Factoid of the day

Scientists try to figure out why naked mole rats don't get cancer.

their genome also might point to clues on aging, is the only mammal that changes it's body temperature with the environment, and are the longest living rodents: Living up to 28 years..

(headsupInstapundit)

Reclaiming the Sahara

Good news article about how letting "weeds" regenerate may stop the loss of topsoil and preserve the land in marginal areas of the Sahara desert.

The bushes turned out to be clusters of shoots from the buried stumps of long-felled trees, whose root systems still drew water and nutrients from far beneath the arid soil. The shoots could never grow much before being cut or eaten by livestock, but when Rinaudo pruned them down to a single stem and kept the animals away, they shot up into substantial trees within four years.
As the trees grew, so did crops. And as local farmers began reaping good harvests, neighbours and visitors followed suit. Now, two decades later, some 200 million trees have been regenerated in this way, covering five million hectares of Maradi and the neighbouring region of Zinder, enabling the growing of enough extra grain to feed two-and-a-half million people.
Nor is this all. Satellite images have shown that the same technique has been used successfully over 485,000 hectares of next-door Mali. And it is known to have spread to Senegal and the Niger regions of Tahoua and Dosso, though no one has had the resources to quantify it.

and then there are the Sahara canal projects.

Want a clear, slimy complexion?

Forget snakes on a plane: It's snails on the face.

AFP-JIJI

more HERE.

Factoid of the day

The first mention in writing about the Loch Ness monster legend was in the 690's AD, when someone wrote the story of when St Columba ran into the monster.

full article here.

more HERE

Guilty for being partly responsible for the death of many men in the Battle of Cul-drebene, St Columba set out to mainland Scotland on a pilgrimage to spread Christianity across the land.

During this time, on his way to visit with the Pictish king in Inverness, he encountered some Picts burying what remained of one of their own people - badly savaged by a creature in the Loch.

The dead mans boat lay on the other side of the water, so Columba ordered one of his followers to swim over and retrieve the boat.During this the servant was attacked by a creature that reared out of the Loch to attack the swimmer.

Columba (invoking the name of God) commanded the beast to return to whence it came and it vanished beneath the waters of the Loch leaving the swimming man unharmed.

you know, I always thought this legend was up there along with big foot and alien abductions.

But we now have RiverMonsters the TV series on our local cable, and it makes me wonder: If the fish are that big now (when the high population and overfishing make it less likely they grow that big), I wonder if this legend was based on a huge fish, not a dinosaur...

and yes, they have a show about Nessie (but I haven't seen it on our cable yet)

as for Colomba: sounds like he was another saint who had PTSS...

Headlines below the fold

28 congressmen/senators here were linked to a scam where fake NGO's let them steal money for personal use. There is even a "Watergate" type break in against the reporters.

Wonder how many in the US Congress do the same and get away with it?

Governor Corzine, call your office.

Papa Francesco

In case you are wondering why the Pope is popular, check out this sermon, which links the care of refugees from Africa and the love of our brother with the care for the environment.

Immigrants who died at sea, from that boat that, instead of being a way of hope was a way of death. This is the headline in the papers! When, a few weeks ago, I heard the news – which unfortunately has been repeated so many time – the thought always returns as a thorn in the heart that brings suffering. And then I felt that I ought to come here today to pray, to make a gesture of closeness, but also to reawaken our consciences so that what happened would not be repeated. Not repeated, please! But first I want to say a word of sincere gratitude and encouragement to you, the residents of Lampedusa and Linosa, to the associations, to the volunteers and to the security forces that have shown and continue to show attention to persons on their voyage toward something better. You are a small group, but you offer an example of solidarity! Thank you!...

I give a thought, too, to the dear Muslim immigrants that are beginning the fast of Ramadan, with best wishes for abundant spiritual fruits. The Church is near to you in the search for a more dignified life for yourselves and for your families. I say to you “O’ scia’!” [trans.: a friendly greeting in the local dialect].

