No Magic Trick Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have levitated mice with a powerful magnetic field that simulates a zero gravity environment. The left half of the photo features the mouse at rest; the right half shows the mouse floating in mid-air. Image NASA/JPL
NASA Levitates Mice in Magnetic Field
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
Sept. 15, 2009 — Researchers have levitated small mice in a powerful magnetic field that simulates the gravity-free world of space.
Their work calls attention to a technology that could help unravel a range of phenomena from the physics of fluids to the genetic underpinnings of osteoporosis.
The research by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., is intended to supplement and verify experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station, which last month received its first batch of mice for a long-duration stay.
Three North Carolina men were charged in Myrtle Beach after they tried to steal candy and condoms from Kmart, according to a police report.
Ronald Sullivan, 20, of Stedman, N.C., Addison Philyaw, and Nathan Gates, both 17 of Fayetteville, N.C., were each charged with shoplifting after police were called at 8:15 p.m. Saturday to the store on Kings Highway, police said. Two juveniles who were with the men were not charged because store officials declined to prosecute them.
A loss prevention employee told police he saw the group enter the store and take several candy bars, a package of chewing gum and a box of condoms from the shelves and hide them in their clothing, according to the report. The stolen items, valued at $18.37, were returned to the store.
What a great idea. Work is good for the soul and this sure beats pounding rocks in the hot sun. Order some here.
The recipe for Jailhouse Fire hot sauce was refined over two years by the jail's horticulture program. Inmates hope to sell the sauce over the Internet starting next year. Inside the jail, inmates prefer a hotter version.
Florida inmates make, sell their own hot sauce
AP | Aug 9, 2009 | Information from: St. Petersburg Times, http://tampabay.com
TAMPA, Fla. – A group of Tampa inmates is offering a taste of what it’s like jail — no locks, bars or handcuffs required. But you’d better have an tough stomach to use more than a dash of their “Jailhouse Fire Hot Sauce.” Minimum-security Hillsborough County Jail inmates offer it in “Original,” “Smoke” and “No Escape” varieties, all made from their jail-grown peppers.
They came up with the recipe and started selling it in 2005. Since then, horticulture instructor Allen Boatman estimates they’ve made $10,000 on the sauce. Each bottle is $7.
The income is used to keep up the greenhouse and buy basic supplies.
How many people ride their bicycles as primary transportation? To work? To the store? To parties? Ok, now how many of people in AMERICA ride their bike that way?
As someone who regualrly rides my bike to IKEA I can’t tell you how much I’d welcome a similar law where I reside. I’ve been groped by people in cars stuck in traffic, had things thrown at me, been maliciously cut-off and cursed. In one horrifying incident during my college days a van pulled up next to me, the side door slide open and two full grown men leaned out trying to grab me.
But the MOST common is the wicked witch bicycle song being sung at me. Strangers, people I love, black, white, young, old, they ALLL sing to me. I’m not green, nor a witch and I’m really f@cking tired of being taunted with that song.
Lawmakers approve bill to protect bicyclists
www.nola.com | by Ed Anderson, The TImes-Picayune | June 11, 2009
BATON ROUGE — With little debate, the Senate sent Gov. Bobby Jindal a bill Thursday designed to make it safer for bicyclists to coexist with vehicles on state roads and highways.
Senators voted 37-0 for House Bill 725 by Rep. Michael Jackson, I-Baton Rouge, that will require motorists to leave a “safe distance … of not less than 3 feet” when passing a bicyclist.
Sen. Sharon Weston Broome, D-Baton Rouge, said the bill is needed to improve safety on highways and to help keep bicycle riders form getting killed or injured by vehicles.
Sen. B.L. “Buddy” Shaw, R-Shreveport, said that cyclists should know the rules of the road. “I know of bicycle riders who pulled in front of cars” causing accidents, he said.
Grim statistic. First time I’ve picked up an article from this site, but it wasn’t a slub or blog post like many other sources for this story. So consider the source when reading this since Joe Friday isn’t telling this story.
Here’s a fact packed exceprt
Bringing this income stratification into still sharper focus provides a staggering indication of the concentration of wealth in the US. The top .01 percent of the population, (less than 15,000 families) saw its share of total income rise from 5.46 percent in 2006 to 6.04 percent in 2007 (compared to just 0.9 percent in 1979). This 2007 figure amounts to roughly double the total combined income for the bottom 20 percent, some 30 million families.
