Who's Next?

North Korea Says It Has Detonated Its First Hydrogen Bomb

North Korea declared on Tuesday that it had detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

The assertion, if true, would dramatically escalate the nuclear challenge from one of the world’s most isolated and dangerous states.

In an announcement, North Korea said that the test had been a “complete success.” But it was difficult to tell whether the statement was true. North Korea has made repeated claims about its nuclear capabilities that outside analysts have greeted with skepticism.

“This is the self-defensive measure we have to take to defend our right to live in the face of the nuclear threats and blackmail by the United States and to guarantee the security of the Korean Peninsula,” a female North Korean announcer said, reading the statement on Central Television, the state-run network.

The North’s announcement came about an hour after detection devices around the world had picked up a 5.1 seismic event along the country’s northeast coast.

It may be weeks or longer before detectors sent aloft by the United States and other powers can determine what kind of test was conducted. Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in a statement that American officials “cannot confirm these claims at this time.”

One of the things I love about the Obama administration has been how it has advanced world peace . . .

There is still some question as to whether this is a true Teller-Ulam style Hydrogen bomb, or "merely" a fusion boosted fission weapon. In either case, this, it is bad news.

This is truly scary, since there is no organization in the world that can't smuggle anything it wants into the US if it really wants to badly enough. So what happens, when in six months the Norks claim to have smuggled an H-bomb into (hopefully) New York or Washington D.C. and demand the US leave South Korea (I'm OK with that) and that we feed their hungry masses for the next 100 years. Can we afford to call their bluff?

And why would any fifth rate dictator even hesitate to try to build one with Obama in office? Kind of dated but here's ultra-liberal (you can hear his contempt for the US right off the bat) reacting to China getting the atomic bomb (the "little" fission bomb, not the bf hydrogen bomb:

The World's First Smart Bra?

That's what they're claiming: Meet the world's first smart bra

A San Francisco company hopes women will ditch the Fitbit or Apple Watch and forget about having to use an accessory to measure heart rate and steps.

The OMbra, the worlds's first "smart" bra, introduced here at the Consumer Electronics Showby OMsignal, aims to measure your biometrics through a piece of clothing already worn daily.

"Women gravitate towards wearables, but they don't want an item they have to put on or worry about every day," says OMsignal chief marketing officer Shaz Khang. And "if they're going to be wearing it all day, they want to get more information."

The bra is expected to start shipping in spring, for around $150.

But if my research is right, this is far from the first "smart bra" that has been promoted for example this was promoted back in 2011. : Smart Bra Detects Cancer Long Before Tumors Are Noticeable.

Random bra picture to "illustrate point"

Nevada-based First Warning Systems has created a bra that uses sensor technology to detect subtle temperature changes that take place as blood vessels grow and feed tumors.

The data collected is fed into pattern recognition software, which can help identify possibly tumors long before they're big enough to appear on a mammogram.

The bra has undergone three clinical trials with over 600 participants, and is ready to go to market in Europe starting in 2013. With FDA approval, it may be available in the US as early as 2014.

It seems to me, a bra that spots cancer is a lot smarter than a bra that tells your heart rate. But then, it doesn't seem to have materialized either. And back in 2013 Bill Gates Microsoft was promoting one: Microsoft develops ‘smart’ bra to stop women comfort eating

Another random bra picture

Microsoft has offered a bizarre take on wearable technology with a controversial new ‘smart’ bra for women. Researchers for the software giant claim the undergarment will stop women comfort eating when stressed.

The hi-tech bra measures the wearer’s heart rate and breathing and alerts them when their stress levels are rising by sending a Bluetooth alert to their smartphone.

Senior Microsoft researcher Mary Czerwinski hopes the bra will make women think twice before opening the fridge. ‘It’s mostly women who are emotional overeaters and it turns out a bra is perfect for measuring the heart,’ she told Discovery News.

But what happens when it goes blue-screen? Anyway, that hasn't become a runaway best seller that I'm aware of..

‘We tried to do the same thing for men’s underwear but it was too far away.’ 

Why would a man want underwear that nags him about eating comfort food?

I suspect you get the picture

And of course, who can forget the Japanese smart bra that only unhooks for "true love". It's hard to date the article (deliberately, I suspect) but since it references the Microsoft one, I suspect it's from 2014

Whoever doubted the magic of true love? In the age of wearable technology, true love unlocks a high-tech bra. Japanese lingerie maker Ravijour, in celebration of its tenth year anniversary, has released a smart bra called True Love Tester that can only be unhooked if the user is truly in love.

And how does this version of the smart bra determine whether or not the user has experienced "true love"?

The smart bra comes with sensors that feeds the heart rate of the wearer to a smartphone application via Bluetooth. The mobile application analyzes the heart rate and determines whether it will unhook the bra or not. "When excited, the adrenal medulla secretes catecholomine, which affects the autonomic nerve, and stimulates the heart rate," explained a doctor in the instructional video about the product.

Why, using the same kind of sensors that "new" smart bra uses, heart rate. So why settle for the  San Francisco version that merely reports your heart rate, when you could have the Japanese version that will tell you if he's right for you too?

 

But what if she doesn't want true love?

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Teenage Wasteland" ready at The Other McCain.

Obama's Gun Grab

A slightly more thoughtful take on it than most from Ace: Barack Obama's Executive Order on Guns Is Partly Defensible, Partly Alarming, and Partly... Helpful?

