Stories below the fold

Obama does have a slave in his ancestry.

More HERE. John Punch was a black indentured servant, but the other two indentured servants mentioned were not...and in those days, before the British invented racism, a lot of these servants married each other.
The story of white slavery is rarely mentioned in US history (50 thousand convicts were banished to the colonies to work) although the Aussies know the story about the UK banishing their convicts to that continent....

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This study claims those who take aspirin every day have less Barrett's esophagus (a precancerous lesion of the esophagus).

But it's a bad study: They matched the controls with others and adjusted for age, sex, and alcohol use, but not for symptoms of heartburn, or diet, and it's unclear why the controls got an EGD done....  The study also was not statistically significant (95% is low enough to still be a coincidence). So it's probably true, based on the biochemical basis of the study, but they haven't proven it. And the dirty little secret is that even one aspirin a day can cause GI Bleeding in the elderly.

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Manila needs a new sewer system: they flooded badly in yesterday's storm (again). 

we were fine...it's not that we have open ditch sewer drainage, it's that we didn't get that much rain, because the storm his south of here.

But Ruby's school in Manila (who sponsors and monitors her homeschool studies) was having a "retreat" south of Manila today, and they had to postpone it due to flooded streets.

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Elizabeth Warren praises China for building their infrastructure.

Uh, didn't she read about that terrible flood in Beijing that a lot of locals are blaming on the bad infrastructure?
Probably not: We expect floods in Manila, but usually they cover up these problems in China... but now with cellphones and twitter, they have less control in stopping the story from getting out..

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RIP: Tony Martin died, age 98, after a long career.







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and yes, Hobbit Fans, The OneRingNet confirms there will be a third Hobbit film. and links to Jackson's facebook post.