Canadian authorities have just revealed that someone recently stole "a massive haul of maple syrup worth up to $30 million" from a warehouse in Québec.

Police and auditors have not yet released details of exactly how much product is missing; the current word is "a large quantity."

If the thieves had somehow made off with the entire contents of the warehouse, Canada would have lost more than a tenth of its 2012 syrup harvest (3.4 million liters).

The Federation of Québec Maple Syrup Producers (three magical elves) noticed that the syrup was missing during a routine inspection of the warehouse, which is maintained as part of the world's "global strategic maple syrup reserve."

more

http://gawker.com/5939581/we-gave-canada-one-job-dont-lose-all-the-maple-syrup-and-they-couldnt-do-it

A South Carolina man reportedly succumbed to injuries he sustained while demonstrating the "proper" way to shoot one's self in the head.

James Gagum was pronounced dead by paramedics who arrived at his Conway home Thursday night to find the 43-year-old lying in a pool of his own blood.

According to eyewitnesses, Gagum had been watching a movie when he was inspired to "correct" a scene in which a person was presumably holding a gun to his own head.

Gagum, seated in a recliner, picked up his gun and put it to his head saying, "that's not how it's done." He then pulled the trigger several times, possibly unaware the gun was loaded.

The third time proved deadly.

http://gawker.com/5939688/man-accidentally-shoots-himself-in-the-head-while-mimicking-movie-scene

by Max Read


Father Benedict Groeschel, a prominent friar, television host, and director of the Office for Spiritual Development for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, gave an interview to the National Catholic Register this week. It's been taken down — why? Probably because Groeschel claimed that "in a lot of cases" of abuse, "the youngster... is the seducer." And expressed sympathy with Jerry Sandusky.

more
http://gawker.com/5939320/prominent-catholic-friar-on-poor-guy-sandusky-a-lot-of-cases-the-youngster-is-the-seducer

Just sickening.

A: When it is done on another planet, by a vehicle not designed to go more than 1 Km!



by NANCY ATKINSON on AUGUST 31, 2012

Meanwhile, back in Meridiani Planum … the Opportunity rover keeps on trucking, and has now exceeded over 35 kilometers (21.75 miles) of driving on its odometer! Quite an accomplishment for the Energizer Bunny of Mars rovers, now operating for 3,057 Martian sols. As the MER team says, “Not bad for a vehicle designed for only about 1 kilometer (.6 miles) of distance and 90 sols (days) of lifetime.”
Oppy is now moving south along the inboard edge of Cape York on the rim of Endeavour Crater surveying exposed outcrop in search of phyllosilicate clay minerals that have been detected from orbit. These outcrops are quite interesting and attention-grabbing; here’s a look in color from Stuart Atkinson:


Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/97146/opportunity-rover-tops-35-kilometers-of-driving/

On to Ceres: Dawn Spacecraft Ready to Say Farewell to Asteroid Vesta
by NANCY ATKINSON on AUGUST 31, 2012

The feat has never been accomplished before and next week’s departure for the Dawn spacecraft from Vesta will be monumental. Dawn is on track to become the first probe to orbit and study two distant solar system destinations. The spacecraft is scheduled to leave the giant asteroid Vesta on Sept. 4 PDT (Sept. 5 EDT) to start its two-and-a-half-year journey to the dwarf planet Ceres.

“Thrust is engaged, and we are now climbing away from Vesta atop a blue-green pillar of xenon ions,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director. “We are feeling somewhat wistful about concluding a fantastically productive and exciting exploration of Vesta, but now have our sights set on dwarf planet Ceres.

In the video above, the Dawn team looks back at the highlights of the year-plus stay in orbit around Vesta. Dawn’s orbit provided close-up views of Vesta, revealing unprecedented detail about the giant asteroid. The mission revealed that Vesta completely melted in the past, forming a layered body with an iron core. The spacecraft also revealed the scarring from titanic collisions Vesta suffered in its southern hemisphere, surviving not one but two colossal impacts in the last two billion years. Without Dawn, scientists would not have known about the dramatic troughs sculpted around Vesta, which are ripples from the two south polar impacts.

“We went to Vesta to fill in the blanks of our knowledge about the early history of our solar system,” said Christopher Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator, based at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). “Dawn has filled in those pages, and more, revealing to us how special Vesta is as a survivor from the earliest days of the solar system. We can now say with certainty that Vesta resembles a small planet more closely than a typical asteroid.”



Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/97150/on-to-ceres-dawn-spacecraft-ready-to-say-farewell-to-asteroid-vesta/

by NANCY ATKINSON on AUGUST 31, 2012

This video has been in production for a while and was not originally meant to honor Neil Armstrong, but it very well could memorialize the first human explorer to set foot on the Moon. This short video titled “From the Earth to the Moon” provides a stunning and inspirational view of the lunar surface, and “highlights vast portions of the lunar surface that have yet to be explored, and demonstrates how new images are revealing dramatic details of future landing sites suitable for both robotic and human missions,” writes lunar scientist David Kring, one of the researchers behind creating this video.
All of the footage is from actual images and data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter; there are no artist renditions or animations.
“The scenes in the video are so dramatic that you may find yourself reaching out to pick up a rock and becoming restless to walk among the lunar peaks,” writes Kring.

As stunning as the video is, it also reminds us that humans have not visited its surface since 1972, even though it is one of the best and most accessible place in the solar system to explore the fundamental principles of our origins, Kring says.


Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/97151/dramatic-new-video-brings-you-to-the-dazzling-lunar-surface/

Is doing the same thing over and over again …

Mike Konczal does what I was planning to do, and compares the (very thin) policy discussion in Mitt Romney’s big speech with previous GOP speeches. As he shows, Romneynomics 2012 is literally identical to McCainomics 2008, Bushnomics 2004, and Bushnomics 2000. Drill, baby, drill; cut taxes on rich people (why didn’t we think of that?); and so on.

I would just add to Mike’s take the historical experience. Romney says that his plan would create 12 million jobs in his first term. Leaving aside the fact that this is about what forecasters on average predict in any case, surely we should ask how the identical policies worked out in Bush’s two terms. And the answer is: zero job growth in term one (and a fall in private sector employment), one million in term two. Oh, and private sector employment lower when Bush left office than when he arrived:




The poverty of new ideas is truly amazing.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/the-definition-of-insanity/

The Medicare Killers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 30, 2012

Paul Ryan’s speech Wednesday night may have accomplished one good thing: It finally may have dispelled the myth that he is a Serious, Honest Conservative. Indeed, Mr. Ryan’s brazen dishonesty left even his critics breathless.

Some of his fibs were trivial but telling, like his suggestion that President Obama is responsible for a closed auto plant in his hometown, even though the plant closed before Mr. Obama took office. Others were infuriating, like his sanctimonious declaration that “the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” This from a man proposing savage cuts in Medicaid, which would cause tens of millions of vulnerable Americans to lose health coverage.

And Mr. Ryan — who has proposed $4.3 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade, versus only about $1.7 trillion in specific spending cuts — is still posing as a deficit hawk.

But Mr. Ryan’s big lie — and, yes, it deserves that designation — was his claim that “a Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare.” Actually, it would kill the program.

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/opinion/Krugman.html?_r=1

Bonus Flashtoon: The Love-Me-Mitt Doll!

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/fiore/item/Fiore-Love-Me-Mitt-Doll-10906.php