Survival Guide: Orangutan to the Rescue

 

How an Orangutan walked a lost researcher back to camp.

This kind of getting lost doesn’t happen anymore; I would have a GPS with me now. But two decades ago at Camp Leakey, an orangutan research camp on Borneo inside Tanjung Puting, the rain forest was an unknowable place. I was trying to find the maroon leaf monkey. One day, after four hours of following marked trails, I thought I saw one. I risked it and went off the trail. Forty-five minutes later, I was still wandering, no maroon leaf monkey in sight. I assumed the trail had to pick up somewhere near where I was, so I used my compass to make a guess. Another 30 minutes later, I wasn’t panicked, but I was definitely a little nervous. I had a headlamp, so I was somewhat prepared, but darkness was coming on quickly and finding my way back was only going to get more difficult.

There was much to admire off-trail—passing humans hadn’t disturbed these parts of the rain forest yet. At one point I saw a shimmering metallic blue pool in an opening. I moved closer, and it vibrated, and hundreds of butterflies took wing. What I saw in their place was the sea of pig feces that had so interested them moments before.

I picked south on the compass. I figured I’d eventually hit the river, if not a trail first. It paid off. After about 20 minutes I saw an unmarked trail. Seconds later, I heard a rustling. I was thinking it was feral pigs or a small wildcat. I shone my headlamp where I thought the sound was coming from. It was an orangutan. The face was familiar: one of the tribe being rehabilitated at camp. The orangutan and I looked at each other, and she held out her hand to me. Then she led me, hand clasped in hand, to camp. Just like me, she was heading back for the evening.


Source: Agustin Fuentes at National Georgaphic

Related: Audio: Fuentes’ Work With Orangutans in Borneo.

Magnitude 6.1 Earthquake NW of Raoul Island, New Zealand

Location and Magnitude contributed by: USGS, NEIC, Golden, Colorado (and predecessors)

Event Time

1. 2013-08-28 02:54:41 UTC
2. 2013-08-28 14:54:41 UTC+12:00 at epicenter
3. 2013-08-27 21:54:41 UTC-05:00 system time

Location

27.795°S 179.672°E depth=488.6km (303.6mi)

Nearby Cities

288km (179mi) NW of Raoul Island, New Zealand
902km (560mi) SW of Nuku`alofa, Tonga
1014km (630mi) NNE of Whangarei, New Zealand
1076km (669mi) S of Suva, Fiji
1100km (684mi) NNE of North Shore, New Zealand

 

The eastern margin of the Australia plate is one of the most sesimically active areas of the world due to high rates of convergence between the Australia and Pacific plates. In the region of New Zealand, the 3000 km long Australia-Pacific plate boundary extends from south of Macquarie Island to the southern Kermadec Island chain. It includes an oceanic transform (the Macquarie Ridge), two oppositely verging subduction zones (Puysegur and Hikurangi), and a transpressive continental transform, the Alpine Fault through South Island, New Zealand.

Since 1900 there have been 15 M7.5+ earthquakes recorded near New Zealand. Nine of these, and the four largest, occurred along or near the Macquarie Ridge, including the 1989 M8.2 event on the ridge itself, and the 2004 M8.1 event 200 km to the west of the plate boundary, reflecting intraplate deformation. The largest recorded earthquake in New Zealand itself was the 1931 M7.8 Hawke's Bay earthquake, which killed 256 people. The last M7.5+ earthquake along the Alpine Fault was 170 years ago; studies of the faults' strain accumulation suggest that similar events are likely to occur again.
 

 

READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT USGS.GOV The technically minded will find it fascinating.

Oldest Evidence of Cooking With Spices Found From 6,000 Years Ago

 

Ancient European hunter-gatherers were using garlic mustard seeds to give their foods a peppery kick as far back as 6,000 years ago. 

Researchers have found evidence for garlic mustard seeds in cooking residues left on ancient pottery shards discovered in what is now Denmark and Germany. The finding, published this week in the journal PLOS One, is the oldest evidence of spices being used for culinary purposes, said study co-author Oliver Craig, an archeologist at the University of York in the UK.

"We think it was mixed with other ingredients in a pot, so it was actually used to deliberately spice other foods," Craig said. Craig and his team found microscopic specks of plant-based silica, known as phytoliths, on fire-scorched pottery shards collected from three campsites in north central Europe that ranged between 5,800 and 6,150 years old.

The team identified the seeds as belonging to the garlic mustard plant, also known as Jack-by-the-hedge. The tiny black seeds from this plant have no nutritional value, but are known for their pungent, peppery taste.

Along with the garlic mustard phytoliths, the team also found remnants of fish and animal fat—probably deer—on the pottery shards, which suggests prehistoric cooks were using the spice to flavor these foods.