The strangest part first: Bob Owens has looked at the order and finds, as regards firearms purchased under the terms of the National Firearms Act, which covers "any other weapon" besides the standard ones (sawed off shotguns and machine guns, usually), Obama's EO features both a harassment and an actual reform to the law.

The harassment part comes with a fingerprint requirement for weapons purchased through a trust -- apparently trusts and groups buy these weapons, and trusts and groups have no fingerprint of their own, so that is a harassment.

The reform part comes in that the new order strikes the requirement of getting a community local law-enforcement officer to sign off on any purchase of such a weapon. Anti-gun local cops had routinely refused to sign off on such purchases, even if the purchases were sought by otherwise qualified and law-abiding people. The new EO gets rid of that requirement, for reasons I can only imagine are pure incompetence on Obama's part (that is, he couldn't possibly intend to harass gun-owners less).

Two parts of his EO are common sense, increasing the number of FBI staff on the background-check detail, and a request to increase funds for mental health, to the tune of $500 million. Both of those measures are responsive to conservative cries of why don't you actually do a better job utilizing the law and authority you already have? and why don't you do a better job trying to keep dangerous people away from guns?

The last part is the touchy one. One could say that, on its surface, it appears unobjectionable. The law says that anyone "engaged in the business" of selling firearms must conduct background checks and get a federal firearms licence. The new "guidance" offered by Obama states that it doesn't matter in what venue you conduct such a business, be it a brick-and-mortar storefront or online, or from the back of a van I suppose, but if you are indeed "engaged in the business" of selling firearms in whatever mode, you're engaged in the business, and subject to the law's requirements of background checks and licensing.

On paper, this seems like an okey-dokey makes-sense sort of thing; but the thing with Obama is, he's a sneaky, obvious, incompetent liar, whose favorite mode of political travel is a poorly-disguised Trojan Horse.

Remember, if you like your plan you can keep your plan. And I suppose: If you like your right to sell guns occasionally as a hobbyist, you can keep your right to sell guns occasionally as a hobbyist.

The Republican Congress should immediately move to legislate the good parts (mental health and more FBI) and ban the bad parts (the FFL flim-flam). Of course, he would threaten to veto it, but could he, when it gives him the majority of what he claims to want and he's complained about lack of Congressional action.

Not Enough Menhaden for the Bay's Stripers

The results of a new workshop suggest that Chesapeake Bay foodwebs have shifted as Menhaden (The Most Important Fish in the Sea) have become less abundant in the Bay in recent years, and that Striped Bass are the predator fish most likely to be affected.

You go, girls!

Predators weren’t eating menhaden because there weren’t enough out there

. . . The workshop analysis used the most extensive predator diet data available for the Bay, so the results are solid. What was not made clear in the article, however, is that the data was all collected since 2002, so it only represents current Bay predator/prey relationships. Also not mentioned, menhaden recruitment to the Bay (annual production of young menhaden that are most eaten by predators) has been very poor for the last 20 years. And, a recent scientific assessment of the menhaden population found their numbers coastwide to be near an all-time low. So, to those concerned about menhaden fulfilling their forage role in the Bay food web, the workshop results are not surprising at all — in fact, they bear out the concern that fewer menhaden are being eaten by predators, and some, like striped bass, are being forced to turn to alternative prey — anchovies, blue crabs and baby seatrout — causing other problems.

I've seen a stripers with a belly full of hard crabs this year. But I've also seen them chowing down on huge schools of peanut bunker (small menhaden)

So, are today’s forage dynamics different from earlier, more stable Bay conditions? Where historical predator diet data are available, the answer is yes, at least for striped bass. Several past diet studies were analyzed in a recent scientific journal article that concluded that striped bass prey consumption in the Bay “changed dramatically” between 1955 and 2001. Menhaden consumption declined 10 to 15 times from what it was in the 1950s, when menhaden numbers were at more normal levels. And, as might be expected, anchovies and blue crabs were relatively uncommon in stripers’ diets back then.

It's really time to cut back on the Menhaden reduction fishery to protect the rest of the ecosystem. What point is having a clean Bay if it's devoid (or at least depauperate) of two of it's most important species.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Teenage Wasteland" ready at The Other McCain.

Drought Busting Storms Hitting California?

I must say, it looks pretty good:

These were predicted at Watts Up With That a few days ago, and has been hanging in my open browser tabs: Drought buster? Up to 10 feet of snow this week for California’s Sierra Nevada.

Here is some good news for drought-stricken California; the latest forecast model output from WeatherBell suggests that the Sierra Nevada snow-pack will get a fresh dump of up to 10 feet of snow. The Sierra snow-pack has already been reported as above normal (at 136 percent of normal) in the most recent snow survey conducted by the California Department of Water Resources.

DWR Director Mark Cowin said the heavy snowfall so far during Water Year 2016 “has been a reasonable start, but another three or four months of surveys will indicate whether the snowpack’s runoff will be sufficient to replenish California’s reservoirs by this summer.”
Each water year begins on October 1 and ends on the following September 30. DWR conducts five media-oriented snow surveys in the Sierra Nevada each winter – near the first of January, February, March, April and May – at the Phillips Station plot (elevation 6,800 feet) just off Highway 50 near Sierra-at-Tahoe Road 90 miles east of Sacramento. Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, said more than four years of drought have left a water deficit around the state that may be difficult to overcome in just one winter season.
“Clearly, this is much better that it was last year at this time, but we haven’t had the full effect of the El Niño yet,” Gehrke said. “If we believe the forecasts, then El Niño is supposed to kick in as we move through the rest of the winter. That will be critical when it comes to looking at reservoir storage.” The state’s largest six reservoirs currently hold between 22 percent (New Melones) and 53 percent (Don Pedro) of their historical averages in late December. Storage in Lake Shasta, California’s largest surface reservoir, is 51 percent of its December 30 average. [The December 30th] manual survey found a snow depth of 54.7 inches – 16 inches more than the average depth measured there since 1965 – and 16.3 inches of water content, 136 percent of the January 1 average for that site.

