World Food Day

Tomorrow (October 16) is World Food Day, a celebration to honor the 1945 founding of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Its purpose is to raise awareness of issues related to poverty and hunger.

Three Letters and Question Mark

Indian man carrying cucumbers
Of course, the three letters are double-u, tee, and eff.

Nonagenarian Steals $200K

(River Falls, Alabama) The local mayor, Mary Ella Hixon, 91, has been convicted of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the small Alabama town where she served as mayor for three decades.

Hixon distributed $201,000 to her family and friends.

The town of roughly 500 residents just north of the Florida panhandle has nearly been bankrupted by the thefts, said Covington County District Attorney Walt Merrell.

Hixon has been placed on five years’ probation after a judge suspended a sentence of 10 years in prison because of her age.

“Had it not been a 91-year-old woman, I would have stood on my head to make sure she went to prison,” Mr Merrell said.

Hixon's lawyer said she was taken advantage of by those she trusted.

Woman Drinks Hand Sanitizer




(Middletown, Connecticut) A 36-year-old local woman, Jennifer Wilcox, was arrested after crashing her vehicle while allegedly under the influence of hand sanitizer.

Police smelled alcohol on Wilcox, but she denied drinking. After failing field sobriety tests she was charged with driving under the influence.

Wilcox later admitted to drinking half of a bottle of hand sanitizer, the newspaper reported.

Wilcox was booked and released on $500 bond.

Mystery Disease Killing Sugar Cane Workers

(Central America) According to a detailed report, chronic kidney disease (CKD) has been killing thousands of sugar crop workers in rural Central America.



Workers protest at plantation entrance

It goes by many names, but around here they call it "the malady of the sugar cane". It's a quiet epidemic that has been preying on Central America for at least 20 years, killing impoverished landworkers in their tens of thousands across Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala. And it is becoming ever more deadly. Between 2005 and 2009, incidents in El Salvador rose by 26%.[…]

The health minister, María Isabel Rodríguez, made a dramatic appeal to the international community for help, telling them: "It is wasting away our populations." But nobody knows what to do about it, because nobody knows what exactly it is.

In the wealthier west, CKD is largely caused by hypertension or diabetes, but most of the victims here have neither. And it attacks the kidneys in an unusual way. Rather than damaging the filtering system, as in ordinary CKD, this disease seems to have an impact on the tubules – the part of the kidney where the composition of the urine is determined.

At the moment, the only scientific consensus is that it's real, and unexplained.

So far, researchers have failed to pinpoint the exact cause of the mysterious and deadly malady. Constant exposure to agrochemicals and persistent dehydration in tropical heat are suggested as likely causes.

Texting and Drinking While Driving

(Reno, Nevada) A 20-year-old motorist, Heather Dyer, has been accused of driving under the influence and texting while driving before crashing and injuring two construction workers.

Dyer was arrested on suspicion of texting while driving, drunken driving, driving with a suspended license, being a minor in possession of alcohol and failure to maintain a lane.

She is accused of crashing into construction equipment in a controlled work zone Wednesday night on Interstate 580.

Dyer was booked into custody at the Washoe County Jail and later released on bail.

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it 


The article below is from the mass-circulation "Daily Mail" in Britain.  The writer is one of their general journalists
 
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.



The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued  quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.  This stands in sharp contrast  to the release of the previous  figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.

Much more HERE


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Housekeeping

Regular readers will notice a new blog template. The change was necessary to allow for Comments. Sadly, my previous Comments provider apparently ceased doing business.

I urge readers to be patient as the new template is worked toward something that approximates the previous version of Interested-Participant. It's time consuming.

Email from Allah

Received an email from the Lord of the Worlds:

Where? Emergency Message

FROM:
Allah

Friday, October 12, 2012 3:57 PM

This planet is in danger. I need to know where to go to help these people. You were suggested as someone who may have heard of God (Allah) and it was suggested I email you, personally. I am God the Father, Allah, and looking for a place to get started for purposes previously explained in the Holy Bible or Qur'an. If you have a suggestion for how you want Me to help, get in touch. If not, there could be spiritual repercussions for your failure to comply.

NOTE: This could be your only opportunity to interact with God Allah.
Thank you for your prayers and review.

Emergency Message,
ALLAH
Lord of the Worlds
Author, Holy Qur'an / Bible
god @llah .US (Unsubscribe)
P.O. Box 701
San Mateo, CA 94401

+1-650-458-7524 SMS/VM ; no international callbacks... email only... English Only
In the event of subscribe error at LLAH.US, you may post to https:// allah. zendesk. com or email god @llah .US (unsubscribe).