Read the full story by Ker Than here at National Geographic

TV CAPTION | NORTH CAROLINA

The Sun - An Ultraviolet Photo

TRACE Project, Stanford-Lockheed Institute for Space Research, NASA

Retirement - A New Perspective

Why do wolves howl?

Cynthia Kidwell | Shutterstock.com

A new study shows that wolves howl more frequently to members of their pack with whom they spend more time, suggesting a link between relationship quality and howling frequency. 

READ THE FULL STORY BY DOUGLAS MAIN OF LIVESCIENCE.COM AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

What’s This Mysterious Circle on the Seafloor?

Photograph courtesy Kimiaki Ito

What creates mysterious circles on the seafloor? No, it’s not aliens of the deep—it’s actually pufferfish hoping to snag a mate, a new study says.

Divers first noticed the 6.5-foot-wide (2-meter-wide) circular structures near Japan‘s Amami-Oshima Island about 20 years ago. But no one knew how these so-called mystery circles were constructed—or what was creating them—until now.

The circles, scientists say, are actually nests created by male pufferfish, which spend about ten days carefully constructing and decorating the structures to woo females. What’s more, this industrious pufferfish is thought to be a new species in the Torquigener genus, according to the study, published July 1 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Nesting Instinct

The male fish, which measures less than 5 inches (13 centimeters) long, first uses his body to create peaks and valleys in the sandy bottom around a central circle of smooth sand. He accomplishes this feat by swimming in toward the center of the circle in a straight line and then back around the center in a circular motion. (Watch a pufferfish video.)

Before the female fish arrive to inspect his handiwork, the male forms irregular patterns in the fine sand particles of the central circle. He also decorates the peaks of the outer portion with shell and coral fragments.

When a potential female partner arrives on the scene, the male stirs up the fine sand in the nest’s inner circle. If she deems the nest, and the male who built it, satisfactory, she lays her eggs in the center of the nest and leaves.

The scientists aren’t sure exactly what the females are looking for when they judge a male’s nest. It could be the central patterns made of fine sand, the decorations on the outside, or the nest’s size or symmetry. (Also see “Help Name This Mystery Fish.”)

But they do know that because the nest-making process is so time-consuming, a larger nest could indicate a stronger or more fit male—both desirable traits to females.

Photograph courtesy Kimiaki Ito

Dad Duties

Once the female splits, though, it’s the male who does the parental chores: He remains in the nest until the eggs hatch six days later.

Afterward, the male looks for a nearby spot to start the nest-making process all over again, which is a mystery of its own: Why spend all that time and energy building a brand-new nest? The scientists think it has something to do with the fine sand particles that make up the smooth center of the circles. (Read “Africa’s Mysterious ‘Fairy Circles’ Explained.”)

The males use up all the fine sand within the radius of their nest during a single spawning cycle. To construct another nest, they have to look elsewhere for a site with more fine sand particles.

Now that’s what you call a labor of love.

SOURCE: Mary Bates and National Geographic

USA | Right-Wing Christian Group Claims Scientists are Peddling Dinosaur Hoax

How Evangelical-Fundamentalist Christian "thinkers" pervert the minds of "believers" with their un-scientific myths and idiotic fantasies.

This is why you just have to love so much of what passes for right-wing thinking in 2013. Call it the Fred Flintstone Effect. Yesterday, Ken Ham, President of “Answers in Genesis,” a staunchly conservative Christian group, released a brief radio spot claiming that dinosaurs are being used to “indoctrinate children.”

As Mr. Ham sees it, this is part of a plan hatched by paleontologists to trick innocent youth into believing the theory of evolution.

Well, you may be able to fool some people all of the time, and other people some of the time; but you can’t fool Ken Ham. God, Ham insists, created all living creatures on the same day, “about 6,000 years ago.”

Fortunately, when it comes to all of America’s impressionable children, Ham is not alone in his position. Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) is also on the job. Until recently, in one of their most popular biology texts they noted:

“Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.”

See how simple science is kids! If Nessie is real—and dinosaurs aren’t extinct—then, evolution is a myth. God, it all makes such perfect, right-wing sense.

You might have thought right-wing thinkers would have been sad when ACE decided not long ago to drop this passage—but Mark Looy, chief communications officer for “Answers in Genesis,” actually agreed with the publisher’s decision.

“There are just so many of these legends, like the dragon mentioned in Beowulf, the numerous accounts of St. George and the dragon, and so on, that they can’t be dismissed,” Looy told reporters for the Christian Post.
“However, because the Loch Ness monster is a questionable example to use, and also because the claim has become such a distraction, we agree that it is wise to delete Nessie’s reference from a textbook that lists possible living monsters.”

(We are thinking here:  maybe they should insert Sasquatch instead.)

