ratboy's anvil 2

Well...yeah. And now there's proof from the scientific community.

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario.

Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]

"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."

The OED makers a public appeal for help.

The major problem we have with the radical elements of the NRA and the libertarians is that they feel they have the authority to declare when and where the government elected by the majority can be considered a tyranny and is then to be properly resisted at any expense, including armed insurrection.

Is the N.R.A. Un-American?

By Stanley Fish

The more militant members of the N.R.A. and most of its leaders may be un-American.

By "militant" I don't mean those who wish to protect recreational shooting and hunting; nor do I mean those who, like Justice Antonin Scalia, believe that there is a constitutional right to defend one's home and family with firearms. These are respectable positions (although I am deeply unpersuaded by the second). I mean those who read the Second Amendment as proclaiming the right of citizens to resist the tyranny of their own government, that is, of the government that issued and ratified the Constitution in the first place.

The reason this view may be un-American is that it sets itself against one of the cornerstones of democracy -- the orderly transfer of power. A transfer of power is orderly when it is effected by procedural rules that are indifferent to the partisan, ideological affiliations of either the party exiting power or the party taking power. A transfer is disorderly when it is effected by rebellion, invasion, military coup or any other use of force.

Those who are engaged in a disorderly transfer believe that their actions are inspired by the highest of motives -- the desire to set right what has gone terribly wrong. Somehow the forces of evil have gained the levers of power, and unless they are dislodged, the values necessary to the sustaining of everything we cherish will be overwhelmed. Violence is ugly, but if tyranny is to be defeated, it may be necessary. Given tyranny's resilience and its tendency to fill any available political space, we must always be ready; the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

This is a familiar story; indeed it is the story -- or at least one story -- of the American Revolution, and that is why it is the story Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the N.R.A., told to a Senate committee in January: "Senator, I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny."

In 1990, Fred Romero, an N.R.A. field representative, put the case as clearly as possible: "The Second Amendment is not there to protect the interests of hunters, sport shooters and casual plinkers." Rather, the "Second Amendment is ... literally a loaded gun in the hands of the people held to the heads of government." In response to statements like this (and there are many of them), President Obama recently said in a speech in Denver: "The government's us. These officials are elected by you." Or, in other words, how can the people's enemy be the representatives elected by the people?

The N.R.A. militants have an answer.

Next time you want to head out the beach to catch some rays you might want to picture this is what you are laying under.

More to it than many think.

Astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield has been sharing his experiences of living in space with us over the past five months.

However, as his mission draws to a close, Hadfield has put together a fitting farewell to mark the end of his time in space through a rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity". In the video the Canadian Astronaut, armed with an acoustic guitar, sings Bowie's classic as he floats through the ship.

The cover has proved so successful that Bowie has even tweeted about Hadfield's version: CHRIS HADFIELD SINGS SPACE ODDITY IN SPACE! "Hallo Spaceboy..."

He did a great job putting the vid together.

Sad.

The Tragically Brief Life and Cruel Death of Malcolm Shabazz

by Dave Zirin

Malcolm Shabazz had everything going for him. He was 28 years old, handsome as hell and a remarkably charismatic public speaker. He was an activist, an organizer and a proud father. He also had the blessing of being the grandson of Malcolm X.

Malcolm Shabazz had everything going against him. He was a young black man with a criminal record in the age of the New Jim Crow. He proudly allied himself with countries resisting US occupation and influence. He spoke to audiences across the earth, earning the unwanted attention of the Department of Homeland Security. He was treated with persecution, scorn and incarceration instead of the utmost sympathy for his role in a fire that took his grandmother Dr. Betty Shabazz, when he was only 13. He also had the burden of being the grandson of Malcolm X.

Now Malcolm Shabazz is dead. He was in Mexico City to meet in solidarity with a labor organizer deported from the United States and ended up beaten to death outside of a bar. Details of how and why he was killed are extremely sketchy, and I am not writing this to add to that noise, except to say that I'll trust a police report about the death of Malcolm X's grandson around the time I grow a tail.

I'm more writing out of anger: anger that this young man, whom I was able to get to know after meeting at a panel on fatherhood, is having his character assassinated in death. For reasons it should have to answer for, USA Today chose to display a picture of him in handcuffs alongside a brief notice about his killing. The Huffington Post--and no, I won't link to this garbage--provided no sense of who he was except to write that he "pleaded guilty to attempted robbery in 2002 and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Just months after his release in 2006, he was arrested again, this time for punching a hole in a store window."