This morning, in light of the Word of God that we have heard, I want to say a few words that, above all, provoke the conscience of all, pushing us to reflect and to change certain attitudes in concrete ways.

“Adam, where are you?” This is the first question that God addresses to man after sin. “Where are you Adam?” Adam is disoriented and has lost his place in creation because he thought to become powerful, to dominate everything, to be God. And harmony was broken, the man erred – and this is repeated even in relations with his neighbour, who is no longer a brother to be loved, but simply someone who disturbs my life, my well-being. And God puts the second question: “Cain, where is your brother?”

The dream of being powerful, of being as great as God, even of being God, leads to a chain of errors that is a chain of death, leads to shedding the blood of the brother!

These two questions resonate even today, with all their force! So many of us, even including myself, are disoriented, we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live, we don’t care, we don’t protect that which God has created for all, and we are unable to care for one another. And when this disorientation assumes worldwide dimensions, we arrive at tragedies like the one we have seen.

“Where is your brother?” the voice of his blood cries even to me, God says. This is not a question addressed to others: it is a question addressed to me, to you, to each one of us. These our brothers and sisters seek to leave difficult situations in order to find a little serenity and peace, they seek a better place for themselves and for their families – but they found death. How many times to those who seek this not find understanding, do not find welcome, do not find solidarity! And their voices rise up even to God!

.........God asks each one of us: “Where is the blood of your brother that cries out to me?” Today no one in the world feels responsible for this; we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility; we have fallen into the hypocritical attitude of the priest and of the servant of the altar that Jesus speaks about in the parable of the Good Samaritan: We look upon the brother half dead by the roadside, perhaps we think “poor guy,” and we continue on our way, it’s none of our business; and we feel fine with this. We feel at peace with this, we feel fine!

The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference. In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn’t concern us, it’s none...

In the Gospel we have heard the cry, the plea, the great lament: “Rachel weeping for her children . . . because they are no more.” Herod sowed death in order to defend his own well-being, his own soap bubble. And this continues to repeat itself.

Duck!

Headsup Orwell's picnic

Video download of the day

This one is an old PBS special on MtPinatubo
 the good news: These nature specials are now on youtube. I download and show them to Lolo when the cable is out (like now) or the only thing on tv is swamp people.

alas they won't let you embed

Don't forget the soap

While the Danes and Norsemen were hitting England and France, the Swedes were terrorizing and settling what is now Russia and the Baltic republics.

So how far did they get? To Contantinople...

History here includes this factoid:

The first record of Vikings in Byzantium is in 839 when a delegation had to return home via Germany. A more forceful encounter occurred in 860 when a large raiding force terrorized Constantinople for ten days. Trading treaties were made in 907 and 911.

An interesting element of these treaties is that they gave the Rus unlimited free baths.

Malala addresses the UN

LINK

Political refugees from the USA? Think Ecuador

I have an idea:

Ecuador has offered Snowdon political asylum: after all, they have already offered asylum to Assange.

All of them are being prosecuted by the Obama administration, for being  "whistle blowers" of stuff that was already known, but not well reported in the MSM.

 (come on now: Anyone listening to C2C or reading various milblogs know this stuff was going on...StrategyPage had a podcast where Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay were laughing at the stuff released by Assange, and were saying "yup...got that one right. Yup...we got that one right too).

So maybe they should offer Zimmerman political asylum also: This was a show trial orchestrated by a few bigshots and aided by the US Justice Department. But a lot of folks suspect it was not about justice, but about manipulating the black vote for Obama.

Menopausal cat item of the day

Family news

the internet was off for 24 hours...they were fixing the lines.

The cable TV is also off, but I have lots of movies and nature stuff to show Lolo so he doesn't get too bored. But he misses the news (he reads the paper but then watches the programs too).

Joy went to a Manila neurologist to get her Bell's palsy checked...they okayed the treatment the local doc gave her, but did a head CT scan (normal of course) and since she was there, checked out her neck pain. She has minor arthritis and minor disk problems, but lots of muscle spasm made worse by her desk, her computer use at the dining room table, and all those long trips to Manila in the car. I have a neck collar I bought at the airport for my trip home,  but she already has two, and if I give her mine she will probably not use it and mislay it, leaving me without one.