In any case, Ham’s theory eliminates many perplexing questions in science—and even history—all in one Book of Genesis swoop. What happened to Neanderthals in Europe, for example, 40,000 years ago? Scientists have struggled to explain their extinction. Now we know. Nothing happened. They weren’t even there. The fossil record is all screwed up. Neanderthals were stomped on by dinosaurs sometime in the last 6,000 years.

Kind of like Jurassic Park—only worse.

Suddenly, the past becomes clear. How did humankind first reach the Americas 25,000 years ago? Science is wrong again. Okay, maybe the first inhabitants of the New World did cross a land bridge over the Bering Strait—but no ice age 25,000 years ago was involved. Man did not yet exist. Mastodons did not yet exist. Sabertooth Tigers did not yet exist. All would be created 19,000 years later and all would hitch a ride on Noah’s Ark.

Without a doubt, hunting must have been good 6,000 years ago. Spear-chucking folk would head out of their caves to bring back the bacon, so to speak. Hmm, what do we feel like eating tonight, buffalo steaks or barbequed Brontosaurus ribs?

Now we know that even the Weather Channel is in on the plot to trick the kids. You want proof? Like scientific proof?

How about this headline from their website today:  “Climate Changing at Fastest Pace Since the Age of the Dinosaurs.” According to a report by two Stanford climatologists the planet is warming at a faster pace than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago:

“Over the next century, the pace of climate change is expected to continue to pick up speed, the report warns, which could lead to a rise in average annual temperatures of 5 to 6 Celsius degrees (about 9 to 11 Fahrenheit degrees) by 2100.”

You can click on a link and see pictures of retreating glaciers round the world. But this is just more scientific propaganda, like when the story mentions plants adapting at the end of the last Ice Age, 20,000 years ago.

This climate change crap is just some left-wing scheme to put the Big Oil companies out of business, and by the way, remember that all that oil was created in just the last 6,000 years, after God in His infinite wisdom decided to create plants.

SOURCE: John Viall at AddictingInfo

Storm Clouds Over California As Seen From Space

Photograph courtesy NASA

Sparks of lightning embedded within a giant storm system light up the night over southern California in this snapshot taken by the crew aboard the International Space Station.

The yellow patchwork across the middle of the frame, are the city lights of Los Angeles and San Diego beneath the grey clouds.

SOURCE: National Geographic

Founding Fathers’ Words Reveal 2nd Amendment Was… To Preserve Slavery?

We’ve all heard the arguments from the gun manufacturers lobby: “The 2nd Amendment was about freedom!” “The 2nd Amendment was to ensure that men could stand against their government” or other similarly absurd thoughts. But, what did the Founding Fathers think of the 2nd Amendment? It turns out, thanks to research done by Thom Hartmann, the 2nd Amendment was about slavery.

What is ignored in the NRA’s arguments is that, at the time the U.S. Constitution was written, the militia in the south was known by another name: the slave patrol, and virtually all men of age served in its ranks at one point or another. As far back as 1680 in Virginia, the militias were organized to prevent:

“…the frequent meetings of considerable numbers of negroe slaves, under pretence of feasts and burialls is judged [to be] of dangerous consequence.” (sic)

In other words, the Virginia Militia was tasked with breaking up slave rebellions by busting any slave who might be organizing one. It even gave ‘incentive’ to men to serve on the militia: any freed colored person (black, Native American, or any other), if caught fleeing by the Militiaman, would be turned over to them as property, enslaved. A very effective incentive in colonial Virginia.

By 1755, the Militia was established not only as a foundation to enforce slavery in the south, but it was a structure which it could be expanded if need be. Countless records of captured free people of color, even people such as the Irish, were pressed as slaves under the system.

With the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, there was concern among slave holders that their militias, their slave patrols, would be usurped by the new federal government using the provisions outlined in Article 1, Section 8. Patrick Henry in particular was quite vocal on the subject, saying:

Let me here call your attention to that part [Article 1, Section 8 of the proposed Constitution] which gives the Congress power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States. . .

By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither . . . this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory. [Source]

He also is quoted as saying:

If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only, can call forth the militia. [Source]

He was not alone either, with George Mason joining him in concern:

The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them. [Source]

In other words, the U.S. Congress could disarm the patrols needed to keep slaves in line, eliminating slavery with one bold and quick move overnight. The 2nd Amendment itself was purposefully designed to empower the states to manage and handle their slave patrols, their militias. Which is why when Thomas Jefferson had James Madison draft up the 2nd Amendment, he had the language changed, from this:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.

To the language we know today:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. [Source]

A serious redesign, would you not say? The focus shift from a civil, non-conscripted force to a state-regulated entity which can be conscripted into service fit the needs of the slave holders. In a stroke of irony, when Abraham Lincoln did free the slaves, he used the very power which Patrick Henry and George Mason feared the government would, only at that time, by the Confederate states acting in revolt, they had abandoned their voting positions within the United States and therefore were unable to block the legislation. Their petty revolt resulted in their institution of slavery being wiped away. It still was a bloody civil war, but their “right to bear arms” destroyed what they had hoped to preserve.