With very few exceptions, not a single piece has what you would expect in a typical obituary: remembrances of loved ones and colleagues to give a three-dimensional portrait of someone's life. The grandson of Malcolm X can only be seen in one dimension. That dimension, as the Associated Press wrote, was just that he "led a troubled life."

There is no question Malcolm Shabazz had troubles. As he himself said, "Considering what I've been through, it's a miracle that I've been able to hold it together. I'm just trying to find my way,... Some of the things I've been through, the average person would have cracked."

But "troubled" is not the sum total of who this young man was. Here's a different take on Malcolm Shabazz by someone who actually knew him. Former NBA player Etan Thomas organized the fatherhood panel I mentioned earlier and worked with Malcolm on numerous events. I asked Etan for his thoughts.

He said, "There is a lot of mischaracterization going on from people who know nothing. They never met Malcolm. They stayed far away from him but now they want to inaccurately characterize him. I knew Malcolm. Talked with him, worked with him, he was my friend. Malcolm had a heart of gold. He wanted to help people and change the world. He had been through so much in his young life. He went with me to Riker's Island to talk to young incarcerated men under 18 and they were focused on his every word. He shared with them the mistakes he made in the past, the absence of a father's presence, gave them words of encouragement and upliftment. And they were hanging on his every word because they saw the sincerity in him. He genuinely cared. It was an honor to work with him, and to have had him as a friend. He will be missed."

When I met Malcolm Shabazz, I had to ask him the question I'm sure he'd been asked a thousand times. I asked, "Is it more burden or blessing to be Malcolm X's grandson?" He smiled and said, "I wouldn't say it's been easy. Yes, being his grandson is a blessing. But you know what? Being a father is a blessing. Being in the struggle is a blessing. And just being alive is a blessing."

We should mourn for the family of Malcolm Shabazz. We should also mourn for ourselves. In a selfish world where the offspring of the famous are more likely to use their cultural capital to become media parasites, we lost someone truly special. He wanted to wield Malcolm's memory to fight for a better world. Now we should do the same with the memory of both of these Malcolms. They were both brilliant. They were both maligned. They were both taken far too young with far too much unfinished work in front of them. Malcolm Shabazz: Presente!

Why, why, why does our education system look so similar to the way it did 50 years ago? Millions of students were failing then, as they are now -- and it's because we're clinging to a business model that clearly doesn't work. Education advocate Geoffrey Canada dares the system to look at the data, think about the customers and make systematic shifts in order to help greater numbers of kids excel.

Geoffrey Canada has spent decades as head of the Harlem Children's Zone, which supports kids from birth through college in order to break the cycle of poverty.

For foreigners, learning to speak Chinese is a hard task. But learning to read the beautiful, often complex characters of the Chinese written language may be less difficult. ShaoLan walks through a simple lesson in recognizing the ideas behind the characters and their meaning -- building from a few simple forms to more complex concepts.

"The Shrimp of The Land"

By Vince Lattanzio

After nearly two decades living under the earth, cicadas are about to shake off the dirt and invade our great outdoors. And they'll be ripe for your feasting says Isa Betancourt, an entomologist from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

"It's a delicacy that's rare," says Betancourt, who's known to dine on a few bugs from time to time. She calls cicadas "the shrimp of the land."

"They are arthropods, which means they have an exoskeleton," she said. "We regularly eat the arthropods of the sea and those are the shrimp, lobsters and crabs. And so cicadas are arthropods too."

The Magicicada, as this type of cicada is named, spend 17 years underground snacking on the roots of plants, trees and vegetables. Now they're coming above ground to shed their skin and mate.

Like other edible insects, cicadas are nutritious, according to Betancourt. She says their bodies are high in protein, low in fat and feature a lot of muscle.

Betancourt suggests trying to grab the magicadas when they're fresh from the ground and undergoing their molting stage, which consists of shedding their skin as they prepare to fly away to find a mate.

"That's when they're softest," she said. "When they first emerge, they'll be kind of a green color and after a few hours they'll harden."

The scientist says you'll most likely find the soft cicadas in the morning hours. She says you can still eat them once they harden, but you should expect a little extra crunch. You'll also want to pull off the wings, because, like corn kernels, they can get stuck in your teeth.

There are a couple dozen recipes for how to specifically prepare cicadas. Betancourt is planning on taking an old shrimp skewer dish, her grandmother has made for ages, and substitute in the insect. She also suggests boiling your insects first to quickly kill and clean them.

