Saturday, September 8, 2018
This Sunday...Skip The NFL
Go To Church
Go To The Range
Go For A Hike
Go For A Walk
Engage with kids or grand-kids
Ride a bike
Check you preps
Clean your closet
Read A Book
Start using isometrics to strengthen muscles:
10 Offbeat Stories You Might Have Missed This Week (9/8/18)
Seven days have passed, and it is time, yet again, to look at some of the stranger stories that made headlines this week.
We have a multifarious collection of news items today. There’s pole dancing in China, a ghost ship in Myanmar, and a giant penis on an English hillside. We make an amazing discovery about sharks and explore some trouble aboard the ISS. We also take a look at two peculiar heists—one which just occurred and one that was solved after 13 years.
10 Astronaut Plugs Hole With Finger
Photo credit: International Space Station/Twitter
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station faced potential peril last week when they discovered that a leak somewhere on the station was causing the air pressure to drop. Fortunately, the hole was small enough that one of the astronauts simply plugged it with his finger.The leak was first detected by NASA ground crews while everyone aboard the ISS was sleeping. The next morning, the first order of business was finding the breach. They located the 2-millimeter-wide hole in the orbital section of Soyuz spacecraft MS-09.[1] It was probably caused by a micrometeorite hitting the ISS with enough force to punch through the wall.German astronaut Alexander Gerst stopped the air pressure from dropping by plugging the leak with his finger. Obviously, this was only a temporary measure while a more permanent solution was devised, not that the lasting resolution was significantly more high-tech. In the end, astronauts used epoxy and high-strength tape to seal the hole. So far, it is working, but they are still looking into something more reliable for the foreseeable future.
As its name suggests, microdosing involves taking very small doses of the drug, as little as one-fifteenth of a tab. It is said that this technique eliminates all hallucinogenic effects but helps with focus and depression. It has become a popular aid in the digital world of Silicon Valley. However, the method has never been tested scientifically, so all reports of benefits and side effects are anecdotal. On September 3, though, a placebo-controlled trial started at Imperial College London, sponsored by the Beckley Foundation, an organization founded to advance research into mind-altering substances.[2]
There’s just one problem—taking LSD is still illegal, no matter the dose. Therefore, researchers had to adopt a less conventional approach by inviting people who already microdose to join a “self-blinded study.” In other words, participants will be providing their own drugs which they will be inserting into some gel capsules while leaving others empty to serve as the control. Then they will take doses regularly without knowing if they are consuming LSD or a placebo.
Afterward, the test subjects will participate in online questionnaires and cognitive games to see what effects the drug has. The research team will know which capsules have LSD inside through QR codes and will tally the results after four weeks of testing.
8 The Ghost Ship Of Yangon
7 Going Up
Photo credit: CNET
We are getting one step closer to a space elevator this month, as Japanese scientists will test a miniature version as proof of concept.
Researchers from Shizuoka University are planning to send up an elevator stand-in box measuring 6 centimeters (2.4 in) long, 3 centimeters (1.2 in) wide, and 3 centimeters high. Unlike a regular space elevator, this one will be launched into space using a rocket. It will also be joined by two miniature satellites which will be connected together using a 10-meter-long (33 ft) steel cable.
The motorized box will travel between the two satellites on the cable, acting as a substitute for an elevator car. Its short journey will be recorded and transmitted back to Earth. The main goal here is to see how a container connected to a cable moves through space.[4] The mission is set to launch on September 11 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima.
There are many obstacles left before a real space elevator becomes a reality. However, the significant reduction in risks and costs is pushing development ever further. The university’s collaborator and adviser, Japanese construction giant Obayashi Corporation, is working on its own space elevator, which should be ready by 2050. Such a device is expected to reduce the costs of transporting cargo from $22,000 per kilogram via shuttle to just $200.
6 Whiskey In The Jar
We have a multifarious collection of news items today. There’s pole dancing in China, a ghost ship in Myanmar, and a giant penis on an English hillside. We make an amazing discovery about sharks and explore some trouble aboard the ISS. We also take a look at two peculiar heists—one which just occurred and one that was solved after 13 years.
10 Astronaut Plugs Hole With Finger
Photo credit: International Space Station/Twitter
9 LSD On Trial
The first ever LSD microdosing trials started this week to see what benefits, if any, this method of consumption has.