When people call themselves patriots, or say they’re standing for what the founding fathers stood for when it comes to the 2nd Amendment, they are, in fact, doing nothing of the sort. Unless, of course, they’re arguing for the right to press people into involuntary, lifetime-indentured servitude, passed from parent to child in perpetuity. Or perhaps, that was, in fact, the plan all along.


SOURCE: Nathaniel Downes; AddictingInfo

Man Does To Banks What Banks Usually Do To Other People

This is absolutely brilliant!

The idea of beating the banks at their own game may seem like a rich joke, but Dmitry Agarkov, a 42-year-old Russian man, may have managed it. Unhappy with the terms of an unsolicited credit card offer he received from online bank Tinkoff Credit Systems, Agarkov scanned the document, wrote in his own terms and sent it through. The bank approved the contract without reading the amended fine print, unwittingly agreeing to a 0 percent interest rate, unlimited credit and no fees, as well as a stipulation that the bank pay steep fines for changing or canceling the contract.

Agarkov used the card for two years, but the bank ultimately canceled it and sued Agarkov for $1,363. The bank said he owed them charges, interest and late-payment fees. A court ruled that, because of the no-fee, no-interest stipulation Agarkov had written in, he owed only his unpaid $575 balance. Now Agarkov is suing the bank for $727,000 for not honoring the contract's terms, and the bank is hollering fraud. "They signed the documents without looking. They said what usually their borrowers say in court: 'We have not read it,'” Agarkov's lawyer said. The shoe's on the other foot now, eh?

 

SOURCE: Bleep

Right Wing Snake Oil Salesmen

It does well to step back once in awhile and remember that the leaders in the conservative movement see their followers not as fellow travelers working towards a common political goal so much as marks. Which isn’t to say that the leaders don’t actually buy into the bigoted worldview. In fact, I’d say that the contempt for humanity that causes them to want to ban abortion, slash the social safety net, support people who murder unarmed kids in the streets, and start wars for the hell of it allows conservative leaders to view their followers as just one more group of people who don’t deserve your sympathy if they can’t see through your bullshit. Conning your followers is seen as just one more strike against those who are perceived as weak.

This is so woven into the fabric of the right that it’s hard to even notice sometimes. See: The way that right wing media blatantly lies to its audience, clearly indicating that they think the audience is stupid and gullible. (Why people fall for that is a topic for another post entirely.) But it was really driven home to me by this Family Research Council mailing that might as well have been titled “We’re Going To Pump You Up With Scary Lies So You’ll Give Us Money Which We Will Not Improve Any Lives But Ours”.* The mailer was sent from Tony Perkins

"If a foreign enemy had plotted to infiltrate America, I’m not sure an army of undercover subversives could have done more damage than our government-run schools….
Leftists don’t want a single American child to escape their thought control.  And they are crowding out true education."

See, I don’t believe that Tony Perkins actually thinks that American public education exists as a leftist reeducation camp. In general, the heated warnings about how “leftists” control everything should be treated as the conspiracy theories they are—”leftists” don’t even control the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party doesn’t control the nation, so the chain of command issues here pretty much put a kibosh on this conspiracy theory. He’s just whipping people up with obvious lies, and there’s not a little projection going on with the “thought control” thing. What’s more “thought control”-oriented than telling people deliberate lies in an effort to keep them in your thrall?

Perkins then went on to complain that the U.S. is not a global leader anymore in….wait for it….the sciences. To blame? Teaching children accurate science in schools.

"Today’s science classes often feature big-government political propaganda, taking time and focus away from true science. Not to mention attacks on the Bible and arrogant censoring of any theories like intelligent design that challenge their Darwinism."

The claim that the way we need to improve our nation’s standing in the sciences is to cease teaching science and instead teach students a bunch of magical stories about Jesus riding dinosaurs is such egregious bullshit that one has to wonder if there’s some kind of intra-wingnut competition between orgs to see how far they can take it and still get donations.

Who doesn’t want to believe that all we need to make dramatic advances in science is to, uh, believe in magic? That’s an attractive belief! Believing in magic is easy to do (for most people, anyway) and it’s a lot less work than actually reworking our education and incentive system to improve scientific research, which also costs money, by the way. But it’s bullshit just like other magical and implausible “too good to be true” claims, but unfortunately, the social cost of right wing con jobs is even higher than it is for your typical snake oil sales.

SOURCE: An article by Amanda Marcotte at RawStory.com

U.S. Supreme Court | You Don’t Have the Right to Remain Silent

The Supreme Court’s terrible—and dangerous—ruling on the Fifth Amendment.