Cicada-Licious, a cicada cookbook (yes, this exists), has a number of other interesting ideas. The book was penned by University of Maryland entomology professor Mike Raupp and a group of students named the Cicadamaniacs. They put the book together when a brood, or group, of magicadas made their appearance around Maryland in 2004.

On the death of Malcom Shabazz

Post of the day

Dee Turner

There are very few thoughtful posts in this thread. I am about halfway through reading Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. His parents were militant Garvey-ites--many blacks raised themselves up to the middle class by following Marcus Garvey--and Malcolm's parents were repeatedly persecuted throughout his childhood. The family was forced to move many times. His dear father was murdered when Malcolm was very young. His mother was placed in an asylum, and it was 25 years before he was able to have her released.

His autobiography told of many more crimes than he ever committed, because he was trying to show he'd been a really bad guy before Elijah Muhammed picked him up and helped him 'become a man'. At 16, he went to live with his sister Ella, who was a habitual petty thief. In fact, his own actual police record was scant before he and his white girlfriend, with his buddy Shorty and another white girl, started burglarizing fancy homes in NYC. They were quickly caught because they never even tried fencing their stolen booty--Malcolm just wasn't a good criminal at all. But his girlfriend betrayed him at trial, and he was sentenced to a far longer prison term than was customary for his crimes, because public outcry about his relationship with a white woman tilted heavily against him.

Although Malcolm X was duped by Elijah Muhammed and his Fard-created pseudo-Islamic doctrine, when Malcolm learned that Muhammed had fathered at least 8 children out of wedlock with various secretaries, he began to study real Islam. He spoke out against Muhammed's crass infidelities, knowing the Nation of Islam would eventually murder him. By 1963-'64. Malcolm had become a true Muslim and had made a hajj to Mecca, where he discovered that true Islam embraced all races as one people. He changed from being a segregationist to joining the Civil Rights Movement. He had worked as a minister without pay for 17 years--along with his public speaking engagements, he visited the sick, arranged funerals, and helped the poor among his congregation at Mosque #7 in Harlem, performing all the regular duties of any pastor, of any faith.

Without the dichotomy between MLK's peaceful protests and the threat behind Malcolm X's fiery rhetoric, the Civil Rights movement would never have achieved as much as it did.

Then you have this boy, given Malcolm's same name but without the solid family, early childhood Malcolm had. His grandmother doubtless rubbed his nose in the fact he couldn't carry off Malcolm's legacy and shouldn't even bear his name. A child of 12, he set fire to their apartment--a thing any pubescent boy might be capable of, in a moment of uncontrollable rage. Afterward, barely a teen, he had to live with having killed her, which surely hadn't been his intent.

Criminals aren't born--they are made.

Whatever your political bent, and whether you are black, white, gray, or green, anybody with a shred of humanity must see that this Malcolm Shabazz never had a chance to develop as a normal person. From the very moment he was given his grandfather's entire name, he was cursed with a burden and a public legacy he couldn't possibly recreate, follow, or change. Faced with that, any one of you might have turned out to end exactly as he has. Yet not a moment of compassion, not any comprehension of his suffering, nor one iota of human mercy, is on display in this thread.

You whites who believe the playing field is equal just because you never owned any slaves are pitifully unaware of what black people in this country endure every day.

Recently my husband, who is black, drove our basketball star daughter to a championship conference. Unsure of where the gym was or where to park, with the clock ticking to start time, our girl jumped out and ran to be sure she got there on time. After he parked, he walked over to another car with a young Asian woman inside. She immediately rolled up all her car windows. He tried to ask her where the gym was. She refused to answer or even look at him. Now, my husband is almost 70. He dresses impeccably. He was wearing a very expensive camera around his neck, and a gold watch. Surely everybody on campus knew about the Championship Basketball Conference, because there were signs and pennants everywhere. This sort of thing happens to blacks, even to elderly, upper middle class folks like my husband, EVERY DAY.

Our basketball star is lighter and more exotic-looking than her sister; if people DO think she's mixed, they're okay with her because she plays basketball--that's an acceptable thing for her, as a partially black girl in white America.

Her sister, however, is academically gifted and wants to be a doctor. She's been fraudulently graded, verbally tortured BY HER TEACHERS, and even as she's about to graduate from a rigorous college back east with two degrees in four years, some professors are still insisting she can't be a doctor. She's been abused every day from when she was 16 months of age.

I'm just glad I'm not black. I am not strong enough to handle what half my family must put up with, day in and day out--or that the entire difference between what one child experiences and what the other does--is solely because one is darker and perceived to be academically brilliant. The basketball player holds a 3.5 GPA in junior college, but all anybody sees is she plays the game, and she's lighter, so she is barely scathed, while the other battles daily to stay focused and not lose the self-esteem white people keep trying to strip from her.

