The "News" thread.

[Unorthodox]

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/11/north_carolinas_shocking_history_of_sterilization/

Forced sterilization was the law in 32 U.S. states, and actually inspired the Nazis. We're just learning the truth

Though North Carolina did not sterilize the greatest number of people (that distinction belongs to California, where 20,000 were sterilized), the state’s Eugenics Board was notorious for its aggressiveness. While many states confined their sterilization programs to institutions, North Carolina allowed social workers to make recommendations based on observations of “unwholesome” home environments or poor school performance. The state’s program was also one of the longest lasting, increasing its number of sterilizations while others were winding down. Between 1929 and 1974, more than 7,600 North Carolinians were sterilized. Like Willis Lynch, many of the victims were children, and consent was provided by relatives or guardians who feared the loss of welfare benefits or other consequences if they refused.

[Buster's Uncle]

Embarrassing.

[Geo]

I'm sure they already had other spies, and didn't need you.

Oh well. Off the pay list I go... 

[Buster's Uncle]

Don't do anything stupid out of desperation for money.  You'd hate to have the rest of the espionage community laughing at how low you've sunk.

[JarlWolf]

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/11/north_carolinas_shocking_history_of_sterilization/

Forced sterilization was the law in 32 U.S. states, and actually inspired the Nazis. We're just learning the truth

Though North Carolina did not sterilize the greatest number of people (that distinction belongs to California, where 20,000 were sterilized), the state’s Eugenics Board was notorious for its aggressiveness. While many states confined their sterilization programs to institutions, North Carolina allowed social workers to make recommendations based on observations of “unwholesome” home environments or poor school performance. The state’s program was also one of the longest lasting, increasing its number of sterilizations while others were winding down. Between 1929 and 1974, more than 7,600 North Carolinians were sterilized. Like Willis Lynch, many of the victims were children, and consent was provided by relatives or guardians who feared the loss of welfare benefits or other consequences if they refused.

If that's not blatant fascism... I don't know what is...

[Buster's Uncle]

Mostly just virulent racism, I imagine...

[Buster's Uncle]

Gross! 15-Ton Blob of Fat Found Growing in Sewer
LiveScience.com
By Marc Lallanilla, Assistant Editor 14 hours ago

 
A 15-ton blob of congealed fat so large it's been dubbed a "fatberg" has been removed from a sewer tunnel beneath London.

And just in case you're not completely grossed out yet, the fatberg — as large as a double-decker bus — was mixed with thousands of used baby wipes.

"While we've removed greater volumes of fat from under central London in the past, we've never seen a single, congealed lump of lard this big clogging our sewers before," Gordon Hailwood, supervisor for water utility Thames Water, said in a statement.

"Given we've got the biggest sewers and this is the biggest fatberg we've encountered, we reckon it has to be the biggest such berg in British history," Hailwood said.

The monstrous blob of fat was created by people pouring food fat down the drain, and by flushing baby wipes down the toilet. Thames Water discovered the fatberg after residents in the suburb of Kingston, Surrey, complained that they couldn't flush their toilets.

By using closed-circuit television (CCTV), investigators discovered the creamy white fatberg, which had reduced the 28-inch (70 centimeter) sewer pipe to just 5 percent of its normal capacity.

"The sewer was almost completely clogged," Hailwood said. "If we hadn't discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston."

Concerned environmentalists will be relieved to know that the fat will be recycled, not sent to a landfill, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"We recycle everything that we remove — the water is extracted and the remaining fats and oils are turned into products like soap, biodiesel and fuel," a spokesman for CountyClean, the waste management company that removed the fatberg, told AFP.

"We have a very specialized piece of equipment — called a Kroll recycler — that we can use from the road and allows us to remove the fat without any workmen having to descend into the sewers," the spokesman said.

It will take about six weeks to repair the damaged sewer, according to Thames Water. The utility shared the CCTV video in an effort to educate its customers about the hazards of dumping fat and baby wipes down the drain.

"Homes and businesses need to change their ways," Hailwood said. "When it comes to fat and wipes, please remember: 'Bin it — don’t block it.'"

http://news.yahoo.com/gross-15-ton-blob-fat-found-growing-sewer-130743125.html

There's a video at the link.  I'M not looking...