This forecast is to be expected, thanks to an El Niño pattern this winter which has already brought much needed precipitation to California. Storms are already stacked up in an west-to-east line as indicated by this satellite image:

It will take more than a few storms to break the drought. Water in California depends on the snow pack in the Sierras, and the storage in numerous reservoirs. At this point, many of the reservoirs are still quite depleted, and will months to fill.  One of those reservoirs is New Melones, which is near where my parents and brother Ted lives. You can see his picture essay on New Melones from July at Down to the old bridge and back:

And I can't pass by a reference to the California drought without this essay from Victor David Hanson, The Scorching of California: How Green extremists made a bad drought worse.

. . .Just as California’s freeways were designed to grow to meet increased traffic, the state’s vast water projects were engineered to expand with the population. Many assumed that the state would finish planned additions to the California State Water Project and its ancillaries. But in the 1960s and early 1970s, no one anticipated that the then-nascent environmental movement would one day go to court to stop most new dam construction, including the 14,000-acre Sites Reservoir on the Sacramento River near Maxwell; the Los Banos Grandes facility, along a section of the California Aqueduct in Merced County; and the Temperance Flat Reservoir, above Millerton Lake north of Fresno. Had the gigantic Klamath River diversion project not likewise been canceled in the 1970s, the resulting Aw Paw reservoir would have been the state’s largest man-made reservoir. At two-thirds the size of Lake Mead, it might have stored 15 million acre-feet of water, enough to supply San Francisco for 30 years.

California’s water-storage capacity would be nearly double what it is today had these plans come to fruition. It was just as difficult to imagine that environmentalists would try to divert contracted irrigation and municipal water from already-established reservoirs. Yet they did just that, and subsequently moved to freeze California’s water-storage resources at 1970s capacities.

All the while, the Green activists remained blissfully unconcerned about the vast immigration into California from Latin America and Mexico that would help double the state’s population in just four decades, to 40 million. Had population growth remained static, perhaps California could have lived with partially finished water projects. The state might also have been able to restore the flow of scenic rivers from the mountains to the sea, maintained a robust agribusiness sector, and even survived a four- or five-year drought. But if California continues to block new construction of the State Water Project as well as additions to local and federal water-storage infrastructure, officials must halve California’s population, or shut down the 5 million acres of irrigated crops on the Central Valley’s west side, or cut back municipal water usage in a way never before done in the United States.

When the drought began in autumn 2011, the average Californian barely noticed. Mountain reservoirs remained full throughout 2011 and much of 2012, thanks to ample rainfall in previous years. Though rain and snowfall plunged to as much as 40 percent below average in most inland counties, shortages affected only large agribusiness conglomerates on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley—a small group of corporate grandees with plenty of land and little public sympathy.

During that first year of drought, quarrels over water were mostly confined to farmers and environmentalists. Confident that stored surface water in mountain reservoirs would remain plentiful, the Greens insisted that the state continue to divert reservoir water away from agricultural usage—at roughly the same rate as during pre-drought years—in order to replenish rivers. In practical terms, however, the diversions meant that substantial amounts of stored snowmelt were released from mountain dams and allowed to flow freely to the Pacific Ocean. Farmers called that wasted water; environmentalists called it a return to a natural, preindustrial California. The Green dream was not simply river restoration and beautification, however. Bay Area environmentalists also believed that vastly increased freshwater inflows would help oxygenate the San Francisco Delta, thereby enabling the survival of the Delta smelt, a three-inch baitfish, while ensuring that salmon could be reintroduced into the San Joaquin River watershed. . . .

Read the whole thing.

So while we may see a little relief for California's water woes, real infrastructure investment is the only long term solution. California is a land where drought has come and gone through history, and the history would suggest that a mega-drought is not out of the question:

California lost it's way years ago in a silly reversion to childhood. Will they ever recover?

Austin Throws Away Cash with Trash

Austin discovers garbage in, debt up

. . . Austin, Texas, thought it was going to become rich off its recycling program. Instead, it spent more than $3 for every $2 it brought in. Demand for garbage is low, which is why people throw it away.

So what is Austin's solution to lagging prices? Increase supply. Apparently despite being home to one of the best universities in the land, no one at Auston City Hall ever cracked an economics book.

From the Associated Press:

In the latest fiscal year, a review of city records shows Austin got a shade under $3 million for its recyclables, even as processing costs hovered around $4.8 million. The city lost $1.9 million last fiscal year and a $2.7 million in the two previous years as recyclable materials have fetched less on the open market than the cost to process them.
The Austin American-Statesman reports that city officials say if more residents recycled more, it would be easier to profitably sell a higher volume of material locally, rather than ship it elsewhere in the state, country or even overseas.

Why not save time and energy by giving the operation away and allowing someone to open a Taco Bell at teh site? It will at least generate taxes.