No white person in this thread has ever experienced this reality. I did not know of it, although I'd researched American racism in books--until I saw how it affects my own family. I see the huge difference in experience between one child and the other. I tell you, it is HEARTBREAKING.

Not a single post here reflects serious thought or sufficient consideration of black reality in the USA--which has become infinitely worse with both elections of a half-black President.

I'm beginning to think Malcolm X may have had it right, about the need for militancy. It certainly appears that we may have to revisit Civil Rights all over again, as it appears it didn't stick, the first time. I'm beginning to think we're headed to another Civil War, and for the same reasons: rightwing states seek to balkanize our laws, so your rights are determined by your zip code instead of your federal citizenship. And blacks are worse off than they were in the 1970s-'80s, despite the apparent gain represented in the White House.

Is that really what you want, a Civil War redux? Far greater circumspection is needed than appears here--all you achieve in this thread is exposure of your vulgar, arrogant, uneducated fear.

#2.48 - Sat May 11, 2013 4:16 AM EDT

The Heritage Foundation uses racist doctrine for it's stance on immigration policy? Who knew? This filth needs to be exposed and burned out with a blow torch.

ACTION:

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REACTION:

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I've been out and about looking for something new beyond the cultural/political insanity of the right wing and recent disaster news of late and found this...I'm a year late but it news to me.

Le1f gets my artist of the year award.

...Carbon copys look so plastic
talking bout let's keep it real
I need a sharp fade baby line me up.
Time to step your cookies up
You ain't giving it enough.
I need my Oreo's double stuffed...

WUT walls? WUT limits?

It's like a totally artisitic gay Dave Chappell doing hip hop/rap on some weird new super-focused hallucinogen...I love it. MORE

Yoyoyoyoyo
Yo ayo. wuut

Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut?
Wut it do? Wut it don't?
Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut?
Wut it do? Wut it don't?

[Verse 1]

Came through in the clutch, stomping like i'm up in Loubitons
Boys they wanna paint me like I'm canvas to do sumi on
I hate bottled water but whatever I'm pouring Evian
I'm the kind of john closet dudes wanna go steady on
Toss my gems up, raise the bar. Yung Phenomenon
I make a neo-nazi kamikaze wanna firebomb
I'm da bomb diggity. Got ya moms feelin me
Tell ya man chill on me. Hang loose like literally

[Hook]

Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut?
Wut it do? Wut it don't?
Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut?
Wut it do? Wut it don't?
I'm getting light in my loafers
And I stay getting life til life's over
I'm butter like cocoa
L O L O L O L I'm loco

[Verse 2]

I feel like I might be such sick rapper
People used to say I was articulate and dapper, so I
Started hugging trees and acting like a bastard
Just to show them who's the new master
Dumb ones thinking I'm from the bush
I hit em with a hee and I make em all shush
I'm black and I'm proud and my swag pack loud like
Vanilla swisher with bubblegum kush
Fantastic since Scholastic amongst dudes stiff like Mattel
Carbon copys look so plastic talking bout let's keep it real
I need a sharp fade baby line me up. Time to step your cookies up
You ain't giving it enough. I need my Oreo's double stuffed
Ukrainian cutie -he really wanna cuddle
The fever in his eyes. He wanna suckle on my muscle
He wanna burst my bubble and see what's up in my jungle
A Christopher Colombo fumble's how that cookie crumbled
This yuppie's talking blah blah. He wants to Bink my Jar Jar
He's twinked out. I'm like nuh uh. I'm laughing at em like haha
I'm an emperor. Wanna see me in my new clothes?
Mother of the house. Care to see me in a new pose?

[Hook]

Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut?
Wut it do? Wut it don't?
Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut?
Wut it do? Wut it don't?
I'm getting light in my loafers
And I stay getting life til life's over
I'm butter like cocoa
L O L O L O L I'm loco

[Verse 3]

Rolling up a personal and chomping on a mango
Whiskey in my cup, posing like i'm in a manga
I'm a black Ken doll, a number 2 pencil
Freshmaker like Mentos. Let me be your mentor
Aries, Leo rising. Nasty with the timing
I see a goonie vibing. I be like "hi man"
Native to the island. Fantasies realizing
I see a hater hating and I be like "goodbye fam"

[Hook]

Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut?
Wut it do? Wut it don't?
Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut?
Wut it do? Wut it don't?
I'm getting light in my loafers
And I stay getting life til life's over
I'm butter like cocoa
L O L O L O L I'm loco

hat tip to Sis Mo

Finally I can get that web cam shot of my hot neighbor I've been after.