An email from Allah or any deity is obviously a spam effort. Nevertheless, there's a bit of comedy here. Of all the individuals credited throughout history with solutions to save the planet, Allah emails an everyday guy in Ohio for suggestions. It's contrary to the recognized all-seeing, all-knowing attributes of a Supreme Being.

More interestingly, one must wonder how many people are gullible enough to believe that Allah lords over the planet Earth from a P.O. Box in San Mateo, California. If so, California must be heaven. Some reports indicate otherwise.

Ohio Woman Busted for Drugs Near School

(Newark, Ohio) A 25-year-old local woman, Kalie D. McCualsky, has been accused of dealing methamphetamine near the Cherry Valley Elementary School.

McCualsky faces a charge of aggravated trafficking in drugs, a third-degree felony.

Officers with the task force and Newark police’s Special Operations Group obtained a search warrant for her residence and had Cherry Valley Elementary School placed on lock down while the search occurred, Lt. Paul Cortwright said.

McCualsky left the residence and was stopped by officers. Police report she had methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia on her person, according to the statement of facts.

Kalie McCualsky was booked and released on $20,000 bond.

Why Jews Support Obama

From Caroline Glick:

Decades ago, the sociographer Milton Himmelfarb coined the aphorism that "American Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans." And his words ring as true today as ever. Surveys show that roughly 70 percent of American Jews intend to cast their ballots for President Barack Obama's reelection next month.

Himmelfarb's quip indicated that American Jews abjure their economic interests in favor of their liberal values. Certainly it is true that for American Jews to vote for Obama next month they must act against their economic interests.

Obama's economic policies have taken a huge toll on the economic fortunes of American Jews who invest disproportionately in the stock market. His nationalization of the college loan business has given universities impetus to raise tuition rates still further, thus dooming more young American Jews to start their adult lives under a mountain of debt. And it isn't at all clear how they will be able to pay off this debt since under Obama half of recent college graduates cannot find jobs.

Obama's gutting of Medicare to pay for Obamacare has harmed the medical choices for older Jewish Americans.

His war on tax deductions for charitable contributions has placed synagogues, Jewish schools and nursing homes in financial jeopardy.

So with economics ruled out as a reason to support Obama we are left with American-Jewish values.

But is Obama really advancing those values? What are those values anyway?

There's more.

Topless Robber

(St. Paul, Minnesota) A 45-year-old local woman, Debra Ann McCoy, has been convicted of robbing a man after flashing her breasts to distract him.

McCoy pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting first-degree robbery in the May 2 incident in which a 50-year-old patron of the Wild Tymes bar was robbed.

According to a criminal complaint, the victim told police he was walking outside the bar when two women approached him, propositioned him and flashed their breasts at him. He walked with the women into an alley where he said two men struck him on the head and robbed him. The victim told police he could hear the women yelling, "How much money you got?"

The other woman arrested in the case, Janet Elizabeth Hall, 31, of Minneapolis, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years and 10 months in prison.

McCoy was sentenced to four years and two months in prison and ordered to pay $1,300+ in restitution.

Glaciers Cracking in the Presence of Carbon Dioxide? 

Note that this is just computer modelling.  Why can't they study ice directly?  It's not exactly hard to find.  Models will usually give you what you want.  Reality is more pesky

And reality would suggest that any such effect is trivial (note that they offer no quantification of the effect).  How, for instance, do the conclusions below fit in with the geologic record, that of CO2 rising in apparent response to global warming only to be followed by an almost equally dramatic temperature fall despite all the extra CO2 around? Judging from the record, CO2’s alleged ability to reduce the earth’s albedo by breaking up ice does nothing to alter the monotonous timing of one Ice Age after another.

New research, published October 11, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, has shown that CO2 molecules may be having a more direct impact on the ice that covers our planet.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology have shown that the material strength and fracture toughness of ice are decreased significantly under increasing concentrations of CO2 molecules, making ice caps and glaciers more vulnerable to cracking and splitting into pieces, as was seen recently when a huge crack in the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica spawned a glacier the size of Berlin.

Ice caps and glaciers cover seven per cent of Earth -- more than Europe and North America combined -- and are responsible for reflecting 80-90 per cent of the Sun's light rays that enter our atmosphere and maintain Earth's temperature. They are also a natural carbon sink, capturing a large amount of CO2.

"If ice caps and glaciers were to continue to crack and break into pieces, their surface area that is exposed to air would be significantly increased, which could lead to accelerated melting and much reduced coverage area on the Earth. The consequences of these changes remain to be explored by the experts, but they might contribute to changes of the global climate," said lead author of the study Professor Markus Buehler.

Buehler, along with his student and co-author of the paper, Zhao Qin, used a series of atomistic-level computer simulations to analyse the dynamics of molecules to investigate the role of CO2 molecules in ice fracturing, and found that CO2 exposure causes ice to break more easily.

