Name: Norman Anthony Aguero Currently a student at FIU. My major is chemistry and my minor is physics. My goal is to hopefully earn a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry.
Baby to be born free of breast cancer after embryo screening
Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor
A woman has conceived Britain’s first baby guaranteed to be free from hereditary breast cancer.
Doctors screened out from the woman’s embryos an inherited gene that would have left the baby with a greater than 50% chance of developing the cancer.
The woman decided to have her embryos screened because her husband had tested positive for the gene and his sister, mother, grandmother and cousin have all had the cancer.
The couple produced 11 embryos, of which five were found to be free from the gene. Two of these were implanted in the woman’s womb and she is now 14 weeks pregnant.
By screening out embryos carrying the gene, called BRCA-1, the couple, from London, will eliminate the hereditary disease from their lineage.
About 5% of the 44,000 cases of breast cancer diagnosed in Britain each year are estimated to be caused by the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes, both of which can be detected in embryos.
Doctors say thousands of cases of breast cancer could be avoided by screening embryos using the technique called preimplantation diagnosis (PGD).
Many women who test positive for the gene have their breasts surgically removed to avoid the disease. Only one other woman – an Israeli mother-to-be – is thought to have become pregnant after undergoing the embryo screening.
The 27-year-old British mother, who asked not to be named, says that after seeing all her husband’s female relatives suffer from breast cancer, she felt she had to take action to save their children from the same plight. Any daughter born with the gene would have had a 50% to 85% chance of developing breast cancer.
She said: “For the past three generations, every single woman in my husband’s family has had breast cancer, as early as 27 and 29. We felt that, if there was a possibility of eliminating this for our children, then that was a route we had to go down.
“It has been successful for us which means we are eliminating the gene from our line.
“We had been through his sister being ill, so it was something we had seen first hand. I thought this was something I had to try because, if we had a daughter with the gene, and she was ill, I couldn’t look her in the face and say I didn’t try.”
The woman and her 28-year-old husband had to go through IVF (in vitro fertilisation) even though they are fertile, in order to create embryos that could be screened.
Tests on the 11 embryos were conducted by removing just one cell when they were three days old. Six of the embryos carried the breast cancer gene. Two embryos that were free of the gene were then implanted, resulting in a single pregnancy.
The couple have also been able to freeze two healthy embryos for future use.
The woman said she felt a responsibility to put herself through the invasive IVF procedure. “The treatment I had to go through was nothing in comparison to what I have seen members of my husband’s family go through.”
In addition to breast cancer, women carrying the gene also have a higher risk of ovarian cancer and male carriers are at greater risk of developing prostate cancer.
The couple’s doctor, Paul Serhal, medical director of the Assisted Conception Unit at University College London hospital, said the breakthrough gives parents the option of avoiding passing a high risk of breast cancer on to their children.
He said: “Women now have the option of having this treatment to avoid the potential guilty feeling of passing on this genetic abnormality to a child. This gives us the chance to eradicate this problem in families.” Serhal added: “It may be devastating psychologically and emotionally for a young woman to have her breasts removed.”
Serhal has treated other couples to create babies free from less well known cancer genes, including one that causes eye cancer and another that carries a high risk of bowel cancer.
Some critics say it is wrong to destroy embryos because there is only a chance women with the gene may develop breast cancer in adulthood. They argue that, increasingly, breast cancer can also be successfully treated.
Chinglish is a portmanteau of the words Chinese and English and refers to spoken or written English which is influenced by Chinese[1]. There are an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English in the People's Republic of China[2].
The term "Chinglish" is mostly used in popular contexts and may have pejorative or derogatory connotations [3]. The terms "Chinese English" and "China English" are also used, mostly in the academic community, to refer to Chinese varieties of English[4] .
Chinglish from this rigid machine translation renders this menu almost unusable.
English first arrived in China in the 1630s, when British traders arrived in South China. Chinese Pidgin English was spoken first in the areas of Macao and Canton, later spreading north to Shanghai by the 1830s[5]. "Yangjing Bang English" in Chinese (洋涇濱, or 洋泾浜) derives from the name of a former creek in Shanghai near the Bund where local workers communicated with English-speaking foreigners in pidgin[citation needed].
Chinese Pidgin English began to decline in the late 19th century as standard English began to be taught in the country's education system[2].
In Beijing, in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the city authorities are clamping down on the usage of Chinglish and replacing it with standard English.[6] Among other examples, signs that previously read: "To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty" may read "Caution - slippery path". Other notable examples include: "Oil gate" (accelerator), "confirming distance" (keep space, distance verification), and so on.[7]
In most dialects of Chinese, voiced obstruent consonants (/b/, /d/, /g/, /dʒ/) do not exist properly. These dialects distinguish unvoiced aspirate and unvoiced unaspirate obstruents. Most Chinese perceive voiced obstruents as unvoiced unaspirates (e.g. /b/ becomes /p/), while unvoiced obstruents in other languages are all perceived as aspirate (e.g. /p/ becomes /pʰ/. This is reflected in several Romanization systems, notably Hanyu Pinyin (but not Wade-Giles). Thus, "buy" is pronounced /paɪ/, while "pie" remains /pʰaɪ/. When unaspirated obstruents occur in English (albeit non-phonemically) as in "spin" (/spɪn/), Chinese speakers would still pronounce them as if they were aspirate (/sɹ.ˈpʰin/). This applies equally to affricates, where "change", normally pronounced /tʃʰɛɪndʒ/, becomes /ˈtʃʰɛn.tʃi/ (or /ˈtɕʰɛn.tɕi/ if palatized).
In Cantonese pronunciation, some consonants are nowadays changed into other, for example N is often pronounced as L. Voiced sounds (/v/ and the /ʒ/ sound - eg. 'pleasure') cause difficulty. In speech, there is also a tendency to add the sound "see" or "chi" at the end of certain singular letters, such as the letters "S" and "H" ('es-see' and 'ay-chi' respectively).
Similarly, there are no syllable codas (consonants at the end of syllables) in Mandarin with the exception of the "n" sound. When encountering such codas, a Mandarin speaker will either modify the consonant to form a separate syllable, or drop it altogether. Thus, for example, CCTV presenters pronounce the letters "L", "M", and "N" as [aɪ lə] ("ai-le"), [aɪ mu] ("ai-mu") and [ən] ("n") respectively.
As all varieties of Chinese are tonal languages, Chinese speakers sometimes apply tonal attributes to English, which is normally a stress-based language. Stressed syllables are generally given higher and falling tones over unstressed syllables. This imparts a "staccato" quality to the accent, a feature shared by speakers of other tonal (or pitch-stressed) languages.
Examples include "to put inJingzhang Expressway" instead of "entering Jingzhang Expressway"), and the use of "emergent" to mean "emergency" or "urgent". In the photo of the park regulations at right, the use of words such as "objectionable" and "inexpedient" is a further example.
As another example, when something is explained, the English learner may respond with "Oh, I know," while the appropriate response would be "Oh, I see." This is because "知道 zhīdao" is usually translated as know regardless of context. "When did you first recognize him?" is also sometimes used for "When did you first meet him?" because "认识[認識] rènshi" is usually translated as recognize as in "I recognize him from last week's party."
The English words see, watch, read and look at are all represented by the Chinese word “看 kàn", and may be used interchangeably. The situation of speak, say and talk is similar. Phrases like "Can you say Chinese?", "I am watching a book", and "Tomorrow I will look a movie" may be common.
Another example is "turn on/off" versus "open/close". In Chinese, "turn on" (in the sense of operating a switch or a machine) and "open" are rendered by the same character, and so are "turn off" and "close". The two terms may be used interchangeably.
"Welcome to" is one of the more noticeable cases of Chinglish, especially on mainland China. This is used as a direct translation in Chinese, "歡迎". It can mean "we invite you to" or "you are welcome to", and is used more as an incentive to the activity introduced or as a form of "thank you". Its use is almost always cordial, inviting, or otherwise positive. Example:
Welcome to ride Line 52 Bus = Thank you for riding Bus Line 52, or You are welcome to ride Bus Line 52.
using "me is" instead of "I am" (such as "Me is Jack")
using awkward gerunds (such as "No Noising")
excessive use of "the" when not needed (such as "The China is bigger than the France", "The France is bigger than the Switzerland")
excessive use of verbs with the "-ing" ending (such as "Please do not climbing"; in the photo below)
excessive use of "to", the use of "to" with modals, preserving "to" in infinitive form even when unnecessary (e.g. "I must to go")
confusion of -ed and -ing adjectives (e.g. "I am very boring" vs. "I am very bored"; "I was surprising" vs. "I was surprised")
The overuse of —ing, and the confusion of one word for another (a warning sign in Guilin)
the overuse of "very" between "be" and an adjective (reflecting the use of "很" in Chinese)
the use of "very" to modify verbs (e.g. "I very like it")
the use of the singular when the plural would be more fitting (various examples can be seen in the park regulations above)
The above examples reflect the influence of Chinese syntax and grammar; in Chinese, verbs are not conjugated (either for tense or pronoun), and there is no equivalent word for "the."
Comma splices can occur frequently. This is due to the fact that in Chinese writing, the comma (逗號 "，") is all that is sufficient to terminate a clause without needing to follow with a conjunction. The equivalent of full stop (句號 "。") is usually reserved for the end of an idea, which theoretically may last as long as a paragraph.[citation needed]
Some Chinese pick non-traditional English names. Such names may be derived from vocabulary they learned in their early English lessons, including names such as Apple, Space, Can, Sea, Mooncake, Magic, Koala, Spider, Thunder, Cloudy, Airy, Rainbow, Table, Bird, Eleven, Hifi, Ice, Puppy, Well and other names of animals, plants, weather phenomena, household appliances, days of the week or months. They might choose products they like as their name, such as Cola or Nautica, or other more advanced words that may be picked for their sound or meaning such as Victory, Nation or even Cemetery.
Some choose Russian, Japanese, or Hispanic names, such as Yuri, Jun, or Antonio. Since most styles European names are widely used in English-speaking communities, these will seem less "odd" than other non-traditional names. These names may just be viewed as nicknames, and some Chinese may choose more common ones if they have to use their name in business or other more formal occasions.
Most (but not all) Chinese people living in Asia are given only Chinese names at birth, and choose their own English name at some point after they begin learning English (if they ever do). Although rare, some parents may name their child a Chinese phonetic translation of an English name, such as Suzie (Sook-Si in Cantonese), Raymond (Wai-Ming in Cantonese), Annie (On-Lei in Cantonese), Annie (An-ni or Anne in Mandarin), Joanne (Jia-An in Mandarin), Ivy (Ai-Li in Mandarin), Eileen (Yi-Lin in Mandarin), Pauline (Poh-Lin in Cantonese), Charlie (Jia-Li in Mandarin), Elaine (Yi-Lan in Mandarin), Maggie (Mei-Qi in Mandarin), Carmen (Kah Man in Cantonese), Ada (Ai-Da in Mandarin), or Joey (Jo Yee in Cantonese). This can be observed from the majority of Cantopop singers from Hong Kong adopting an English name that is somewhat a transliteration of their Chinese name as pronounced in Cantonese. For example: 陳奕迅 Chan Yik-Shun (Simplified: 陈奕迅; Jyutping: can yik seon; IPA:/'tsɐn 'jɪk 'sɵn/) is Eason Chan, 謝安琪 Tse On-Kei (Simplified: 谢安琪; Jyutping: ze on kei; IPA: /'tsɛː 'ɔːn 'kʰei/) is Kay Tse, and 容祖兒 Yung Cho-Yee (Simplified: 容祖儿; Jyutping: jung zou ji; IPA: /'jʊŋ 'tɕou 'jiː/) is Joey Yung.
Some Chinglish phrases are created deliberately as language humour. Examples include:
Open the door see mountain (verbatim translation from a Chinese idiom, meaning "to speak straightforwardly" — 开门见山/開門見山). Other such example may be "five flowers eight doors" (in Chinese, wǔ huā bā mén - 五花八门/五花八門), which means "kaleidoscopic" or "multifarious", and "people mountain people sea" (in Chinese, 人山人海 rén shan rén hai), meaning "a sea of people" or "a huge crowd".
Un-ding-able (it has at least two different meanings in Cantonese. It could mean "no one can stand it" - 頂唔順, here 頂 ding means "to stand", "to endure" or "to tolerate". It could also mean "best of the best" - 無得頂, here 頂 means "to best".)
You go see see lah (Go and have a look. — 你去睇睇啦) (please refer to Hong Kong English or Singlish. Chinese: 你去看看啦). Some aspects of Chinese involves repetition of words to indicate a verb, which in a similar context could include Try try see (go try it — 試試看), sometimes less commonly, run one run (to take a walk - 跑一跑), or wait wait me ba (Wait for me - 等等我吧).
Good good study, day day up (verbatim translation from a Chinese Communist-era saying by Mao Zedong, meaning "study hard, keep improving" (好好学习﹑天天向上 hǎohao xuéxí, tiāntiān xiàngshàng).
Horse horse tiger tiger (verbatim Mandarin Chinese translation for so-so or mediocre - 馬馬虎虎)
Open water or white open water (another instance of verbatim translation, which 開 technically means "open", but in this context it means to boil, which means "[plain] boiled water", as in [白]開水). Though occasionally jokingly used amongst other Asians, it is also a common error and creates confusion outside of Chinese culture, most notably in restaurants or other forms of hospitality that may serve drinks (e.g. cafés, house guests, etc.) where the person being asked may be unaware of the asker's demands.
A more sensible translation is "Everyone is responsible for protecting the greenery!"
[edit]Chinglish phrases used by native English speakers
Long time no see is often attributed as an example of Chinglish being used by native English speakers. The phrase is said to have originated from 好耐冇見(喇)(Cantonese)/好久不見(了)(Mandarin). These Chinglish phrases were used by dock workers to greet sailors from overseas.
It began in the early 1900s when British and American warships and trading ships often stayed at Chinese docks, and through pidgin communications with dock workers, started to communicate in what is now known as Chinglish. The sailors used the phrase long time no see as a joke when they got home and somehow the phrase became widely used even in English-speaking countries. A more grammatically correct phrase of English should be I haven't seen you for a long time.
The phrase has also been said to originate from trade with American Indians. Similar seemingly grammatically "incorrect" phrases (such as "no pain, no gain") are common and native to English; thus "long time no see" may have been just a coincidence.
Anti-Earthquake Memorial: actually an Earthquake Memorial
The following are some instances of Chinglish, along with a description of where they may be found and what they mean when translated into standard English: (Additional examples can be found here. [7])
To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty. (注意安全 坡道路滑) (Beijing) = Be careful, slippery slopes. [8]
Rain or snow day. Bridge, slow-driving. (All expressways in Hebei) = Slow down when driving on the bridge during rain or snow.
Smoking is prohibited if you will be fined 50 yuan. = Smoking is prohibited. Violators are subject to a fine of 50 yuan.
Deformed man toilet. and Crippled restroom. = Public toilet for the disabled.
When you across hard you can ring TEL (number). = In case of an emergency, please call (number).
We can't stand the sight of mattress fragrant grass = Don't step on the grass
The too longer, too higher, overweight and the dangerous things are not allowed to be carried = Escalator, Xidan, Beijing = Objects that are too long, too tall, too heavy, as well as hazardous objects are not to be carried here.
The older, the children, the deformities, the patients and the pregnant women should take the escalator with his guardian together. = Escalator warning, Xidan, Beijing = Seniors, children, the disabled, patients, as well as pregnant women should be accompanied by a guardian.
Extraordinary Door (非常门 / 非常門) = Emergency Exit. The confusion may result in a less-common usage of 非常, where it means "Emergency" (as in "非常时期") while normally it means "Extraordinary". Incidentally, this is the standard usage in Japanese. A less ambiguous term in Chinese for "Emergency Exit" would be 緊急出口.