Robo-bugs are here! World's smallest bot takes flight

Insect-sized robots have long held promise in the minds of sci-fi nerds. They could poke through treacherous rubble in search-and-rescue missions, discreetly snoop on the guilty and innocent alike, and sometimes, just maybe, form into giant swarms that block out the sun and do the bidding of larger, less agile, robotic overlords.

Hopefully that last bit won't come true, at least not before they invent robo-bug repellent. But on Thursday, the door to the future was kicked open when engineers at Harvard revealed a penny-sized robot that can hover like a housefly, beating its wings 120 times per second.

"As far as we can tell, this is the world's smallest flying robot," Kevin Ma, a graduate student at Harvard's Wyss Institute and a member of the robot team, told NBC News.

"It's hard to argue that anything is more agile than a housefly -- I think anyone who's tried to swat [one] would agree," said Rob Wood of the Wyss Institute at Harvard, and the lead researcher on the project. "This is the first controlled flight of an insect-scaled robot."

Two mechanical muscles on the robots control the flapping and twisting motion of the wings. Previous versions of this robot would crash soon after they took off, but the most recent model has motion capture sensors and guiding algorithms that corrects its movements as it takes off.

Revealed in Thursday's issue of Science, this marks an early step towards teeny flying autonomous robots. In its current form, it's mostly suited to help physicists and biologists study the dynamics of motion in a controlled environment. Woods estimates we're still about 30 years away from being able to pack in the power and sensors required for a truly environment-aware robo-bug.

"This proof of concept design ... give[s] us hope that we can develop insect-scale flying robots some day," Vijay Kumar, professor at University of Pennsylvania who has worked with swarms of tiny quadracopters, wrote to NBC News in an email.

While bug-sized robots working individually or in giant swarms could be helpful -- to serve as surrogate bees in pollination efforts, or sniff out dangerous chemicals in the atmosphere -- they'd also make stealthy snoopers. This makes them a favorite target of privacy activists who frequently bring up stealthy miniature bots in discussions about technology and privacy.

For example, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on drone technology in March, the idea of mosquito-sized future drone captivated Senate members. "Presumably at some point you could have one the size of a mosquito that has a battery that operates for weeks and you could have the mosquito following you around and not be aware of it," Al Franken, D-Minn, said. "God help us if an adolescent boy gets hold of one of these."

See?

I live 8 or 9 miles from the town where this is taking place.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

UPDATE:

Charges dropped against Florida teen over amateur science experiment

A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie

Scientists at IBM have just unveiled the world's smallest stop-motion film -- certified by Guinness -- one made by moving individual atoms. What you're seeing is 100 million times bigger than the original elements.

For Star Trek fans, the team also unveiled several franchise-inspired images made with atoms, including the USS Enterprise, the famous logo and the "live long and prosper" sign.

Why? To prove that they can and in the process show off the fun side of science, according to Andreas Heinrich, a principal investigator at IBM Research in California who led the effort.

The dots were rearranged for each frame with a scanning tunneling microscope, a tool that operates at minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 268 degrees Celsius) and magnifies the surface more than 100 million times. The tool was invented and built at IBM more than 30 years ago.

It took months of planning and a team of four IBM scientists to run the tool during 18 hour days for about 10 days straight to produce the images, which were then cleaned up and stitched together to make the film.

Here's how:

hat tip to Peter R

I used to drink heavily back in the day (now it's rarely) but here's a sort of a PSA for those who still do or are about to:

Congeners

PVNN

Congeners are toxic chemicals that are formed during fermentation, some liquors have more of them than others. These congeners are widely responsible for headaches. Simple digest: The clearer your drinks, the less problems you will have the next morning. (Correct only for brandy. Non filtered beer for example can be very good, specially because they contain a large vitamin b complex, which is important to protect you from brain pickling)

For instance:

* Vodka has less congeners than gin.
* Most scotch whiskey has about four times more congeners than gin.
* Brandy, rum and single-malt scotch have about six times more than gin.
* Bourbon drinkers ingest eight times the amount of congeners as do gin drinkers, and 30 times as much as vodka.
* Red wine has more congeners than white wine does.

What causes hangovers?

Dehydration
Alcohol is a diuretic, ie a drug that increases urination and flushes fluids from the body. Drinking coffee the next morning only increases this problem as coffee is also a diuretic.