Chano is busy doing stuff at the farm...one of these days I'll have to go there and photograph the "new" buildings (renovated old ones) for teaching organic veggie farming.

The dogs are all badly infested with ticks. Usually we had a young man working in the garden who would bathe them every week, but now we have an old man, and no one is caring for them...or even making sure they eat okay. Our youngest dog was so thin that she lost her last litter. When I came back from the US, the ticks were so bad that we had to give them a shot to destroy them, but now they are coming back, and Lolo's dog jumps on his side of the bed when we aren't looking, so we have to spray the bed with insecticide every morning, which I hate...

Sargents usually works, but is expensive: I'll probably invest in it when my next funds transfer comes in next week. In the meanwhile, I end up giving them baths....yuck.

Does Global Warming cause obesity?

The AMA decided to make obesity a "disease".

Nonsense, of course. Obesity is a symptom, one aspect of various syndromes (especially Metabolic syndrome, which is genetic, but also can be a symptom of low thyroid function, adrenal gland problems, lack of exercize, overeating from depression, etc.).

Ah, but by making it a "disease" it means you will be paid to see a person who comes in with it.
It also means that our patients won't have to pay a quack to give them diet pills, and that big Pharm will come up with new pills to treat this "disease".

The dirty little secret: The long term "cure" rate of obesity is 5 percent...true, a person's health can improve if you get them to eat correctly, exercize, and lose ten pounds, but that won't cure the primary problem: that we no longer starve six months a year and so don't need our genes to put on weight when there is enough food to eat.
That is what the gene for "metabolic" syndrome does: let you put on weight.

So the Pima Indians in Mexico, who eat a low protein low fat diet and work hard in their fields all day are slim and don't get diabetes, but their American relatives, who get "commodities" (high fat, high protein) and no longer have to grow their own food have the highest percentage of obesity and diabetes in the USA.

The only Amerindian tribe I worked with who were not obese were the Apaches, many of whom still work as ranchers and in more traditional lifestyles. The tribes that were destroyed, have a lot of substance abuse, and now have people living on welfare, are obese, not because they can't afford veggies, but because they don't do hard physical labor anymore, and their genes are still programmed to put all excess calories into fat so they survive the lean hunting season or the lean planting season, before next year's crop is available.

The diabetes epidemic will get worse with the immigration bill: Because although Miami has lots of middle class Cubans and Colombians, and the South west has many Spanish metzisos who have lived there for 400 years, most Mexican immigrant are essentially either Indian or metziso/mulattos (and sometimes, like George Zimmerman's mom, of an Indian/African ancestry).

So expect a lot more obesity, and a booming business for fat docs, even among the poorest neighborhoods.

So what's that about global warming causing obesity?

Well, two ways:

One: The same industries that let people get rich enough to eat good food cheaply are the ones that pollute. Even McDonald's is blamed for global warming, since there are now ranches where there were jungles in Brazil etc. (never mind that the jungles weren't there but were farmed land before 1492, but that's another story).

Two: as there is more carbon in the atmosphere, the plants grow better, and as the world is warmer, there are more areas to grow crops. That means cheaper, more abundant food for the growing population in the third world cities.

What about desertification? Well, part of that started in 8000 bc...and some of the deforestation is because of corruption (you can replant the forest, but that takes money...and the gov't tells the forestry companies to stay out. So locals cut the trees and since they can't afford to ship them out or make roads or buy trucks, they clear cut and wait till the monsoon washes them down to the lowlands...)

Sci fi changes the world

David Gerrold once wrote that not only do stories affect the way we see culture, but they effect how culture changes.
And SciFi has a huge effect not only in predicting what happens, but also in being a "self fulfilling prophecy" of what the future will look like.

