Factoid of the day

Seven famous people who missed the Titanic, at Smithsonian magazine

includes Theodore Dreiser (cost too much), Marconi (left three days earlier on the Lusitania), Milton Hershey (decided to leave earlier), J Pierpoint Morgan (decided to stay longer in Europe), Henry Frick (his wife sprained her ankle), AG Vanderbilt (changed his mind the last minute) etc.

Science lesson of the day

Crime fighting the old fashioned way

Orkney shop worker foils knife robbery with tape dispenser

Music anyone?

Musical interlude of the day

I can't decide if I liked the movie or not, but the music is pretty....

Cat item of the day

Stuff below the fold

Headlines below the fold

It's not planking...it's NoyNoying...and they are doing it as part of the big strike to protest the increase in oil/gasoline prices.
-----------------

another day, another earthquake...in the south, not here. No one hurt.

------------------------
It wasn't just Kony, but the good news is that Thomas Lubanga has just been convicted for his use of child soldiers.

However, he wasn't charged for ethnic murders or other violent actions of his militia.
----------------------

Occupy churches...this time by pro democracy activists in Cuba, who want to have the church pressure the gov't to reform.
-----------------

the "yeah we know that" headline:Menopause really does cause 'brain fog' as scientists find women in their fifties struggle with working memory

------------------------------
There are risks to trying to give birth naturally after a Caesarian section.

sigh. I know this.

--------------------
and the really important science headlines of the day:

Jilted fruit flies turn to alcohol

more HERE.

Conspiracy theory of the day

I am belatedly listening to Professor Bob's podcast on the Assasination of President Lincoln, and the podcast about John Wilkes Booth's background said he was a Catholic convert.

Hmm...I don't remember reading about that in O'Reilly's bestselling book.
I was aware that the owner of the boarding house where the plot was hatched, Mrs. Surratt, was a Catholic, (but I didn't know she was a convert); and that her son fled to Catholic Montreal to avoid arrest, but years later was acquitted of the charge.

And Dr. Mudd was also Catholic, and anti Catholic bigotry might have been one reason he was convicted:

In reviewing Samuel Mudd's "military records," the Army ought to have considered some issues which affected the fairness of Mudd's trial, at least by modern standards. * Samuel Mudd was a Roman Catholic, a fact which was brought out during the trial. One of the members of the Hunter Commission was Brigadier General Thomas W. Harris. In 1897, Harris published a book entitled Rome's Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The theme of this book was that President Lincoln's assassination had been the result of a Catholic plot. It is open to question whether Brigadier General Harris was fully free from bias against Dr. Mudd, in view of Dr. Mudd's religion and Harris' later writings about that religion. Bias on the part of a judge is, of course, a good reason to set aside a trial verdict.

No one today (even O'Reilly) notices the anti Catholic conspiracy theory that said the Jesuits were behind the assassination, but one wonders if the bigotry had something to do with the conviction of Mudd and Suratt...

---------------------------
The AtlanticMonthly has some stories from the Civil war period on line HERE.
including this one, printed 3 months after the assassination.

We have the authority of a high Government official for the statement that "the President's murder was organized in Canada and approved at Richmond"; but the evidence in support of this extraordinary announcement is, doubtless for the best of reasons, withheld at the time we write

but guess who the author blames for inspiring the thinking that inspired the plot? Cicero...

Cicero, for example, is never tired of sounding the praises of eminent homicides. He scarcely praised himself more than he eulogized illustrious murderers of other days. And on his eloquent words in honor of assassination are the "ingenuous youth" of Christian countries trained and taught.

---------------------------------------
In a related item:

Evidently somebody at one time thought this was a good idea:

Bobblehead dolls of the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln have been pulled from sale at the Gettysburg National Military Park visitors’ center bookstore.

The dolls of John Wilkes Booth with a handgun were removed from shelves on Saturday, a day after a reporter for Hanover’s The Evening Sun newspaper asked about them, officials said.

via Dustbury

Yes, ignore those cultists, we are making utopia

The Anchoress writes:

Chris Matthews calls Catholics and Mormons "cultists"...

and then she notes:

The Mandated $1 Abortion Contribution of Obamacare: Reality or not? If the MSM ignores it, does it cease to go into effect?

well, the press seem to be ignoring this from the bishops:

Stuff below the fold

Santorini, the volcano that is though to be behind the Atlantic myth, is rumbling again.

headsup Instapundit
-------------------------
StrategyPage has some background on the headlines

This One from strategypage, saying that it's awful quiet and that the murder spree was in a neighborhood run by Taliban drug gangs so no one can get in and investigate what happened.