Notably, the decreased ice strength is not merely caused by material defects induced by CO2 bubbles, but rather by the fact that the strength of hydrogen bonds -- the chemical bonds between water molecules in an ice crystal -- is decreased under increasing concentrations of CO2. This is because the added CO2 competes with the water molecules connected in the ice crystal.

It was shown that CO2 molecules first adhere to the crack boundary of ice by forming a bond with the hydrogen atoms and then migrate through the ice in a flipping motion along the crack boundary towards the crack tip.

The CO2 molecules accumulate at the crack tip and constantly attack the water molecules by trying to bond to them. This leaves broken bonds behind and increases the brittleness of the ice on a macroscopic scale.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). 

Texas Teacher Accused of Sex with Student

(Houston, Texas) A 36-year-old career technology teacher at Sealy High School, Stacey Manning, has been arrested for allegedly engaging in sex with an 18-year-old male student.

Manning faces a charge of second-degree felony improper relationship between educator/student.

“She got angry and started calling his girlfriend names, because he had a girlfriend at the time,” student Caleb Scarbrough said of the male student who was allegedly trying to break off the relationship with the teacher.

“And so the girlfriend went and confronted him about this relationship and so they went to the police about it because she was saying awful things about this girl.”

Manning was booked into custody and released on $10,000 bond.

Turtle Urine Study

Chinese Soft-Shelled Turtle
(Singapore)

The Chinese soft-shelled turtle looks like someone glued the snout of a pig onto the face of a fish, with the texture of a scrotum for good measure. But its bizarre appearance pales in comparison to an even more bizarre, and newly discovered, habit: it urinates through its mouth.

When the turtle breaks down proteins in its liver, it ends up with an abundance of nitrogen, which it expels from its body in the form of urea. Humans are the same — we get rid of urea in the form of urine, via our kidneys. But the soft-shelled turtle has an altogether different route.

It's well-adapted to life in the water, and lives in salty swamps and marshes. But Yuen Ip from the National University of Singapore noticed that when the turtle emerges from water, or is stranded on land during dry spells, it will plunge its head into puddles. While submerged, it rhythmically expands and contracts its mouth. Ip found that the turtle gets rid of most of its urea through its mouth rather than its kidneys, via gill-like studs in its mouth. It can breathe and urinate through the same structures.

There's a joke here somewhere.

Florida Teacher Accused of Child Abuse

(Tampa, Florida) A 37-year-old teacher at Seminole Heights Elementary School, Esraa Mohamed Soliman, has been accused of child abuse for rubbing a shoe on the face of an autistic student.

Soliman was arrested at her home on a charge of child abuse.

She was teaching at Seminole Heights Elementary School on Tuesday afternoon when she got upset at the boy for not listening to her, cops said.

Soliman allegedly grabbed him by his backpack and forced him into a chair.

When the child threw one of his shoes at her, cops and witnesses said, she grabbed it and rubbed it into his face.

Soliman was booked into custody and released on $2,000 bond.

Michigan Teacher Guilty of DUI - Updated

(PawPaw, Michigan) On appeal, a Circuit Court judge reinstated the charges against former teacher Leslie Buscher, now 38. Yesterday, the case was decided.

From WOOD TV:

A Van Buren County district judge found a former Portage teacher guilty of being "super drunk" in a case that involved legal twists and turns since her arrest in July 2011.

The judge found Leslie Buscher guilty of operating a vehicle while intoxicated with a high blood alcohol content (Michigan's "super drunk" law), operating while intoxicated with an occupant under 16 years old, and having an open intoxicant.

No sentencing date yet scheduled.

* * * * *
Teacher DUI Dismissed, Appealed - Updated
[Previous 3/1/12 post]
(PawPaw, Michigan) Elementary school teacher Leslie Buscher is temporarily safe.

Although Leslie Buscher was found in her car with a blood alcohol level exceeding 0.4 percent, drunken-driving charges against her were dismissed because her car was parked off the road, according to court documents.

A Van Buren County judge's decision turned on this point: Does the shoulder of Red Arrow Highway fit the definition of a roadway "ordinarily used for vehicular travel"?[…]

Van Buren County sheriff’s deputies said Buscher, who has worked in Portage schools since 1999, was slumped over the wheel of her 2005 Dodge Durango and had a cup of vodka and her two children inside the vehicle when they found her at about 3:30 p.m. that day.

In a written opinion filed last month, District Judge Richard Hentchel dismissed the charges. He agreed with Buscher's attorney that she could not be found guilty of driving while intoxicated, since she was not driving the car at the time and her car was off the roadway when she was found by deputy David Walker.

The prosecution has appealed the case.