Protect Circumstance begin with me. (保护环境从我开始 / 保護環境從我開始) = Protecting the environment starts with me; an environmental protection slogan found on litter bins.
Prevent Health Care Section (预防保健科 / 預防保健科) = Preventative Medicine - a sign found in a hospital in Wuhan. The error stems from the slippery nature of word forms (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) in Chinese grammar.
Careful Landslip, Attention Security (小心地滑 注意安全) = Warning: Slippery Floor (for your own safety). (Jinan International Airport)
Carefully meet (小心碰头 / 小心碰頭) = Watch your head. (Convenience store in Beijing) This is to warn customers not to hit their head on the low ceiling above stairways. The word 碰头 / 碰頭 in Chinese literally means to bump one's head, but also means to meet or to have a gathering. A variation seen in Nanjing subway stations for the same Mandarin phrase: "Attention Your Head."
Ban the use for maintenance of equipment = Out of order pending repairs. On a toilet by the Great Wall, near Jinshanling.
Site of Jumping Umbrella = Paragliding Site
Please would paper chuck in wastebin Thank you! = In a public toilet in Shanghai = Please throw the toilet paper in to the wastebin. Thank you!
Public toilet in Shanghai
Protect Environment, Saving Bumf (支持环保 节约用纸 / 支持環保 節約用紙) = Protect the Environment, use less paper. (Jinan International Airport)
Don't use it while stabilizing, Do not be occupying while stabilizing, No occupying while stabilizing = Do not use the toilet while the train is stopping at a station. (Train toilets).
Visit in civilisation, pay attention to hygiene! (文明旅游，注意卫生！/ 文明旅遊，注意衛生！) = This is a message mainly aimed at locals and other people who would otherwise visit somewhere in a sloppy or rude manner.
No gambling promote leagal entertainment = anti-gambling propaganda poster by the Beijing police.
The Familiar Food Make Sures the Price (熟食计价处 / 熟食計價處) = A poor translation of "Cooked (Prepared) Foods Pricing Department" on a sign at the above supermarket in China. The word for "cooked" (熟) can also mean "familiar" in other contexts. As above, the characters comprising the word for "pricing" or "valuation" (计价 / 計價) can be translated separately as "make sure" (计 / 計) and "price" (价 / 價).
After first under on, do riding with civility. (先下后上 文明乘车) = Sign in the Shanghai Metro advising passengers to let others disembark before boarding trains.
The visitor halts (游人止步) = Restricted area to visitors. Found at the Yonghe Temple (Beijing).
Please Steek Gently = Please close door gently (关门 / 關門 is an entry in a Chinese-English dictionary yielding steek, archaic.)
New Shipu Hotel = not a hotel but a restaurant. The confusion results from the Chinese word "饭店 / 飯店" which can mean both hotel and restaurant (c.f. inn). Although alternative words are available to make the distinction, this word is often used by owners when naming their establishment.
Deep fried ghost or deep fried devil and oil fried ghost (油炸鬼) = A literal translation of a name for Youtiao used in southern China.
Bake the Cell Phone (烘手机 / 烘手機) = Hand dryer (a result of poor parsing)
Kindly Treat the Virescence around in the Way Life is Treated = Treat the grass in the same way as you would treat life. "Virescence" is a rarely-seen word meaning "greenness." Found at Tiger Hill in Suzhou.
The Chain-Bridge runs East and West like a Rainbow = Sign pointing towards a chain-bridge near Jinshanling, on the Great Wall.
Fuck the Certain Price of Goods (干货计价处 / 乾[幹]貨計價處) = A translation of "Dry Goods Pricing Department" on a sign at supermarket in China. The merger of the traditional character for "dry" (乾) and the character meaning "to do" (幹), also commonly used to denote the vulgarity "fuck," into one single simplified character (干) [dry] likely led to this confusion. [9] The characters comprising the word for "pricing" or "valuation" (计价 / 計價) can be translated separately as "certain" (计 / 計) and "price" (价 / 價).
I'm in the wrong profession. The heck to science. I'm going to turn into a internet match-making guru. I'll get rich. For instance, I just found the perfect match for Roma:
Recently some restaurants in Guangdong, China, have been promoting a popular dish called “water boiled live cat”.
The way the restaurants kill the cats is very cruel and inhumane. One of the chefs even says “the more torture the cats receive, the better they taste.”
They use a bat and beat the cats until they pass out; then throw them into hot water and boil them alive, then de-skin and cook them again.
One restaurant in Pan Yu district, even has a cat “shelter” in their back yard.
Customers go out back and pick which cat they want to eat and the chef will beat the chosen cat half to dead and boil it alive. Not just wild cats end up on the dinner table, some high class cats like Persians will end up a meal as well.
The Menu offers the following choices and prices:
Cat meat￥10 ($1.25)/lb
Cat’s brain ￥30 ($3.5)/lb
Cat’s intestine ￥50 ($6.4)/lb
Lets just hope this is not another prelude to a SARS breakout like before.
It is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for the crime of raping a child, when the victim does not die and death was not intended. Louisiana Supreme Court reversed and remanded.
Patrick O. Kennedy, a man from suburban New Orleans, Louisiana, was sentenced to death after being convicted of raping his eight-year-old stepdaughter. He has contended since the assault occurred in March 1998 that it was committed by two neighborhood boys. His attorneys have said he refused to plead guilty when a deal was offered to spare him from a death sentence. He was sentenced under a 1995 Louisianalaw that allows the death penalty for the rape of a child under the age of 13.[1]
Kennedy's lawyers challenged the constitutionality of executing a person solely for child rape before the Louisiana Supreme Court which rejected the challenge on the grounds that the death penalty was not too harsh for such a heinous offense. The court noted that, although the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down capital punishment for rape of an adult woman in Coker v. Georgia, that ruling did not apply when the victim was a child. Rather, the Louisiana Supreme Court applied a balancing test set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, first examining whether there is a national consensus on the punishment and then considering whether the court would find the punishment excessive. In this case, the Louisiana Supreme Court felt that the adoption of similar laws in five other states, coupled with the unique vulnerability of children, justified imposing the death penalty.[2][3]
His lawyers then challenged the constitutionality of executing a person solely for child rape in federal court eventually making it to the Supreme Court which agreed to hear his case in January 2008.[4] At the time Kennedy was one of two men in the country under sentence of death for a non-capital crime; the other, Richard L. Davis, had been sentenced under the same Louisiana law.[5]
U.S. Supreme Court
In seeking certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, Jeffrey L. Fisher, a Stanford Law School professor appealing on behalf of Mr. Kennedy, argued that five states do not constitute a "national consensus" for the purposes of Eighth Amendment analysis, that Coker v. Georgia should apply to all rapes regardless of the age of the victim, and that the law was unfair in its application, singling out black child rapists for death at a significantly higher rate than whites. Certiorari to the defendant was granted on January 4, 2008.[6]
The case posed a direct test of whether states may constitutionally impose the death penalty for any crime other than murder, and, in particular, whether a death sentence is a disproportionate penalty, under the Eighth Amendment, for raping a child. No person has been executed in the United States for rape since 1964.[7]
Louisiana Assistant District Attorney Juliet L. Clark argued for the State of Louisiana and Texas Solicitor General R. Ted Cruz argued for the State of Texas and other amicus curiae states.[8]
If so, does Louisiana's capital rape statute violate the Eighth Amendment insofar as it fails genuinely to narrow the class of such offenders eligible for the death penalty?[9]
Opinion of the Supreme Court
In June 25, 2008, the Supreme Court, splitting 5-4, held that "[t]he Eighth Amendment bars Louisiana from imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death." In its majority opinion authored by Justice Kennedy, the Court explained that the application of the death penalty had to rest on national consensus, and that as only six States permitted the death penalty for child rape, no such consensus existed. In formulating the idea of "national consensus" the Court relied on the previous cases Roper v. Simmons (2005), which outlawed the execution of minors, and Coker v. Georgia (1977), which outlawed the application of the death penalty for the crime of rape. According to the Court, "[t]he death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child."[10]
In his dissent Justice Alito sharply criticized the majority for usurping the role of the legislature. Alito argued that Kennedy's rationale for divining national consensus was flawed, because the previous Coker decision had "stunted legislative consideration of the question whether the death penalty for the targeted offense of raping a young child is consistent with prevailing standards of decency." In this Alito followed former Chief Justice Warren Burger, who had dissented from Coker because it, in his view, prevented a full debate over the uses of the recently-reinstated death penalty. In this vein, Alito also argued that "The Eighth Amendment protects the right of an accused. It does not authorize this Court to strike down federal or state criminal laws on the ground that they are not in the best interests of crime victims or the broader society."[11]
Minerals Needed for Life Found on Mars By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
posted: 26 June 2008
03:55 pm ET
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander found evidence of mineral nutrients essential to life in Martian dirt, mission scientists announced Thursday.
After performing the first wet chemistry experiment ever done on another planet, Phoenix discovered that a sample it dug of Martian dirt contained several soluble minerals, including potassium, magnesium and chloride. Though the data is preliminary, the results are very exciting, scientists said.
"We basically have found what appears to be the requirements for nutrients to support life," said Phoenix's wet chemistry lab lead, Sam Kounaves of Tufts University. "This is the type of soil you'd probably have in your backyard. You might be able to grow asparagus pretty well, but probably not strawberries."
Asparagus, which thrives in alkaline soil, would like the Martian dirt, which Phoenix measured to have a very alkaline pH of between eight to nine. Strawberries, meanwhile, like acidic soil, he said.
The finding comes a week after the lander discovered water ice in the same dirt.
On June 25, the probe placed a cubic centimeter sample of Martian dirt in its onboard wet chemistry laboratory for the first time. The lab, part of Phoenix's suite of instruments called the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, was designed to test Mars' dirt for salts, acidity, minerals and conductivity.
After mixing the dirt with water Phoenix brought from Earth in one of MECA's teacup-sized beakers, the instrument measured various characteristics of the solution to learn about the properties of the dirt.
MECA includes four beakers, each of which can be used only once. The inside of each beaker contains 26 sensors designed to study red planet material, NASA officials have said.
"We're making mud, we're stirring it up, we're measuring it with sensors," said Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Michael Hecht, lead of the MECA instrument.
Habitable world
The new findings help fulfill Phoenix's main purpose: to search for signs that the red planet's northern polar regions could have been habitable to life. The probe landed in the arctic plains of Mars May 25 to begin what is now a planned four-month mission. It is not equipped to find life itself.
The soluble mineral nutrients it found, and the dirt's hospitable pH level, are both promising signs. However the MECA instrument is not able to test for organic compounds, such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, which are also necessary for life as we know it.
"We did find basically that there's nothing about [the dirt] that would preclude life," Kounaves said. "In fact it seems very friendly."
Though the dirt itself seems to be hospitable, Kounaves pointed out that the very top layer at the surface is exposed to high levels of harsh UV light that is damaging to organic compounds, so may not be able to support life.
"There could be microbes living meters and meters underground," he said. "They would be very happy."
Water ice
Phoenix also recently found another promising sign that this Mars environment could be habitable to life. In a major success last week, the probe photographed what scientists say must be water ice: a few bright crumbs that evaporated over four days from a trench in the ground. The scientists think it's water, and not some other material such as carbon dioxide, because of the time frame over which it vaporized. The local temperatures are too warm for carbon dioxide to remain frozen for even one day, scientists said.
Launched in August 2007, Phoenix includes cameras, a scoop-tipped robotic arm, weather station and ovens in addition to its wet chemistry lab.
The probe's oven instrument, the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA), also recently completed an experiment in which it heated up a sample of Martian dirt to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit). When the sample was heated, the instrument measured signs of water, which researchers think was probably emitted when minerals melted that contained chemically-bound water. This water would have been bonded to other molecules in the minerals, rather than existing on its own in the dirt.
"This is the first time anybody's ever heated up part of a planet to such high temperatures," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for TEGA. "When we heated up the sample we got some modest amounts of water vapor. This is what we were hoping to see."
Though further analysis is needed to determine the source of the water vapor for sure, "what we can say now is that the soil clearly has interacted with water in the past," he said.
The results of both the TEGA and MECA tests are showing scientists that it's possible Mars may indeed have hosted, or be hosting, some form of life.
"Over time I've come to the conclusion that the amazing thing about Mars is not that it's an alien world but that it's actually very Earth-like," Kounaves said.
WASHINGTON - Scientists working on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission are reporting what they call compelling evidence that the robot craft has found ice while digging on the Martian surface.
NASA is expected to give details on the discovery during a news conference on Friday.
The small science probe landed safely last month on a frozen desert at the Martian north pole to search for water and assess conditions for sustaining life.
The Robotic Arm on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander carries a scoop of Martian soil bound for the spacecraft's microscope in handout photo released on June 13, 2008.
Reuters/NASA
Small chunks of bright material described as the size of dice have disappeared from inside a trench where they were photographed by the craft earlier this week, NASA said in a statement late on Thursday.
This has convinced scientists the chunks were ice -- frozen water -- that vaporized after digging exposed it, NASA said.
"It must be ice," said mission principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days. That is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."
The presence of water on Mars is a hot topic for scientists. They have presented strong evidence in recent years of huge deposits of frozen water at the Martian poles and point to geological features that indicate that large bodies of water have flowed on the planet's surface in the distant past.
Water is a key to the question of whether life, even in the form of mere microbes, has ever existed on Mars. On Earth, water is a necessary ingredient for life.
The chunks were left at the bottom of a trench dubbed "Dodo-Goldilocks" when Phoenix's robotic arm enlarged that trench on June 15. Several chunks were gone when Phoenix looked at the trench again on Thursday, NASA said.
The U.S. space agency also said that the lander, digging in a different trench, used its robotic arm to connect with a hard surface that has scientists believing they have found an icy layer on the Martian surface.
The $420 million lander spent 10 months journeying from Earth to Mars.
The following has nothing to do with any blogger I was just thinking (egads, not again) about love and human relationships in general, and decided to post this.
Codependent Relationships - Toxic Love
"We are set up to fail to get our needs met in Romantic Relationships because of the belief system we were taught in childhood and the messages we got from our society growing up."
"This dance of Codependence is a dance of dysfunctional relationships - of relationships that do not work to meet our needs. That does not mean just romantic relationships, or family relationships, or even human relationships in general.
The fact that dysfunction exists in our romantic, family, and human relationships is a symptom of the dysfunction that exists in our relationship with life - with being human. It is a symptom of the dysfunction which exists in our relationships with ourselves as human beings.
And the dysfunction that exists in our relationship with ourselves is a symptom of Spiritual dis-ease, of not being in balance and harmony with the universe, of feeling disconnected from our Spiritual source.
That is why it is so important to enlarge our perspective. To look beyond the romantic relationship in which we are having problems. To look beyond the dysfunction that exists in our relationships with other people.
The more we enlarge our perspective, the closer we get to the cause instead of just dealing with the symptoms. For example, the more we look at the dysfunction in our relationship with ourselves as human beings the more we can understand the dysfunction in our romantic relationships."
(All quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney)
"As long as we believe that we have to have the other in our life to be happy, we are really just an addict trying to protect our supply - using another person as our drug of choice. That is not True Love - nor is it Loving."
"The thing that is so important about the issue of Romantic Relationships is to realize how we were set up to "fail" in romance - to really get it on a gut level, so that we can forgive ourselves. Once we start letting go of feeling responsible for something we were powerless over, letting go of the false guilt and toxic shame about our "mistakes" and "failures" in romance - then we can start to learn how to take healthy risks. Loving and losing is much better than never loving at all."