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Mr. J. Lydon
US income gap widest since 1917
www.wsws.org | 19 August 2009
The social chasm separating America’s financial oligarchy from working people, the vast majority of the population, is wider than at any time since 1917, according to the latest statistics from the Internal Revenue Service.
The income gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent has reached “a level higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of the stock market bubble in the ‘roaring’ 1920s,” according to an analysis of the data published earlier this month by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez.
Saez’s report, entitled “Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States,” shows that the real increase in the concentration of wealth has taken place at the pinnacle of the social pyramid—the top 1 percent, with annual incomes of $400,000 and above.
The figures released by the IRS are from 2007. They indicate that for most of the top 10 percent (families with incomes of $110,000 or more), there was little change in terms of income growth and share, but the top 1 percent increased their share of the national income to 23.5 percent, compared with 22.8 percent in 2006.
Between 2002 and 2006, this social layer, consisting of one out of 100 American households, accounted for 65 percent of income growth nationwide. This trend has held for the better part of the past decade.
During the period 2002-2007, the top one percent saw an annual growth in income of just over 10 percent annually. During the same period, the bottom 99 percent saw an increase of only 1.3 percent per year, falling well below the rate of inflation. As a result, the top one percent accounted for two thirds of income growth over the six-year period.
Bringing this income stratification into still sharper focus provides a staggering indication of the concentration of wealth in the US. The top .01 percent of the population, (less than 15,000 families) saw its share of total income rise from 5.46 percent in 2006 to 6.04 percent in 2007 (compared to just 0.9 percent in 1979). This 2007 figure amounts to roughly double the total combined income for the bottom 20 percent, some 30 million families.
As Saez comments, “2007 was an incredibly good year for the super rich.”
It was also, of course, the year preceding the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This was no mere coincidence. The accumulation of obscene amounts of wealth by this tiny minority is a major factor in the bankrupting of the country and the plunging of the entire world into economic crisis and misery.
Professor Saez points to the dramatic changes in the economic landscape since 2007, noting that real income is falling across the board. He points out that in previous recessions, the income share of the top 1 percent has tended to decline because business profits, capital gains and stock option returns tend to fall faster than average income.
“Based on the US historical record, falls in income concentration due to recessions are temporary unless drastic policy changes such as financial regulation or significantly more progressive taxation are implemented and prevent income concentration from coming back,” Saez writes.
The present crisis, however, is not just another recession. Rather, it signals the final collapse of the post-World War II global capitalist order, which depended on the economic supremacy of the United States. The ruling elite, not just in the US but in all the major capitalist countries, aims to resolve this crisis through a drastic reduction in the income and social conditions of the working class, accompanied by attacks on basic democratic rights and an increasing turn to military aggression.
As part of this global process, the working class in the US has already suffered severe blows. Some 30 million are jobless or relegated to involuntary part-time work, while wage-cutting is rampant.
At the other end of the social spectrum, wealth accumulation continues unabated. Seven of America’s top ten CEOs took home total compensation of $100 million or more last year, according to a report by the independent research group The Corporate Library. This compares to just three who pocketed that much the year before.
Topping the list (which includes the heads of seven major oil companies) is Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Group LP, the private equity firm, who took in $702.4 million—nearly $2 million a day.
Meanwhile, Wall Street has set aside tens of billions of dollars for annual bonuses, with 2009 set to be the most lucrative year yet for the bankers and financial traders.
The Obama administration has no intention of imposing the kind of financial regulation or tax increases on the rich that Saez suggests could lessen social polarization and the concentration of wealth. On the contrary, all of its policies have been directed at bailing out the banks and the financial elite, while demanding that workers accept drastic pay and benefit cuts, the destruction of their jobs, and a series of counter-reforms in health care and other essential social programs.
Commenting on the controversy over Wall Street pay and benefits last week, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs defended the bankers’ plundering of the economy, telling the press “I don’t think the American people begrudge that people make big salaries, as long as they’re not jeopardizing the good will of the public in doing so.”
The only alternative to the destruction of working class living standards to maintain the wealth of the financial aristocracy is a socialist one. It requires a break with the Democratic Party and the building of an independent mass political movement of the working class fighting for an end to the domination of society by the financial parasites of Wall Street.
The banks and finance houses must be taken out of private hands and placed under public ownership and the democratic control of working people. The vast fortunes accumulated by the CEOs and financial speculators should be reclaimed to pay for jobs, education, health care, housing and other vital social needs.