The second is Austin Bay's column that cautions that a quick pull out will result in Cambodia redux.

and Pakistan's ISI the mastermind of the Mumbai bombings is organizing for the next election.

-------------------
New branch of ancient humans? The Red Deer Cave People don't seem to fit into the old categories.

The people may be linked to the Skhul/Qafzeh people out of Israel and/or the equally mysterious Denisova people from Altai, Groves said. Curnoe and his team are now attempting to recover DNA from the samples, which could answer these and other questions.

Guess I'll have to start listening to the Biological Anthropology lectures or the prehistory ones from USCSD...

-------------------
You heard of the "twinkie defense"?

Now there's the "I can't believe it's not Butter" rage attack.

A chemical called 'trans fatty acids' - found in large quantities in margarine, and also in other fast foods - makes people aggressive and irritable.

Researchers studied 945 people with varying diets - and found those who ate large quantities of the chemical were consistently more aggressive.

-----------------------------

Face-palm Headline of the day

Divine Comedy is 'offensive and discriminatory', says Italian NGO

Human-rights organisation calls for Dante's 'racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic' epic poem to be removed from classrooms

the Facepalm is an internet meme, for those of you who still have a life and don't live on line.

family news

we had the electricity go off during the night, and had to wait til the phone company fixed the line and then we had to reset our modem.

then I had a dental appointment.


So it's 2pm and I am just getting on line.

Chicken news

I had posted about C.Dif enteritis and that they were treating it with fecal transplants, but I noted probiotics were being used also to prevent folks from getting it.

Well, it appears to work in chickens. LINK

------------------
in other chicken news: the Japanese earthquake last year resulted in the death of 4.37 million chickens because the docks were destroyed and they couldn't import enough chicken feed.

they are mainly raised for their eggs.

------------------

Stuff below the fold

ButtercupMiniaturesBlog discusses the various traditions of spring cleaning.

-----------------------

A long but interesting article about everything you wanted to know about Vinegar, including why ladies carried a bit of it with them when they went outside, an be found at Jane Austen's world

--------------------------

The Royal Museum in Ontario has two podcasts on the Maya:
Download mp3 | Written Transcript
Download mp3 | Written Transcript


If you scroll down, the museum has some podcasts on ancient China, and talk by Jane Goodall too.

-----------------------
this Japanese webpage sells you a clock that acts as a seismometer.

they also sell an LCD geigercounter. and a pet evacuation jacket.


--------------------
bookmarked for later reading: Ralph Peter's testimony to Congress about Pakistan/Afghanistan.

We cannot hide in Kansas because, as on 9/11, the world comes to us. But we also cannot embark upon spendthrift nation-building efforts where there’s no nation to build.

a thoughtful read...

Venus, meet Jupiter

Venus, meet Jupiter.

Photograph by Laurent Laveder, TWAN

natgeo says:

This Thursday evening, look to the western skies as Jupiter and Venus—the two brightest planets to the unaided eye—stage a close encounter over the Northern Hemisphere.

Though the two planets will appear to converge all this week, they'll be at their closest March 15—separated by only 3 degrees in the sky, or the width of two fingers at arms' length.

St Patrick's day music

Check out Celtic music Magazine to download some Irish Drinking Songs selected by Celtfather Mark Gunn.

the celtic music podcast for St Pat's day is here.

of course, as MarkGunn reminds you, St Patrick never drank



and the Biologist's St Patrick day song reminds you of the important facts:

Insomnia download of the day

Isaac Newton's Optics should put you to sleep

more classical texts:

1. Newton, Isaac. "Preface to The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (in "Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books") · (readers)
2. Einstein, Albert. "Ether and the Theory of Relativity" (in "Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 017") · (readers)
3. Einstein, Albert. "Geometry and Experience" (in "Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 020") · (readers)
4. Einstein, Albert. "Relativity: The Special and General Theory" · (readers)
5. Einstein, Albert. "Sidelights on Relativity" · (readers)
   

\

or try listening to:

Copernicus, Nicolaus. "Dedication from The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies to Pope Paul III" (in "Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 003")

or if you prefer biology, try
Children's Life of the Bee, The by Maeterlinck, Maurice

Why Rednecks marry

Philippine news

Arrests over the NBN-ZTE deal

Wikipedia has the full report. or HERE....you can read various articles at this link from the Inquirer.