Mild poisons in the drink
Complex organic molecules such as methanol and acetone are found in some drinks and are said to be responsible for hangovers rather than ethanol (alcohol). This view is by researcher Dr Ian Calder of the London based National Hospital for Neurosurgery.

Which Alcohol is worse?
Brandy is worst for hangovers, then in descending order are: red wine, rum, whisky, white wine, gin and vodka. The British Medical Journal did tests that showed drinking bourbon whiskey is twice as likely to cause a hangover than the same amount of vodka.

Too much alcohol
Too much alcohol depletes the body of necessary substances required to stay healthy, these include blood sugar, vitamins and minerals.

Wine - a bad harvest
If you are drinking wine that comes from a country where a small change in the climate can make a big difference to the quality of wine, eg France, Germany, New Zealand, then in a bad season the wine contains many more substances that cause hangovers.

Wine - drinking it too young
Almost all red wines and chardonnay are matured in oak barrels so that they will keep and improve. If you drink this wine younger than three years there will be a higher level of nasties that can cause hangovers. If left to mature these nasties change to neutral substances and don't cause hangovers. As a rule of thumb wine stored in oak barrels for six months should be acceptable to drink within the first year. If the wine is stored for twelve months or more in oak barrels it should then be left for at least four years. Some winemakers have been known to add oak chips directly into the wine to enhance flavors, especially in a bad season, and this can take years to become neutral.

Safety Tip!! Don't mix booze with Tylenol

One thing you REALLY ought to be aware of -- if you plan on living very long -- is that acetominophen (Tylenol) in combination with alcohol does HORRENDOUS liver damage. Alcohol alone damages the liver; and acetominophen (Tylenol) does a little damage to the liver; but if you mix the two, the damage you incur is EXPONENTIAL. I'm sure you can find plenty of medical journals to collaborate this if you want to. This made news a while back. You can literally wreck your liver in a very short time if you mix Tylenol with alcohol.

Old wives tales- Malarkey or not?

"A hair of the dog that bit you."

This remedy calls for having a drink the next morning for relief of a hangover. It is recommended that you have whatever you were drinking the night before, although a bloody mary is a common substitute.

Malarkey? No. When you wake up after drinking, you're coming off the effects of a mild overdose of a depressant. Having a drink helps to ease the symptoms, and a bloody mary contains lots of vitamins your body desperately needs. Unfortunately, you are merely putting off the side effects temporarily.

"Don't mix you liquors." or "Beer before liquor, never sicker. Liquor before beer, never fear."

This pokey old rhyme portends of bad things to come if mixing booze or if beer is consumed before liquor.

Malarkey? No. Mixing different types of alcohol makes it more difficult for your body to process congeners, because it your body has to identify and neutralize more varieties of congeners.

Carbonation speeds the absorption of alcohol, so drinking beer then liquor would cause the liquor to be absorbed at a faster rate than it would normally.

Plus, people tend to drink liquor faster than beer, which is more filling. So, switching to liquor from beer is likely to speed up your rate of liquor consumption after you're already halfway towards being in the bag.

Don't be surprised if you don't know some of these handy dandy shortcuts.

We all know in the abstract soldiers get wounded and killed, but watch this video and tell me you wouldn't feel horrible and personally pained if any of these guys got hurt.

The guys with the mortar really crack me up each time I watch it.

A big salute to y'all guys! Great job and a serious from the heart thank you for the service.

Today is DNA Day - 60th anniversary of Watson and Crick's discovery

Francis Crick sketched this diagram of the DNA double-helix molecule in a 1953 letter to his son, Michael.

By John Roach

The modern era of biology was launched 60 years ago today with the publication of a one-page paper in the journal Nature that described the DNA's double helix structure, a revelation of how organisms store biological information and pass it from one generation to the next.

The Nobel Prize winning discovery was published by the biologists James Watson, an American, and Francis Crick, an Englishman. In 2003, Congress declared that "DNA Day" was April 25.

The date is also special because it commemorates the completion of the Human Genome Project.

To learn more about the day and the discoveries it celebrates, check out the National Human Genome Research Institute's DNA Day Facebook page. Visitors are encouraged to suggest a "DNAnalogy" that helps explain what DNA is. For example, visitor Tom Wood writes that "DNA is like an architectural blueprint. The blueprint is the plan, but it's never the final result."

Who knew? Well, pretty much everybody.