[Unorthodox]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2394408/BBC-Breakfast-presenter-Louise-Minchin-accidentally-releases-mosquitoes-inside-studio.html

When the BBC Breakfast show decided to do an item about being bitten by mosquitoes, the programme's producers took no chances.
A sealed box of mosquitoes was brought in with a small hole cut in the side, covered by some protective gauze netting, through which each presenter could put their arm to see who the insects preferred.
Unfortunately, as presenter Louise Minchin tried to put her arm through the netting into the box, she managed to rip it off entirely, leaving the way clear for the whole swarm of bugs to fly free into the studio.
Scroll down for video

 
Don't bite me! BBC Breakfast presenter Louise Minchin gently puts her arm into the box of mosquitoes
 
Oops! As she pulled her arm away, the protective sleeve detached from the box, leaving the hole unguarded
 
The presenter was reduced to helpless laughter and had to mop her eyes after realising what she had done
The popular blonde host, 44, shrieked with laughter when she realised what she'd done, as the insects swarmed out of the box and up into the rafters.
Minchin had been interviewing Dr James Logan from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine about how the recent muggy weather had been perfect for mosquitoes. 
She and co-host Bill Turnbull, 57, had asked the doctor how best to avoid being bitten, and they'd discussed whether mosquitoes preferred some victims to others, putting their arms into the box of bugs.
 More...Baked waxworm anyone? Students hope to break down the prejudice against eating bugs by opening a pop-up restaurant with grasshopper and caterpillar on the menu
Twitter to alert hungry diners to bad restaurants that are likely to make them ill

But when Minchin pulled her arm away, she ripped the protective sleeve, leaving the doctor with an empty box where the insects had been.
Minchin gasped and said: 'Me and mosquitoes have a very bad relationship,' while Turnbull added: 'Anyone got any fly spray?'
The camera then cut to the newsdesk where newsreader Simon McCoy flapped his hands, mimicking swatting the pests away.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2394408/BBC-Breakfast-presenter-Louise-Minchin-accidentally-releases-mosquitoes-inside-studio.html#ixzz2c3p5sS62
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*snicker*

[Unorthodox]

Area 51. 

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/government-now-admits-theres-area-51/68389/

ewly declassified documents, obtained by George Washington University's National Security Archive, appear to for the first time acknowledge the existence of Area 51. Hundreds of pages describe the genesis of the Nevada site that was home to the government's spy plane program for decades. The documents do not, however, mention aliens.

The project started humbly. In the pre-drone era about a decade after the end of World War II, President Eisenhower signed off on a project aimed at building a high-altitude, long-range, manned aircraft that could photograph remote targets. Working together, the Air Force and Lockheed developed a craft that could hold the high-resolution cameras required for the images, a craft that became the U-2. Why "U-2"?

They decided that they could not call the project aircraft a bomber, fighter, or transport plane, and they did not want anyone to know that the new plane was for reconnaissance, so [Air Force officers] Geary and Culbertson decided that it should come under the utility aircraft category. At the time, there were only two utility aircraft on the books, a U-1 and a U-3. told Culbertson that the Lockheed CL-282 was going to be known officially as the U-2.
The next step was to find a place from which the top-secret aircraft could be flown.



On 12 April 1955 [CIA officer] Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund Ritland (the senior Air Force officer on the project staff) flew over Nevada with [Lockheed's] Kelly Johnson in a small Beechcraft plane piloted by Lockheed's chief test pilot, Tony LeVier. They spotted what appeared to be an airstrip by a salt flat known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground. After debating about landing on the old airstrip, LeVier set the plane down on the lakebed, and all four walked over to examine the strip. The facility had been used during World War II as an aerial gunnery range for Army Air Corps pilots. From the air the strip appeared to be paved, but on closer inspection it turned out to have originally been fashioned from compacted earth that had turned into ankle-deep dust after more than a decade of disuse. If LeVier had atrempted to land on the airstrip, the plane would probably have nosed over when the wheels sank into the loose soil, killing or injuring all of the key figures in the U-2 project.
That's the first acknowledged mention of the Groom Lake site, according to Chris Pocock, a British author who's written extensively about the program and provided his thoughts to the GWU archive. Nor, it seems, has the low-contrast image that accompanies that section (below) been seen.



The name "Area 51," so evocative, was an accident of circumstance.