From the Cheezburgersite:

Dog item of the day

Archeology reports:

(Danielle deLeon)

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN—Mitochondrial DNA samples taken from living Asian, American, and European dogs, and from dog bones found at American archaeological sites, show that many American dog breeds, including Chihuahuas, Peruvian hairless dogs, and Arctic sled dogs, originated with dogs from East Asia and Siberia. Their canine ancestors probably crossed the land bridge linking East Asia and North America with the ancestors of Native Americans.

Background stuff

StrategyPage has a long essay on what's really going on in Egypt.

A bit different than the stuff you are probably hearing...but probably more accurate. Essentially the army there are the puppet masters, but the good news is that aside from stealing everything in sight, they are also good at running the place.

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How to stop the NSA from getting your stuff? Try a typewriter.

Ah, but they also photograph/open your letters...as many missionaries who reported gov't atrocities found out when I worked in Zimbabwe when it was the apartheid regieme and still called Rhodesia.

They even searched our luggage and checked if we were carrying letters/information to mail when we arrived in Europe (to get around this censorship). I was too honest to carry letters, of course: My face would have given it away.

But my mom blithely said she didn't have anything, so they didn't check her stuff... and so she was the one who smuggled the letters out for them.

I should note that nowadays, Zimbabwe is finally getting cheap cellphones and internet coverage outside major cities, but they also have a survellience system blocking the internet and watching emails.

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Factoid of the day

You may have heard about Pope Francis visiting the refugees who landed on an Italian island while trying to get into Europe.

After arriving on Lampedusa on Monday morning after a flight from Rome, Francis boarded a coast guard launch and tossed a wreath of white and yellow flowers into the sea in memory of the men, women and children who drowned.
Just hours before his arrival, a boat reached the island carrying 166 migrants, many of them looking exhausted and traumatised and some barefoot.
A few had to be helped onto stretchers while others were given water and food.
After disembarking at Lampedusa's small harbour, he met a group of young immigrants, many of them teenage boys from Eritrea and other African countries, on the quayside.
One of the teenagers told the pontiff that he and other refugees had "suffered terribly" on their journeys after being "robbed" by people traffickers. He said he hoped that help would come from "other European countries"...
Since 1999, more than 200,000 people have arrived on Lampedusa – making the island one of biggest gateways for undocumented migration into Europe.

 the UKTelegraph story has photos; what I found astonishing is that some "catholic" blogs complained he said mass  on an altar that was a fishing boat; and some "right wing" sites complained he was friendly to Muslims, encouraging them to find God in their Ramadan fast.

Yet refugees are not just trying to get into Europe:

StrategyPage has this article on Yemen:

July 10, 2013: In addition to its own economic and political problems Yemen is also stuck with over a million refugees from Africa, many of them brought over by Yemeni smugglers (most get to Yemen via Somali and other African smugglers). 

In other words, poor Yemen has more refugees fleeing there than Italy.
But in their usual tart manner they include this dirty little secret: 

About half the refugees are from Somalia. Hosting all these people is an economic burden, even if foreign aid use used to supply most of the refugee needs. But with worsening water shortages and growing unemployment, even the foreign aid does not solve all the problems the refugees cause. Yemen has been unable to get other countries to provide more help, in part because a lot of the aid is stolen by Yemenis.

and then there is the Saudi crack down on their own illegal aliens. Every day we hear about more coming home to the Philippines.


But Yemen is in trouble here too:

Yemen has also asked international refugee organizations for help in dealing with over 200,000 Yemenis forced from Saudi Arabia in the last three months as the Saudis crack down on some two million illegal migrant workers in the country.

the PhilStar says there are 10 thousand illegal Pinoys affected by this decision (but most of us suspect there are a lot more)

This Saudi story says they have eliminated 240 thousand such workers.

the Saudi crackdown is about their own unemployment rate: trying to insist folks hire local Saudis than foreigners, especially instead of illegal foreigners who work for lower wages.

But it has resulted in lower wages for those who work legally too...