Codependent Relationships Dynamics part 2 - Dysfunctional Definition of Love
"As long as we believe that someone else has the power to make us happy then we are setting ourselves up to be victims"
One of the biggest problems with relationships in this society is that the context we approach them from is too small. We were taught that getting the relationship is the goal.
It starts in early childhood with Fairy Tales where the Prince and the Princess live happily-ever-after. It continues in movies and books where "boy meets girl" "boy loses girl" "boy gets girl back" - the music swells and the happy couple ride off into the sunset. The songs that say "I can't smile without you" "I can't live without you" "You are my everything" describe the type of love we learned about growing up - toxic love - an addiction with the other person as our drug of choice, as our Higher Power.
Any time we set another human being up to be our Higher Power we are going to experience failure in whatever we are trying to accomplish. We will end up feeling victimized by the other person or by our self - and even when we feel victimized by the other person we blame our self for the choices we made. We are set up to fail to get our needs met in Romantic Relationships because of the belief system we were taught in childhood and the messages we got from our society growing up.
There is no goal to reach that will bring us to happily-ever after. We are not incomplete until we find our soul mate. We are not halves that cannot be whole without a relationship.
True Love is not a painful obsession. It is not taking a hostage or being a hostage. It is not all-consuming, isolating, or constricting. Believing we can't be whole or happy without a relationship is unhealthy and leads us to accept deprivation and abuse, and to engage in manipulation, dishonesty, and power struggles. The type of love we learned about growing up is an addiction, a form of toxic love.
Here is a short list of the characteristics of Love vs. toxic love (compiled with the help of the work of Melody Beattie & Terence Gorski.)
1. Love - Development of self first priority.
Toxic love - Obsession with relationship.
2. Love - Room to grow, expand; desire for other to grow.
Toxic love - Security, comfort in sameness; intensity of need seen as proof of love (may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness)
3. Love - Separate interests; other friends; maintain other meaningful relationships.
Toxic love - Total involvement; limited social life; neglect old friends, interests.
4. Love - Encouragement of each other's expanding; secure in own worth.
Toxic love - Preoccupation with other's behavior; fear of other changing.
5. Love - Appropriate Trust (i.e. trusting partner to behave according to fundamental nature.)
Toxic love - Jealousy; possessiveness; fear of competition; protects "supply."
6. Love - Compromise, negotiation or taking turns at leading. Problem solving together.
Toxic love - Power plays for control; blaming; passive or aggressive manipulation.
7. Love - Embracing of each other's individuality.
Toxic love - Trying to change other to own image.
8. Love - Relationship deals with all aspects of reality.
Toxic love - Relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant.
9. Love - Self-care by both partners; emotional state not dependent on other's mood.
Toxic love - Expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other.
10. Love - Loving detachment (healthy concern about partner, while letting go.)
Toxic love - Fusion (being obsessed with each other's problems and feelings.)
11. Love - Sex is free choice growing out of caring & friendship.
Toxic love - Pressure around sex due to insecurity, fear & need for immediate gratification.
12. Love - Ability to enjoy being alone.
Toxic love - Unable to endure separation; clinging.
13. Love - Cycle of comfort and contentment.
Toxic love - Cycle of pain and despair.
Love is not supposed to be painful. There is pain involved in any relationship but if it is painful most of the time then something is not working.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship - it is natural and healthy. There is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship that will last forever - expecting it to last forever is what is dysfunctional. Expectations set us up to be a victim - and cause to abandon ourselves in search of our goal.
If we can start seeing relationships not as the goal but as opportunities for growth then we can start having more functional relationships. A relationship that ends is not a failure or a punishment - it is a lesson.
As long as our definition of a successful relationship is one that lasts forever - we are set up to fail. As long as we believe that we have to have the other in our life to be happy, we are really just an addict trying to protect our supply - using another person as our drug of choice. That is not True Love - nor is it Loving.
In our efforts to communicate the latest budget developments here and in Tallahassee in a timely manner, the university is disseminating weekly budget updates from President Modesto A. Maidique. These communiques are sent to our students, faculty and staff, alumni, donors, FIU Board of Trustees, Foundation Board of Directors, President's Council, select media, elected officials and other interested parties. We believe that timely information on a topic of such critical importance will benefit the entire university community and help to continue the university's forward momentum.
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In This Issue:
Dear members of the university community:
Today our Board of Trustees approved the budget reduction plan we put forth after months of evaluation and consultation with the entire university community and others. The plan calls for the closure of more than two dozen academic programs and centers. Given the nature of academic programs and our commitment to students already enrolled, most of these closures and staff reductions will take effect over the next three years.
These extreme measures are necessary to bridge a record $32 million gap in our budget this year. The gap is a result of the reduced state budget and increased costs to continue operating. The gap is mitigated by some one-time dollars we had in reserve and by efficiencies we were able to employ in operational areas.
We arrived at this list of programs through an exhaustive process that looked at how each unit in the university was serving our community, educating students and how it aligned with the university’s research mission. I think everyone involved would agree it was an arduous but necessary exercise.
The plan was discussed and reviewed by the Faculty Senate, as well as in a number of other meetings, including three Town Hall meetings attended by hundreds of faculty, staff and students.
At today’s Academic Policy Committee and full Board of Trustees meetings, there was intense discussion about the 25 programs recommended for closure, including dance, humanities, and industrial system engineering. After hearing from students, faculty and community representatives, the board adopted the recommendations to close these programs and recommend to the Board of Governors that the Ph.D. program in industrial and systems engineering be closed as well.
Our trustees understood that these program closings emerged through a long and painful process. They also understood that if they rejected any of these programs for closure, we would have to go back to the drawing board and select other programs that would generate equivalent savings.
As someone who has spent more than 20 years working to build this university, I am heartbroken to have to be involved in downsizing it. I don’t remember a previous BOT meeting where students and faculty members left in tears. Unfortunately, we simply do not have a choice.
The programs we are phasing out are as follows:
Dance, BA
English Teacher Education, BS
English Teacher Education, MS
Environmental and Systems Engineering, MS
Exercise Science, BS, MS
German, BA
Health Sciences, BS
Health Information Management, BA
Humanities, BA
Insurance and Risk Management, BBA
Industrial Systems Engineering, BS, MS,
Logistics and Materials Management, BBA
Mathematics Teacher Education, BS, MS
Music Teacher Education, BS
Science Teacher Education, BS, MS
Social Science Teacher Education, BS, MS
Technology Management, MS
Tourism Studies, MS
Travel and Tourism Management, BS
In addition, the board agreed to recommend to the Board of Governors that we close the Ph.D. program in Industrial and Systems Engineering.
In the case of the programs closed in the College of Education, we found that there’s a more efficient way to deliver that same education. Namely, through partnerships with programs already established in the College of Arts and Sciences. We will not stop educating English or math teachers. We will approach their education in a new, and we believe, more effective way.
The Board also accepted our recommendation to close six centers. Those are:
Center for Economic Research and Education
Center for Health Research and Policy
Future Aerospace Science and Technology Center for Space
Center for Ethnobiology and Natural Products
Institute for Children and Families at Risk
Intercultural Institute for Educational Initiatives
It has been a difficult process, and one which I’ve shared with you weekly over the past three months. Today was a tough day for everyone involved. But all of us -- the executive team and the members of the Board of Trustees -- believe that the university will emerge from this stronger and better equipped to meet the needs of future generation of students.
The strategy is multifaceted:
No across-the-board cuts.
Multifaceted three-year plan to the reduce budget.
Protect current students. Students in programs designated for closure will be offered the opportunity to finish their degree programs.
Find new money to continue investing in critical areas, including student advising.
Budget reduction plan must be multi-year because we believe there will be further cuts this year and in future budget cycles.
We are confident we have taken the least damaging road to cutting $32 million out of our E&G budget.
I thank the entire university community for your thoughtful involvement in this process. Our students’ participation was passionate and professional. I thank the faculty and the deans, for their tireless effort in sifting through all the information to find the programs that were ultimately recommended for termination. I would like to once again recognize the work done by Senior Vice President and CFO Vivian Sanchez and her team and Provost Berkman, who in my estimation had the biggest burden of all because he oversaw the process that developed the recommendation for program closures.
I am very grateful to the members of the Board of Trustees for supporting our months-long effort. In particular, I thank Trustees Bruce Hauptli for guiding, in a thoughtful and responsible way, the collegial participation that we experience throughout this process.
I thank all of you not for me, but for FIU.
As an optimist I have to say that Monday marks the beginning of a new phase for FIU – FIU 3.0 – and I ask for your dedication and support as we continue to offer our community the most valuable gift of higher education.
Yet, the president of our university just got himself a $6000 plasma T.V.
As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.
The question of what to do next has divided this fiercely Catholic enclave. Even with national data showing a 3% rise in teen pregnancies in 2006—the first increase in 15 years—Gloucester isn't sure it wants to provide easier access to birth control. In any case, many residents worry that the problem goes much deeper. The past decade has been difficult for this mostly white, mostly blue-collar city (pop. 30,000). In Gloucester, perched on scenic Cape Ann, the economy has always depended on a strong fishing industry. But in recent years, such jobs have all but disappeared overseas, and with them much of the community's wherewithal. "Families are broken," says school superintendent Christopher Farmer. "Many of our young people are growing up directionless."
The girls who made the pregnancy pact—some of whom, according to Sullivan, reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives and plans for baby showers—declined to be interviewed. So did their parents. But Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Ireland says. "I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."
The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. "We're proud to help the mothers stay in school," says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.
But by May, after nurse practitioner Kim Daly had administered some 150 pregnancy tests at Gloucester High's student clinic, she and the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, a local pediatrician, began to advocate prescribing contraceptives regardless of parental consent, a practice at about 15 public high schools in Massachusetts. Currently Gloucester teens must travel about 20 miles (30 km) to reach the nearest women's health clinic; younger girls have to get a ride or take the train and walk. But the notion of a school handing out birth control pills has met with hostility. Says Mayor Carolyn Kirk: "Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children." The pair resigned in protest on May 30.
Gloucester's elected school committee plans to vote later this summer on whether to provide contraceptives. But that won't do much to solve the issue of teens wanting to get pregnant. Says rising junior Kacia Lowe, who is a classmate of the pactmakers': "No one's offered them a better option." And better options may be a tall order in a city so uncertain of its future. —with reporting by Kimberley McLeod/New York
Rare events likely to become commonplace, climate report says
Frank Polich / Reuters
A levee breach flooded the town of Louisiana, Mo., Wednesday. While the Midwest flooding cannot definitively be tied to climate change, experts said Thursday that Americans can expect more extreme weather events in the future.
MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 7:23 p.m. ET,Thurs., June. 19, 2008
WASHINGTON - Droughts will get drier, storms will get stormier and floods will get deeper with a warming climate across North America, U.S. government experts said in a report billed as the first continental assessment of extreme events.
Events that have seemed relatively rare will become commonplace, said the latest report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a joint effort of more than a dozen government agencies.
"Heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity," the report stated. "Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights."
There has been an increase in the frequency of heavy downpours, especially over northern states, and these are likely to continue in the future, Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in a briefing Thursday.
For example, Karl said, by the end of this century rainfall amounts expected to occur every 20 years could be taking place every five years.
Such an increase "can lead to the type of events that we are seeing in the Midwest," said Karl, though he did not directly link the current flooding to climate change.
The report itself noted that "intense precipitation (the heaviest 1 percent of daily precipitation totals) in the continental U.S. increased by 20 percent over the past century while total precipitation increased by 7 percent."
Shifting dangers
But the report cautioned that preparing for weather that has been relatively common can leave people vulnerable as extreme events occur more and more.
"Moderate flood control measures on a river can stimulate development in a now 'safe' floodplain, only to see those new structures damaged when a very large flood occurs," the report said.
At the same time heavy rains increase, there'll be more droughts, especially in the Southwest, Karl said.
"When it rains, it rains harder and when it's not raining, it's warmer — there is more evaporation, and droughts can last longer," he explained.
The Southwestern drought that began in 1999 is beginning to rival some of the greatest droughts on record including those of the 1930s and 1950s, he added.
Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said there has been a trend toward increasing power in hurricanes since the 1970s in the Atlantic and western Pacific, a change that can be linked to rising sea surface temperatures.
There is a statistical connection between rising sea surface temperatures and hurricane activity, Meehl said, but linking changes in hurricanes to human actions will require more study.
Hotter days more often
More easily attributed to human impact, through release of greenhouse gases, is an overall increase in temperatures, he said.
It's not getting as cold at night as it did in earlier decades and there are fewer nights with frosts, a trend expected to continue into the future, Meehl said.
"A day so hot that it is experienced only once every 20 years would occur every three years by the middle of the century," under the mid-range projections of climate models, the report said.
Researchers can use computer models of climate to separate out cause and effect of this warming, he explained — looking at the effect of things like changes in solar radiation or volcanic eruptions — and the result is to attribute climate warming to the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is well established through formal attribution studies that the global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases," the report itself states.
Other future projections cited in the report include:
Sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in summer in coming decades;
Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense;
Droughts will likely be more frequent and severe in some areas;
Hurricanes will likely spawn increased precipitation and wind;
The strongest cold-season Atlantic and Pacific storms are likely to create stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.
Participating in the Climate Change Science Program are the Agency for International Development, Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Department of State, Department of Transportation, U.S. Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.
Most of us are happy to slap two pieces of bread together with a few slices of cheddar and, if we're lucky, a squirt of salad cream to make a good cheese sarnie.
But it seems the process may have just become a bit more complicated than that.
Not content with their usual figures and algebra, scientists have discovered a mathematical formula for creating the perfect cheese sandwich.
The volume of mayonnaise or pickle to calculate the ideal cheese thickness to go with the relish is essential, according to scientists
Sensory analysts at Bristol University have devised an equation into which diners follow factors such as how much mayonnaise or pickle to put in the sandwich and the ideal cheese thickness to go with the relish.
The formula, which includes nine algebraic variables, has been used to create an online calculator, which can be seen at www.cheddarometer.com.
The formula (detailed below) is the result of a study by senior research fellow Geoff Nute and his team at the university's Sensory & Consumer Group in the Division of Farm Animal Science.
Using human assessors and complex measuring devices, the group claims to have 'mapped' the flavour profile of hundreds of samples of Cheddar to determine the tastiest thickness for each type of filling.
West Country Farrmhouse Cheesemakers have come up with what they say is the mathematical formula for the perfect cheese sandwich
Mr Nute said: 'We used specially trained human taste testers to sample a range of Cheddar cheeses in a carefully controlled environment and combined results from these tests with instrumental data obtained using colorometers and pressure sensors to obtain precise measurements of variants such as yellowness, crumbliness, creaminess and tanginess.
'The results of our research have been extrapolated to produce a formula which takes into account modifying characteristics of individual cheeses and the ratio of popular fillings and achieves a mathematical balance of flavours in order to gauge the correct thickness of the Cheddar.'
The formula, which includes nine algebraic variables, has been used to create an online calculator
Philip Crawford, chairman of the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers group, said: 'We are very proud of our authentic farmhouse Cheddar which we make by hand on our farms using only milk from our own cows.
'This means each variety has a unique character and we were fascinated to know which combinations of sandwich fillings work best with each cheese.
'Collaborating with Mr Nute and his team we have managed to create the Cheddarometer and reveal the blueprint to everyone's perfect cheese sandwich.'
Last year the collective turned a traditional round of Cheddar into an unlikely internet hit, when 1.8 million visitors looked at a webcam showing the cheese maturing in real time.
