Herman Cain reveals his religious bigotry and xenophobia

Cain speaks for nearly a half an hour [at Florida's The Holy Land Experience amusement park] and despite a couple fleeting "999" mentions, keeps his speech to topics of faith and his recent battle with cancer. He begins with a story about how he knew he would survive when he discovered that his physician was named "Dr. Lord," that the hospital attendant's name was "Grace" and that the incision made on his chest during the surgery would be in the shape of a "J." 

"Come on, y'all. As in J-E-S-U-S! Yes! A doctor named Lord! A lady named Grace! And a J-cut for Jesus Almighty," Cain boomed.

He did have a slight worry at one point during the chemotherapy process when he discovered that one of the surgeon's name was "Dr. Abdallah." 

"I said to his physician assistant, I said, 'That sounds foreign--not that I had anything against foreign doctors--but it sounded too foreign," Cain tells the audience. "She said, 'He's from Lebanon.' Oh, Lebanon! My mind immediately started thinking, wait a minute, maybe his religious persuasion is different than mine! She could see the look on my face and she said, 'Don't worry, Mr. Cain, he's a Christian from Lebanon.'" 

"Hallelujah!" Cain says. "Thank God!" 

Boldfacing mine. Further details at Yahoo News.

Immigrants

The cover of this week's New Yorker magazine.

Artistic credit to Christoph Niemann, via Neatorama.

The Tea Party congressmen start to cash in

It's not just the Tea Partier, of course.  And not just the Republicans; all the elected officials do this.  It's a big trough.

A joint analysis by iWatch News and the Center for Responsive Politics has found that the 15 freshmen members of the Tea Party Caucus have embraced many of the same special interests that have supported Republicans for years. The fifteen combined have received over $3,450,000 during the first three quarters of this year from almost 700 different PACs...

“Business as usual,” says Mary Boyle of good-government group Common Cause. “The lobbyists and other traditional Washington powers know that the newbies will learn fast that they need them, and their rolodexes.”..

The Bankers Association is another notable, given the full throated support of the financial system raised by some members of the Tea Party Caucus. Freshman Joe Walsh recently screamed at a constituent who asked about big banks’ role in the financial collapse, "Don't blame the banks ... that pisses me off.” In fact, over 17 percent of the money brought in by the Tea Party Caucus freshmen came from the financial institution, according to CRP numbers.... 

Further details, with info re individual congressmen, at the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch website.

"Brinicle" - an underwater "icicle of death"

YouTube link. 

Filmed "beneath the ice off the foothills of the volcano Mount Erebus", the timelapse covers a period of 4-5 hours; here's some of the relevant science (from the YouTube link):

In winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can be below -20C, whereas the sea water is only about -1.9C. Heat flows from the warmer sea up to the very cold air, forming new ice from the bottom. The salt in this newly formed ice is concentrated and pushed into the brine channels. And because it is very cold and salty, it is denser than the water beneath.

The result is the brine sinks in a descending plume. But as this extremely cold brine leaves the sea ice, it freezes the relatively fresh seawater it comes in contact with. This forms a fragile tube of ice around the descending plume, which grows into what has been called a brinicle.

I was surprised to see that it killed starfish on the sea floor.  The video is excerpted from the "Frozen Planet" series.  More information at the BBC.

Debunking "vodka tampons"

Earlier this year I posted a report from Germany in which authorities claimed that the use of alcohol-soaked tampons was not an effective way to get intoxicated.  Reports of such have been persistent, but now Danielle Crittenden has performed a more thorough debunking by writing a first-person description of the difficulties and ultimate failure of the maneuver.  Some excerpts:

This had urban legend written all over it. I mean, just think of the sheer logistics of it (Gentlemen, you may want to skip down a paragraph): When you soak the tampon, it enlarges (duh). How then do you reverse engineer it back into its applicator to "toss it back," so to speak? And without the help of the applicator, wouldn't it be like trying to shove an unfurled umbrella back into its cover? Ok, so maybe you don't remove the tampon, but soak it in its applicator: Just stick it in a martini glass like a swizzle stick. Classy! Still, how does it absorb the alcohol if it can't expand? ...

Grimly, I realized there was only one way to settle the mystery... In the interests of science and parents everywhere, I decided that I would have to test the rumour myself... My concerns about the plastic applicator, however, proved well-founded. It drank up a little, maybe half an ounce, before it could hold no more. Not even a 13-year-old would get tipsy from that. I moved on to the next beaker...