It's really recycling if they give you enough money to recover your costs, it's just boutique trash collection to make you feel less sinful.

Johnny Depp Pays Homage to His Better Half

Ripped right from the gossip Famous for Being Famous section of Wombat-socho's "Live at Five: 01.04.15":  Johnny Depp Thanks Wife Amber Heard "For Putting Up With Me"

The Black Mass actor gave his wife a shout out last night while accepting the Desert Palm Achievement Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

"I also have to thank my wife Amber for putting up with me, for living with all these characters, which can't be easy," he said, referring to his many film roles. "It's hard for me—it's got to be hard for her."

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Teenage Wasteland" ready at The Other McCain.

"We connect on a lot of levels but the first thing that really got me was she's an aficionado of the blues," he said at the L.A. premiere of her film The Danish Girl. "I would play a song, some old obscure blues song, and she knew what it was."

He continued, "She's very very literate. She's a voracious reader as I have been, so we connected on that as well and she's kind of brilliant and beautiful."
"I'm a lucky man," Depp said with a smile.

Likewise, Georgia.

Amber is a lucky former Rule 5 winner, but I still have a few pictures in reserve:

Chemists Get Four Shiny New Toys for Christmas

Discovery and Assignment of Elements with Atomic Numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118

The fourth IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party (JWP) on the priority of claims to the discovery of new elements has reviewed the relevant literature for elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 and has determined that the claims for discovery of these elements have been fulfilled, in accordance with the criteria for the discovery of elements of the IUPAP/IUPAC Transfermium Working Group (TWG) 1991 discovery criteria. These elements complete the 7th row of the periodic table of the elements, and the discoverers from Japan, Russia and the USA will now be invited to suggest permanent names and symbols. The new elements and assigned priorities of discovery are as follows:

Element 113 (temporary working name and symbol: ununtrium, Uut)
The RIKEN collaboration team in Japan have fulfilled the criteria for elementZ=113 and will be invited to propose a permanent name and symbol.

Elements 115, 117, and 118 (temporary working names and symbols: ununpentium, Uup; ununseptium, Uus; and ununoctium, Uuo)

The collaboration between the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, USA; and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA have fulfilled the criteria for element Z=115, 117 and will be invited to propose permanent names and symbols.

But chemists and engineers won't be putting them to much use any time soon. They are all radioactive, of course. Wikipedia already has listings for their half-lives 113 - 19.6 seconds, 115 -  220 milliseconds, 117 - 78 milliseconds, and 118 - 890 microseconds.

Evidently, the Island of Stability has not yet been discovered.

What's New at Clinton.com?

Another free style attempt. Some quick review of the Clinton.com corporate model.  Bill Clinton Made $8 Million From Speeches To Companies With Matters Pending Before Hillary's State Dept. That's personal walking around money, above and beyond his predsidential pension, and any accrued interest from Hillary's cattle future investments. Money just seems to fall on these people. Just the incredible, amazing, astonishing coincidences of Secretary of State Clinton. Just call it Hillary Clinton’s $13M fail as Secretary of State.

At her confirmation hearing, questioners raised the issue of her hubby’s global business. Hillary vowed to take “extraordinary steps . . . to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Count 13 million record fails for those “extraordinary steps.”

She avoided the appearance of a conflict of interest with actual conflicts of interest?

Looking into the wayback machine to the end of the last Clinton era for the Millennials in the crowd: Clinton Reaches Deal to Avoid Indictment and to Give Up Law License. That was Bill giving up his right to practice law (I mean, did you ever really expect him to go back to work) as a result of lying under oath. The Justice system depends on lawyers and other officers of the court not lying in legal proceedings. Bill Clinton violated that oath. Speaking of lying, Hillary is still lying about what she told families of the Benghazi victims, and accusing them of lying about whether she told them the video was responsible for the attack on the Benghazi embassy.

Another tidbit picked out of Hillary's latest email tranche,  Merkel despised ‘Obama phenomenon’, raising my opinion of Angela Merkel, not that it was that high to begin with. But Here’s the bottom line of the Hillary email dump from the New York Post editorial board, in its entirety (it just too good to chop). My bold.

The content of the Hillary Clinton emails released New Year’s Eve doesn’t matter nearly so much as what the State Department held back: It found 275 of the messages to contain classified info — in two cases, “Secret” information.

The total so far is 1,274 classified emails, debunking Clinton’s claims that she never sent or received such info on the account run from the private, unsecured server in her home.

Her fallback defense is that nothing was marked “classified.” Yet all State employees are warned that some stuff is “born classified.” That covers the redactions in the latest dump — info from other governments or concerning US policy on other governments.

Clinton put her personal control of access to her correspondence above basic security protocols — and when caught, she still exercised that control to destroy thousands of other messages she thought best to keep secret.

Her wants come first; her sworn obligations, a distant second — then, now and always. That’s the real bottom line of her record at State.

Did the Clinton campaign really pick a child to read a question to her off cue cards? It sure looks that way:

The scent of chlorophyl was strong as a young boy approached Hillary Clinton at a town hall in New Hampshire holding a note card. Clinton put her arm around the boy’s shoulder as he read aloud from the card: “When you become president, what is your plan to connect mental health problems and guns to make sure that me, my brothers, and my friends are safe from violence at school?”

Look at the video. Does that kid look like he wrote that sentence? Well, parrots can speak too, right?

