respiratory virus is sending hundreds of children to hospitals in Missouri and possibly throughout the Midwest and beyond, officials say.And maybe it's just coincidence that tens of thousands of children from foreign countries with poor health care have just violated our borders, and been rewarded with free educations in our schools. We may never know.
The unusually high number of hospitalizations reported now could be "just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases," said Mark Pallansch, a virologist and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Viral Diseases.
Ten states have contacted the CDC for assistance in investigating clusters of enterovirus: Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Kentucky.
At a news briefing Monday, the CDC confirmed that samples it tested from children who had been hospitalized in Illinois and in Kansas City did show signs of the EV-D68 virus, meaning there is a possible regional outbreak. Tests continue on samples from children suspected to have the virus in Colorado.
A mysterious explosion that rocked Nicaragua's crowded capital Managua, creating a large crater, appears to have been caused by a small meteorite, officials said Sunday.Well, it wasn't earth shattering, but it was a significant hole in the ground. Considering the alleged parent body, "2014 RC" was supposed to pass 25000 miles away from earth, it may be premature to blame this on it.
Amazingly, in a sprawling city of 1.2 million people, the impact near the international airport did not cause any known injuries, but it did leave a crater measuring 12 meters (39 feet) across and was felt throughout the capital late on Saturday.
Nicaraguan authorities believe it was a piece of the small asteroid dubbed "2014 RC," which passed very close to Earth on Sunday and was estimated by astronomers to be about 20 meters big, or the size of a house.
"We are convinced that this was a meteorite. We have seen the crater from the impact," said Wilfredo Strauss of the Seismic Institute.
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It is the greatest murder mystery of all time, a puzzle that has perplexed criminologists for more than a century and spawned books, films and myriad theories ranging from the plausible to the utterly bizarre.
. . .
A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her blood as well as DNA from the killer.
The landmark discovery was made after businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl at auction and enlisted the help of Dr Jari Louhelainen, a world-renowned expert in analysing genetic evidence from historical crime scenes. Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match.
The revelation puts an end to the fevered speculation over the Ripper’s identity which has lasted since his murderous rampage in the most impoverished and dangerous streets of London.
Kosminski was 23 when the murders took place, and living with his two brothers and a sister in Greenfield Street, just 200 yards from where the third victim, Elizabeth Stride, was killed. As a key suspect, his life story has long been known, but I also researched his family. Eventually, we tracked down a young woman whose identity I am protecting – a British descendant of Kosminski’s sister, Matilda, who would share his mitochondrial DNA. She provided me with swabs from the inside of her mouth.This is a remarkable use of the DNA technology, but I doubt it would stand up in court today, given chain of custody problems with the shawl.
Amplifying and sequencing the DNA from the cells found on the shawl took months of painstaking, innovative work. By that point, my excitement had reached fever-pitch. And when the email finally arrived telling me Jari had found a perfect match, I was overwhelmed. Seven years after I bought the shawl, we had nailed Aaron Kosminski.
A couple of weeks ago, the big outrage of the feminist world (I guess, I don't really follow them too much, I don't have the stomach for it, that's a job for Stacy McCain), was the cover of a new Spider-Woman comic, drawn by erotic artist Milo Marana, which showed her in a pose that was allegedly something that no male superhero would be seen in, just to show her female 
Scientists have discovered the fossilized remains of a new long-necked, long-tailed dinosaur that has taken the crown for largest terrestrial animal with a body mass that can be accurately determined.What, it wasn't named after big acoustic guitars?
Measurements of bones from its hind leg and foreleg revealed that the animal was 65 tons, and still growing when it died in the Patagonian hills of Argentina about 77 million years ago.
“To put this in perspective, an African elephant is about five tons, T. rex is eight tons, Diplodocus is 18 tons, and a Boeing 737 is around 50 tons,” said study author and paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara at Drexel University. “And then you have Dreadnoughtus at 65 tons.”
Dreadnoughtus, meaning “fears nothing,” is named after the impervious early 20th century battleships.
Although it was a plant-eater, a healthy Dreadnoughtus likely had no real issues with predators due to its intimidating size and muscular, weaponized tail.Except, of course, when it was a baby. Then it was at the bottom of the food chain like any old chicken. Curiously the specimen, already the largest land animal known, was still growing rapidly when it died:
To look for hints of age, Lacovara and his colleagues looked for any traces of bone growth. As the animal gets older, parts of the skeleton will fuse together, and its bone growing cells will morph from fluffy to flat.And what good is a giant dinosaur without a dinobabe to ride it?
“With Dreadnoughtus, there's no indication that there was any cessation or slowing of growth [in the bones],” he said. “When it died at 65 tons, it was growing fast, which is kind of scary.”
The Internal Revenue Service has lost emails from five more employees who are part of congressional probes into the treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, the tax service disclosed Friday.Now, we know that all the traffic in and out of government servers is backed up for restoration of the
The IRS said in June that it could not locate an untold number of emails to and from Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The revelation set off a new round of investigations and congressional hearings.
On Friday, the IRS issued a report to Congress saying the agency also lost emails from five other employees related to the probe, including two agents who worked in a Cincinnati office processing applications for tax-exempt status.
The disclosure came on the same day the Senate's subcommittee on investigations released competing reports on how the IRS handled applications from political groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Ana Paula Araujo (born October 25, 1981 in Roraima) is a Brazilian model who appeared in the 2007 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. In addition to working with world-class photographers on her SI shoots, she was the object/subject of Joanne Gair body painting works in the 2007 edition.She has also appeared in advertisements for Liz Claiborne.
. . . Apparently, I’m not the only one who had questions about the prevalence of conformity on both sides of the political spectrum:Liberals are willing to argue about anything until they get a 50.01% consensus on it. After that, it's cast in stone, through the immutable "liberal ratchet", whereby governmental control once achieved can never be repealed.
The way I saw it, this slavish obedience to authority and tradition on the part of conservatives was the true source of the culture war between liberals and conservatives over foreign war, abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, and racial inequality. They way I saw it, conservatives clung to old, near-sighted ways of thinking and fell in line with the dictates of the "man in charge." If only conservatives would think for themselves -- like liberals do -- the war would be over and we could get on with life, governance, and progress. Or so I thought.Jeremy Frimer, the author of the piece, noticed that socialists seemed unable to tolerate even mild questioning of Che Guevara’s eminently questionable legacy. Frimer is a researcher at the University of Winnipeg, and he decided to investigate. What he found is that liberals are actually very comfortable with authority and obedience -- as long as the authorities are liberals (“should you obey an environmentalist?”). And that conservatives then became much less willing to go along with “the man in charge.”
Then, in 2012, I went on a cycling trip around Cuba.