On Monday, in a case called Salinas v. Texas that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, the Supreme Court held that you remain silent at your peril. The court said that this is true even before you’re arrested, when the police are just informally asking questions. The court’s move to cut off the right to remain silent is wrong and also dangerous—because it encourages the kind of high-pressure questioning that can elicit false confessions.

Here are the facts from Salinas: Two brothers were shot at home in Houston. There were no witnesses—only shotgun shell casings left at the scene. Genovevo Salinas had been at a party at that house the night before the shooting, and police invited him down to the station, where they talked for an hour. They did not arrest him or read him his Miranda warnings.  Salinas agreed to give the police his shotgun for testing. Then the cops asked whether the gun would match the shells from the scene of the murder. According to the police, Salinas stopped talking, shuffled his feet, bit his lip, and started to tighten up.

At trial, Salinas did not testify, but prosecutors described his reportedly uncomfortable reaction to the question about his shotgun. Salinas argued this violated his Fifth Amendment rights: He had remained silent, and the Supreme Court had previously made clear that prosecutors can’t bring up a defendant’s refusal to answer the state’s questions. This time around, however, Justice Samuel Alito blithely responded that Salinas was “free to leave” and did not assert his right to remain silent. He was silent. But somehow, without a lawyer, and without being told his rights, he should have affirmatively “invoked” his right to not answer questions. Two other justices signed on to Alito’s opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia joined the judgment, but for a different reason; they think Salinas had no rights at all to invoke before his arrest (they also object to Miranda itself). The upshot is another terrible Roberts Court ruling on confessions. In 2010 the court held that a suspect did not sufficiently invoke the right to remain silent when he stubbornly refused to talk, after receiving his Miranda warnings, during two hours of questioning. Now people have to somehow invoke the right to remain silent even when they’re not formal suspects and they haven’t been heard the Miranda warnings. As Orin Kerr points out on the Volokh Conspiracy, this just isn’t realistic.

The court’s ruling in Salinas is all the more troubling because during such informal, undocumented, and unregulated questioning, there are special dangers that police may, intentionally or not, coax false confessions from innocent suspects. I have spent years studying cases of people exonerated by DNA testing. A large group of those innocent people falsely confessed—and many supposedly admitted their guilt even before any formal interrogation.  Take the case of Nicholas Yarris, who was exonerated by DNA testing in 2003, after 20 years in prison. He had been convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania for the murder of a woman found raped, beaten, and stabbed near her abandoned Chrysler Cordoba.

When informally questioned, police said, Yarris volunteered that he knew the victim had been raped, and that the victim’s Chrysler had a brown “landau” roof (a vinyl fake convertible look). That was a striking detail, especially since the police had kept it out of the press. No tape was made of the interrogation. The police didn’t even produce notes. And now that DNA has cleared Yarris, we know his confession was false, and that he must not have volunteered the fact about the car roof at all.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Salinas encourages the kind of loosey-goosey, and easily contaminated, police questioning that led to Yarris’ wrongful conviction. Salinas may very well have been guilty of the two murders. But in many cases, as in this one, there are no eyewitnesses and not much other evidence of guilt: That is why the police may desperately need a confession. And that makes it crucial for them to handle interrogations and confessions with the utmost care. The court appreciated none of the pressures police face, and how they can squeeze an innocent suspect. Alito and the other conservatives were not troubled that there was no video to confirm that Salinas was in fact uncomfortable as well as silent. If Salinas had answered the question by exclaiming that he was innocent, could police have reported that he sounded desperate and like a liar? The court’s new ruling puts the “defendant in an impossible predicament. He must either answer the question or remain silent,” Justice Stephen Breyer said in dissent (joined by the other three liberal-moderates). “If he answers the question, he may well reveal, for example, prejudicial facts, disreputable associates, or suspicious circumstances—even if he is innocent.” But if he doesn’t answer, at trial, police and prosecutors can now take advantage of his silence, or perhaps even of just pausing or fidgeting.

Questions first, rights later is the approach the court’s majority now endorses. And by giving the police more incentive to ask questions informally, the new ruling will also undermine the key reform that police have adopted to prevent false confessions: videotaping entire interrogations.  Why not try to trap a suspect before the camera starts rolling? In only a few cases like Yarris’ will there be DNA to test. The likely result of the court’s embrace of shoddy interrogation tactics: more wrongful convictions.

SOURCE: Brandon L. Garrett's article at Slate

 

Persistence

Learn to Speak Tea Bag and Be A Real Teabagger

Meditating “Buddha Boy” Goes Without Food Or Water For 10 Months!

A meditating teenage boy in south-central Nepal who went without food or water for 10 months has changed the way we look at modern science and medicine forever.