Remember a few days ago how Hillary claimed that Trump was being used in ISIS recruiting videos, and it turned out, there were no examples found, but there were examples with Bill Clinton and others? So embarrassing that ABC News Now Says Hillary Clinton PREDICTED Trump Would Be Used In ISIS Videos. My, Her Majesties robes are holding up well. Of course, now, probably reacting to Hillary's assertion, one Islamic Group FINALLY Uses Donald Trump in Video.  So, can we call Hillary Clinton one of al-Shabab (an Al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia) media advisers? I think so.

And the Bill Cosby indictment continues to resonate unfavorably to the Clinton's. As Republicans Compare Bill Clinton To Bill Cosby, Comedian Previously Endorsed Hillary For Senate. Between Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner and Bill Cosby, Hillary certainly seems to attract a certain type, doesn't she? But don't confront her about her record with abusers, that's heckling: Rep. who asks Hillary about Bill’s past labeled a ‘heckler’ and ‘disrupter’,  like disrupting Hillary's long march on the White House isn't a good thing.

How to Replace a Transmission

Hat tip to Ace's ONT.

Gratuitous Monday Morning Kate Upton

Why not? It's supposed to get cold here.



Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Teenage Wasteland" ready at The Other McCain.

The Problems with Nutrition Guidelines

I've been sitting on this one for several days, and I just finally decided to get it out there:

I'm Completely Fed Up with Nutrition Science. You Should Be, Too.

Nutrition science is bad for your health! Not really, of course, but if you worried about every single study that linked a certain food to a negative health outcome, you'd probably go insane.

Red meat? Cancer. Grapefruit? Cancer. Cheese? Cancer. Artificial sweeteners? Obesity. Sugar?Obesity. Milk? Bone fracture. The list could go on and on, but let's get to the meat of the article.

I'm fed up with nutrition science, and you should be, too.

It was not a single study that evoked my distaste, but a nauseating status quo that's become too much to bear.

The problems with nutrition science begin with how most of its research is conducted. The vast majority of nutrition studies are observational in nature -- scientists look at people who eat certain foods and examine how their health compares with the health of people who don't eat those foods or eat them at different frequencies. But as I reported earlier this year, these sorts of studies have a high chance of being wrong. Very wrong. . .

Many familiar examples follow. But the problems go further.

Muddying the waters further is the stream of cash pouring into nutrition science from corporate interests. Nestlé funds research, as does Dannon. Coca-Cola has recently been accused of funding scientists who focus on physical activity as the primary cause for obesity rather than the copious amounts of sugar found in their undeniably unhealthy soft drinks. Many of the members of the advisory committee for the federal government's dietary guidelines also have ties to industry.

The ultimate point of nutrition research is to apprise the public of what they should and should not eat. What really is healthy? What isn't? But this endeavor may have been doomed from the start. As was recently showcased in research published to the journal Cell, what's healthy for one person may not be healthy for someone else.. . .

But beyond what companies try to push, the government, which has a whole additional method of persuasion, legal sanctions backed by the power of imprisonment, and ultimately, the gun, has been notoriously wrong on numerous recommendations on diet, salt, carbohydrates, meat, you name it, they've promoted bad ideas with the force of law. I can ignore a company, but I cannot safely ignore the state.

An interesting article in the Washington Post this morning on the diet guidance that ancient mummies are providing us. In a nutshell, not much:

But examinations of the bodies of the Unangans from Kagamil Island and other pre-modern people indicate that, in fact, the modern scourge of heart disease is not at all new, and that people who exercised more than we do as a matter of necessity, and whose diet was free from modern temptations, also suffered striking levels of heart disease, according to the researchers.

In recent years, X-ray based scans of mummies from around the world - including the hunter gatherers of Kagamil as well as those from ancient Egypt, Peru and the American Southwest — found signs of heart disease or atherosclerosis, the plaque lining the arteries near the heart.
. . .
Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City and a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, said the research has changed the way he views what we can do to prevent heart disease.

”I’m a clinical cardiologist and I want people to eat a healthy diet, but this puts all that in perspective. ... At least part of this disease is not explained by traditional risk factors. These ancient people didn’t have preservatives, everything was organic, they didn’t smoke and they got plenty of exercise. But ... the amount of atherosclerosis in ancient times isn’t much different from what you see in modern times. If you account for age, it looks like we’re in the same ballpark.”

My motto: Eat what you want (in moderation), die anyway.

OK, That Was Pretty Good

Magic Shot!!!

Posted by International Highlife on Saturday, January 2, 2016

Sunday 1/3/16 Beach Report

We hurried off to the beach this morning so we, well, I, really, could get back in time for the Redskins game at 1 PM. It was gorgeous; 45 F but windless, and cloudless.

I got lucky right of the bat and found this "Top Shelf" Mako (probably extinct Giant White Shark) tooth. It wasn't really a productive day, though, we only got four teeth total.

It's even more remarkable that I found it while being dragged down the beach at high speed.

 Something unusual out on the water. A duck with a red head. Could it be a Redhead, or a Canvasback? Looks more like a Redhead to me. You can see a blue bill on the one in front.

 The Buffies are still hanging out, although not in the huge raft they were the last time I saw them.

We even had a near fly by from a Brown Pelican. While Pelicans aren't rare in the Bay (far from it, these days), for some reason we rarely see them near our shore.