The formula:
W [1 + ((bd)/6.5)) - s + ((m-2c)/2) + ((v+p)/7t)] (100 + l/100)
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann suckered a whole bunch of Germans in 1790 when he launched the medical fad known as Homeopathy. Somehow this quackery survived to present day, where it has enjoyed a dramatic resurgence in popularity. The theory has two central principles worth noting:
The Law of Similars. Hahnemann somehow decided that nature will never permit two illnesses with the same effects to coexist in the human body. Based on that (bogus) assumption, the good doctor reasoned that he could exploit this (nonexistent) phenomenon to cure disease. He figured that he could dispel any given symptom by attempting to induce it a second time; somehow, they would cancel out. Therefore, the treatment for a patient who is nauseated would be to administer a substance known to produce nausea. Hahemann described it thusly: Similia similibus curentur -- "Allow likes to cure likes."
The Law of Infinitesimals. This one is even dumber. Hahnemann claimed that the effectiveness of a drug was inversely proportional to its dosage. The smaller the amount, the greater its impact on the body. So if your medicine isn't having much of an effect, you should decrease the dosage. Based on this utter nonsense, homeopathic remedies contain miniscule quantities of active ingredients. In fact, the "strongest" formulations usually contain not a single molecule of the substances in question. Zero parts per billion -- pure water. This might seem to be a fatal flaw in the theory, but the Homeopaths have an explanation. Even after the solute is finally eliminated by the process of repetitive dilution, the water somehow remembers the drug and maintains its curative properties. Even though it's completely gone. Still remembers. Somehow. (Riiiight.)
Thankfully, this lunacy is mostly harmless. As long as the patient's illness is minor, Homeopathy itself is unlikely to do any harm. The water treatment will have no impact. And the body's intrinsic healing processes are certainly capable of conquering routine diseases, especially when assisted by the placebo effect.
The problem arises when a truly serious affliction comes up, and the fool is determined to rely on the distilled water alone. At which point, the chump stands a pretty good chance of getting an apology from Dr. Hahnemann in person.
Timeline
5 Oct 1994
Predicting that the world would soon end in an environmental disaster, homeopath Luc Jouret and 52 others belonging to his Order of the Solar Temple commit mass suicide near Cheiry, Switzerland and Montreal, Canada.
6 Oct 2001
The Daily Record reports that model Kate Moss used "acupuncture and homeopathic cures to aid her recovery since breaking her shoulder last month. She had to be cut free when her car collided with another and rolled down an embankment."
8 Oct 2001
The Express reports that model Tony Blair's sister-in-law Lyndsey Booth is a practicing homeopath, and that Blair's mother-in-law used homeopathic remedies on her family.
Oct 2003
Pamela Anderson, hepatitis C sufferer, tells Us magazine that she expects to die from the disease within a decade. But she has opted for homeopathy, not Interferon, for her treatment. In fact, her doctor Wendy Hewland tells Us she "made a single remedy specifically for Pam."
The possible existence of UFOs presents a sticky problem in logic. Well, not so much of a problem, as an inevitability. If you believe UFOs exist, then the following chain of deduction proceeds as surely as night follows day:
1) If UFOs are real, the government knows about them.
2) If the government knows about UFOs, the government is doing something about them.
3) If the government is doing something about UFOs, they sure as hell haven't told us about it.
For nearly as long as the term "flying saucer" has existed, there have been tales of government cover-ups. It's a bus that starts with the alleged Roswell crash, with stops at Area 51 and all points between Paranoiaville and TV Land.
For those seeking to wed UFOs with the kind of paranoid, deceitful behavior we have come to expect from the U.S. government, the story of Majestic-12 represents a high-water mark.
The story of Majestic-12 first surfaced in 1984, appropriately, when a roll of film was passed over the transom to a documentary filmmaker with no particular pedigree in UFOs or conspiracies, but whose friends were intensely into the subject. The film contained images of what purported to be classified U.S. government documents.
And what documents they were! The papers described a top secret government organization known as "Majestic 12," a cabal of some of history's most prominent names, which was in charge of protecting what the government knew about extraterrestrials and flying saucers. And according to the documents, "what the government knew" was rather a lot.
Majestic 12 was run by a clique of military and scientific personnel. Some of the names on the list were very well-known indeed. Others were not. In fact, some of the names were so obscure that the researchers examining the papers hadn't ever heard of them, although their existence (and credentials) would rapidly be confirmed.
The documents claimed that the U.S. government had recovered both wreckage and alien corpses at the alleged Roswell crash in New Mexico and at a subsequent crash in 1950. Under the orders of President Harry Truman, via the offices of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, Majestic (or MJ-12) was created in 1947.
The documents laid out an impressive board of directors for Majestic. In addition to Forrestal, the list included:
Dr. Vannevar Bush, who was chairman of the World War II National Defense Research Commission and Office of Scientific Research and Development.
Air Force General Hoyt Vandenburg, who was director of the CIA shortly before the group's "official" formation.
Navy Rear Admiral Sidney Souers, former director of Naval Intelligence and the first director of Central Intelligence.
Scientists Lloyd Berkner, Jerome Hunsaker and Detlev Bronk.
Assistant Assistant Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray (who would later become CIA psy-ops chief).
Major General Robert M. Montague, who commanded atomic weapons research at a classified base in Albequerque, NM (and whose primary claim to fame otherwise is the appearance of his name on the Majestic documents).
Donald Menzel, a prominent Harvard astrophysics professor, most famous for his strident attacks on the intelligence of UFO believers.
With the exception of Menzel, the list looked pretty credible to its recipients at first glance. Another document purported to be a classified briefing paper addressed to President Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.
The papers were quickly disseminated into the UFO community. Even among the eager-to-believe crowd they became controversial. Subsequent "leaks" complicated the discussion by adding more and more incredulous documents to the overall cache, without any indications of where these documents were originating or whether they were all coming from the same source.
The later documents were more and more spectacular, both in the nature of their claims and the celebrity of their supposed authors. Later releases included briefings allegedly penned by Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, and some included claims that the government had recovered alien bodies and alien technology. One particularly sensational "leak" contained photographs of the contents of an "above top secret" government manual on the handling of UFO recoveries.
Stanton Friedman and William Moore, the researchers primarily pushing these materials out into the public eye, remain fairly controversial, even within UFO circles. The documents themselves have been the subject of endless analysis, with very little in the way of fruitful conclusions.
Moore was one of the first people to view the MJ-12 documents. While he has maintained their veracity, he has been involved in a couple of very public embarrassments which finally led to his "confession" that some information he had been peddling was wrong and might have been "disinformation" sent out by nefarious shadow-government types seeking to discredit UFO researchers.
Friedman is viewed either as a dogged and persevering hero, or as an intellectual fraud, depending mostly on the preconceptions of the person describing him.
The FBI investigated the MJ-12 documents in 1988, providing one of the few indisputably legit documents on the subject. Not surprisingly, the official verdict was that the documents were "completely bogus." However, it's worth noting that the investigation was not prompted by any assumption of fraud. Rather, it was launched in order to determine "whether the document had been properly declassified" and whether military secrets had been improperly revealed.
And even the FBI finding itself, declassified only after an FOIA demand, was heavily redacted. Whatever conclusions one might draw about Majestic, Area 51, Roswell and UFOs in general, there's no question that the government believes it has something to hide. Maybe that something isn't E.T.'s calling card records, but it probably isn't a comprehensive history of the use and design of weather balloons either...
As LITM says I'm an "Info whore." And "Be honest."
So, I've decided to post honest blogs about my life. Not day to day stuff, but a simple autobiography. My humble biography will be written in little installments.
My parents came from diverse backgrounds. My Dad is Cuban, my mother Puerto Rican.
As far as I can tell, the Aguero (my dad's) lineage can be traced back as far as the mid 14th. century. My uncle, Ray, dad's younger half brother, did most of the research. Here's our crest:
This surname AGUERO was a Spanish name of three-fold origin. It was a topographic name for someone who lived near a spring, or an occupational name for a seller of water or no doubt was the sobriquet of some early teetotalers. During the Middle Ages it was said that 'Ale for an Englysshe man is a naturall drynke'. It was drunk at all times, taking the place not only of tea, and coffee, but also of water. A 13th century writer describing the extreme poverty of Franciscian monks when they first settled in London writes 'I have seen the brothers drink ale so sour that some would have preferred to drink water'. The surname was perhaps applied to a man so poor that he could not afford to drink ale even when it was four gallons a penny. The name was also used ironically of a tavern-keeper, and perhaps of a tippler. The name was derived from the Old Spanish AGUADO (water) and rendered in medieval documents in the Latin form AQUA. The name is also spelt AGUADO. Surnames as we know them today were first assumed in Europe from the 11th to the 15th Century. The employment in the use of a second name was a custom that was first introduced from the Normans. They themselves had not long before adopted them. It became, in course of time, a mark of gentler blood, and it was deemed a disgrace for gentlemen to have but one single name, as the meaner sort had. At first the coat of arms was a practical matter which served a function on the battlefield and in tournaments. With his helmet covering his face, and armour encasing the knight from head to foot, the only means of identification for his followers, was the insignia painted on his shield and embroidered on his surcoat, the flowing and draped garment worn over the armour. The lion depicted in the arms is the noblest of all wild beasts which is made to be the emblem of strength and valour, and is on that account the most frequently borne in Coat-Armour.
Well, we sold water. In fact, many of my freinds have said I can sell water to my mother, even if she's not thirsty...that another story. My dad's first name is Norman, and I'm sure my grandmother was well educated in history; thus the "Norman" first name as related to the above historical comment.
My grandmother was educated at Penn state, way back in the mid forties. Also, I have a strong affinity to cats. Maybe it's a genetic programmed thing; in retrospect, I call my little beasties: "Little Lions." Jeez...that's another story...
My mom's maiden name is hyphenated, Sanchez-Rivera.
My mom had a tragic life. She was orphaned at age four. My grandmother on my mom's side died from "prenicious anemia" or lukemia. I believe that my grandfather (mom's side) died of tuberculosis. I'm not sure because in Puerto Rico TB was sort of a stigma back in 1935. It's equivalent of AIDs or cancer in our time.
So Uncle Tony and mom were on their own at a very young age.
I know this about my mom's surname:
The prestigious surname Sanchez originated in Spain. The earliest forms of hereditary surnames in Spain were the patronymic surnames, which are derived from the father's given name, and metronymic surnames, which are derived from the mother's given name. Spanish patronymic names emerged as early as the mid-9th century and the most common patronymic suffix is ez. The patronyms were derived from a variety of given names that were of many different origins. The name Sanchez is derived from the extremely popular medieval given name Sancho. This given name was originally derived from the Latin name Sanctius, a derivative of sanctus. The name owes its popularity to the fact that it was borne by a 9th century martyr of Cordova.
Spelling variations of this family name include: Sánchez, Sanchez, Sans, Sanx, Sanz, Sainz, Sáenz, Saenz, Saiz, Sáez, Saez, Sánguez, Sanguez, Sánchiz and many more.
First found in Castile, where the name originated in Visigothic times.
Some of the first settlers of this family name or some of its variants were: Among the early explorers of the New World was Hernán Sánchez de Badajoz, who accompanied both Almagro and Pizarro to Peru and later to Costa Rica. Also of note were Juan Sánchez de Vizcaya, who voyaged to Paraguay with Alvar Núñez in 1542.
Rivera:
A name bestowed on a person who lived on a riverbank. The Rivera surname can be traced back to Gonzalo López de Rivera, Lord of the Castle of Rivera in Galicia in the 1200's. Some sources, however, claim that the Riveras are direct descendants of Sancho Belloso, natural-born son of the King of León, Ramiro III. Others, that the name dates back to ancient Roman times...
While most of God’s creatures seem content with straightforward cock-to-cunt copulation and the occasional rubbing of genitals on a pant leg, human beings seem to have an unending supply of perverse inventiveness when it comes to getting hard and getting off. Not least among these is the ancient Chinese practice of foot binding.
Just as firm, full tits are splashed liberally across the pages of modern American porn magazines, so too did deformed, four inch feet once fill the pages and canvases of Ancient Chinese Erotica. Countless paintings, engravings, and poems depict horny Chinese men fondling or otherwise admiring the tiny, slippered feet of demure Chinese beauties. If it seems hard to understand why anyone would get really hot over feet, especially over freakishly small feet, consider what grotesqueries lie within those tiny, embroidered slippers!
First, the whole ugly process of foot binding began when a girl was about 4 years old. A long cloth was tightly bound around each of her feet, causing her four smaller toes to bend completely under. Then, every day, the binding would be pulled tighter and tighter, until - after two or three years -- the little girl’s foot was essentially broken in half and bent double.
Sometimes a rock or large block of stone would be used to break the bones that inhibited progress. Other times the child would simply be forced to walk back and forth on her bound and bent feet, so that her own weight would help crush the foot into the desired shape. The pain was excruciating and endless. At times it was so intense that the child would black out. Often the mother (to whom it fell to enact the time-honored tradition), would gag the child to muffle her screams. Each day she would clean blood and pus from the child's wounds. Frequently bits of dead gangrenous flesh would fall off. Often whole toes would come loose. And all the while, the stench was beyond belief.
But when the process was finally "complete", the result was essentially a pair of castrated feet about three to four inches long. The resulting dainties required the girl or woman to lead the life of the quiet homebody, depending on her husband to handle all matters outside the home–- a situation remarkably in keeping with the ancient Confucian teachings about the proper relations between men and women. In fact, Confucian values such as chastity, obedience, and loyalty were assured by the little bound feet possessed by vast numbers of Chinese wives and daughters.
While this fact in itself may have appealed to Chinese males of yesteryear, what probably really turned them on was the belief that tottering around (on the balls of her heels) significantly tightened and strengthened a Chinese woman’s buttocks and inner thighs and turned her vagina into one tight hotsy totsy love machine – all the better to grip your “jade spear” with my dear.
Whether this claim holds any truth or not, it is thoroughly documented that women with bound feet suffered greatly from the condition all through their lives. While foot binding was finally outlawed in 1911, it was not until the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1940s and '50s that it was genuinely obliterated. Sadly, women with bound feet were often targeted for humiliation and brutality as China moved from a pro-aristocrat to a pro-worker ethos. Many such women took to wearing larger shoes, stuffed with straw or newspaper, to hide the condition of their feet.
Considering that foot binding had its earliest beginnings some 800 to 1,000 years ago in the T’ang Dynasty, becoming widespread between 1368-1644, it is astonishing that a practice so obviously cruel could continue for so long -- especially considering that it made its victims less able to contribute economically. But it simply goes to show what creatures of the mind human beings are. For the ancient Chinese, a woman’s tolerance of foot binding demonstrated her obedience to her parents and to her future husband and his family (a value which Confucians believed built a stronger, healthier society). It also showed the individual's own mastery over the self-oriented impulses of pleasure and pain. (Or, in the mother's case, over the natural instinct of responding to her child's pleas and screams. Rationally, she knew that her daughter would hate her later on when she could not marry.)
Like the “gom jabbar” in the science fiction classic Dune, being unmoved by pain, choosing social ideals over personal impulses, proved the Chinese woman to be a spiritually strong, “civilized” human being. It is ironic then, that with the arrival of white westerners in the late 19th century, the Chinese began to look at themselves through new eyes and to see the practice of foot binding as barbaric, uncivilized, and as weakening to Chinese society.
With all due respect to everyone involved, you can't throw a rock into a crowd of Muslims without hitting someone whom all the other Muslims consider a heretic.
Every single person practicing Islam in the world today is a heretic in the eyes of at least one other such person.
The Western mindset may not be properly equipped to understand the scope and breadth of how Islam functions. While primarily Christian cultures do have diverse views of Christianity, the West has slowly moved toward a "live and let live" attitude that is dramatically different from how Islam is defined in the East.
The major distinction is that Christian sects (such as Catholicism, Mormonism, Anglican, etc.) are considered to be different "religions" that co-exist peacefully but do not really overlap.
Conversely, Islam is predicated around absolutes -- "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet." The general notion is Islam is monolithic — virtually anyone accepting that statement is considered a Muslim — but in practice, Islam is incredibly diverse.