In 2006, Discovery Channel film crew traveled to Nepal to establish if it was possible for a human to abstain from all sustenance, water included, by filming “Buddha Boy” continuously for four days and nights.

Ram Bahadur Bomjon, also known as “Buddha Boy” attracted thousands of visitors and media attention when he began his mysterious meditation without food and water on 16 May 2005.

Most people can live without food for several weeks, with the body drawing on its fat and protein stores. But the average human can survive for only three to four days without water.

The film crew was able to film Ram continuously for 96 hours, day and night, during which time he did not change his position and did not drink any fluids or eat any food. The film crew concluded that: “After 96 hours of filming, Ram has defied modern science by continuing his meditation and remaining alive.”

The Discovery Channel documentary film produced was titled “The Boy With Divine Powers” and you can watch it below.

What is most incredible about the film footage is that the boy showed no signs of classical physical deterioration caused by dehydration. Close inspection by the film crew of the area around the tree where Ram was sitting confirmed no hidden food supply or water pipes. According to science, an average person would be expected to die from kidney failure after four days without drinking any fluids.


However, this doesn't seem to be the case for a person who can reach a high level of meditation or a person who can harvest energy from other sources, such as the sun. In fact, there have been other extreme cases of food and water fasting, such as that of an Indian man who claims not to have eaten or drunk anything for 70 years.

Many have argued that Ram Bahadur Bomjon is the reincarnation of Buddha. However Ram himself has denied this fact but rather he claims that to have been “enlightened” like Buddha after his long meditation. Over the following years after the filming of the documentary, Bomjon has reappeared and blessed thousands of pilgrims – only to disappear again and meditate.

SOURCE: Why Don't You Try This?

Dolphins granted non-human personhood by Indian Government

 

Cetaceans should be regarded as non-human persons with their own rights and therefore it is morally unacceptable to keep them in captivity - this is the new ruling by the Government of India, which in a landmark decision has taken an important first step in establishing global animal welfare rights.

The decision was taken by India's Minister of the Environment and Forests, who banned dolphin shows. All Indian states have been warned by the Government to reject proposals to hold dolphin shows or open dolphinariums, be these requests public or private.

The Central Animal Authority issued the following statement: "Cetaceans...should be seen as 'non-human persons' and as such should have their own specific rights." The direct result is that dolphin parks which have opened recently in India will close and proposals for new ones will be shelved. The move makes it illegal to capture or confine cetacean species, which include whales and dolphins, the reasoning being that these animals are highly intelligent and sensitive.

READ THE FULL STORY BY TIMOTHY BANCROFT-HINCHEY HERE AT PRAVDA

NASA Confirms the Sun's Magnetic Field Is About to Flip

Something big is about to happen on the sun. According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun’s vast magnetic field is about to flip. 

 “It looks like we’re no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal,” says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. “This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system.” 

The sun’s magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of ‘Solar Max’ will be behind us, with half yet to come. Hoeksema is the director of Stanford’s Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun’s polar magnetic fields. The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet’s polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun’s polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals—with a fourth in the offing. 

Solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, describes what happens: “The sun’s polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle.” 

 A reversal of the sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun’s magnetic influence (also known as the “heliosphere”) extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field’s polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space. When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the “current sheet.” The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun’s equator where the sun’s slowly-rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there’s a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet. During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball. As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet. 


READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT BLEEPIT.

Fetal pain is a lie | Phony science has clouded the abortion debate

New laws banning abortion after 20 weeks are based on pseudoscience -- and real research proves it conclusively 

Since Nebraska first jump-started the trend back in 2010, close to a dozen state legislatures across the country have passed laws banning abortion at 20 weeks. Most of these restrictions are given grave-sounding titles like the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” or some near-identical riff on the words “fetal,” “pain” and “protection.” All of them, no matter what they’re called, rest on the stated premise that a fetus can experience pain at 20 weeks, and that this is a sufficient justification to ban all abortions after this gestational stage.

But “fetal pain” in the popular discourse is a nebulous concept, one that lawmakers like Jodie Laubenberg, Trent Franks and others haven’t much bothered to define or help ground in available medical evidence.

Probably because there really isn’t any. The limited research used to support such claims has been refuted as pseudoscience by both the Journal of the American Medical Association and the British Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (Not to mention smaller studies from researchers at Harvard University, University College London and elsewhere.)

“We know a lot about embryology [in the field]. The way that a fetus grows and develops hasn’t changed and never will,” Dr. Anne Davis, a second-trimester abortion provider, associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center, and consulting medical director at Physicians for Reproductive Health, told Salon. “And what we know in terms of the brain and the nervous system in a fetus is that the part of the brain that perceives pain is not connected to the part of the body that receives pain signals until about 26 weeks from the last menstrual period, which is about 24 weeks from conception.”