After consulting with [the CIA's] Dulles, Bissell and Miller asked the Atomic Energy Commission to add the Groom Lake area to its real estate holdings in Nevada. AEC Chairman Adm. Lewis Strauss readily agreed, and President Eisenhower also approved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51, to the Nevada Test Site. The outlines of Area 51 are shown on current unclassified maps as a small rectangular area adjoining the northeast corner of the much larger Nevada Test Site.
Recognizing that people might not be excited about moving to a place called "Area 51" in the middle of the desert, a new name was offered: "Paradise Ranch, which was soon shortened to the Ranch." It was less appealing, however, in popular culture.

The National Security Archive outlines other new revelations in the documents (all 407 pages of which can be downloaded from the site). Three new details:

[Unorthodox]

http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21011550967433/family-allegedly-kicked-out-of-universal-studios-over-police-t-shirt/

UNDATED (WSVN) -- A South Florida family is disappointed after they said they were kicked out of a Florida theme park over a T-shirt.

Sixteen-year-old Sabryna Jarosz had no idea her parents were taking her on a birthday trip to Universal Studios Orlando. But the excitement soon turned into disappointment.

"It was a surprise for our daughter's sweet 16," said Sabryna's mother Diana.

The family was on their way to see the Blue Man Group on Saturday night when they said park security surrounded them. "This is what they kicked me out for, wearing that?" said Sabryna's father Christian as he showed off the police shirt he was wearing when he claims security escorted him out of the theme park.

Christian said security told him he couldn't wear the shirt. "He just basically said, 'You can't wear that that shirt in this park,'" he said.

"We wanted to get to the show. It was about Sabryna's birthday. So he's like, 'Follow us, we'll go to Billabong, we'll buy a shirt.' I picked out a shirt for him," said Diana.

According to the Jaroszes, while they were buying the new shirt and questioning the policy, more security showed up. "[They said], 'Don't bother; you guys are out of here.' We were like, 'What are you talking about? We are out of here? We are buying a shirt.' He's like, 'Don't even worry about it. Don't buy it; you guys are all out of here,'" said Christian.

Sabryna said she just wanted to enjoy her birthday. "I was like, 'What is going on? I just want to see Blue Man Group.' I'm just so excited my family took me here," she said.

A spokesman for Universal Studio's released a statement by e-mail which read: "The only people we allow in our parks with shirts that might identify them as police officers are working law enforcement personnel. This is for everyone's safety and to avoid confusion."

"He just basically said over and over, 'You know what this means ... if you don't leave right now you are trespassing and you'll be arrested.' And honestly, I run a school; I've never done anything against the law," said Diana.

The Universal spokesman refused to comment on the specific case, but he did say staff wouldn't kick anyone out of the park for simply asking a question.

The Jaroszes said they don't plan on returning to Universal Studios anytime soon.

(Copyright 2013 by Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)



Read more: http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21011550967433/family-allegedly-kicked-out-of-universal-studios-over-police-t-shirt/#ixzz2dvlZIsRA

We had a situation at the local amusement park last year.  They have a water park inside, and one day, I was just taking the kids to the water park portion in the morning.  Got in just fine.  When we went to leave the water park we got the "I can't let you out", because Talia was wearing her swimsuit.  It was a one peice thing, and I had brought shorts, but they wouldn't let us leave without a shirt.  Teenage girls were showing more skin in their "shirts", but since it was a swim suit, it was against policy.  THEN WHY DID YOU LET US IN TO BEGIN WITH.  Ended up buying a shirt from the gift shop.   

It was a really bad day for the survey people to grab us on the way out...

Really haven't desired to be back to the water park portion since. 

[Unorthodox]

Are we outgrowing the uncanny valley?

Is the "uncanny valley" a myth?
   The "uncanny valley" is that creepy Final Fantasy feeling when a robot or CGI character is too dead-eyed to be believable, but too realistic to be cute. Roboticists and animators have long tried to avoid creations that induce this psychological state. But maybe they've been worried about nothing.
Roboticist Masahiro Mori invented the idea of the uncanny valley back in the 1970s, when he created a chart showing an enormous dip in people's comfort levels around humanoid robots that were almost lifelike but not quite perfect.

And Mori's idea has been law among roboticists and animators for years, as they try to avoid freaking people out with creations that remind us of corpses and zombies (which you can see are at the bottom of that uncanny trough).
But now some scientists are finding that people are no longer having that creeped-out response to lifelike automatons.
Rose Eveleth writes on the BBC:
A few studies have asserted that the whole thing doesn’t exist. In one study, David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, in Plano, Texas, and his colleagues showed participants images of two different robots that were animated to simulate human-like facial expressions. The survey simply asked the participants what they thought of the experience. The vast majority (73%) liked the human-like robots. In fact, not one person stated that these robots disturbed them.