As its name suggests, microdosing involves taking very small doses of the drug, as little as one-fifteenth of a tab. It is said that this technique eliminates all hallucinogenic effects but helps with focus and depression. It has become a popular aid in the digital world of Silicon Valley. However, the method has never been tested scientifically, so all reports of benefits and side effects are anecdotal. On September 3, though, a placebo-controlled trial started at Imperial College London, sponsored by the Beckley Foundation, an organization founded to advance research into mind-altering substances.[2]
There’s just one problem—taking LSD is still illegal, no matter the dose. Therefore, researchers had to adopt a less conventional approach by inviting people who already microdose to join a “self-blinded study.” In other words, participants will be providing their own drugs which they will be inserting into some gel capsules while leaving others empty to serve as the control. Then they will take doses regularly without knowing if they are consuming LSD or a placebo.
Afterward, the test subjects will participate in online questionnaires and cognitive games to see what effects the drug has. The research team will know which capsules have LSD inside through QR codes and will tally the results after four weeks of testing.
8 The Ghost Ship Of Yangon
Photo credit: Yangon Police/Facebook
A curious sight occurred in the city of Yangon in Myanmar last week when a giant “ghost ship” was found drifting near its shore. The mystery was put to rest on Saturday when the vessel was identified as the Sam Ratulangi PB 1600, an Indonesian freighter headed for Bangladesh.
There were no crew members or goods aboard the ship. Myanmar navy officials believed it had been towed after finding two cables at the head. An investigation eventually found an Indonesian tugboat called Independence about 80 kilometers (50 mi) away.
What started off as an intriguing, even spooky mystery had a mundane explanation. The tugboat had been towing the freighter since August 13. They were headed for a ship-breaking factory in Bangladesh, but bad weather caused a cable to break.[3] They then decided to simply abandon it.
A curious sight occurred in the city of Yangon in Myanmar last week when a giant “ghost ship” was found drifting near its shore. The mystery was put to rest on Saturday when the vessel was identified as the Sam Ratulangi PB 1600, an Indonesian freighter headed for Bangladesh.
There were no crew members or goods aboard the ship. Myanmar navy officials believed it had been towed after finding two cables at the head. An investigation eventually found an Indonesian tugboat called Independence about 80 kilometers (50 mi) away.
What started off as an intriguing, even spooky mystery had a mundane explanation. The tugboat had been towing the freighter since August 13. They were headed for a ship-breaking factory in Bangladesh, but bad weather caused a cable to break.[3] They then decided to simply abandon it.
7 Going Up
We are getting one step closer to a space elevator this month, as Japanese scientists will test a miniature version as proof of concept.
Researchers from Shizuoka University are planning to send up an elevator stand-in box measuring 6 centimeters (2.4 in) long, 3 centimeters (1.2 in) wide, and 3 centimeters high. Unlike a regular space elevator, this one will be launched into space using a rocket. It will also be joined by two miniature satellites which will be connected together using a 10-meter-long (33 ft) steel cable.
The motorized box will travel between the two satellites on the cable, acting as a substitute for an elevator car. Its short journey will be recorded and transmitted back to Earth. The main goal here is to see how a container connected to a cable moves through space.[4] The mission is set to launch on September 11 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima.
There are many obstacles left before a real space elevator becomes a reality. However, the significant reduction in risks and costs is pushing development ever further. The university’s collaborator and adviser, Japanese construction giant Obayashi Corporation, is working on its own space elevator, which should be ready by 2050. Such a device is expected to reduce the costs of transporting cargo from $22,000 per kilogram via shuttle to just $200.
6 Whiskey In The Jar
House Leaders Question Environmental Group’s Ties With China
Congressional leaders are pressing their case against environmental activists who are closely aligned with Chinese government officials.
In a letter Wednesday to the Washington-based World Resources Institute, Reps. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, and Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., ask the leader of the nonprofit international research group to document compliance with federal law covering agents of foreign powers.
Bishop and Westerman note that World Resources Institute consistently has praised China’s actions through certain media platforms even as it sharply criticizes recent U.S. policy under the Trump administration:
While WRI criticizes policies of the U.S. government, WRI is silent on Chinese human rights violations such as arrests of environmental protesters and the mass detention of ethnic minorities. By contrast, WRI advocates on behalf of the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in other countries. On important issues for Chinese leadership, WRI’s position appears to closely reflect China’s goals and objectives.
Bishop is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and Westerman is chairman of its oversight and investigations subcommittee.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires anyone who acts as an agent of foreign principals “in a political or quasi-political capacity” to disclose that relationship periodically with the U.S. government, according to the Justice Department. The law also requires disclosure of all “activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of those activities.”
The two congressmen’s letter to Andrew Steer, president and CEO of World Resources Institute, notes that the organization has operated in China since 2008.