Lots of money went into a lot of different pockets in the deal, but who is telling the truth? If you become a whistle blower, they will dig up when you took a "gift" and jail you and discredit you...or worse.

and the latest on the Corona case here.

the reason I am not a good reporter on these things is that you have to know who is related to whom to figure out the mess. And then there is that law against libel...
---------------------------

For your Purim viewing pleasure: Ushpizin:




headsup BywayofBeauty

BUGS!

Ondrej Pakan's beautiful bugs

via NotCot:

Paranoia alert

When I first heard a soldier shot up a bunch of folks in Afghanistan, I figured he went "amuk" (to use the term that is used in the Philippines when an ordinary person goes crazy and kills people).

But the story is getting stranger and stranger. Yes, the usual spin is there, but not a lot of details.... even though the massacre site is within walking distance of the base, most of the reports seem to be from the "governor"....and now I'm reading stuff like this:

"U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, in cooperation with Afghan authorities, will investigate this incident," ISAF said in a statement. It did not give further details.

Kandahar Governor Tooryalai Wisa said a U.S. soldier left his base in Kandahar on Saturday and opened fire on civilians. He said initial reports indicated up to 16 civilians were killed. That could not be immediately confirmed.

real murders, or a "goat scam"? Or both?

Medical stuff below the fold

Medical headlines will be posted here until I get my xanga site up and running...it won't post and says it's "updating" but I wonder if someone hacked it because I wrote about the Obama administration trying to destroy catholic health care.

Must not be paranoid...must not be paranoid.

------------------------------------------

Remember all those folks insisting that only taking stem cells from embryos (which killed the embryo) would cure Type I diabetes, (and that those who dared to point out this inconvenient fact were evil?)

Well, duh: New Approach to Treating Type 1 Diabetes? Transforming Gut Cells Into Insulin Factories

A study by Columbia researchers suggests that cells in the patient's intestine could be coaxed into making insulin, circumventing the need for a stem cell transplant...

so far it only works in mice...
-----------------------

Botox works! for hyperactive bladders, that is.

so does that mean we need to sell our stocks in Depends?

----------------------------
Cervical cancer rates in North Carolina are similar to the rest of the US, but why are there pockets of high rates in minority areas?

Racial predjudice? Barriers to health care? Promiscuity?

Wonder if anyone is checking if circumcision might have to do with the higher rate...

The conclusion is that they will need to emphasize HVP vaccine to school girls in these areas, since there is no way legally to force someone to get a pap smear.

as for circumcision: Post anything in favor and you get the anti-Bris police posting nasty comments on your site.
So don't tell Andrew Sullivan: Circumcision may lower your chance of getting prostate cancer.
----------------------

500 genes associated with Pancreatic cancer?
This cancer is rare (40 000 cases in one year in the US), and only a small percentage of cases are familial.

--------------------------------------
NYTimes article discussing surgery of epilepsy producing brain lesions might lead to fewer seizures and less disability.

They've pretty well known this since I became a doc 40 plus years ago, but the taboo against brain surgery is still strong, partly because it was overused to try to control severe mental illness in the days before anti psychotic medications allowed us to empty the mental hospitals.

---------------------------
Want to limit aggression? Promote self control.

Feeling angry and annoyed with others is a daily part of life, but most people don't act on these impulses. What keeps us from punching line-cutters or murdering conniving co-workers? Self-control. A new review article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines the psychological research and finds that it's possible to deplete self-control -- or to strengthen it by practice.

Yeah, another idea that's been around for 5000 years, but discarded by the "get rid of those old hangups and let it all hang out" ideas of 1960's.

Related item: the Unreal hotel (headsup the Anchoress). Yes, children, can you say "culture of death"?
don't say we weren't warned...