The first major split in Islam took place about five seconds after Mohammed died. Because he had made no plans for succession, Mohammed's earliest followers disagreed over who would lead the Islamic nation after his death.
Some, known as Shi'a Ali (the party of Ali), believed that Mohammed's son-in-law and his subsequent descendants should inherit the job (more on this below). The majority view (eventually known as Sunni) called for an elected leader, the Khalifa, or simply the Caliph.
Originally a political division, the conflict between Shi'a (also called Shi'ites) and mainstream Muslims, eventually known as Sunni, slowly became a religious schism over the rightful leadership of Islam, and subsidiary issues having to do with somewhat more arcane legal distinctions.
The Shi'a and Sunni headings encompass the vast majority of Muslims in the world. Some members of each branch consider the other heretic, but others see the distinctions as purely political. The two major schools of Islam are intermittently at war with each other (more so when there's no external enemy to focus on, but that doesn't always stop them).
However, the Shi'a-Sunni conflict is only the tip of a very large iceberg of disputes. In addition to a handful of completely separate sects, both Shi'a and Sunni communities are divided into thousands of smaller sub-sects and cults with a shockingly diverse array of beliefs.
After Shi'a and Sunni, the two best known Islamic sects are the Sufis and the Ismailis, both of which are considered heretical by many mainstream Muslims.
Sufism is a mystical branch of Islam which emphasizes prayer and transcendent rituals such as ecstatic dance ("whirling dervishes" are Sufis). Like the Christian Gnostics, Sufis believe that Allah reveals himself to individuals on a personal level.
This notion doesn't sit will with the authoritarian hierarchies of mainstream Islam. One famous tenth century Sufi teacher was crucified for heresy. The most famous Sufi of all was the poet Rumi, who preached religious tolerance and wrote classic tomes of poetry with decidedly homoerotic overtones. Rumi was branded a heretic but managed to avoid execution.
Some Sunnis accept Sufism as a legitimate part of Islam, but fundamentalist sects such as Wahhabism don't. But then Wahhabism, a sub-sect of Sunni that demands a literal interpretation of the Koran, is also considered heretical by some other Sunnis. And Wahhabbism is much more recent, only dating back to the 18th century, whereas Sufism can trace its origins as a formally structured order to no later than the 12th century, follwing a tradition to that goes as far back as the time of Muhammad himself.
On the other side of the fence, Ismailism is a sub-sect of Shi'a Islam. Ismailism also tends toward the mystical. Its modern incarnation is decidedly pacifist and extremely tolerant of other religions.
That's today, of course. In the past, the Ismailis gave birth to their own sub-sects, including one of the most famous heresies in Islam, the Nizaris -- aka the Assassins.
The Assassins were born in the 11th century and survived in meaningful numbers for a couple hundred years. Assassins were Shi'a Muslims who worked rather aggressively to protect the interests of Ali's descendants.
The Assassins practiced a strict regimen of initiations and degrees, often structured more like a secret society than a religion. They were famous for opposing (or possibly colluding with) the Knights Templar. Initiates were trained as deep undercover agents who were trained to kill on command, without regard for personal safety. They were based in a nearly impregnable castle in Alamut, located in modern-day Iran.
Those who died in the line of duty were considered martyrs and guaranteed safe passage to heaven. According to legend, the Assassins used sophisticated mind control to reinforce this idea. It's commonly believed that the Assassins dosed its followers with hashish to manipulate them with drug-induced visions of paradise, but the historical record is somewhat debatable.
The Assassins arose in the middle of a major crisis in Islam, which would lead centuries later to a whole slew of new heresies. Chief among them is the notion of the Madhi, the Islamic version of the Messiah.
Around the end of the seventh century, the descendants of Ali had been attacked and some number of them were murdered. Since the Shi'a believe the descendants of Ali are the rightful leaders of Islam, this obviously presented a problem.
It wasn't clear whether there was a child survivor of the murderous attack. Some believed that the heir to Ali had been hidden by Allah, or by courageous Shi'a supporters. This hidden heir became known as the Madhi, and his role would evolve over time.
Others threw their support behind different relatives of Ali whose bloodlines were less than ideal. The Ismailis (and later the Assassins) supported a genealogy of descendants that ran through Isma'il. In an effort to prevent another murderous attack, Isma'il's heirs kept themselves hidden.
While this was effective at preventing their murders, it also opened the door to a lot of competing claims from people who felt they were the most legitimate heirs to Ali, and thus to the legacy of Muhammad himself.
Alternatively, the Ismailis believed that the line of Ali continued through Isma'il and his descendants, with a rightful Caliph whose hereditary title is Aga Khan. (The current Aga Khan is a Harvard graduate who lives in Switzerland.) The Assassins supported one of the branches of a split in Isma'il's family tree, Nizar, as Caliph, the political leader of Islam.
Ismaili daggers and fortresses were put to work on Nizar's behalf, but when he and his descendants were eventually killed, the Assassins conveniently claimed to have miraculously rescued one of his children to preserve the Caliphate under their auspices and direct control. Despite this incredible stroke of good luck, the sect mostly tapered off and died by the Middle Ages.
Another sect, known as the Twelvers, is now more or less the mainstream Shi'a sect, representing most of the population of Iran. Bypassing Isma'il's claim, the Twelvers believe they believe that Mohammed's line had 12 legitimate successors (Imams) until the last, who was hidden (or "occulted") by Allah and will return one day to claim his place as the rightful leader of Islam.
The idea of the Madhi spread eventually to some Sunni circles as well, although it doesn't mean exactly the same thing to Sunnis that it does to Shi'a. Although there is still a strong tinge of apocalyptism to the concept, the Madhi in Sunni Islam is considered to be the last of a series of eight renewers of Islam.
The emergence of a Madhi approved by both Sunni- and Shi'a would therefore present the startling prospect of possibly healing the schism and reuniting the vast body of Muslims under one theological banner.
Realistically, the chances of that happening are just about zero. But that doesn't stop people from dreaming, often dangerously.
In 1979, an armed band of extremists seized Mecca and attempted to overthrow the ruling Saudi monarchy. Assisted by a certain Mahrous bin Laden and the Muslim Brotherhood, the extremists followed a self-styled Madhi who entered Mecca during the assault, toting a gun.
After a couple of weeks of standoff, the Saudis allegedly called in foreign soldiers for help, resulting in a theologically dubious attack to reclaim Mecca. Whatever else the assault proved, it did demonstrate that the Madhi was less than he claimed to be. He was killed in the attack.
If you're thinking that Mahrous sounds familiar, you may have heard of his younger brother, Osama bin Laden, and therein lies a murky tale of the future of Islamic heresy.
The sectarian nature of Islam demands a certain amount of internicene tolerance. Nevertheless, there are some things that can really get you into trouble. For instance, a Tuscon Sunni imam named Rashed Khalifa was murdered over his claim that two tiny verses of the Koran were invalid.
Another way to cause big problems is Madhi-ism. Many outside observers of Islam (i.e., infidels) believe that bin Laden may be working toward an ultimate theological goal in which he is "revealed" to be Madhi at a dramatic moment. (If you've been reading this and wondering how Islamic heresy really affects your life, then pay attention, because we just got to that part.)
If bin Laden successfully assumed the role of Madhi, and if he did so with an eye toward reconciliating the branches of Islam, one of two things would happen (to reduce things to the most simplistic outcome).
Either he'd be roundly condemned as a heretic and subsequently shunned by the vast majority of the Islamic community (which already has its doubts about him), or he'd instantly become leader of a superpower without borders, commanding the loyalty of millions or even billions of believers around the world.
Which outcome you get depends on how much time and effort is put into crafting some sort of a historical claim to the lineage of Ali, and a number of other extremely complex factors. It would be a very, very tall order to pull it off, but the right kind of claim could even unify Shi'a and Sunni in a political-religious bloc covering a third of the world, including its richest oil fields.
Additionally, if bin Laden did win widespread acceptance as Madhi, it would likely be intepreted as a major hallmark of the apocalypse by many Muslims.
Since al Qaeda is already made up of guys willing to blow themselves up for al Qaeda even without this complication, well, you can just imagine the mayhem that would ensue. Take one part September 11, and one part World War II. Add the collapse of the oil economy, and a dash of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Stir vigorously and heat until boiling...
I'm here, hanging out with a little cat named Emmy. She loves me and I love her. She reminds me of this song, by Doris Day. I love the little beast and I'm sure she loves me back. We all share the same biology /chemistry.
On 30 June 1908, there was an explosion in Siberia. It was caused by something that fell from the sky in a fireball.
Some sense of scale is required to fully appreciate the magnitude of this explosion.
The blast killed animals and knocked down trees over more than 800 square miles. In contrast, the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima created a zone of total destruction of just four-and-a-half square miles.
And 800 square miles was just the kill zone. The effects of the blast rattled and even broke windows more than 250 miles away. It caused atmospheric disturbances as far as Great Britain. The earth trembled all over Russia.
The explosion was the greatest devastation wrought during recorded history, and the only reason it isn't a major feature in the history books is the fact that Siberia is so damn empty. Despite the biblical scale of the destruction, only one man was reported killed (when he was thrown against a tree). Had the explosion taken place over a city, it could have killed millions and would easily have been the most deadly single event in history.
So what the fuck caused this apocalyptic scene? Alarmingly, no one has the slightest idea. Fortunately, almost everybody has an opinion.
The actual event began when a fireball was seen streaking through the air early on the morning of 30 June. An object was seen streaking through the sky from as far as 250 miles away. Witnesses generally described it as a fireball or a shooting star. Some said it had a fiery tail. Some said it was brighter than the sun.
Whatever it was (and we'll get to that in a minute), it exploded about five miles above the ground. As already related, the shock wave was historic. A black cloud covered the area and ash fell like rain. That evening, the night sky over Europe was filled with eerie light.
The question of just what fell on Tunguska that day has never been resolved, but not for lack of trying. Literally hundreds of billions of brain cells have been taxed on behalf of this subject, without a truly satisfactory answer.
The most popular theory is that the blast was caused by a meteorite, a cometary fragment or an asteroid hitting the earth. While these may all sound pretty much like the same thing, they're not quite.
The big issue surrounding any of these theories is the fact that the whatever-it-was blew up before it struck the ground. Now, it's quite likely that a meteorite or asteroid would fall apart on atmospheric entry, but an explosion isn't consistent with what you would expect. A comet is a more complicated structure, and it's a little easier to craft an explanation for why it might explode.
But all of these theories remain extremely... well, theoretical. The major problem with all three of the above theories is that the explosion of a typical astronomical object would scatter tons of space-junk all over Siberia. Numerous studies and expeditions failed to find any such debris. The comet theory has been further discredited by modern atmospheric studies which show that cometary fragments evaporate far above the surface of the earth all the time, without doing any damage.
The uncertainty around the cause of the explosion opened to the door to much wackier ideas. The comet and asteroid theories were questionable, but the next tier of scientific explanations were downright bizarre.
Faced with an indisputable mystery of incredible scale, many nonscientists embraced the idea that the explosion was caused by a UFO crash. Many scientists were appalled by this irresponsible nonsense, and they quickly moved to provide their own irresponsible nonsense as a somehow superior alternative.
For several years, a small number of scientists toyed with the theory that a hunk of antimatter collided with the earth, causing the event. The theory was first proffered in 1930, when antimatter was still a theoretical construct and before anyone had any idea about how to check for its presence.
Once technology to scan for evidence of antimatter was developed, the verdict was pretty discouraging. Background radiation levels at Tunguska were not especially consistent with the theory. Furthermore, scientists have since discovered that antimatter doesn't just float willy-nilly around the universe. In all the vastness of space, no one has ever observed antimatter occurring in nature, let alone drifting into perfectly innocent little planets in the middle of nowhere.
Despite these objections, you can easily find people who cling to the notion that antimatter caused the Tunguska explosion. They can get away with it by citing the still somewhat-ambiguous properties of antimatter (which has only ever been observed in laboratory conditions).
If you're going to indulge such increasingly baseless speculation, of course, why stop with the antimatter theory (which is still relatively plausible if extremely unlikely)? The next best idea anyone could come up with was even more improbable -- that a tiny black hole wandering through space crashed into the earth.
This notion was even more preposterous than the antimatter. The main variant of the theory suggested that this tiny black hole crashed all the way through the earth and popped out the other side. Unfortunately, there were numerous problems with this theory as well. For one thing, there was no evidence to support the "exit wound" that would presumably have been caused by this event. For another, there is no widely accepted evidence or theory to support the idea that tiny black holes even exist in nature at all.
Even then, assuming tiny black holes do actually exist, and assuming one of them did actually run into the earth, odds are it would have done a hell of a lot more damage than killing a few thousand reindeer. Don't forget that black holes warp space and time in a dramatic fashion. Realistically, such an impact would quite possibly rip the entire planet Earth into shreds, or suck it into timeless oblivion. Tunguska may have been a huge event when viewed from a human scale, but 800 square miles is hardly a blip from a cosmological standpoint.
Given the unsatisfactory nature of the "sober" scientific explanations, you might be forgiven for considering some explanations that are, well, much less sober.
You can find plenty of long treatises on the Internet that outline various theories that the Tunguska event was caused by the explosion of an alien spacecraft. While the above scientific theories are at least grounded in logic, the UFO theories are grounded in faith, and there isn't much you can do to argue with faith.
There have been plenty of different iterations of the UFO theory (without even counting fictional versions such as one featured on The X-Files). The most recent of these cropped up in the summer of 2004, when a Russian named Yuri Lavbin claimed to have found fragments of an alien craft within the blast zone.
Lavbin's fragments have been the subject of some controversy. He might just have made the whole thing up. Some historians have noted that the Soviet space program crashed a few vehicles in the region during the 1960s, and they speculate that Lavbin's find might be the remnants of a documented Soviet space probe. Of course, they could also be pieces of an alien vessel, but the lab reports haven't come back yet.
Other alien space theories are based around the observation of similarities between the Tunguska blast pattern and the blast patterns created by nuclear explosions. Under this premise, the aliens detonated a nuclear weapon over the region either by accident or deliberately. For the most part, the "on purpose" theories never clearly spell out a motive for this pre-emptive nuclear strike. As with the antimatter theory, the radiation levels at Tunguska don't especially support an alien nuke attack.
If you want to get weird without leaving the confines of the earth, you can always go with the death ray theory, which argues that the Tunguska blast was caused by Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-born pioneer who made major contributions to harnessing the power of electricity.
Unlike most of the above notions, the Tesla death ray notion has a few documented facts to back it up. At almost the exact time of the Tunguska blast, Tesla was experimenting with an invention known as the Tesla Coil.
According to the story (which is better documented than mini-black holes, just for instance), Tesla was attempting to use his Coil to broadcast a transmission to the Arctic Circle by dumping massive amounts of electricity into the earth itself. Tesla theorized that the earth would conduct the electricity as what he called "terrestrial waves." The experiment ended when the amount of current he used caused a nearby generator to blow up amid a violent and apparently man-made lightning storm.
While the timing of the experiment is interesting, and the geographical locations are suggestive, the Tesla death ray theory still lacks a coherent scientific scenario which could have caused the wanton destruction witnessed in Tunguska. There are also those pesky eyewitness reports of something falling from the sky. On the other hand, lightning is often perceived as falling from the sky when it actually leaps up from the ground.
The Rotten Library has a wacky theory about the Tunguska blast as well. We theorize that you are going to hear many, many more theories about what caused the explosion before the issue is ever resolved. Tunguska has become a magnet for the adventurous imagination, among credible scientists as well as random loonies, and that isn't likely to change any time soon.
