January 14, 2016

NRA head wants to debate Obama on guns ... a week after skipping Obama town hall on guns

Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association (NRA), speaks during a news conference in Washington December 21, 2012. NRA, the powerful U.S. gun rights lobby, went on the offensive on Friday arguing that schools should have ar


A week after refusing to participate in a town hall event at which President Obama responded to both allies and opponents on gun issues, the National Rifle Association is posturing about wanting to debate Obama. “I’ll meet you, for a one-on-one, one-hour debate,“ Wayne LaPierre, the gun lobby group’s president, says over ominous music in a belligerent video. His proposal for the debate involves:


… a mutually agreed-upon moderator, on any network that will take it. No prescreened questions and no gasbag answers. Americans will judge for themselves who they trust, and believe, on this issue. You, or the NRA.

Very tough, Mr. LaPierre.
But the evidence suggests Americans have already judged for themselves. The NRA has its adherents, and NRA adherents can be the kind of dedicated single-issue voters who give politicians something to fear. But the majority of Americans have made up their minds: They support stricter gun laws, particularly for background checks. The NRA may be able to obstruct progress, and I’m sure its membership thrills to the dick-swinging of LaPierre’s video, but it’s defending unpopular positions.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/14/1469854/-NRA-head-wants-to-debate-Obama-on-guns-a-week-after-skipping-Obama-town-hall-on-guns

January 14, 2016

Bizarre & Disturbing. Subtropical Storm Alex Forms in Atlantic, Hurricane Pali in Pacific in Jan

Hurricane Pali is heading where no hurricane has gone before, within 5 degrees of the equator in the north central Pacific. Forecasters have been stunned by Pali. Tropical storms generally don’t form near the equator because they can’t develop enough spin there but a phenomenal atmospheric wave moved eastward along the equator all the way from the Indian ocean to the eastern Pacific over the last month. That massive wave of thunderstorms on both sides of the equator built a strong surge of westerly winds on the equator as it moved east.

When those west winds reached the central Pacific where the Northeasterly trade reach deep into the tropics, the thunderstorms developed spin and tropical storm Pali formed “impossibly” close to the equator. Pali is the earliest tropical storm ever in the central and east north Pacific. Only one other hurricane has ever formed in January in that region. Moreover, Pali has been closer to the equator than any storm in the region. The super El Nino and the very warm equatorial water temperatures played a role, but Pali’s behavior is still hard to explain.

To make the weather even weirder, a subtropical storm, Alex, just formed in the Atlantic...in January. Water temperatures would normally be too low to support development of a tropical storm except for the very cold temperatures aloft. Very cold temperatures persist into the stratosphere above Alex. It’s weird, really weird, how the lower atmosphere (troposphere) is so thick above Alex and how the lower stratosphere is so cold.

One of the weird effects of increasing greenhouse gases is the cooling of the lower stratosphere. MIT professor Kerry Emanuel found that the cooling of the transition layer between the troposphere and stratosphere has had a larger impact on increasing the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes than warming sea surface temperatures. Perhaps that has something to do with the bizarre formation of subtropical storm Alex in January.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/13/1469634/-Bizarre-Disturbing-Subtropical-Storm-Alex-Forms-in-Atlantic-Hurricane-Pali-in-Pacific-in-January

January 13, 2016

This Map Shows All Drive-In Theaters Still Operating in America

If your desire to revel in childhood nostalgia is strong enough to overcome a few major inconveniences, this is the map for you!

Popping up across America as the country embraced the car in the wake of the post-war boom, drive-in movie theaters became a staple of ‘50s and '60s culture. They brought together communities, gave families access to cheap entertainment, helped bring Hollywood productions to the masses, and gave teenagers a place to neck with their special someone in their sin wagons. The movement peaked in the late '50s, when there were over 4,600 different drive-in locations, and suffered a precipitous decline starting in the 1980s.

Today, there are just 336 left in America, all of which are cataloged in the very busy map below, via braid.io, using data from drive-ins.com.

http://jordan-zakarin.tumblr.com/post/136892366081/this-map-shows-all-drive-in-theaters-still

January 12, 2016

Oregon judge plans to bill Ammon Bundy up to $70,000 a day for security costs to county

An Oregon judge says he will bill Ammon Bundy up to $70,000 a day to reimburse Harney County for security costs related to the ongoing occupation of a wildlife refuge.

Local schools reopened Monday for the first time since Bundy and other militants seized a visitors center Jan. 2 at the Malheur National Wildlife Preserve and demanded the transfer of federally owned land to the county, reported KTVZ-TV.

Bundy and other militants used a backhoe owned by the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife to remove fences separating federal land from property owned by a local rancher.