Related item: Druggies now have their own special interest group in California that pressures gov't to supply them with clean needles, crash pads, and of the ability to blame someone else for their own behavior:

Tall and gangly, with a drifting eye, Mr. Jackson speaks with a mumble and a dry sense of humor about losing most of the perks of a normal life — car, career, apartment — to meth, something he feels might have been avoided had a group like his been around at the time.

“If there was more information out there, I could have known how to stay safe,” Mr. Jackson said.

hmmm...has he tried self control?

-----------------------
another item that confirms what we have always known:

Don't pull too hard on the unbillical cord article in the NYTimes. The review was about cutting deaths from post partum hemorrhage, and they said give pitocinto make the uterus clamp down instead of pulling the cord to hasten delivery of the placenta.

However, the problem may not be pulling the cord but a weak uterus from multiparity, malnutrition, exhaustion of the mother....
and note this article from Sierra Leone, or this Ghana news agency article about fake pitocin used by the midwife.

Mr Nuertey entreated pharmacists to advise policy makers on the best ways to tackle the menace.

He said a recent research on the potency of ‘uteronics’, a maternal delivery medicine, found that those medicines in some public facilities were either counterfeit or poorly stocked.

Pot meet kettle

The saying is "the pot calling the Kettle black" but Fonda criticizing Limbaugh isn't pot meets kettle, but crockpot meet forest fire. Full rant moved to BNN.

The Pot calling the kettle black

Guess who wants to censor Limbaugh?

Jane Fonda.

Yes, we have no bananas

Poster source

There were some stories about bananas being threatened by a fungus awhile back: that there was a danger that all bananas would die out in the near future from an infection.

Not a big thing in the US but a big problem in countries where people eat various types of bananas for food. (In Uganda, about 20% of calories come from this lowly fruit).

Now, there are reports about Ugandan scientist growing GM bananas that are resistant to the scourge that won't respond to the usual chemicals:

But local scientists have not. On a sprawling campus outside Kampala, Wilberforce Tushemereirwe and his colleagues at the National Banana Research Programme have been on a quest to defeat the disease by building a better banana. This has involved adding to the fruit a sweet pepper gene that has already improved disease resistance in several vegetables.

Not important you say? No, unless you get half your calories from that lowly fruit.

but they needed special "permission" because GM food is banned there...blame the rich white churches and NGO's...like the Catholic ones who turned away US rice for one of our disasters, because it "might" contain GM rice.

I have some reservations about GM food, but the extreme hype against it seems to be based on superstition rather than science, and is loudest among those who never went hungry:

A study by Enoch Kikulwe, assistant professor of international food economics at the University of Göttingen, Germany, revealed more opposition to GM crops among the elite than those in poorer villages. Most studies show that better education led to more acceptance of GM foods, he said.

But for Kamenya the farmer, – who falls into the elite category – the anti-GM stance was hypocritical. "Most of the people against this have choices," he said, a pot of matooke steaming nearby. "Somebody who is hungry does not have a choice. GM, organic or whatever – you have to feed the people."

History lesson of the day

Before HBO had ROME:



Before there was I Claudius




before there was Mel Brooks


There was Cleopatra...

Keep Calm and Carry On

Key fact:

The third and final poster of the set was again very straightforward and to the point - it simply read ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. The plan in place for this poster was to issue it only upon the invasion of Britain by Germany. As this never happened, the poster was never officially seen by the public.

And the phrase: "carry on"?

That phrase was made famous by the "Carry on" film series...

Blame Evil Capitalism

The BBC has an article on the theme "poor people living on $1 a day.

They are honest enough to point out that $1 dollar buys a lot more in poor countries than in the USA, but the really startling part of the article is this graph on what percentage of the world's population live on less than $1.25 a day, and that a lot of these people are farmers who grow their own food, which doesn't go into the calculations: They just don't have much cash...




Yes, this is thanks to the evils of capitalism, making folks richer one family at a time.

Even those who point out the income gap fail to realize that it's not that the poor are poorer, but that they have not yet become more prosperous; They are still as poor as their ancestors, not poorer than they were 50 years ago. Except now they probably have cellphones.

--------------------

Did you know Spain just elected a conservative president? Check David Warren's discussion of the economic problems faced by that country.


----------------------------------
Preparing for "the Big One": The "Balikatan" exercize next month will not do wargames but on how the military will respond to a major earthquake in Manila.