On the bright side, we live in an age that admits to very few genuine mysteries. Tunguska is an honest-to-god mystery. It's not a matter of interpretation (like the Bermuda Triangle) and it can't be simply dismissed by the skeptics. It reminds us that for all we know, there is still a hell of a lot we don't know. If this mystery endures for the ages, would that really be so bad?
"Is God a man with two arms and legs like me? Does He have eyes, a head? Does He have bowels? Well I do, and that makes me more wonderful than He is!"
Kellogg's Cornflakes, the bland breakfast flakes that go almost instantly limp in milk were originally invented to bore you into such a deep coma that you would fall face down in the milk drenched flakes, drown, and thereby be spared the temptation and sin known as masturbation.
Like many Christian conservatives before and since, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg believed that masturbation, and in fact all sexual excess, was sinful -- "sexual excess" here defined as "sex for anything beyond reproduction". For instance: after marrying, Kellogg chose to spend his honeymoon sequestered from his wife, valiantly striving to complete his his influential book Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life (1892). Talk about your dull, soggy flakes.
Kellogg himself seems to have solved the problem by redirecting his attentions to an obsessive fascination with cleansing the bowels. For Kellogg, the tube linking anus to lips was a seething quagmire of pollution, poisoning the mind and spirit as well as the body. Kellogg, a vegetarian himself, recommended abstaining from flesh and spicy foods, augmenting the diet with plenty of fiber, drinking lots of water, and irrigating with regular enemas of water with a yogurt chaser. And as director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Kellogg had ample license to apply his approach to many captive well-to-do neurotics in need of mental restablizing.
According to Kellogg, 90 percent of all human ills originated in the bowels. One would think however that all 90 percent originated in the twiddling of the crotch, given the fury with which Kellogg attacked the humble practice of masturbation. In Plain Facts for Old and Young, he advised that the first line of defense was keeping children busy and constantly under surveillance -- that is, working them daily to the point of exhaustion. The vigilant parent must especially be aware of a child's goings on in the bathtub, on the toilet, or in bed, for solitude was a temptation to vice. Furthermore, all parents were urged to watch for such tell-tale "symptoms" of masturbation as bad posture (slumped shoulders), a fear of the opposite sex, and hanging out in groups with other children of the same gender. Stiffness in the hips in boys or a wiggly walk in girls were also clues. Also a child who suddenly became more bold -- or worse, more timid -- was surely a masturbator as well.
To stop these hideous acts of depravity, Kellogg strongly advocated circumcision of young boys (note that, up until this era, most non-Jewish American boys were not circumcised), stating that the operation should be done without anesthesia because the remembered pain (and the soreness which followed for several weeks) would serve as a lasting reminder deterring the child from rummaging.
Another deterrent recommended by Kellogg was to wire a boy’s foreskin together at the tip such that any mere erection would become very painful. The wire was of course to be attached by piercing the foreskin with a needle, with the wire following along in place of thread. For the multitude of American males who do not (thanks to Kellogg and his ilk) have a foreskin, it may be worth mentioning that the foreskin is considered to be much more sensitive to pain and pleasure than the bald penis you may currently own.
But Kellogg did not single out only boys for torment -- perish the thought! Girls too must be prevented from self-pleasuring, at all costs. For girls Kellogg recommended that application of carbolic acid directly to the clitoris was:
an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement, and preventing the recurrence of the practice in those whose will-power has become so weakened that the patient is unable to exercise entire self-control.
The worse cases among young women are those in which the disease has advanced so far that erotic thoughts are attended by the same voluptuous sensations that accompany the practice. The author has met many cases of this sort in young women, who acknowledged that the sexual orgasm was thus produced, often several times daily. The application of carbolic acid in the manner described is also useful in these cases in allaying the abnormal excitement, which is a frequent provocation of the practice of this form of mental masturbation.
Of course, now medical doctors know that carbolic acid is extremely poisonous. When applied to the tissues, and when applied directly to muscle or nerve, it causes instant paralysis. And when swallowed undiluted, it produces violent gastro-enteritis, with vomiting and purging, followed by collapse, delirium, and often by convulsions and death.
Nonetheless, if carbolic acid did not do the trick, Kellogg reasoned it was necessary to surgically remove the clitoris. He cites one such surgery, he performed at the request of the girl's father. Sure that his 10 year old would go to hell for her sinful indulgence, the father had resolved he would rather take her out in the wilderness and leave her to die rather than have her infect the minds of her siblings with her evil ways. Kellogg and cliterodectomy were her only hope for continued life and salvation. The good doctor happily obliged.
Although it is hard to judge whether Kellogg and similar theorists were the cause or merely the voice of 19th century Americans' surging hysteria over masturbation, we can certainly see that the shadow of this era has lingered in our culture for over a century. Only now with the threat of HIV looming more menacingly has our society begun to switch gears and tout masturbation as a good complement to abstaining from premarital sex -- but only because horny teens were having trouble abstaining without jacking off. And Christian bible scholars are revealing the all new politically correct truth that the bible doesn't really condemn masturbation at all!
Surely Kellogg is rolling over in his grave at this latest theological development. But at least people still like his cornflakes. But wait! The cornflakes we consume today are not John Kellogg's simple flakes of corn! They are actually an adulterated version of his original creation, spiked with sugar and who knows what else. In fact the Kelloggs' breakfast cereals were manufactured by his brother Will Kellogg, whom he sued for trotting out the Kellogg name on something much more palatable than the original gruel served up at his Battle Creek Sanitarium. No doubt this insidious corruption of American breakfast cereal explains why Americans are the horny bastards they are today.
A recent Time Magazine profile of Vice President Dick Cheney opened with the following anecdote:
When Richard Bruce Cheney was a student at Natrona County High School in Casper, Wyo., he was a solid football player, senior-class president and an above-average student. But he wasn't the star. That distinction belonged to Lynne Vincent, Cheney's girlfriend and future wife. A straight-A scholar, Lynne was elected Mustang Queen, the equivalent of most popular girl. She was also a state-champion baton twirler, a big deal in 1950s Wyoming. To begin her routine, Lynne would set both ends of a baton on fire and throw it in the air while her boyfriend stood inconspicuously off to the side holding a coffee can filled with water. When Lynne was finished with her pyrotechnic act, she would pass her flaming baton to Cheney, who, while the audience applauded and Lynne curtsied, would quietly douse the fires by sticking each end of the baton in the coffee can.
Kind of like his current role, except the baton is the world, and the coffee can might be filled with fuel oil.
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in January 1941, so his brain crystallized into its current form just before the 1960s introduced the idea of fun into American life. Cheney's picture appears next to the definition of "dour" in the dictionary. He dropped out of Yale in favor of attending the prestigious University of Wyoming, where he majored in political science, and he went on to earn his doctorate from the prestigious University of Wisconsin. In your face, Yale!
His life in politics began during the Nixon administration. When he arrived in Washington, D.C., then-Sen. Donald Rumsfeld took Cheney under his wing. Rumsfeld was buddies with Gerald Ford, and when Ford ascended to greatness, he took Rumsfeld along as chief of staff. Rumsfeld took Cheney along, as deputy chief of staff.
When Rumsfeld took a stroll down the road for his first stint as Secretary of Defense in 1975, Cheney rose to glory, serving as Ford's chief of staff for more than a year, before the accidental president was obliterated by Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election.
After washing out of the White House, Cheney adopted the same tactic as when he washed out of Yale -- he fled back to Wyoming. In 1978, he ran for Congress and won handily. In Congress, Cheney rose through the party ranks, endearing himself to Ronald Reagan with his hawkish views on foreign policy and his fevered support for the "Star Wars" missile defense system.
Cheney also distinguished himself as an archconservative during these years, opposing everything from abortion to gun control to Head Start and the Department of Education. If it wasn't a laser-equipped satellite or a lunatic Nicaraguan commando, Cheney wasn't going to waste federal funds on it.
Cheney voted to protect citizens' constitutional right to own armor-piercing bullets. He voted against the Clean Water Act. In fact, he voted against any bill that even included the words "corporate" and "pollution." He voted to protect the sacred constitutional right of a corporation to keep quiet about which local communities they flooded with toxins that cause cancer and birth defects.
Unlike his constituents' wives, Cheney's baton-twirling spouse Lynne wasn't just sitting around barefoot and pregnant all this time. Under Reagan, Lynne Cheney served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, protecting innocent citizens against the depravations of public broadcasting and from potentially confusing "propaganda" content, such as a documentary suggesting Africans might have a few legit gripes about centuries of colonialism, forced slavery and industrial exploitation.
After leaving the NEH, Lynne Cheney threw a few flaming batons through the windows, demanding that the Endowment (and the Endowment for the Arts) be completely dismantled rather than allowing them to promote the sinister aims of the Clinton Administration and defending Clarence Thomas' right to discuss long dongs with underlings.
When George Bush Sr. took office after the 1988 election, Bush settled on Cheney as Secretary of Defense, after his first choice, John Tower, self-destructed in a haze of alcoholic booty calls. Cheney helped lead the Gulf War, personally twisting the arm of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia until the monarch allowed a massive contingent of U.S. troops to set up shop in the kingdom. The resulting Arab outrage was personified by Osama bin Laden, who used the presence of U.S. troops on Saudi soil as the pretext for a declaration of jihad against the West. Once the Gulf War was won, Cheney gutted the Defense Department, firing about a quarter of the military, cutting billions in spending and even scaling back his beloved "Star Wars" program.
When Bush Sr. was drubbed by Bill Clinton in 1992, Cheney decided it was high time he became a titan of industry. With nothing but insider Washington credentials on his resume, he became chairman and CEO of Halliburton Corp. in 1995. Cheney made millions leading the massive oil industry construction company, while carefully "tweaking" its accounting practices. A 1998 accounting change improved the company's revenues by $234 million over the course of four years.
Prior to the change, Halliburton had booked sales when a client agreed to pay for cost overruns and contract disputes. After the change, the company took a guess at what they'd collect and booked the sales as a done deal. Despite the fact that the practice looks and sounds a bit sleazy, it's fairly commonplace in the industry. Of course, before Enron, off-balance sheet financing was pretty commonplace too.
The practice was further complicated by the fact that Halliburton was severely on the ropes at the time the change was made. In addition to suddenly boosting the company's bottom line just when Halliburton was going to get slaughtered on the stock market, Cheney and crew "neglected" to inform the SEC about the change until more than a year later. When Cheney quit Halliburton to take the vice presidential nomination in 2000, the company offered him a $20 million going-away gift, characterized as a "retirement package" for his many (five) years of service in the private sector. In a concession to public outrage and concerns that Halliburton was buying access to the White House, Cheney selflessly accepted only $13.6 million, indisputably preserving the ethical integrity of the Executive Branch.
During the 2000 elections, Cheney's history of heart troubles raised serious concerns among the electorate. Voters worried that if Cheney died while in office, his running mate George W Bush might be left in charge of the country. In a concession to these worries, Cheney had a super high-tech pacemaker installed in June of 2001.
Nevertheless, the heart issue would continue to haunt him. When al Qaeda attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11, the official version had the vice president shuttled to an emergency bunker in the basement of the White House. According to his own account, he was grabbed by a couple Secret Service agents and carried to the basement, despite being fully conscious and not at all having a heart attack. While the President of the United States jumped in a plane and began a daylong hiding spree, Cheney was running the country from the White House basement, or so the story goes. In the aftermath of the attacks, however, Cheney took a while to resurface.
The party line was very reasonable, pointing out that the vice president was being kept in a secret location so that he could take over the country in the event of another terrorist attack. But it was awfully tempting to speculate that he had in fact suffered yet another heart attack while watching the planes hit the Trade Centers. Regardless of what actually happened, Cheney gradually resurfaced, starting with short, limited appearances and expanding back into a somewhat normal role, as American life returned to somewhat normal.
However, Cheney was pissed. His old hawkish ways rapidly reasserted themselves as the hunt for Osama bin Laden began. Almost immediately after the attacks, Cheney and his old crony Donald Rumsfeld (now Secretary of Defense) began beating the war drums for a new invasion of Iraq, despite a complete absence of any evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything at all to do with September 11 or al Qaeda in general.
Cheney got his way, eventually. After a staged confrontation at the United Nations, where Secretary of State Colin Powell was roped into making the improbable case for an invasion, the Bush administration discarded all hopes of attracting allies (other than faithful lapdog Britain), despite Cheney's last-minute "can't we be friends" tour of Europe. The U.S. went ahead with the invasion in spring 2003.
Cheney's enthusiasm for the war wasn't solely driven by philosophy. His old buddies at Halliburton were finally seeing a return on that $13.6 million (and the $1 million a year in "deferred compensation" still being paid to supplement Cheney's measly six-figure government salary). Halliburton's first quarterly earnings report at the end of the short second Gulf War saw profits double from the previous period (more than $20 million), a gain which news reports comically characterized as coming "despite" the war.
Halliburton's construction and engineering subsidiary has been paid nearly $1 billion through government contracts containing profit-guarantees, and various other contracts initiated since the company's former CEO arrived in the White House. Halliburton has built military bases in the former Soviet Union and Turkey, and it made $33 million building jail cells for terrorists at Camp X-Ray. (In all fairness, even these contracts don't make up for Cheney's major accomplishment as CEO, an acquisition which is expected to cost Halliburton upwards of $4 billion in asbestos liabilities.)
Just before the Iraq war started, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton an "emergency" contract for oil fields reconstruction, which was awarded without the usual government bidding process because of said "emergency" (and despite the fact that the invasion wasn't on any particular timetable and the fact it had been in the works for a year and a half).
The deal was authorized for up to $7 billion, but the Army didn't trash the country with sufficient enthusiasm to make the whole amount, and the actual size of the deal is now estimated at $600 million (assuming Halliburton survives the lawsuits from competitors who inexplicably feel that something fishy is going on here).
A disappointment to be sure, but Cheney has four more years to make it up to them. And then there's always Syria... And Iran... And...
Timeline
30 Jan 1941
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney born, Lincoln NE.
14 Aug 1941
Lynne Ann Vincent born, Casper, WY.
Nov 1962
Dick Cheney arrested for drunk driving.
1963
Dick Cheney arrested for drunk driving, again.
1963
Drops out of Yale.
29 Aug 1964
Marries high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent.
1965
Graduated University of Wyoming.
Oct 1965
Selective Service subjects married men without children to the draft.
1965
Seeks a 3-A deferment (has dependents) when Lynne is ten weeks pregnant.
28 Jul 1966
First child born, nine months and two days after Selective Service announced that married men without children were subject to the draft. Whew, that was close.
Nov 1975
Appointed Gerald Ford's White House Chief of Staff, a position he holds for two years.
1977
Elected six times to the House of Representatives for Wyoming's only seat.
1978
Dick Cheney suffers a heart attack.
1981
Lynne Cheney publishes Sisters, a romance novel about the Old West with prominent lesbian themes.
1984
Dick Cheney suffers a heart attack.
1988
Dick Cheney suffers a heart attack.
Aug 1988
Dick Cheney undergoes quadruple heart bypass surgery.
1988
Elected House Minority Whip.
1989
"I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."
Mar 1989
Dick Cheney appointed George HW Bush's Secretary of Defense, where he presided over the Operation Just Cause (the invasion of Panama) and Operation Desert Storm.
1991
Pete Williams, Cheney's assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, outed by Advocate cover story as homosexual.
Jun 1999
Daughter Mary Cheney: "The reason I came to work here [Coors' Brewing Co.] is because I knew several other lesbians who were very happy here." Cheney was then Coors' liaison to the gay community. Interview by lesbian magazine Girlfriends.
3 Jul 1991
Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by George HW Bush.
"The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is." Speech, Cato Institute.
Jul 2000
Karl Rove: "Those heart attacks occurred in the '70s and '80s, and he then served as secretary of defense in President Bush's administration and presided over Desert Storm... I don't know of a more stressful situation than being secretary of defense during an armed combat, and he seemed to do just fine." CBS.