The return of income polarization to the level of 1917 has profound significance. That was the year of the October Revolution in Russia, marking the first time that working people took political power and initiated the task of placing society on socialist foundations on a worldwide basis. The social gap that now dominates US society, and indeed the entire planet, cannot continue without producing an explosive resurgence of class struggle and a new period of social revolution.
The skinny dippers skinny dipped all across the USA but all the photos are from the Bible belt. Whoo hooo…. good clean fun!
Two hundred forty-nine people registered at Whispering Pines Nudist Resort and Campground to take part in the American Association for Nude Recreation World Record Skinny Dip for the Guinness World Record in conjunction with AANR resorts nationwide at 3 p.m. July 11, 2009. The pool at Whispering Pines was filled, and many others used the adjacent pond to participate in the skinny dip, the conclusion of Nude Recreation Week.
Nudists set Guinness World Record for largest simultaneous skinny dip
nydailynews.com | BY Kate Nocera DAILY NEWS WRITER | Updated Tuesday, July 14th 2009, 3:01 PM
Forget the bathing suit, this swim was all about the birthday suit.
The Guinness World Record created a category for the “largest number of people skinny dipping at once,” and the American Association for Nude Recreation set up simultaneous naked dips across the US and Canada.
All across the country, Americans stripped down en masse.
In New Jersey, 134 nudists jumped into a pool at Sky Farm in Basking Ridge. All the participants had to be fully naked at exactly 3 p.m. and have water up to their shoulders to fulfill the guidelines, the Asbury Park Press reports.
“Thank you, everybody, for being part of nudist history,” called out Cindy Thiboutout, who served as event coordinator the APP reports.
This poor guy messed up the robbery so bad, one feels sort of sorry for him, sort of.
Bumbling bank robber shows teller his ID, police say
Alaska Daily News | August 12th, 2009 | By JAMES HALPIN jhalpin@adn.com
A man walked into a Midtown bank last week, gave his name and account number to the teller and showed his ID. It was his real name and it was his own account. The ID had his picture.
Then he handed over a piece of paper — a receipt — with a note scribbled on the back.
“I have a gun. Give me all the money in your drawer.”
The FBI said the man walked out of the Alaska USA Federal Credit Union on Juneau Street with about $600.
It was a less than perfect crime and now the man is in jail, the FBI said. They identified him as Jarell Paul Arnold, 34, and he’s being held on a federal bank robbery charge.
According to charges filed in court, the robber walked into the credit union about 1:05 p.m. Friday and inquired about the balance on his account. The teller, Letecia Chroust, asked for his name, account number and photo identification, according to an affidavit filed in court.
After complying, the man slipped Chroust the note, the charges say. He didn’t show a gun, but had his hand in his jacket like he had one, the charges say. The robber stuffed the cash in his jacket and took off.
The suspect eluded capture as police and FBI agents closed in following the heist. But FBI agent Steven Payne’s curiosity was aroused when he recalled that he had previously arrested the owner of that same bank account, Arnold, on a charge of bank robbery back in 2004, according to the affidavit.
In that case, Arnold pleaded guilty to the bank robbery charge and was sentenced to 57 months in prison, according to court records.
After confirming through surveillance images that Arnold provided his correct identity to the teller, FBI agents arrested him Monday. He subsequently admitted he was the robber, though denied he actually had a gun, according to the affidavit.
Arnold remains in custody at the Anchorage jail, according to the Department of Corrections.
Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.
I sure hope the Belgians get to the bottom of this scary trend among trendy items that users hold against their heads or carry on their body.
Unrelated image of exploded iphone. If you hack it, it may blow up. Image gizmodo.com. Click for article.
Brussels Investigates Exploding iPhones
The European Commission asks iPhone manufacturer Apple to provide more information on cases of burning and exploding iPods and iPhones
August 19, 2009 | www.businessweek.com | By Leigh Phillips
A series of alleged cases of “exploding” iPhones and iPods in a handful of EU member states in which overheated devices “crackle and pop like a deep-frier” before breaking apart or catching fire, have provoked the European Commission into requesting manufacturer Apple (AAPL.O) and EU member states provide information on the possible dangers of two of the company’s most popular products.
“At the end of last week, we asked Apple and the member states where the incidents occurred to provide us with information on the matter,” commission spokesperson Ton Van Lierop, currently charged with the industry and enterprise dossier, told EUobserver.