-----------------------------

This BBC article highlights "indigenous groups protesting" against mining in Ecuador, with the report of "hundreds of protesters" but a photo only showing less than a score...

but if you read down the article toward the end, you will see that the President of Ecuador held his own counter protest:




hmmm...looks like more than a couple hundred protesters here...

And guess who owns the mining company? China...

-----------------------------

The big impeachment trial of the Supreme court ex justice is still going on here, and the latest kerfuffle is about who released the bank accounts that seems mysteriously full of cash. Like a soap opera, it is primetime viewing for many...

And Miriam is now "trending" ...

Like a widely watched telenovela, the trial begins its Season 2 as it were, with the defense panel’s turn to present its rebuttal following the prosecution’s sudden decision to rest its case.

As of Sunday afternoon, Santiago’s Twitter followers have reached 132,663, while her Facebook fans have generated 102,000 “friends.”

The highly charged hearing on February 29—during which lawyer Vitaliano Aguirre incurred the ire of the feisty senator for covering his ears while she was lambasting the prosecution’s handling of the case—went exactly like a cliffhanger season-ender. The audience lapped it all up.

One priest overdid a sermon, claiming she should go to hell for her escapades, resulted in this tongue in cheek essay in the Inquirer about hell's residents being upset she might disturb the place when she gets there...

Father Catalino Arevalo declared in a homily that Sen. Miriam Santiago deserved “the fires of Hell” for calling prosecutors fools for their mishandling of their accusations. The priest’s pronouncement immediately sent shivers to residents of the Hellfire and Brimstone neighborhoods of Hell.

“We’re okay with the eternal scorching and scalding, but adding nonstop, high-decibel diatribes to that would be intolerable,” complained Lucrezia Borgia, who hurriedly packed her exotic poisons to evacuate to a truly violent but quieter neighborhood, Circle Seven.

Panicked residents like Borgia learned of the looming crisis triggered by Santiago’s possible arrival when the piped-in music system abruptly stopped playing “Unchained Melody” and began airing ominous choral passages from “Carmina Burana,” which were made famous by horror movies....

Before Satan retreated into the Inner Mouth of Hell, which reporters thought was just a big pothole on EDSA courtesy of the Department of Public Works, he clarified that he did not have the power to determine any government official’s ultimate fate, contrary to popular belief.

“I can’t stop Ms. Santiago or any Filipino public official. Let’s make one thing clear, people. I’m just the Prince of Darkness, not Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.”

(a reference to Corona's alleged protection of our lovely ex president Gloria)

Miriam has a degree in theology and claims Vatican II did away with "hell", but she might want to check out the Bible on how the deity feels about those who pretend to be religious and take bribes and cheat the poor.

-----------------------------
The Hollywood Press association is sending some funds to the UN to help the kids affected by Sendong...so the Golden Globes do have a silver lining.

Everyday heroines

From the Phil Inquirer:

(Japanese Ambassador) Urabe specifically thanked the Filipino nurses who have stayed in nursing homes to help care for elderly patients, despite the threat of nuclear contamination and aftershocks.

“Just last week, I was visiting Fukushima. I wanted to pay tribute to the Filipino nurses. They stayed on despite the nuclear disaster because they couldn’t leave the helpless elderly people,” Urabe said at a ceremony on the campus of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.

He was Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Bob Sherman, one of the Sherman brothers who wrote the music for Mary Poppins, has died.

Rest in peace.

Headsup BrianSibley

The Silk Road

this is an old Japanese/NPR series on the Silk Road that I've been trying to find for years (I saw it years ago but never could afford to buy the series in the US).

It's a bit boring, but interesting.

Cat item of the day

The Lost Kingdoms of Africa

Forget everything you learned about Africa, and watch the BBC series on the Lost Kingdoms of Africa.

Some of them I knew about (Nubia and Ethiopia are sometimes mentioned in western history, and I worked in Zimbabwe, so I know that story) but other kingdoms I am less aware of, and now some archeologists are digging up the past.
AMAZON LINK

The first few of the series are on Youtube, for your enjoyment.

Audiobook of the week

If you enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, you might enjoy these short stories by the same author:


Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922

Is Hollywood bowing to political pressure to be biased?

From Strategypage

several Hollywood movies that were changed, late in their production, to eliminate elements that could be seen as critical of China or the Chinese government.