30 Jul 2000
In response to a query from Cokie Roberts about Cheney's lesbian daughter, Lynne Cheney retorts: "Mary has never declared such a thing. I have two wonderful daughters. I love them very much. They are bright. They are hard working. They are decent. And I simply am not going to talk about their personal lives. And I'm surprised, Cokie, that even you would want to bring it up." ABC This Week.
22 Nov 2000
Vice President-elect Dick Cheney suffers a heart attack.
22 Nov 2000
"Dick Cheney is healthy. He did not have a heart attack." George W Bush, spoken after Cheney was hospitalized earlier that day for a heart attack.
20 Jan 2001
Dick Cheney inaugurated as Vice President.
2001
George W Bush: "A Yale degree is worth a lot, as I often remind (Cheney)... So now we know -- if you graduate from Yale, you become president. If you drop out, you get to be vice president." Commencement speech, Yale University.
26 Aug 2002
Vice President Dick Cheney declares: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
16 Mar 2003
On Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney declares: "Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that (Saddam Hussein) has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
22 Jun 2004
During a brief-but-heated exchange on the Senate floor with Senator Patrick Leahy, Vice President Dick Cheney uses "the F-word" according to CNN. Leahy aides tell Reuters that the veep said either "fuck off" or "go fuck yourself." Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems later opines: "That doesn't sound like language the Vice President would use, but there was a frank exchange of views."
2 Nov 2004
George W Bush is elected to his second term as President with 286 electoral votes to John Kerry's 254.
11 Feb 2005
While on a quail hunting expedition, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shoots lawyer and hunting partner Harry Whittington in the face and chest with his shotgun. This is the first time a sitting vice president has shot someone since Alexander Hamilton's ill-starred duel with Aaron Burr back in 1804.
Despite everything that seems obvious about human nature, it took the species a surprisingly long time to come up with someone to blame for its own failings.
Satan is a modern concept, as concepts go, dating back only to about the 3rd century B.C., when humanity woke up and realized that
a) The only way to understand people who disagree with you is to characterize them as unmitigated evil, and
b) When people who formerly agreed with you begin disagreeing with you, clearly some supernatural force must be at work.
Satan appears in the Torah at a fairly early point, but not as we know him today. In the Old Testament, Satan is sort of the John Ashcroft of God's administration, an unpleasant figure who nevertheless works within the system. His first major supporting role comes in the Book of Job, when he prosecutes the title character with a series of hardships as part of God's anti-sin initiative.
Other older references to Satan are equally ambiguous about his role. Around 400 B.C., however, people realized that there were political benefits to demonizing the disenfranchised, and the idea of an embodiment of pure evil became expedient. By the time of Christ, the notion was quite popular, and the teachings of Jesus are full of colorful anecdotes and aphorisms that helped cement the status of Satan as a fixture in Western religion.
The serpent of Genesis was later retroactively determined to be this figure of Satan, and thus blamed for all of humanity's woes. The association also led to Satan's reputation as a teacher of secret knowledge. After all, the serpent in Genesis merely offers Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil. Even in the modern age of information control, God's reaction to this education initiative can only be seen as Draconian.
As the Christian age began, the full mythology was developed. The New Testament strikingly diverged from the Old in its depiction of both God and Satan. In the Old Testment, the woes and trials of life are entirely God's responsibility. God is a vengeful God, after all.
In the Old Testament, God curses humanity and the Earth itself for all time punish Adam and Eve for taking night classes in dualistic morality. He obliterates entire cities for their liberal views about sexual orientation and transforms onlookers into salt. He crams a boat full of people and critters, then kills the entire remainder of the world in a flood, forcing the survivors to repopulate the world through incest. He dumps his chosen people in the desert for 40 years, then gets pissed off when they try to vote him out in favor of a gold cow. In short, God is specifically identified as being the cause of bad things that happen to people.
By the time of the New Testament, this view began to change. Jesus identified God as a loving father figure, which represented a rather abrupt departure from the previous view. So if God is good, why do bad things happen?
At this point, the mythology of Satan become more fully developed. Its broad strokes eventually boiled down to the following structure:
Back before people came along to screw things up, Lucifer (whose name means Morning Star or "Bright One") was God's favorite angel.
And then there was Man. When God unveiled his new plan for "people," Lucifer was not amused. He felt that these new "people" were somehow demeaning to angels, and attempted a coup in heaven.
After a Bay of Pigs-style fiasco, the coup was thoroughly thwarted. Lucifer was renamed Satan (which means "adversary" or "challenger") and cast down from heaven, along with all his followers, representing a third of the "heavenly host."
After being cast down, Satan takes control of Hell. It's unclear whether he actually seizes Hell, or if Hell is granted to him by divine mandate. Later theologians dodge this question by pretty much defining Hell as "where Satan is." From hell, Satan continues to wage war on God.
From his base in Hell, Satan proceeds to try to tempt humans into sin. When these humans sin, it's marked against them in a ledger and suddenly the vengeful God makes his comeback. Lots of people go to Hell when they die. Depending on your religious framework, this can be as punishment for their specific sins or on general principle.
There's a lot of murkiness on various issues here, such as whether Satan actually has a chance in hell (so to speak) of winning his war, whether he's tolerated by God for some ineffable reason, or what.
After the original concept took hold, massive embellishments began. By the Middle Ages, Satan had become a figure of some literary weight and occult significance, operating under a number of aliases, including Beelzebub, the Devil and Mephistopholes.
The Christian Church (and subsequently Islam, which also incorporated the figure) depicted Satan as a mighty tempter who offered power and pleasures in exchange for one's immortal soul. The church also attempted to associate pre-Christian Witchcraft practices with Satan, often draping such traditions in lurid tales of orgies, violence and supernatural power.
Needless to say, these claims prompted a great deal of popular interest in Satan, especially among those rare individuals who liked sex, power and/or violence. Medieval Satanism and demonology was a flourishing hobby among the upper and middle classes, who dabbled and indulged while burning peasants for such unholy practices as putting aloe on cuts and making eucalyptus tea.
With the full-fledged incarnation of Satan as a mythological figure, corresponding theological concepts also arose, including Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil, the Antichrist, who may or may not actually be Satan per se, and the Apocalypse.
Hysteria about the influence of Satan continued well into the 18th century, when dozens of American women were burned as witches and accused of having preternatural sex with demons. The church also developed an elaborate framework having to do with possession, in which Satan entered the bodies of otherwise wholesome people, and had to be exorcised.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, both God and Satan were on the decline. The rise of secular humanism had many people seeing both figures as quaint anachronisms. Satan started to make his big move from terror-inspiring malevolence to popular entertainer.
Whereas earlier writers had built Satan into a figure of high operatic drama in works like "Faust" and "Dante's Inferno," the modern world reduced him to cartoon villain in movies like "The Omen" and Roman Polanksi's "Rosemary's Baby," or even comic relief, in "South Park" and "The Devil and Daniel Webster."
Despite this diminution of stature, Satan remained a popular leading man and occasional scary figure, in movies such as "Satan's Amazon," "Satan and the Woman," "Satan's Bed," "Satan's Black Wedding," "Satan's Blade," "The Satan Bug," "Satan's Cheerleaders," "Satan's Choice," "Satan Claus," "Satan Eats Lunch," "Satan in Prison," "Satan in High Heels," "Satan's Lust," "Satan's Mistress," "Satan Never Sleeps," "Satan's Sadists," "Satan's Sister," "Satan's Slave," "Satan's Touch" and "Nude for Satan."
In fact, a little bit of Satan can be found almost everywhere in modern culture — except in Satanism, ironically enough, a modern movement founded by Anton LaVey, which claims it uses Satanic trappings to ironically underscore the importance its actual hedonistic secular humanism. (Contrary to popular belief, neither Aleister Crowley nor Jack Parsons were Satanists of any stripe.)
About the worst thing you can do to a Satanist is accuse him or her of actually worshipping Satan, sacrificing babies, or being in any way evil. Doing this will provoke an self-righteous diatribe about relativistic morality which can potentially go on for several hours. It doesn't help to point out that they're just asking for it by calling themselves Satanists when they're really "nothingists," so it's better just to avoid the subject entirely. In fact, it's best to avoid all conversation with Satanists altogether and just stick to sex if at all possible.
Timeline
30 Jun 2002
Maj. Gen. William G. Boykin declares: "If you go back and look at the history of our nation, you will find that we are a nation founded on faith. Read what the writers of our Constitution said and you will understand why Satan hates this nation."
In 1917, two schoolgirls named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths (16 and 10 years old, respectively), produced what appeared to be substantial proof of the existence of fairies: a series of photographs showing the girls frolicing with fantastic humanoid, winged creatures in the forests of Cottingley Glen. While the jaundiced eye of the 21st century might consider them patently obvious in their deception, to the folks of the time, they became rather hotly contested and lauded.
A particular high point in the story is the appearance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, years after the initial publicity, where he both believed the girls and endeavored to work with them to help prove them out (and generate further publicity).
Alas, six decades later the girls (now quite old) confessed to having made the fairies up out of cardboard cutouts, and to have created the entire mess up. Well, unless they were just trying to hide the fairies from the world....
Just the cricket: Eating insects is good for us and for the environment, scientists claim
It might be a while before they appear on the shelf at Tesco.
But scientists claim adding insects to our diet would be good for us and the environment.
Crunching into crickets or snacking on grilled caterpillar is apparently a means to a nutrient-rich diet that also helps reduce pests and puts less strain on the planet than eating conventional meat.
Some insects in their dried form are said to have twice the protein of raw meat and fish, while others are rich in unsaturated fat and contain important vitamins and minerals.
Experts believe they could one day be marketed as a healthy alternative to fatty snacks.
In most of Europe, bug-eating is largely restricted to the belated realisation that there has been an unwelcome addition to the salad.
It is common elsewhere, however, with some 1,700 species of bug eaten in 113 countries.
In Taiwan, stir-fried crickets or sauteed caterpillars are delicacies. A plate of maguey worms - larvae of a giant butterfly - sells for £12.50 in smart Mexican restaurants.
Sago grubs wrapped in banana leaves go down well in Papua New Guinea, as does dragonfly in Bali.
In many parts of south-east Asia market stalls sell insects by the pound and deep-fried snacks are served up as street food.
Insects are arthropods, much like crab, shrimps and lobster which are all accepted by the European palate. In North Africa locusts are sometimes called sky prawns.
But Patrick Durst, of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, said that if consumers were to be tempted to broaden their culinary horizons the trick might be to make the bugs look more palatable.
'You need to get the food into a form where someone doesn't have to look the bug in the eye when they eat it,' he said.
Earlier this year the Food and Agriculture Organisation held a conference to discuss how entomophagy - eating insects as food - could contribute to sustainable development.
Bug-farming preserves forests - which are needed to attract insects - and is encouraged in some countries.
As for pesticides, some experts have pointed out the irony of using chemicals to get rid of bugs that are more nutritious than the crops they prey on.
In Thailand when pesticides failed to control locusts, the government urged locals to eat them and distributed recipes.
Chef Paul Cook, who supplies exotic and unusual food through his Bristol-based business Osgrow, has sold a range of insects including locusts.
He said: 'You have to get past your feeling when you look at a whole locust or cricket. They are very clean and nutritious.
'But I don't think we are going to see Jamie Oliver encouraging us to have sky prawns on the school menu.'
Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. The Abominable Snowman. Tales of unidentified mysterious animals have long intrigued and captured the imagination of people around the world — and Japan is no exception. Here is a brief introduction to 7 of the island nation’s most notorious cryptids, complete with grainy photographs where available. Whether you regard these tales as fact or fiction, their impact on the culture where they were encountered is undeniable.
* * * * *
- Hibagon
The Hibagon (a.k.a. Hinagon) is a cryptic hominid, similar to Bigfoot, inhabiting the area around Mt. Hiba in northern Hiroshima prefecture. According to numerous eyewitness accounts from the early 1970s, the Hibagon stands about 1.5 to 1.7 meters (about 5 ft) tall, weighs an estimated 80 to 90 kilograms (about 180 lbs), is covered in a thick coat of black or brown fur (sometimes it is reported as having a spot of white fur on its chest or arms), and has an unusually large triangular head and intelligent human-like eyes. The Hibagon received its name from the local animal control board.
The first known Hibagon sighting occurred on July 20, 1970 in the area around Mt. Hiba near the border with Tottori prefecture. Three days after the initial sighting, the furry ape-like creature was seen again walking through a rice paddy in the nearby rural town of Saijo. A total of 12 sightings were reported that year, and mysterious footprints were found in the snow that December.
Numerous Hibagon sightings were reported in areas surrounding Mt. Hiba in the summers between 1971 and 1973, as increased human activity during the hunting season forced the creature down from the mountain. On August 15, 1974, the Hibagon was photographed as it hid behind a persimmon tree. Unusual footprints measuring 20 centimeters (9 in) long were found nearby. After this photo was taken, the Hibagon went back into hiding, only to be seen two more times — once in 1980 and again in 1982 — before disappearing forever.
The Hibagon may have disappeared long ago, but the residents of Saijo have not forgotten. The town has adopted the likeness of the creature as its mascot, and souvenir shops sell Hibagon Eggs and other cryptid ape-themed sweets. [More]
* * * * *
- Tsuchinoko
Tsuchinoko — Reality? Myth? Or mistaken identity?
The Tsuchinoko is a snake-like cryptid found throughout Japan, except in Hokkaido and the Okinawan islands. Reports describe the Tsuchinoko as having a thick, stubby body measuring 30 to 80 centimeters (12 to 30 in) in length, often with a distinct neck, gray, brown or black scaly skin, and venomous fangs. Some accounts suggest the Tsuchinoko has a loud, high-pitched squeak and can jump as far as one meter.
The earliest known written record of the Tsuchinoko dates back to the 7th century, where it appears in the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters), the oldest surviving book in Japan. In some legends, the Tsuchinoko can speak, has a tendency to tell lies, and enjoys the taste of alcohol.
Skeptics dismiss Tsuchinoko sightings as simple cases of mistaken identity, suggesting the creatures are nothing more than snakes in the process of digesting large meals, or perhaps even escaped exotic pets such as the blue-tongued lizard.
Regardless, local tourist boards in rural areas frequently organize Tsuchinoko hunts to attract visitors, promising large sums of money to any participant lucky enough to capture one. The town of Itoigawa in Niigata prefecture, for example, has a hunt scheduled for June 8, 2008 and is offering a 100 million yen (about $1 million) reward to whoever brings one back alive. [More]
* * * * *
- Kusshii
Kusshii is a giant lake monster believed to inhabit Hokkaido’s Lake Kussharo, a large freshwater lake located in an environment and climate similar to that of the famed Loch Ness. According to eyewitness accounts, Kusshi is 10 to 20 meters (30 to 60 ft) long and has humps on its back, a long neck and a pair of horns on its head. Reports suggest it can swim as fast as a motorboat. Kusshii’s most famous appearances include a 1973 sighting by 40-member team of biologists from Hokkaido University, as well as 15 separate reports by tourists in 1974.
* * * * *
- Isshii
Isshii, another Japanese cryptid lake monster, is believed to inhabit Kagoshima prefecture’s 20,000-year-old Lake Ikeda, the largest caldera lake in Kyushu. The creature is similar in appearance to Kusshii, but larger.
Isshii entered the public consciousness in September 1978, after more than 20 people reportedly witnessed a giant creature moving at a blistering speed through the water. Widespread news coverage of the sighting brought a flood of tourists to the lake, and in December of the same year, a photograph was taken showing what some believe is the back of the creature poking through the water surface. Since 1990, a number of home videos have emerged showing mysterious activity just under the water surface, but none of the videos are widely seen as irrefutable proof of Isshii’s existence.