Because the neural structures necessary to feel pain have not yet developed, any observable responses to stimuli at this gestational stage — like the fetal “flinching” during an amniocentesis — are reflexive, not experiential. Which is to say, the fetus at 20 weeks can’t actually feel anything at all. Which is to say, the fundamental justification for these laws is a really big, really popular lie.

READ THE FULL STORY BY KATIE McDONOUGH HERE AT SALON. IT'S IMPORTANT TO GET THE REAL FACTS ON THIS ISSUE.

Here Are The 1400 Potentially Earth-Ending Asteroids Circling Our Planet

There are more than 1,400 potentially dangerous asteroids orbiting alongside the Earth, and any one of them is big enough to end humanity.

Fortunately, NASA keeps an eye on them for us — and they've mapped them all out here in this image from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, made using data from the Near-Earth Orbits List:

NASA/JPL-Caltech

To make this list an asteroid has to be "relatively large and close" — at least 460 feet in diameter, and within 4.7 million miles of us — to get NASA's attention. As you can see in the diagram, there are plenty of space rocks hurtling through the solar system that fit those criteria.

Read the full story by Robert Ferris at Business Insider

A Beer Before It Starts

Dreams

Dolphins can recognize whistles from old tank mates from over 20 years ago

Dolphins have long impressed people with their sharp minds and humanlike traits, such as calling each other by name, goofing off and even understanding numbers. Now a scientist has found that the mammals can recognize an old friend’s whistle, even after they have been apart for 20 years — the longest social memory ever recorded for a non-human.

In a study released Tuesday, dolphins largely ignored calls from unfamiliar dolphins but responded when an old tank mate’s signature whistle was played back to them. It didn’t matter how much time had passed since the two had last seen each other or whether they had been tank mates for only a few months: The dolphins appeared to remember a familiar whistle.

“The main implications of such findings is that humans are not the only mammals that retain memories of others for long periods,” said Eduardo Mercado III, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who was not involved in the research.

Before the new study, published online in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B,” much of what had been known about dolphin memory was anecdotal. This recorded feat of long-term memory puts dolphins in the same field as other highly intelligent creatures, including some monkeys and elephants, both of which have been known to recognize unrelated members of their species after time apart.

Video

[Read Meeri Kim's full story here at Washington Post]

The Arrogance of Fascism ... Nestle CEO: Water Is Not A Human Right, Should Be Privatized

I worked for Nestle' for six years and even them, forty-five years ago, it was always about what Nestle' wanted. Even then, they acted as if national laws did not apply to them.

Is water a free and basic human right, or should all the water on the planet belong to major corporations and be treated as a product? Should the poor who cannot afford to pay these said corporations suffer from starvation due to their lack of financial wealth? According to the former CEO and now Chairman of the largest food product manufacturer in the world, corporations should own every drop of water on the planet — and you’re not getting any unless you pay up.

Watch the video below for yourself:

The way in which this sociopath clearly has zero regard for the human race outside of his own wealth and the development of Nestle, who has been caught funding attacks against GMO labeling, can be witnessed when watching and listening to his talk on the issue. This is a company that actually goes into struggling rural areas and extracts the groundwater for their bottled water products, completely destroying the water supply of the area without any compensation. In fact, they actually make rural areas in the United States foot the bill.

As reported on by Corporate Watch, Nestle and former CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe have a long history of disregarding public health and abusing the environment to take part in the profit of an astounding $35 billion in annual profit from water bottle sales alone.

[Read the full story by Anthony Gucciardi at NaturalSociety]

10 worst examples of Christian or Far-Right terrorism

[Salon.com] Conservatives claim that all terrorists are Muslim, but most violent attacks in the US are carried out by white men.

From Fox News to the Weekly Standard, neoconservatives have tried to paint terrorism as a largely or exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Their message of Islamophobia has been repeated many times since the George W. Bush era: Islam is inherently violent, Christianity is inherently peaceful, and there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist or a white male terrorist. But the facts don’t bear that out. Far-right white male radicals and extreme Christianists are every bit as capable of acts of terrorism as radical Islamists, and to pretend that such terrorists don’t exist does the public a huge disservice. Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev and the late Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev (the Chechen brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, 2013) are both considered white and appear to have been motivated in part by radical Islam. And many terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who were neither Muslims nor dark-skinned.

When white males of the far right carry out violent attacks, neocons and Republicans typically describe them as lone-wolf extremists rather than people who are part of terrorist networks or well-organized terrorist movements. Yet many of the terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who had long histories of networking with other terrorists. In fact, most of the terrorist activity occurring in the United States in recent years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.


Ten of the worst examples of non-Islamic terrorism, that have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years, are listed in this article by Alex Henderson at Salon.