* * * * *
Teacher Faces Drunk Charges
[Previous 7/26/11 post]
(PawPaw, Michigan) A 37-year-old 5th-grade teacher at Lake Center Elementary School, Leslie Buscher, was found slumped over her steering wheel with a blood alcohol level five times the legal limit.

Two children, ages 2 and 4, and a party cup half full of vodka were also found inside the vehicle.

Sheriff's officials say Buscher's BAC was more than .40; the legal limit in Michigan is .08.[…]

Buscher is charged with two misdemeanors: Operating with a blood alcohol content of .17 or more and operating while intoxicated with a passenger under 16 years of age.

Buscher waived her arraignment and pleaded not guilty through her attorney.

An example of what complete socialist control means for the environment 


Socialists are only "green" if it doesn't hobble their power

If you're looking for a lakeside retreat on a budget, it's likely you could easily pick up a villa near to Russia's beautiful Lake Karachay and still have change left for a new sofa.

But it's probably worth bearing in mind that in 1990 just standing on the shore for an hour would give you a radiation of dose of 600 roentgen.  In case you were wondering, that's more than enough to kill you.

The lake, in Russia's south-west Chelyabinsk region, close to the modern border with Kazakhstan, is located within the Mayak Production Association, one of the country's largest — and leakiest — nuclear facilities.

Built in the Forties as Soviets moved armament production east to avoid the Nazi invasion, Mayak was one of the Russia's most important nuclear weapons factories and was off limits to foreigners for 45 years.

It was only after President Boris Yeltsin signed a 1992 decree opening up the area that Western scientists were able to gain access - and promptly declared it the planet's most polluted area.

In their long decades of obscurity, the nuclear engineers at Mayak spent their time mainly having nuclear meltdowns and dumping radioactive waste into the river.

The watered-down waste was a cocktail of radioactive elements, including long-lived fission products such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137–each with a half-life of approximately thirty years.

When their facility's existence was finally acknowledged, the Chelyabinsk region had seen a 21 per cent increase in cancer, a 25 per cent increase in birth defects, and a 41 per cent increase in leukaemia.

The nearby Techa river, on which several villages relied for water, was so contaminated that up to 65 per cent of locals were stricken with radiation sickness.

Prevented from mentioning radiation in their diagnoses, doctors treating those who had fallen ill termed the sickness 'special disease'. Even then, these notes were classified until 1990.

The rural communities surrounding the nuclear facility suffered greatly from their government's nuclear arms race with the U.S.

Eager to catch up with the technological development of Western weapons, the Mayak engineers didn't worry too much about safety and the facility suffered several major accidents in the Fifties and Sixties.

By the mid-Fifties they decided, belatedly, to cease dumping nuclear waste into nearby lakes and rivers, instead pumping it into a row of vats. Then in September 1957 they exploded with a force equivalent to about 85 tons of TNT, spewing about 70 tons of radioactive waste a mile high.

The dust cloud spread isotopes of cesium and strontium over 9,000 square miles, affecting some 270,000 Soviet citizens and their food supplies.

With their waste storage system obliterated, authorities decided to direct Malak's constant flow of radioactive effluent into Lake Karachay, which lacked any surface outlets making engineers optimistic that anything dumped there would be entombed indefinitely.

This worked okay for ten years, until a severe drought struck the whole of Chelyabinsk. Lake Karachay gradually began to dry up, exposing the radioactive sediment in its basin. The spread of toxic dust peppered about 900 square miles of land with Strontium-90, Caesium-137 and a host of other unpleasant elements.

Today, huge tracts of Chelyabinsk remain uninhabitable as a result of the river contamination, the 1957 blast and the 1967 drought. Lake Karachay's surface is now more concrete than water, but its contamination is still not contained.

Estimates suggest approximately a billion gallons of groundwater have been contaminated with 5 megacuries of radionuclides and even today, the local population still does not know the actual levels of radioisotopes in its home grown products.

SOURCE


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Eco-Power Jacks Prices in Germany

Wind turbines and solar power are not cost effective and must be subsidized.

German households are set to face higher power prices in the coming year, thanks to an increase in the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) surcharge - it is expected to rise by about 50 percent, a report said Tuesday.

The German policy of phasing out nuclear power plants is credited with the increase in prices.

Russian Duma News

From Russian Dilettante's Weblog:

As you may have heard, the Russian Duma has passed a law which lets a government agency to arbitrarily block internet sites for "extremism", "information harmful to minors" and so on - basically for anything they don't like. This piece of legislation (if it may be called so - passed by an unelectd bunch of corrupt toadies) goes into full effect on 1 November.

But it's getting worse now - the Duma is going to discuss amendments to the bill outlawing all anonymizing software!

Smart people will find ways around it, no doubt, but the combination of evilness and meanness of those people never fails to amaze.

More