I repaired to the bathroom and -- without too much information here -- managed to wad the thing up and push it in where it was supposed to go. (Did it help that I've had three kids? Possibly.) Girls, don't do this in your best party dresses: I think I lost another half-ounce in the process as it splattered on to my clothes and the floor. No need to say "Bottoms up!"

Reaction: Oh sweet mother of Jeez---- 

Owwwwww..... Absolut... firewater!!!!!!! 

Holy sheeeeeeeee... 

It felt like someone had thrown a lit match in there. I began hopping around and breathing in the rapid, short puffs I'd learned in birth classes, so long ago, before I realized I didn't need to breathe like that if I took the epidural...

The rest of her report is in the Huffington Post.  It is worth noting in closing, however, that intrarectal administration of alcohol ("butt-chugging") IS pharmacologically valid, as exemplified by this report of a man who killed himself with an intrarectal overdose (and won a 2007 Darwin Award).

Is Gingrich channelling?

He prides himself on being a historian.  His recent criticism of the participants in OWS - "Go get a job, right after you take a bath" - is strikingly similar to this comment from the presidential campaign of 1968:

"You come up when I get through and I'll autograph your sandals for you. That is, if you got any on . . . You need a good haircut. That's all that's wrong with you. . . There are two four-letter words I bet you folks don't know: 'work' and 'soap.'"

Those not old enough to remember the incident will find the 1968 speaker identified at The Dish. 

A toad with a living intraocular worm

YouTube link. 

I don't know what type of worm this is, but when as I watched the video I was reminded of guinea worms that infect human eyes, and of Sir David Attenborough's pronouncement on that subject:

Andrew Denton: When you see this sort of stuff, do you ever get a sense of God's pattern?

Sir David Attenborough: Well, if you ask…about that, then you see remarkable things like that earwig and you also see all very beautiful things like hummingbirds, orchids, and so on. But you also ought to think of the other, less attractive things. You ought to think of tapeworms. You ought to think of…well, think of a parasitic worm that lives only in the eyeballs of human beings, boring its way through them, in West Africa, for example, where it's common, turning people blind. So if you say, "I believe that God designed and created and brought into existence every single species that exists," then you've also got to say, "Well, he, at some stage, decided to bring into existence a worm that's going to turn people blind." Now, I find that very difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God. And I certainly find it difficult to believe that a God — superhuman, supreme power — would actually do that.

And another observation from the same interview:

Andrew Denton: As perhaps the most experienced broadcaster in the world, here's a question for you. Why is it alright for kids to watch zebras having sex on television, but it's pornographic if humans do it?

Sir David Attenborough: Very difficult question, and I don't know the answer. Um…and of course, oddly enough, it's the same with violence. That people will object very much to seeing a predator killing its prey, and yet, in the news, will accept showing shots of people shooting one another. It's just awful.

If you're not already awed by stem cell biology...

... take a look at this report in Circulation Research from researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center which demonstrates that in a pregnant female experiencing myocardial (heart) injury, stem cells from her fetus can navigate to the mother's heart to assist in the repair process.

We report that fetal cells selectively home to injured maternal hearts and undergo differentiation into diverse cardiac lineages. Using enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP)-tagged fetuses, we demonstrate engraftment of multipotent fetal cells in injury zones of maternal hearts. In vivo, eGFP+ fetal cells form endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, and cardiomyocytes.

This study was conducted in mice, but there is no reason to expect that it would not apply to humans, and it may in fact help explain earlier observations that pregnant women experience better recovery from heart injuries than persons in other demographic groups. Also of note:

Previous research has identified fetal stem cells in other damaged organs of pregnant women, including the brain, liver, kidney and lung. Fetuses also produce cells that are known to protect the mother against breast cancer.

Finally, note that fetal stem cells can be harvested from placentas; their use doesn't imply the need for abortions.
 
Via Neatorama.

Vivaldi's "Summer" performed by David Garrett

YouTube link. 

Last year I posted a video of him entering the Guiness Book of World Records by playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" in 1 minute, 5.26 seconds.

Scum

From a story in the Wall Street Journal:

When a man walking among the graves at the Mount Emblem Cemetery in this Chicago suburb suddenly jumped into his car and sped off one day in August, a worker jotted down his license plate number and called police.

A few days later, police say, they tailed the blue Ford Focus to another cemetery and watched as the man collected 51 bronze vases attached to grave markers in about 15 minutes. He then drove to a scrap-metal yard, where police say he had already sold hundreds of vases with a replacement value of up to $600 each.