The GOP: Crazy Like a Fox and Highly Destructive

Dr. Paul Krugman wrote in his NYT blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, that the GOP has basically gone insane ("Chaos Looms"). Ray Pensador gives us an interesting take on this in an article at Daily Kos:

"If they are crazy, they are crazy like a fox.  It's funny that what they are doing (in all the craziness) coincides 100 percent with the agenda of corporatist business cartels, i.e., ALEC.

You see, the U.S. Constitution is kind of a pesky obstacle to the treasonous alliances represented by billionaires, their business cartels, and the politicians on the take (who together make up the American Oligarchy, or Corporatocracy).

Much of the constitutional protections we used to take for granted have already been undermined (or done away with altogether)--with our acquiescence as the result of being manipulated through fear and propaganda.

But as is the case with every tyrannical class in history, today's blood-thirsty, rapaciously greedy tyrants will continue their oppression (and pushing their luck) for as long as we tolerate it.

The looting our the national treasure; the paralysis and dysfunction of government; the imposition of austerity (sequester and all the other non-sense) is all being done by design.


These forces, which represent the proverbial "enemy within," are in the process of tearing down our system of government (a democratic republic based on the tenets of a Bill of Rights/Constitution).

By creating gridlock, and constantly pushing the government to the brink of a shutdown or default, they are acting as some sort of "wrecking ball" against democracy.

They--the GOP--are not crazy; they are actually brilliant in making you think they are crazy.  They are systematically destroying the proper functioning of government, as ordered by their paymasters."

[READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT DAILY KOS]

Is a Neurotic Form of Christianity Destroying America?

“The deconstruction of Christianity is not an attack on the church but a critique of the idols to which it is vulnerable – the literalism and authoritarianism, the sexism and racism, the militarism, and the love of unrestrained capitalism with which the church in its various forms has today and for too long been entangled, any one of which is toxic to the kingdom of God.”

“Strategically, diplomatically, socially, politically, morally, economically, evangelically, in every possible way we are witness today to a low point in American leadership, an ethical, social, political and biblical catastrophe.”

These passages from the book, What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (The Church and Postmodern Culture) by John Caputo, taken out of context, might suggest that religion is the singular cause for the continuing trajectory of a deepening dysfunction in our society. But a twisted popular form of Christianity catalyzes two other more powerful ingredients; predatory capitalism and a government that serves the interests of big money.

These three powerful components work together to drag us down the slope to more and more dysfunction in the name of a more moral society – a moral society based on a set of values that are so misapplied as to become destructive.

In other words, these three components create a moral society that destroys its own villages in order to save them.

[Read the full story by Robert De Filippis here at The Big Slice]

Christian Extremists Being Disgusting

Evangelical-Fundamentalist Christians are often utterly disgusting in their choice of tactics when they are pushing their biblically ungrounded Anti-Choice barrow. They claim to be Christians, but their actions are often far from being Jesus-like. This is one such case and it falls into the "contemptible" category.

 

As Janet Allen reports at AlterNet:

Squeezably Soft Fetus Toys Slipped Into Kids' Candy Bags at North Dakota State Fair

Photo Credit: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock.com

North Dakota pro-lifers may have recently lost in federal court their bid to ban abortions at six weeks, ("Unconstitutional," said a federal judge), but that hasn't stopped them from trying everything they can to win the battle against choice.

In a particularly creepy ploy, anti-choicers slipped squishy fetus toys into children's candy bags during a parade a North Dakota State Fair. The doll, called "The Precious One" is manufactured by Heritage House, a pro-life store, and retails for $1.50 apiece, less if you buy them in bulk, which apparently the pro-lifers did, since there were lots of five and six year olds running around squeezing, throwing and playing with their squeezable fetus toys afterwards.

Here was the reaction of one mother who attended the event, according to Jezebel:

Amber Mendez, a mother of three who attended Saturday's parade, was likewise affected by the "Precious Ones" she found in the candy bags her kids got for free during the event. "They're so lifelike. I'm squeezing it. It's fleshy."

Mendez says she's "in the middle" when it comes to abortion, but feels that her rights as a parent were compromised at the parade when her children were handed the fetuses along with informational  pamphlets that included lines like "Week 1: conception; the baby is smaller than a grain of sugar, but the instructions are present for all that this person will ever become."

"My kids can read," she said. "I shouldn't have to explain to five and six-year olds what abortion is at a family event. I doubt these people would be allowed to hand out condoms to little kids. But it's okay to talk to them about abortion without my permission?"

The dolls are designed to brainwash youngsters—pregnant women, too—out of ever terminating an unwanted pregnancy. "Its beautiful detail, softness and weight can really move hearts and change minds," the Heritage House website says. Usually, the fetus toys are given directly to pregnant women and to kids at school demonstrations.