Georgia corralling a large (for us) Lion's Mane Jellyfish, one of several we saw washed up or in shallow water lately. Probably the largest jellyfish in the world:

The largest recorded specimen found, washed up on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1870, had a bell with a diameter of 2.3 metres (7 ft 6 in) and tentacles 37.0 m (121.4 ft) long. Lion's mane jellyfish have been observed below 42°N latitude for some time in the larger bays of the east coast of the United States.

Can the Redskins Count Coup on the Cowboys?

The 8-7 Redskins take on the 4-11 Cowboys at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas in the last regular game of the season in one minute. Since the Redskins fans tend to regard the Cowboys as the ultimate rival, one would hope they could win this one. The Redskins have already won their division, and will get at least one playoff game.

Cowboys take the kickoff in the endzone, and will start at the 20. Three and out. Punt goes out of bounds at the 28.

Cousins completes on his first pass to Jordan Reed at the 39ish, first down. Garcon goes for 4. Fourth and not enough, they elect to punt. Fair catch at the Cowboys 6 yard line.

Now, how is the Redskins naming fight going? Well, the SJW Crybullies won a round when
Goshen's mascot now officially RedHawks after district dropped Redskins moniker

Minutes before tip-off of the Hacienda Holiday Tournament, announcer Mike Kemper introduced the Goshen High School varsity girls basketball team.

“Now, it’s time for your lady Redsk...” he said, correcting himself mid-word and finishing with “RedHawks.”

Has the Next American Revolution Already Started in Oregon?

Probably not, but: Militia takes over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters

"After the peaceful rally was completed today, a group of outside militants drove to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, where they seized and occupied the refuge headquarters. A collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution. For the time being please stay away from that area. More information will be provided as it becomes available. Please maintain a peaceful and united front and allow us to work through this situation."

The Bundy family of Nevada joined with hard-core militiamen Saturday to take over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 30 miles southeast of Burns for years.

The occupation came shortly after an estimated 300 marchers — militia and local citizens both — paraded through Burns to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who are to report to prison on Monday.

Among the occupiers is Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and two of his brothers. Militia members at the refuge claimed they had as many as 100 supporters with them. The refuge, federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend.

From the discussion at Althouse: Paco Wove wrote

The story at that link doesn't explain the genesis of this dispute. Here's a little background:

The father and son of a prominent Oregon ranching family plan to surrender at a California prison next week after a judge ruled they served too little time for setting fires that spread to government lands they leased to graze cattle.

Dwight Hammond, 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, said they lit the fires in 2001 and 2006 to reduce the growth of invasive plants and protect their property from wildfires.

The two were convicted of the arsons three years ago and served time -- the father three months, the son one year. But a judge ruled their terms were too short under federal law and ordered them back to prison for about four years each.

The decision has generated controversy in a remote part of the state where the Hammonds are well-known for their generosity and community contributions. It's also playing into a long-simmering conflict between ranchers and the U.S. government over the use of federal land for cattle grazing.

It doesn't appear as though the fires burned anything but grass and trees, so four years in prison seems pretty harsh. Haven't found out anything about the judge involved yet.
The Hammonds don't seem to want anything to do with the Bundys.

My own thoughts on the matter:

Burning grasslands is the traditional Indian way of keeping grasslands clear of encroaching trees and weeds. When I lived in Oregon, the grass seed fields of the Willamette Valley were burned every fall to kill the weeds.

The inequality between the amount of land the Federal government owns in different states is staggering. As little as 0.4% in Rhode Island and Connecticut and 84.5% in Nevada. Oregon is a mere 53.1%, while Wisconsin is 5.6%. You can't tell me that the differences between Wisconsin and Oregon warrant that kind of discrepancy. The US could certainly solve it's deficit and probably it's debt problem by carefully selling off the land it owns that is already being put to productive use by the private sector. And the new owners would probably treat the land better, having a vested interest. But that would put a lot of federal bureaucrats out of a job, so it will never happen.

President Obama could head this off by pardoning the Hammonds. Anyone think he's up for that?

Bassline Sunday

Anna Sentina doesn't just play bass:



Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Teenage Wasteland" ready at The Other McCain.

FBI Seeks Bacon Information

FBI Offers $5,000 After Bacon Found at Vegas Mosque

The FBI is offering a $5,000 reward for information that helps them find the person who put raw bacon on the door handles of a Las Vegas mosque.

The FBI said in a statement Wednesday that agents are trying to find the man seen in a surveillance video putting the meat on the entrances of the Masjid-e-Tawheed mosque. Authorities call it a desecration of the Islamic worship center.

The Quran, the holy book of Islam, prohibits Muslims from eating pork, and pigs have been used to taunt or offend Muslims.

Both the FBI and Las Vegas police say they're investigating the case as a possible hate crime.

This was an asshole thing to do, a property crime and an act of hate, indeed. But does this really deserve to be a Federal matter? Would a similar crime against a synagogue get equal attention?

Spelling is For The Patriarchy

Ace for the hat tip.

Maryland Watermen, Army War Over Oyster Restoration

Army Corps of Engineers weighs in on watermen's concerns

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has responded to comments from local watermen after the Maryland Department of Natural Resources asked the corps to delay oyster restoration work in the Tred Avon River pending the completion of a review of the project’s effectiveness.
. . .
In a recent email, Angie Sowers, integrated water resources management specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, said preliminary results do show some success in the recently completed Harris Creek sanctuary.