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Debunked: The Harvard study that Republicans used to push austerity

by Clare Kim

A 28-year-old economics graduate student has rewritten a study led by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that has been widely cited as the intellectual basis for worldwide government austerity measures. The Harvard study argues that higher public debt slows down economic growth when the GDP rises above a 90% threshold. But after an attempt to duplicate the Harvard study's findings, Thomas Herndon, a Ph.D student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, ended up debunking Reinhart and Rogoff's economic theory and found that the Reinhart-Rogoff study was incorrect due to spreadsheet coding errors and selective data. Herndon did not attribute motive; he focused only on the statistical and computational inaccuracies of the influential paper.

Released April 17 by University of Massachusetts researchers, Thomas Herndon and his two economics professors, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, published a paper pointing out several inaccuracies in Reinhart and Rogoff's paper. The "RR" study has been repeatedly used as an argument for pushing austerity and for the view that government deficits are economically threatening.

Herndon's study finds that their "results are not consistent with and do not confirm their findings" after uncovering flaws in their data analysis and computing method. Herndon clarified the Harvard study's "selective omissions and unconventional weighting" on Monday.

"We did use the terms 'selective' and 'unconventional' to describe the problems we saw with their paper, and we believe these are accurate characterizations. 'Selective' is an appropriate description because the data were 'selected' for exclusion," Herndon writes.

In terms of Reinhart and Rogoff's "unconventional" weighting system, Herndon points to a Excel spreadsheet error that compounds the growth-rate error. Herndon says, "It was the combination of the weighting system with the exclusion-for whatever reason-that combined to cause the most significant fall in average GDP growth. There is nothing inherently wrong with their weighting system. However it is unusual and it is their obligation to be open and clear in explaining why they used this unusual methodology."

Additionally, Herndon also uncovered a transcription error with Spain's average GDP growth. In one of Reinhart and Rogoff's tables, Spain's average GDP growth was entered at 2.8% instead of 2.2%. Two other samples showed five countries-Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and Canada-were removed, adding to the amount of computational errors in the Harvard report.

Herndon concluded, "Contrary to RR, average GDP growth at public debt/GDP ratios over 90 percent is not dramatically different than when debt/GDP ratios are lower."

An addendum to Herndon's paper also defines a stronger causal relationship between economic and public debt. A contribution by his professor Arin Dube provides evidence that the causality runs the other way around -- from slow growth to high debt.

Reinhart and Rogoff responded to Herndon's claim, acknowledging several mistakes, but both economists contended that their study's general argument that high debt leads to slower economic growth could still be corroborated.

"It is sobering that such an error slipped into one of our papers despite our best efforts to be consistently careful. We will redouble our efforts to avoid such errors in the future. We do not, however, believe this regrettable slip affects in any significant way the central message of the paper or that in our subsequent work," Reinhart and Rogoff wrote.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell said in his program Wednesday evening, "No matter how many times academics try to tell politicians that they cannot base policy action on any one study in any area of social sciences or natural sciences politicians refuse to learn that lesson. Republicans loved the 90% number. Because for once they had some science behind what they were saying."

Herndon, along with the economics department at UMass-Amherst, have undercut the austerity argument that there is no definitive threshold for the debt/GDP ratio relationship and that public debt holds a pivotal role in overcoming a financial recession-a topic that has been on the mind of every American.

The criminal justice system is more than adequate to deal with such acts of terror as these brothers recently committed in Boston. What they did was criminal and the surviving brother need not be handed over to some military tribunal for adjuration; he can be tried like any other violent offender.

Boston is 'terrorism' - but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine?

Can an act of violence be called 'terrorism' if the motive is unknown?

Glenn Greenwald

Two very disparate commentators, Ali Abunimah and Alan Dershowitz, both raised serious questions over the weekend about a claim that has been made over and over about the bombing of the Boston Marathon: namely, that this was an act of terrorism. Dershowitz was on BBC Radio on Saturday and, citing the lack of knowledge about motive, said (at the 3:15 mark): "It's not even clear under the federal terrorist statutes that it qualifies as an act of terrorism." Abunimah wrote a superb analysis of whether the bombing fits the US government's definition of "terrorism", noting that "absolutely no evidence has emerged that the Boston bombing suspects acted 'in furtherance of political or social objectives'" or that their alleged act was 'intended to influence or instigate a course of action that furthers a political or social goal.'" Even a former CIA Deputy Director, Phillip Mudd, said on Fox News on Sunday that at this point the bombing seems more like a common crime than an act of terrorism.