Hanson and his team then showed the participants a continuum of images, starting with a picture of Princess Jasmine taken from the Disney movie Aladdin. Over the course of six images, Jasmine’s face slowly morphed into that of actress Jennifer Love Hewitt. The idea of these facial progression studies is to try to observe the dip in likeability that Mori predicted between an obviously cartoon image and an obviously human one. The participants were asked to rank the acceptability of each picture in the series. But, again, rather than see a dip in the scores in the middle of the range – as the uncanny valley would predict – none of the images seemed to bother anyone.

Why this happened isn’t clear, and not everyone thinks Hanson’s experiment is robust. Many other studies have shown the opposite. For example, Edward Schneider’s lab at SUNY Potsdam in New York collected 75 existing characters from video games and animation, including Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse, Snoopy and Lara Croft. They asked participants how human and how attractive (or repulsive) they perceived each character to be. In this case, the researchers did find a dip in likeability in the middle of the series, roughly where the ogres from World of Warcraft sit.

Moreover, a team lead by Karl MacDorman at Indiana University conducted an experiment similar to Hanson’s, using a progression of images in which a robot face slowly morphs into a human one. They, too, found a U-shaped dip in likeability in the middle of their 11-image series.
Is this a generational difference between people who grew up in the 1990s, with robots and CGI, and Mori's generation who grew up in the 1960s?
Annalee Newitz is the author of the book, Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. Follow her on Twitter.

[Rusty Edge]

I'm guessing  that I'm one of those people that dip. I grew up in the 60s/70s.  For me the creepiest twilight zones are the ones that blurr the lines between humans and dolls/manequins. The worst was the Ventriloquist episode with Cliff Robertson where his dummy struggled with him and then exchanged places.  I'm guessing it was the inspiration for the Chucky Horror films ( which I don't want to see.) Dolls that look haunted give me the creeps.


I always thought that the best approach to robots was to make them resemble "man's best friend", the dog.

Not some human replacement that could become my slave or replacement, neither of which I want.


But generational differences wouldn't surprise me, especially among people raised on Teletubbies.

[Unorthodox]

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/56824317-79/honey-utah-red-department.html.csp

Utah beekeepers asked to report red honey to state officials
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
First Published Sep 04 2013 02:06 pm • Last Updated Sep 04 2013 02:15 pm
The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food is advising beekeepers to separate red honey from natural honey in their hives and to report the colored product to state officials.

The advisory comes after the department received several complaints about the presence of the red honey occurring in bee hives located in areas of Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties.

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Red honey likely stems from bees being fed a by-product from a candy cane factory.

Officials are investigating the safety of red honey, "but we have no reason to believe the product is unsafe," said department spokesman Larry Lewis.

The Division of Regulatory Services also is determining if the product is in violation of the Utah Honey Standard of Identity Act, which identifies honey as a product that originates from a floral source.

WHY are you feeding bees candy canes? 

From what I can gather, ONE person fed the candy cane, and since bees are lazy like the rest of nature, they stole some and it got into commercial hives, which got some stolen, and so on. 

Still confused by the initial feeding.  You typically don't start keeping bees without SOME kind of research, and why you would suppliment with candycane is beyond me.  Best guess was hoping peppermint would keep something out?

[Buster's Uncle]

Panda poop: The missing link for cheap, renewable energy?
Carmel Lobello September 11, 2013 3:47 PM  The Week



What goes in...comes out as renewable energy?

 
Pandas may hold the key to efficiently and cheaply turning plants into renewable energy — in their feces.

This week, at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Indianapolis, Ashli Brown, a biochemist from Mississippi State University, presented research she's doing with the feces of Ya Ya and Le Le, two pandas at the Memphis Zoo.

"We have discovered microbes in panda feces that might actually be a solution to the search for sustainable new sources of energy," she told attendees, according to National Geographic. Apparently these microbes are very good at breaking down plant material used to make biofuels like ethanol.

The finding could solve a tough problem for scientists. Biofuels are often made from crops like corn and soy beans that can also be used for food. Because scientists are reluctant to dip into the food supply, they've had develop ways to break down the inedible parts of these crops, like the corn cobs and stalks.