This past summer, Harris Creek was the first tributary where restoration plans were completed, Sowers said. Since 2011, Sowers said 2 billion oysters were planted in Harris Creek, with more than 350 acres of oyster bar restored.

“Areas that had less than one oyster per square meter now have upward of 25, preliminary results from the (Oyster Metrics Workgroup) show,” Sowers said in her email.

But watermen were not impressed:

In a phone interview, Bunky Chance, president of Talbot Watermen’s Association, said data coming out of Harris Creek indicates restoration efforts have not been successful
. . .
Both Chance and Bob Newberry, chairman of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, said Broad Creek, which is part of a commercial fisheries area, has a higher spat count, and oyster bars in Broad Creek are doing better than the sanctuary in Harris Creek.

Oysters do better in some places than in others for various reasons not entirely well known to science. It could be that Broad Creek is just one of those areas, which would explain why it still has any oysters at all after a century of heavy fishing as well as diseases.

Watermen were also less than thrilled with the substrate used, and its use in the Harris Creek restoration.

In a recent interview, Newberry said he has concerns regarding large rock piles that were put into Harris Creek improperly and that he said have done more than $30,000 in damage to watermen’s boats.

What watermen really resent, though, is any area where oysters are that they are not allowed to pillage.

Rule 5 Saturday - Goldie Hawn

This Rule 5 post prompted by this article found via Wombat-socho's "LIVE AT FIVE: 12.31.15"

Goldie Hawn On Life In NYC At 19:

I Lived in a One-Room, Roach-Infested Apartment and 'Had Men Exposing Themselves to Me'

So, pretty much what New York City is going to go back to under De Blasio?

Goldie Jeanne Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an American actress, director, producer, and occasional singer. Hawn is known for her roles in television's Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and films such as The Sugarland Express, Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Shampoo, Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, and Cactus Flower, for which she won the 1969 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She is the mother of actors Oliver Hudson, Kate Hudson, and Wyatt Russell. Hawn has been in a relationship with actor Kurt Russell since 1983.

Damn, Laugh-In was funny. . .

GOODSTUFFs BLOGGING MAGAZINE (222nd Issue) is Starting the New Year in a BIG way! Dolly Parton is hosting this massive metablog. Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho has the ginormous "Rule 5 Sunday: Happy New Year!" and "FMJRA 2.0: Wolf Like Me" ready for browsing at The Other McCain.

RIP: Natalie Cole

The daughter of singer Nat King Cole, and a singer in her own right, dies at 65

Natalie Cole has died, reports the Associated Press and TMZ. She was 65.

"I think that I am a walking testimony that you can have scars," she told CBS’s Sunday Morning in 2006. "You can go through turbulent times and still have victory in your life."

Cole died Thursday evening at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles due to compilations from ongoing health issues, her family said in a statement to the AP.

"Natalie fought a fierce, courageous battle, dying how she lived ... with dignity, strength and honor. Our beloved Mother and sister will be greatly missed and remain UNFORGETTABLE in our hearts forever," read the statement from her son Robert Yancy and sisters Timolin and Casey Cole.

Born Feb. 6, 1950, in Los Angeles, Cole had music in her genes. Her father was legendary crooner Nat King Cole, and her mother, Maria Cole, sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

At age six, Cole recorded a duet with her father, I’m Good Will, You’re Christmas Spirit. By age 11, she was performing alongside him on his television show.

Years after reclaiming her life from drug addiction, Cole was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2008. Exhausted, she continued performing until her rapidly declining health was tied to kidney disease, likely a result of the medication she was using to treat her hepatitis C.

Cole continued to tour, receiving dialysis three times per week between performances. During a March 2009 appearance on Larry King Live, her fans’ love for her was apparent. The show received dozens of emails from fans offering her replacement kidneys.

While fighting her own battles, Cole was helping her sister, Cookie, battle cancer. Her sister died the morning Cole got a successful kidney transplant in May 2009.

Too soon. Fucking drugs and Hep C. We have the ability to eliminate Hep C like Polio and Smallpox. The US should devote the resources necessary to do so.

First Beach Walk of 2016 and the Counting of the Year Jar

2016 started cloudy and about 45 F here in Slower Maryland, with 5-10 kt NW breeze. Not bad for January. We bundled for our colds, and took Skye II to the beach after lunch, around 2 PM.

Georgia found the first shark's tooth of the year, this "back of the jaw" Snaggletooth.

I quickly responded with mine, this slightly worse for wear small Snaggletooth upper. Not a really good day for teeth, we only found 9 (and I take credit for 7), and none really remarkable.

People sometimes ask why we never run out of sharks teeth. This picture show why; the cliffs are constantly sliding and eroding, and dumping more teeth into the surf.

Skye gets some personal attention. There were several other groups out on the beach, and she got her fair share and then some of pets.

Just bobbing around waiting for something to happen.

 The Counting of the Year Jar - 2015

Overall, one of our worst years in quite a while, mostly because we were busy doing other things, but it also seems less teeth in the surf. Either that or my eyes are getting worse. . .

Anyway, according to the monthly (and sometimes combined monthly) counts we go 1084 shark's teeth, including the "Top Shelf" teeth shown in front of the jar, plus 31 Black Drum's teeth (the round bits).

A little closer look at the Top Shelf specimens. A row of more or less complete Eagle Ray plates on the left, next a row of Cow Shark teeth, with a broken Crocodile tooth at the top. To the right on top the years best specimens of various sharks, including Makos, and Snaggletooths. The "sticks" at the top are fragments of Sting Ray barbs, and I've already mentioned the Black Drums' teeth.