It says the institute’s “leadership regularly interacts with senior Chinese government and Communist Party officials and provides public support for Chinese environmental programs, including supplying positive quotes for Chinese government press releases and op-eds in the government-controlled China Daily.”
China Daily is an English-language newspaper that is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the letter says.
The two House Republicans quote FBI Director Christopher Wray as calling China “the broadest, most challenging, most significant” counterintelligence threat to the U.S.
For this reason, Bishop and Westerman argue, “the apparent strong ties between the People’s Republic of China, the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and certain U.S.-based tax-exempt organizations” warrant clarification and investigation.
Steer, an economist from Great Britain, previously worked as a special envoy on climate change for the World Bank. He is a member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, an advisory body sanctioned by the Chinese government.
Bishop and Westerman set a deadline of Sept. 12 for Steer to respond to the request to document compliance with the law.
The Daily Signal asked World Resources Institute for comment on its compliance, its reaction to the letter, and meeting the deadline. In an email Friday, the institute replied:
In order to respond to the world’s most urgent sustainability challenges, it’s vital to work in the world’s developing countries and major economies, including China, the world’s most populous country. We are proud of our work in China, including on issues related to air pollution, traffic congestion, and water quality.
We welcome the opportunity to respond to the [Natural Resources] Committee’s letter, as we vigorously pursue our goal of making the planet safer, healthier and more prosperous for all people.
World Resources Institute, founded in 1982, received its initial funding in the form of a $15 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The institute describes its mission as “to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of...
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #373
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Friday, September 7, 2018
Animated Gif Collection #13 -OR- This Guy Was Inches From DEATH!
More Great Gifs:
Takeoffs And Landings...
Just When He Least Expected It..
More Amazing Animated Gifs HERE
Animated Gif Collection #2 HERE
Animated Gif Collection #3
Animated Gif Collection #4
Animated Gif Collection #5 -OR- Motorcycles And Bulls Don't Mix..
Animated Gif Collection #6 or Bet She Lost Some Teeth...
Animated Gif Collection #7 -OR- This Is What Happens When You Fall Asleep While Driving...
Animated Gif Collection #8 -OR- Fish: 1, Dog: 0
Animated Gif Collection #9 -OR-Out Of Control Bus -OR-
Animated Gif Collection #10 -OR- How To Launch An Oil Truck Into The Air
Animated Gif Collection #11 -OR- Man That Must Have Hurt
Animated GIF Collection #12 -OR- This Is Brutal
Animated Gif Collection #13 -OR- This Guy Was Inches From DEATH!
Animated Gif Collection #14
Animated Gif Collection #15
Animated Gif Collection #16 -OR- Make It Rain!
Animated Gif Collection #17 -OR- THIS IS NOT HOW YOU KILL THE CHINESE CORONA VIRUS!
Sex, Lies And Muslim Honor Killings In Texas....
Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, 60, was found guilty of masterminding two homicides as part of broader plot to kill five people, including his daughter, after she ran away from the family compound in rural Montgomery County, converted to Christianity and married a Christian man.
Family members of the victims said the quick verdict indicates the jury was certain that Irsan was guilty, and that “honor killings” are not acceptable.
“Honor killings have no place in American society,” said Michael Creed, the older brother of Coty Beavers, one of the victims. “These are not infrequent events that happen in some random part of the world. They’re happening in America and they’re on the rise.”
A lengthy punishment hearing will begin on Friday, and the jury will determine if Irsan should be sentenced to death or life without parole for the double homicide of 28-year-old Beavers in November 2012 and Gelareh Bagherzadeh, an Iranian activist who was a close friend of Irsan’s daughter, 11 months earlier.
As state District Judge Jan Krocker read the verdict, Irsan shook his head slightly and looked down at the counsel table where he was sitting in a black suit.
After the courtroom had been cleared, members of the Beavers and Bagherzadeh families, all with tears in their eyes, hugged the prosecutors who also cried.
“It’s been hard for all of us, but it’s a good day,” said Kathy Soltani, a family friend of the Bagherzadehs. “Two wonderful lives cut short. It’s senseless. It’s a hard day, even though it’s a happy day.”
The two seemingly unrelated murders shocked Houston residents in 2012, and for a time there was speculation that Bagherzadeh’s murder was the work of Iranian elements unhappy with her criticism of that country’s government. But an even darker motive was given in 2015, when Irsan, his wife, and son were charged with planning the killings to restore family honor.
In closing arguments, a team of special prosecutors insisted that the elder Irsan, the father of 12 children by two wives, was...