But those materials are tough. They have to be cooked or treated with substances like acid to turn them into simple sugars, which are then fermented into ethanol or other biofuels. The process is expensive, and not particularly energy-efficient — which kind of defeats the point.

The microbes in panda poop, however, could break down these materials a lot more efficiently and at a lower cost.

What's so special about panda waste? For one, an adult panda eats 20 to 40 pounds of tough, fibrous bamboo each day. It spends about 12 of each 24 hours munching away.

There are other factors that make the microbes in panda poop more effective than the microbes in, say, cow dung:

Pandas also have short digestive tracts for such large animals, and just a single stomach chamber, [Candace Williams, one of the researchers] added. (Cows, in comparison, use four different stomach regions to gradually remove the energy from grass.) "This means their bacteria have to be even more potent at breaking down the material quickly," she said, "making them very efficient and perhaps even more promising for biofuel production."

The scientists hope to use the microbes themselves, or the enzymes the bacteria makes to digest the plant material.

And if the prospect of cheap, efficient biofuel production isn't enough, there's another reason these microbes appeal to scientists: Pandas are an endangered species — the world is down to about 2,500 of them. "Researching the poop microbes may also lead to the discovery of new information that can be used to keep pandas healthy," says Nature World News.

Now, if only we could convince them to procreate.

http://news.yahoo.com/panda-poop-missing-cheap-renewable-energy-194700378.html

[Buster's Uncle]

What Goes Up, Must Come Down: Balloonist Abandons Transatlantic Voyage
LiveScience.com
By Marc Lallanilla, Assistant Editor  September 13, 2013 2:12 PM
Updated at 2:06 p.m. ET, Friday, Sept. 13.


Balloonist Jonathan Trappe, who was attempting to set a new world record by becoming the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean by cluster ballooning, has abandoned his effort and landed in a remote part of Canada.

Trappe lifted off from Caribou, Maine, Thursday morning (Sept. 12) with 370 balloons attached to a small yellow lifeboat, and headed east across the sea according to The Guardian. His destination: somewhere between Iceland and Morocco.

An experienced cluster balloonist, Trappe has floated over the English Channel and once traveled for 14 hours by balloon, setting a world record. "This is far greater than anything achieved before," Trappe said before liftoff. "I'm looking at 62 hours or longer."

But Trappe's latest attempt was short-lived: He reported "technical difficulties" late Thursday evening, landed his craft and spent the night in an isolated area of coastal Canada, according to Reuters.

Cluster ballooning is an extreme activity that began in 1982, when Larry Walters of San Pedro, Calif., strapped 45 helium balloons to an ordinary lawn chair, intending to rise a few yards above his backyard. Underestimating the lift of helium balloons, Walters suddenly found himself shooting upward to a height of about 15,000 feet (4,600 meters). He eventually landed safely by using a pellet gun to shoot some of his balloons, but not before his "aircraft" became entangled in some power lines, causing an area-wide blackout.

Not all balloonists are greeted with the same enthusiasm that Walters and Trappe have encountered. The U.K. Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has denounced cluster-ballooning stunts as a waste of helium, a valuable and increasingly rare commodity. "While Mr. Trappe is attempting a remarkable feat, when you know how precious helium is, it seems crazy to use such a large volume of it in such a frivolous way," James Hutchinson, science manager of the RSC, said in a statement.

Indeed, resource managers worldwide are growing increasingly alarmed over the looming shortage of helium. Though it's the second-most-abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, helium is not easy to find or store in usable quantities — most of the helium in the atmosphere escapes into space, and current helium supplies are largely extracted from underground natural-gas reserves.

Because helium has the lowest boiling and melting points of all the chemical elements — liquid helium is the only liquid that cannot be solidified by lowering its temperature — it's proven to be indispensable in a wide range of industrial and medical uses. Magnetic resonance imagery (MRI) relies on helium to cool the powerful magnets needed to create MRI scans.

Helium is also essential to the manufacturing of computer chips, optical fiber and medical lasers. It's often used in rocket-engine testing, arc welding, air-to-air missile guidance, and other civilian and military uses. Party balloons and parade floats use just a small fraction of the world's helium supply.

http://news.yahoo.com/goes-must-come-down-balloonist-abandons-transatlantic-voyage-181211602.html