First 2016 Dispatch from Clinton.com

Holy-Moly, skip a few days for the holidays, and the stuff just piles up. I think it's going to be a busy year. I'll try this free form again.

Ann Althouse discusses how Hillary claims to have gone "undercover" in Dotham, Alabama back in 1972, as a Yale Law student in an attempt to find evidence of racism in the schools. In the words of one commenter "In other words, Hillary was telling lies to people to gain their trust. . . Nothing has changed." Another points out that if she had been a lawyer at the time, lying like that would be an ethics violation. Another points out that liberal loathe behavior like this in James O'Keefe's Project Veritas.

One of the big threads in the last week has been how Hillary is preparing to use Bill as a weapon in her election campaign. Donald Trump promptly leaped on that to emphasize Bill's penchant for womanizing to turn back Hillary's war on women rhetoric: "Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign but HE'S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!" As often happens, once the unspoken was spoken by Trump, others followed. Ken Silverstein of the Miami Observer noted The Flying Peophile: The Jeffrey Epstein Affair Imperils Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Prospects.

For those of you who haven’t heard much about the Jeffrey Epstein, he is a 62-year-old billionaire and major donor to the Democratic Party. The story erupted after Virginia Roberts gave a sworn statement in a federal court filing that claimed (as reported here by Radar) that that under Mr. Epstein’s tutelage she “was a teen sex slave forced to have sex with Prince Andrew” and that she also saw Bill Clinton on Mr. Epstein’s “orgy island.”

Any number of journalists agreed, that If Hillary plays the sexism card, then Bill’s behavior is fair game (WSJ). Our least favorite "fact checker spinner" at the Washington Post: A guide to the allegations of Bill Clinton’s womanizing, but then declines to fact check. A normally loyal liberal, Ruth Marcus, also at WAPO. Trump is right: Bill Clinton’s sordid sexual history is fair game. WAPO's Jannell Ross then calls for equal treatment of Trumps colorful marital history Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and how sexism is now partisan. Yeah, I'm OK with that, too.

Katherine Timpf (who plays a dumb quirky blonde on the Greg Gutfeld show, but writes columns for National Review) wrote: Hillary Clinton Is Not a Feminist

Hillary Clinton claims to be pro-women, yet has actively worked to ruin lives of so many of them. She’s running on a “feminist platform” — she’s even dared to say that sexual-assault survivors have a “right to be believed” — despite the fact that what she did to the women who accused Bill went far beyond not believing them.
 She attacked them.

When allegations of sexual misconduct emerged during Bill’s 1992 presidential run, she’s reported to have said “Who is going to find out? These women are trash. Nobody’s going to believe them.” Multiple people also report that she called the women “sluts” and “whores” — you know, for daring to be raped. A private investigator named Ivan Duda claims that, after Bill lost his second governor’s race, Hillary told him: “I want you to get rid of all these b****** he’s seeing . . . I want you to give me the names and addresses and phone numbers, and we can get them under control.”

And  provided this helpful reminder (remember, millennials were most playing Mario Cart when this happened):‘I will not stop talking about this’! NRO’s Katherine Timpf won’t let Hillary off ‘feminist’ hook

Sexual predators named Bill ... 

Stacy McCain helpfully cites Katherine as well, but passes on this "compare and contrast" picture of two sexual predators in "Real Feminists Support Bernie Sanders." Remember this when  they tell you that this was too long ago to matter.

Speaking of Millennials, Hillary keeps stumping with the loser of the lot Lena Dunham:Why Hillary Clinton Keeps Stumping With Lena Dunham. I eagerly await ignoring their joint nude scene, while Hewitt Schools Lemon on Need for Trump, GOP to Educate Millenials on Bill Clinton Sex Scandals.



Switching topics to ethics in general A government watchdog group has released a list of eight politicians it considers Washington, D.C.’s worst ethics violators, but Hillary Clinton is in a “league of her own.” A history lesson:



6 moments that could haunt Hillary Clinton

1) “We now finally are where we need to be” on ISIL . . .
2) Republicans are my enemies . . .
3) “What, like with a cloth or something? . . .
4) Guns . . .
5) Charter schools . . .
6) Not My Abuela . . .

Over the New Years holiday, the Hillary Clinton/State Department email scandal reared it head again as the State Department just couldn't get it's act together to produce the emails required to satisfy the judge, releasing only 65% of the required number. As with previous releases, 275 of the emails had to be classified confidential or secret and partially redacted to be released, and at least one was marked confidential. Among the amusing things revealed in this partial email tranche, Clinton and her button man, Sid "The Shiv" Blumenthal discussed whether John Podesta and Tom Daschle were anonymously undermining President Obama in 2010 and that Hillary's State Department Kept Tabs on the Drudge Report.

Final Holiday Underwear Post

I don't really like underwear for Christmas. How about you?



At least they got the music from somebody who can sing.

Wombat-socho has the ginormous "Rule 5 Sunday: Happy New Year!" ready for browsing at The Other McCain.

New Years Friday Monkey Dacker

me at mom's house on thanksgiving

#currentmood #same

Posted by Katie Rex on Monday, November 23, 2015

Happy New Year!

And may 2016 be the best year yet.

Wombat-socho has the ginormous "Rule 5 Sunday: Happy New Year!" ready for browsing at The Other McCain.