Headlines below the fold

There was a major train disaster in Canada, but no one wants to notice that transporting oil via trains on ancient railroad tracks might be more dangerous than a pipeline.

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Chinese ground to air missiles are going to the bad guys, but never mind.

you know, maybe Nukes in Iran would be safer than letting these nuts get hold of modern weapons: The Iranian mullahs love money and won't really start a war with Israel because they really don't want to be martyrs: which is why they got rid of their nut case leader.

------------------------------------------------
Israel deflects the propaganda from their enemies with the truth.

The bad news? The truth won't protect you from lies in French courts.

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and the really bad news? The "hard news" stories are biased to support the regieme in power.

Yes, the press continues to be upset that the facts don't agree with their rush to judgement about the white racist who killed an innocent teenager,

but that doesn't mean they notice the killing of black teenagers if they can't be used to spin the narrative:
CNN Headline in June;
For Chicago, 7 weekend homicides represent progress 

and, of course, when a prominent Democrat and ex governor is caught in a "mistake" that resulted in 1.6 billion dollars to be "missing" from the bank accounts of ordinary folks a couple billion, well, don't expect any outcry against him when the big shot isn't indicted. More HERE.

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what Father Z calls the "magesterium of nuns" in the Catholic health association has continued to obey Obama, not God, in paying for contraception.

The Obama rules are a shell game, not reality, but never mind. Must be politically correct...

and who made this decision? A few leftists at the top....just like the AAFP and the AMA supported obamacare over the wishes of their members.

Which is why the AMA is dropping members for years, and I'm thinking of dropping the AAFP next. They don't even bother to answer my letters protesting their decisions.

but the press won't notice, any more than they noticed the Pricilla nuns dancing in adoration before the their new age guru...

Various stories

When I took flying lessons, our small town airport was between mountains, requiring a change from the usual flight path.

You made your first turn over a mountain, meaning you had to land at a steeper flight path than normal. Then you turned for approach when you saw the whites of the eyes of those skiing on the nearby mountain. Finally, you came in steeper than normal but had to watch it because there was a small lake on approach, so when you changed from over water to over land, the updraft stopped and your plane lost altitude.

So why am I stating all this? Because the dirty little secret is that a lot of airports have similar "air over water then over land" approaches, which can cause problems, especially on cloudless warm days.

The latest Plane crash in San Francisco may have run into a similar problem: Analysis here denies it.

The approach to runway 28 Left at San Francisco International airport presents some challenges, not unlike those at many other airports that are either built right on the ocean or next to it. Winds at these airports tend to be stronger and more unpredictable in terms of their gusts and direction. Bodies of water are also known to produce sudden updrafts and heavy fog. As of the latest briefing by investigators, it appears flying conditions were not a factor in the crash.

they then go on to point to the pilot errors in a plane he might not have had much experience with.

I've been in two missed landings, both in the Dakotas, with fog and snow and a cross wind. You know the pilot made the right decision when you start climbing and see the airport 100 feet to the right of your window...

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Nine "must have" survival tools.

here, the worst case scenerio would be a major earthquake. So are we prepared?

Yes, I do have a first aid kit. But usually I only buy a week of Lolo's blood pressure medicine at a time because it is expensive, so we have a problem there.

we don't have MRE's: we have a garage full of rice.

We don't have water purification tablets: The river is two blocks down and somewhere in our junk room we have a huge ceramic water purifier...we also have our own water pump and generator to run it (actually two generators: A large one and a smaller backup one that we sometimes use at the farm), although in an earthquake the pump might be damaged..

We have plenty of knives, and since the Philippines has gun control (and Chano, being a Christian, is one of the few middle class Filipinos who obey the law), we do sleep with a machete on the window sill next to our bed. Our main protection against attack is George, the killer Lab,

 and of course in a worst case scenerio, we can always eat Adobong George...

We don't have a magnesium fire stick, but we do have plenty of matches and our stove has a flint starter.

We don't have sleeping bags, but mats and hammocks.

Ah, but we do have duct tape. Worth it's weight in gold.