Bundy said the militants had rifled through files at the occupied building looking for evidence of wrongdoing, but he insisted they had not accessed computers — although public radio reporters witnessed them doing that.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/oregon-judge-plans-to-bill-ammon-bundy-up-to-70000-a-day-for-security-costs-to-county/

January 12, 2016

Scientists try to stay grounded amid rumors that gravitational waves were discovered

Cossmologist tweet appears to confirm rumors of possible discovery that could ‘open a new window on the universe’

Not for the first time, the world of physics is abuzz with rumors that gravitational waves have been detected by scientists in the US.

Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Arizona State university, tweeted that he had received independent confirmation of a rumor that has been in circulation for months, adding: “Gravitational waves may have been discovered!!”

The excitement centers on a longstanding experiment known as the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) which uses detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana to look for ripples in the fabric of spacetime.

According to the rumors, scientists on the team are in the process of writing up a paper that describes a gravitational wave signal. If such a signal exists and is verified, it would confirm one of the most dramatic predictions of Albert Einstein’s century-old theory of general relativity.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/scientists-try-to-stay-grounded-amid-rumors-that-gravitational-waves-were-discovered/

January 11, 2016

NOT THE ONION: Gov. Perry Unable to Find Vagina on Anatomical Doll

In a skirmish at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston about the state’s new ultra-restrictive abortion law, Democratic Senator Wendy Davis angrily told Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry he knows nothing about human reproduction or women’s vaginas.

“You don’t have to own an SUV to know where to pump the gas,” responded Perry, drawing immediate boos from the small lecture hall full of med students and from some of the media in attendance.

As the governor’s press handlers started to interrupt, Perry waved them off and stepped up to an anatomically-correct ‘female’ doll used in medical training that was laying on an examining table in the room.

“I’m not stupid. Those are the vagina right there,” said Perry, pointing at but not touching the labi majora, the visible protruding edges leading in to the vagina.

http://thelapine.ca/gov-perry-unable-to-find-vagina-on-anatomical-doll/

January 10, 2016

Climb Aboard NASA's Biggest Flying Laboratory

January 9, 2016

Canada rejects asylum plea from black American saying he wanted to escape police abuse

A Canadian tribunal has rejected a claim for refugee status from an African-American man who said he feared persecution and police abuse in the United States based on his race, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada said on Friday.

While saying he did find Kyle Lydell Canty to have a genuine fear of returning to his home country, adjudicator Ron Yamauchi said that was not enough to grant asylum.

A string of shootings of black men by U.S. police over the past 18 months have led to widespread protests and the issue has fueled a civil rights movement under the name Black Lives Matter.

“The Act does not protect claimants from every form of ill-treatment, suffering, and hardship,” he wrote in the decision, dated Dec. 3. “It is addressed at situations of persecution, which is serious harm, an interference with a basic human right.”

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/canada-rejects-asylum-plea-from-black-american-saying-he-wanted-to-escape-police-abuse/

January 9, 2016

Blaine Cooper, one of the HomeGrown Warlords is Getting Shredded on Facebook

"The Lord® came to me and said 'Larry (not my name but when the Lord® speaks to you, well, you listen) I want you to organize the people to donate their snacks to our Patriots® in Oregon®. My father, God® who is also me believes that you can do this. I've asked the Holy® Spirit®, who is also me to help out with supplies and socks. I'm not sure about the socks, I might ask one of the saints to do that. Maybe Saint Theresa, she's new. Anyway, I am God® and all that. Bring them snacks.' I'll be damned if I don't heed his call. No matter how self-serving and somewhat rambling it was. ‪#?SnacksforYallQaeda‬"

People Really are frying him over the stolen valor. Enjoy!

https://www.facebook.com/Blaine-Cooper-230684280388837/?fref=ts

January 9, 2016

The Carter Center announces only 22 cases of flesh-eating Guinea worm disease left—from 3.5 million

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On Thursday, The Carter Center announced that only 22 cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in 2015— a reduction of 83% from 2014. This quite remarkable, as when The Carter Center began leading the international campaign to eradicate the parasitic disease in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million Guinea worm cases occurring annually in Africa and Asia.

"As we get closer to zero, each case takes on increasing importance. Full surveillance must continue in the few remaining endemic nations and neighboring countries until no cases remain to ensure the disease does not return," said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. "The Carter Center and our partners are committed to seeing that this horrible parasitic disease never afflicts future generations."
jimmy-rosalynn-carter-photo.jpg
Considered a neglected tropical disease, Guinea worm disease (Dracunculiasis) is contracted when people consume water contaminated with Guinea worm larvae. After a year, a meter-long worm slowly emerges from the body through a painful blister in the skin. Guinea worm incapacitates people for weeks or months, making them unable to care for themselves, work, grow food for their families, or attend school.

Without a vaccine or medical treatment, the ancient disease is being wiped out mainly through community-based interventions to educate and change behavior, such as teaching people to filter all drinking water and preventing contamination by keeping anyone with an emerging worm from entering water sources.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/8/1467404/-The-Carter-Center-announces-only-20-Guinea-Worm-Disease-cases-left-from-previous-3-5-million-cases