Over the last two years, the US has witnessed at least three other episodes of mass, indiscriminate violence that killed more people than the Boston bombings did: the Tucson shooting by Jared Loughner in which 19 people (including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) were shot, six of whom died; the Aurora movie theater shooting by James Holmes in which 70 people were shot, 12 of whom died; and the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting by Adam Lanza in which 26 people (20 of whom were children) were shot and killed. The word "terrorism" was almost never used to describe that indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people, and none of the perpetrators of those attacks was charged with terrorism-related crimes. A decade earlier, two high school seniors in Colorado, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, used guns and bombs to murder 12 students and a teacher, and almost nobody called that "terrorism" either.

In the Boston case, however, exactly the opposite dynamic prevails. Particularly since the identity of the suspects was revealed, the word "terrorism" is being used by virtually everyone to describe what happened. After initially (and commendably) refraining from using the word, President Obama has since said that "we will investigate any associations that these terrorists may have had" and then said that "on Monday an act of terror wounded dozens and killed three people at the Boston Marathon". But as Abunimah notes, there is zero evidence that either of the two suspects had any connection to or involvement with any designated terrorist organization.

More significantly, there is no known evidence, at least not publicly available, about their alleged motives. Indeed, Obama himself - in the statement he made to the nation after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured on Friday night - said that "tonight there are still many unanswered questions" and included this "among" those "unanswered questions":

"Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?"

The overarching principle here should be that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is entitled to a presumption of innocence until he is actually proven guilty. As so many cases have proven - from accused (but exonerated) anthrax attacker Stephen Hatfill to accused (but exonerated) Atlanta Olympic bomber Richard Jewell to dozens if not hundreds of Guantanamo detainees accused of being the "worst of the worst" but who were guilty of nothing - people who appear to be guilty based on government accusations and trials-by-media are often completely innocent. Media-presented evidence is no substitute for due process and an adversarial trial.

One of the sweetest souls ever to grace the planet.

"The promoters of the event actually appeared to Richie to perform for 20 minutes or so, because no one wanted to be first," Davidowitz told TODAY. "Instead of 20 minutes, the crowd kept him on stage for more than two hours with their cheers and demands for more."

After Woodstock, Havens started his own record label, Stormy Forest. He also worked as an actor, appearing in the London stage version of The Who's "Tommy" and in the 1977 Richard Pryor movie "Greased Lightning," about the first black stock-car driver to win an upper-tier NASCAR race.

"Richie Havens was gifted with one of the most recognizable voices in popular music," Havens' agent said in a statement. "His fiery, poignant, soulful singing style has remained unique and ageless since his historic appearance at Woodstock in 1969. For four decades, Havens used his music to convey passionate messages of brotherhood and personal freedom."

Havens was always grateful for his fans. "From Woodstock to The Isle of Wight to Glastonbury to the Fillmore Auditorium to Royal Albert Hall to Carnegie Hall, Richie played the most legendary music festivals that ever were, and most of the world's greatest concert venues," the statement went on to say. "But even when performing in a Greenwich Village coffeehouse or a small club or regional theater, he was eternally grateful that people in any number turned up each time to hear him sing. More than anything, he feels incredibly blessed to have met so many of you along the way."

January 21, 1941 - April 22, 2013

Alrighty then.

Basically, I just like the headline pun.

My Orgasthumb

by Lynsey Hope

Rafe Biggs, 43, was left a quadriplegic after he broke his neck falling off a roof. He lost all feeling below the waist and feared he would never experience sexual pleasure again.

But a year later he enjoyed orgasmic sensations when a girlfriend massaged and sucked his thumb. Rafe, who now regards his thumb as a "surrogate penis," said: "I felt this build-up of energies and felt I was getting closer and closer to orgasm.

"When I did it was one wave of pleasure after another -- it was amazing. I never thought it would be possible, but massaging and sucking on my thumb, feels a lot like my penis used to feel -- it's really hot."

Rafe, from Oakland, California, now has regular sessions with sex therapist Lisa Skye Carle.

She said: "What Rafe is experiencing is a 'transfer orgasm' -- where another place on the body gives the same sensation. He has significant reduction in pain after a session."

Rafe is now trying to help others through his organisation Sexability. He said: "Sex is therapeutic and can really help disabled people."

Maybe 32 people owned it?

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- A video posted to the Internet shows police on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus confiscating what is described as a 2-pound marijuana joint Saturday.

According to various accounts on the Internet, the incident happened at an annual event that marks April 20, or 4/20, numbers which have become associated with smoking marijauna.

According to the website LiveLeak.com, the officers took the giant joint because it violated the weight limit set for carrying pot, which is one ounce.