 The vases, about 10 inches high and three inches in diameter, are made of bronze, an alloy rich in copper. They typically screw into a plate on the grave marker and are secured with a small chain. Although the price of copper has dropped about 20% this year, most major metals prices are still near historic highs.

Worth knowing about if you have any relevant family gravesite decorations - though I don't suppose there's much you can do to prevent the theft.  More at the link.

Hammock in a home library

You know you'd love to have one. 

Found at The Centered Librarian.

Stacking and carrying bricks

YouTube link. 

Filmed in Khulna, Bangladesh (another episode - apparently the original - is here. Truly an awesome performance in what would otherwise be a rather mundane activity.

[I originally posted this three years ago, but Skipweasel reminded me of it when I recently wrote about bricklaying, and I think it's worth a repost.  If you haven't viewed it before, you'll have a hard time believing what you're seeing.  Just when you think he's done and fully loaded... he adds more.]

I'll bet this lady had an interesting x-ray

MIAMI -- A woman who wanted to work at a nightclub started searching for someone who could perform plastic surgery at a cheap price to give her a curvier body. Police say what she found was a woman posing as a doctor who filled her buttocks with cement, mineral oil and flat-tire sealant.

The rest of the story is at the Fox News.

Interesting hairstyle

Major Daniel Gano - County Court Clerk who created the 

first Commercial Greenhouse and Botanical Gardens in Cincinnatti - 1872

Men of various cultures and eras have braided their hair, and I've seen modern women with beads and fabric incorporated into braids, but would that be the explanation for the curious little sphere on this man's shoulder, or am I misreading the photo?

Via Victoria's Rusty Knickers.

Addendum: I originally titled this post "What's resting on this man's shoulder ?" (because I couldn't tell), but by consensus in the comments, that's just a tangle of curly hair at the end of the braid.  I guess you can tell I've never braided any hair.  Oh, well, this is a rather prosaic final post for the day; the choice was between him and some slime mold.  Maybe the latter would have been more exciting.

The mass murder of rhinoceros

Can nobody stop it? Can no major political leader or other public figure realise what is happening and have the guts or find a moment to speak out about the horrific, heartless, headlong slaughter of the world's rhinos which is now running out of control?

Yes of course, most people naturally have concerns at the moment which preclude worrying about the welfare of wildlife. But the rhino carnage now going on is different; in its scale, it is something quite new. Driven by an urban myth in Asia – that a Vietnamese politician had his liver cancer cured by powered rhino horn – the price of horn has shot up to about $38,000 per kilo, more than the price of cocaine, and approaching the price of gold. These lumberingly gentle, charismatic animals might as well be walking around with a solid gold nose, and as a result are being butchered as never before...

On the very day I wrote this, the world wildlife watchdog, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, announced that a further rhino subspecies, the western black rhino from West Africa, had also been driven extinct, while a third, the northern white rhino, last seen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, had "probably" been driven over the edge. In addition to that, the IUCN said, the Javan rhinoceros itself is teetering on the brink, probably down to about 40 individuals, in a single park in Indonesia...

Now comes even more disturbing news: a report from the Humane Society International, complete with sickening photographs, reveals that the latest trend is for poachers to use silent tranquiliser dart guns, rather than rifles, as the risk of detection by wildlife protection officials is less. So while the animals are still alive, the HSI report says, the poachers "use machetes and chainsaws to hack off their horns, leaving the animals to regain consciousness with hideous deep face wounds, massive blood loss and unimaginable pain".

The executive director of HSI, Mark Jones, himself a vet, says: "The rhinos who die whilst still anaesthetised are the lucky ones."

And all this for a myth. All this for the fable, long accepted in traditional Asian medicine, that rhino horn has curative properties. In fact, rhino horn is largely composed of keratin, the substance of which our fingernails and hair are made, and has no medicinal properties whatsoever. But the burgeoning Asian middle classes – those for whom traditional medicine is a way of life – have now gone from an ancient belief that the horn cures fevers, to believing that horn cures cancer, and are bidding the price up to spectacular and disastrous levels.

Yet disappearing they are. Of the five main rhinoceros species, all except one – the population of white rhinos in South Africa – are now threatened with extinction. It is happening before our eyes. These marvellous relicts of the age of megafauna, of the time of the mammoth and sabre-toothed tiger and other remarkable beasts which died out at the close of the last ice age, are coming to the end of their time on Earth, simply through naked human greed.

From an essay by Michael McCarthy in The Independent.  Spread the word.  Perhaps it will reach someone.