Some theories suggest Isshii could be an unidentified descendant of the Plesiosaur, while others believe it to be some sort of giant eel. Other theories suggest the sightings can be explained as rogue waves generated by winds unique to the lake.
Rogue waves cannot, however, explain what happened in 1961, when a large-scale search was conducted for a US military jet believed to have crashed in the lake. Sonar equipment used in the search reportedly revealed a large rock-shaped object moving through the water below, and records indicate that divers on the lake floor were nearly attacked by a large, unidentified creature.
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- Giant Snake of Mt. Tsurugi
Mt. Tsurugi, the second highest peak on the island of Shikoku, is steeped in mystery. According to one local legend, the mountain is actually a giant man-made pyramid, and another legend says that a hoard of King Solomon’s secret treasure lies buried within. A giant snake believed to be guarding that treasure has been sighted on many occasions.
In May 1973, a group of 4 forestry workers reportedly encountered a 10 meter (33 ft) long snake as big around as a telephone pole. The creature was described as having shiny black scales, and it reportedly made a loud chirping sound. In the months that followed, local officials organized a large-scale hunt for the snake, enlisting the help of hundreds of volunteers. While the creature was not apprehended, the searchers did find what appeared to be giant snake tracks that measured 40 centimeters (16 in) wide and passed alongside fallen trees.
A local history museum has in its collection a large jawbone measuring 34 centimeters (13 in) across, which many believe belongs to the giant snake. Others speculate it belongs to a shark.
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- Takitaro
The Takitaro is a type of giant fish measuring up to 3 meters (10 ft) long, which is found in Yamagata prefecture’s Lake Otoriike. Located nearly 1,000 meters above sea level, the remote mountain lake was created ages ago when an earthquake triggered a massive landslide that dammed up a mountain stream.
The Takitaro appears in a number of stories throughout the 20th-century. In 1917, for example, a pair of men are said to have captured a 1.5 meter (5 ft) long fish that was large enough to feed 20 floodgate construction workers for 4 days. In 1982, a group of mountain climbers above the lake observed a fish over 2 meters (6.5 ft) long in the clear water below. This sighting grabbed headlines nationwide.
Three years later, in 1985, a team of scientists went to the lake in search of the Takitaro. Sonar equipment revealed the presence of giant fish, and the scientists identified some smaller specimens as relatives of ancient salmon that likely became trapped in the lake when it was formed long ago. The true identity of the giant Takitaro, however, remains a mystery, but some believe it is a mutant descendant of these ancient fish.
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- Kappa
Kappa (river imps) have appeared in countless stories and folk legends for centuries, and they rank among Japan’s most well-known cryptids. While most people nowadays regard the amphibious child-sized troublemakers as pure myth, stories of kappa encounters still crop up from time to time, such as the following two reports from Japan’s southern island of Kyushu.
Report 1 — Slimy Footprints at the River’s Edge: At around 11 PM on August 1, 1984 in the town of Tsushima in Nagasaki prefecture, a squid fisherman named Ryu Shirozaki was walking home from the local pier after work. As he passed near the Kuta river, he came upon a small group of children playing at the water’s edge. While it was not entirely uncommon to encounter people fishing in the river at night, it was rather surprising to see youngsters there.
As Shirozaki approached the children, he was struck by how bizarre they appeared in the moonlight. He could make out swarthy faces, unusually spindly arms and legs, and glistening skin. Suspicious, Shirozaki called out to them as he neared, but they seemed startled and quickly disappeared into the water.
The next morning when he returned to the same spot, Shirozaki discovered a set of moist, teardrop-shaped footprints on the nearby pavement. The prints, which appeared to consist of a slimy substance that had begun to coagulate under the hot morning sun, stretched for about 20 meters. Each footprint measured 22 centimeters (about 10 in) long and 12 centimeters (5 in) wide, and they were spaced about 50 to 60 centimeters (about 2 ft) apart.
Shirozaki and a few curious onlookers immediately suspected the footprints belonged to a kappa. People began to gather around as the news spread quickly through town, and all agreed the prints belonged to a kappa. In the minds of many residents, the footprints confirmed the existence of the river imps they knew through local legends.
When police forensic investigators arrived on the scene, they determined that the slimy footprints consisted of an unknown secretion. They took a sample to the lab for analysis, but the results unfortunately turned out to be inconclusive because the sample was too small. The police eventually dropped their investigation, and the mystery of the slimy footprints was never solved.
Report 2 — The Unclean Guest: Another recent kappa encounter occurred on June 30, 1991 in the town of Saito in Miyazaki prefecture, when an office worker named Mitsugu Matsumoto and his wife Junko returned home for the evening. Upon opening the front door, the Matsumotos were confronted with a strange smell inside their home. Inside, they found dozens of small, wet footprints around the front door and in the hallway, bathroom, and two tatami rooms. At first they suspected a burglar, but they soon realized nothing had been stolen.
The police briefly surveyed the house, but found nothing except a floor soiled by 30 footprints, each measuring about 7 centimeters long and 6 centimeters wide, and having 4 or 5 toes. To Matsumoto, the footprints did not look human, nor did they appear to belong to any animal he could imagine.
Later that night, as Mrs. Matsumoto was putting laundry away, she discovered an unusual orange stain on some clothing. The next morning, as Matsumoto inspected the house more closely, he discovered a deposit of orange liquid on the portable stereo in the tatami room. He took a sample to the local public health center for analysis, and the results indicated the liquid had an extremely high iron content and a chemical composition resembling spring water.
Troubled by the incident, Matsumoto decided to visit a shaman. After listening to Matsumoto’s story, the shaman encouraged him not to worry, explaining that the kappa indigenous to the nearby swamp enjoyed playing the occasional prank on local residents. The kappa were harmless, the shaman told him.
Harmless, perhaps, but Matsumoto found the kappa difficult to clean up after. He tried using detergent, paint thinner and gasoline to remove the footprints and orange stains, but nothing seemed to work.
[Note: This post includes information from Shin-ichiro Namiki’s Nippon No Kaiki Hyaku, 2007 (published in Japanese)]
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Thankfully, this lunacy is mostly harmless. As long as the patient's illness is minor, Homeopathy itself is unlikely to do any harm. The water treatment will have no impact. And the body's intrinsic healing processes are certainly capable of conquering routine diseases, especially when assisted by the placebo effect. 
The possible existence of UFOs presents a sticky problem in logic. Well, not so much of a problem, as an inevitability. If you believe UFOs exist, then the following chain of deduction proceeds as surely as night follows day:
With the exception of Menzel, the list looked pretty credible to its recipients at first glance. Another document purported to be a classified briefing paper addressed to President Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.
The FBI investigated the MJ-12 documents in 1988, providing one of the few indisputably legit documents on the subject. Not surprisingly, the official verdict was that the documents were "completely bogus." However, it's worth noting that the investigation was not prompted by any assumption of fraud. Rather, it was launched in order to determine "whether the document had been properly declassified" and whether military secrets had been improperly revealed. 
While most of God’s creatures seem content with straightforward cock-to-cunt copulation and the occasional rubbing of genitals on a pant leg, human beings seem to have an unending supply of perverse inventiveness when it comes to getting hard and getting off. Not least among these is the ancient Chinese practice of foot binding. 
Sometimes a rock or large block of stone would be used to break the bones that inhibited progress. Other times the child would simply be forced to walk back and forth on her bound and bent feet, so that her own weight would help crush the foot into the desired shape. The pain was excruciating and endless. At times it was so intense that the child would black out. Often the mother (to whom it fell to enact the time-honored tradition), would gag the child to muffle her screams. Each day she would clean blood and pus from the child's wounds. Frequently bits of dead gangrenous flesh would fall off. Often whole toes would come loose. And all the while, the stench was beyond belief. 
Considering that foot binding had its earliest beginnings some 800 to 1,000 years ago in the T’ang Dynasty, becoming widespread between 1368-1644, it is astonishing that a practice so obviously cruel could continue for so long -- especially considering that it made its victims less able to contribute economically. But it simply goes to show what creatures of the mind human beings are. For the ancient Chinese, a woman’s tolerance of foot binding demonstrated her obedience to her parents and to her future husband and his family (a value which Confucians believed built a stronger, healthier society). It also showed the individual's own mastery over the self-oriented impulses of pleasure and pain. (Or, in the mother's case, over the natural instinct of responding to her child's pleas and screams. Rationally, she knew that her daughter would hate her later on when she could not marry.) 
With all due respect to everyone involved, you can't throw a rock into a crowd of Muslims without hitting someone whom all the other Muslims consider a 
However, the Shi'a-Sunni conflict is only the tip of a very large iceberg of disputes. In addition to a handful of completely separate sects, both Shi'a and Sunni communities are divided into thousands of smaller sub-sects and cults with a shockingly diverse array of beliefs. 
The Assassins arose in the middle of a major crisis in Islam, which would lead centuries later to a whole slew of new heresies. Chief among them is the notion of the Madhi, the Islamic version of the Messiah. 
If bin Laden successfully assumed the role of Madhi, and if he did so with an eye toward reconciliating the branches of Islam, one of two things would happen (to reduce things to the most simplistic outcome). 
On 30 June 1908, there was an explosion in Siberia. It was caused by something that fell from the sky in a fireball.
So what the fuck caused this 
The most popular theory is that the blast was caused by a meteorite, a cometary fragment or an asteroid hitting the earth. While these may all sound pretty much like the same thing, they're not quite. 
Faced with an indisputable mystery of incredible scale, many nonscientists embraced the idea that the explosion was caused by a 
If you're going to indulge such increasingly baseless speculation, of course, why stop with the antimatter theory (which is still relatively plausible if extremely unlikely)? The next best idea anyone could come up with was even more improbable -- that a tiny black hole wandering through space crashed into the earth. 
You can find plenty of long treatises on the Internet that outline various theories that the Tunguska event was caused by the explosion of an 
Other alien space theories are based around the observation of similarities between the Tunguska blast pattern and the blast patterns created by nuclear explosions. Under this premise, the aliens detonated a nuclear weapon over the region either by accident or deliberately. For the most part, the "on purpose" theories never clearly spell out a motive for this pre-emptive nuclear strike. As with the antimatter theory, the radiation levels at Tunguska don't especially support an alien nuke attack. 
According to Kellogg, 90 percent of all human ills originated in the bowels. One would think however that all 90 percent originated in the twiddling of the crotch, given the fury with which Kellogg attacked the humble practice of masturbation. In Plain Facts for Old and Young, he advised that the first line of defense was keeping children busy and constantly under surveillance -- that is, working them daily to the point of exhaustion. The vigilant parent must especially be aware of a child's goings on in the bathtub, on the toilet, or in bed, for solitude was a temptation to vice. Furthermore, all parents were urged to watch for such tell-tale "symptoms" of masturbation as bad posture (slumped shoulders), a fear of the opposite sex, and hanging out in groups with other children of the same gender. Stiffness in the hips in boys or a wiggly walk in girls were also clues. Also a child who suddenly became more bold -- or worse, more timid -- was surely a masturbator as well. 
Another deterrent recommended by Kellogg was to wire a boy’s foreskin together at the tip such that any mere erection would become very painful. The wire was of course to be attached by piercing the foreskin with a needle, with the wire following along in place of thread. For the multitude of American males who do not (thanks to Kellogg and his ilk) have a foreskin, it may be worth mentioning that the foreskin is considered to be much more sensitive to pain and pleasure than the bald penis you may currently own. 
Although it is hard to judge whether Kellogg and similar theorists were the cause or merely the voice of 19th century Americans' surging hysteria over masturbation, we can certainly see that the shadow of this era has lingered in our culture for over a century. Only now with the threat of 
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in January 1941, so his brain crystallized into its current form just before the 1960s introduced the idea of fun into American life. Cheney's picture appears next to the definition of "dour" in the dictionary. He dropped out of Yale in favor of attending the prestigious University of Wyoming, where he majored in political science, and he went on to earn his doctorate from the prestigious University of Wisconsin. In your face, Yale! 
Cheney also distinguished himself as an archconservative during these years, opposing everything from abortion to gun control to Head Start and the Department of Education. If it wasn't a laser-equipped satellite or a lunatic Nicaraguan commando, Cheney wasn't going to waste federal funds on it. 
Unlike his constituents' wives, Cheney's baton-twirling spouse Lynne wasn't just sitting around barefoot and pregnant all this time. Under Reagan, Lynne Cheney served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, protecting innocent citizens against the depravations of public broadcasting and from potentially confusing "propaganda" content, such as a documentary suggesting Africans might have a few legit gripes about centuries of colonialism, forced slavery and industrial exploitation. 
When Bush Sr. was drubbed by 
During the 2000 elections, Cheney's history of heart troubles raised serious concerns among the electorate. Voters worried that if Cheney died while in office, his running mate 
The party line was very reasonable, pointing out that the vice president was being kept in a secret location so that he could take over the country in the event of another terrorist attack. But it was awfully tempting to speculate that he had in fact suffered yet another heart attack while watching the planes hit the Trade Centers. Regardless of what actually happened, Cheney gradually resurfaced, starting with short, limited appearances and expanding back into a somewhat normal role, as American life returned to somewhat normal. 
Cheney got his way, eventually. After a staged confrontation at the United Nations, where Secretary of State Colin Powell was roped into making the improbable case for an invasion, the Bush administration discarded all hopes of attracting allies (other than faithful lapdog 
Halliburton's construction and engineering subsidiary has been paid nearly $1 billion through government contracts containing profit-guarantees, and various other contracts initiated since the company's former CEO arrived in the White House. Halliburton has built military bases in the former Soviet Union and Turkey, and it made $33 million building jail cells for terrorists at 
Despite everything that seems obvious about human nature, it took the species a surprisingly long time to come up with someone to blame for its own failings.
As the 
There's a lot of murkiness on various issues here, such as whether Satan actually has a chance in hell (so to speak) of winning his war, whether he's tolerated by God for some ineffable reason, or what.
With the full-fledged incarnation of Satan as a mythological figure, corresponding theological concepts also arose, including 
Despite this diminution of stature, Satan remained a popular leading man and occasional scary figure, in movies such as "Satan's Amazon," "Satan and the Woman," "Satan's Bed," "Satan's Black Wedding," "Satan's Blade," "The Satan Bug," "Satan's Cheerleaders," "Satan's Choice," "Satan Claus," "Satan Eats Lunch," "Satan in Prison," "Satan in High Heels," "Satan's Lust," "Satan's Mistress," "Satan Never Sleeps," "Satan's Sadists," "Satan's Sister," "Satan's Slave," "Satan's Touch" and "Nude for Satan." 
In 1917, two schoolgirls named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths (16 and 10 years old, respectively), produced what appeared to be substantial proof of the existence of fairies: a series of photographs showing the girls frolicing with fantastic humanoid, winged creatures in the forests of Cottingley Glen. While the jaundiced eye of the 21st century might consider them patently obvious in their deception, to the folks of the time, they became rather hotly contested and lauded.
The first known Hibagon sighting occurred on July 20, 1970 in the area around Mt. Hiba near the border with Tottori prefecture. Three days after the initial sighting, the furry ape-like creature was seen again walking through a rice paddy in the nearby rural town of Saijo. A total of 12 sightings were reported that year, and mysterious footprints were found in the snow that December. 
In May 1973, a group of 4 forestry workers reportedly encountered a 10 meter (33 ft) long snake as big around as a telephone pole. The creature was described as having shiny black scales, and it reportedly made a loud chirping sound. In the months that followed, local officials organized a large-scale hunt for the snake, enlisting the help of hundreds of volunteers. While the creature was not apprehended, the searchers did find what appeared to be giant snake tracks that measured 40 centimeters (16 in) wide and passed alongside fallen trees. 