Hollywood Director Caught Knowingly Employing REGISTERED CHILD SEX OFFENDER
 |
| Actress Olivia Munn raised the alarm with studio executives after learning of Streigel's sex offender status. |
20th Century Fox has purged one scene from its upcoming ‘Predator’ movie after it was discovered that one of the actors is a registered child sex offender. The director apologized when it emerged he knew about the conviction.
The scene was cut after executives were made aware that actor Steven Wilder Striegel is a registered sex offender. Striegel played a minor role in the film, featuring in only one scene.
“When the studio learned the details, his one scene in the film was removed within 24 hours,” Fox said in a statement as cited by Variety. “We were not aware of his background during the casting process due to legal limitations that impede studios from running background checks on actors.”
Actress and ‘Predator’ star Olivia Munn, who acted in the scene with Striegel, learned of the actor’s conviction as a child sex offender and alerted the studio on August 15.
In addition to this statement, the @latimes also reported that Wilder said Shane was “aware of the facts” of his arrest. He made a “personal choice” to continually work with a convicted sex offender, but I didn’t have a choice. That decision was made for me. And that’s not okay.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Predator director James Black was aware of Striegel’s status as a sex offender at the time he hired him. Striegel has previously appeared in several films directed by Black, including ‘Iron Man 3’ and ‘The Nice Guys.’
“Having read this morning’s news reports, it has sadly become clear to me that I was misled by a friend I really wanted to believe was telling me the truth when he described the circumstances of his conviction,”Black said. ”I believe strongly in giving people second chances – but sometimes you discover that chance is not as warranted as you may have hoped.”
“After learning more about the affidavit, transcripts and additional details surrounding Steve Striegel’s sentence, I am deeply disappointed in myself. I apologise to all of those, past and present, I’ve let down by having Steve around them without giving them a voice in the decision,” Black added.
Striegel pleaded guilty to two felony counts of ‘risk of injury to a child’ and ‘enticing a minor by computer,’for his internet relationship with a 14-year-old Connecticut girl in 2009. Messages between the two were found by the girl’s father who alerted authorities. Striegel was later convicted of...
Coup against Trump gains traction after John McCain’s funeral
On Thursday, two more anonymous “senior White House officials” boasted about “dozens and dozens” of other White House appointed bureaucrats that are carrying out “a resistance from the inside” against the Trump administration, Axios reported.
This sadly also confirms everything Trump has been saying about the deep state conspiring against him. On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted that he was going to start declassifying evidence of the deep state’s many crimes.
The problem however is everyone on the right and left hates John McCain. The level of hatred on social media and in comment sections across the internet after McCain’s death was clearly bipartisan.
Left-wing journalist Caitlin Johnstone was temporarily banned from Twitter over her tweet that had gone viral.
To all the people who are reporting @caitoz to the Twitter police, what exactly are you reporting her for? She is not advocating anyone harming #JohnMcCain. She just thinks the world will be better off when he is dead.
If you think her opinions are tasteless, you can block her.
Contrary to the media’s propaganda, McCain was hardly a unifying figure. If the NYT op-ed writer had contact with people outside of the swamp, they would have known this.
The Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, a 527 Political Action Committee, was formed in 1997. During his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, McCain was a “Manchurian candidate” the group said.
They believe that McCain was an agent of the Vietnamese, and in 2008, a flier claimed that McCain was a “Hanoi Hilton songbird” who collaborated with...
3 Takeaways From Day 3 of Kavanaugh’s Confirmation Hearings
Protesters continued to punctuate the senators’ questions throughout the day, and a dozen or so of the girls Kavanaugh has coached on basketball teams showed up in the afternoon to support “Coach K.”
Here are the key takeaways from Kavanaugh’s final day before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
1. Booker’s ‘disclosed’ documents were a nothing burger—and a publicity stunt.
The morning began with the dramatic announcement by Sen. Cory Booker, D.-N.J., that “I am going to release [an e-mail from Kavanaugh’s record] about racial profiling, and I understand that the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate.” That decision earned Booker a stern rebuke from some Republican senators.
It turns out, however, that the documents Booker had discussed in the hearing and “released” had already been cleared for public release the night before. He wasn’t defying anyone.
So far, more than 350,000 pages of material from or about Kavanaugh’s professional work have been made available to the public. That’s more than for the past five Supreme Court nominees combined.
This week’s discussion about documents, however, has failed to clarify that different federal statutes set rules for handling different categories of material.
The Federal Records Act, for example, governs documents from Kavanaugh’s work as an associate independent counsel, while the Presidential Records Act governs the documents from his work as an associate White House counsel.
Most documents can be made publicly available right away, while others require more review but are still made available to the committee members and staff. That’s what the label “committee confidential” means.
Booker, apparently objecting to any documents being designated “committee confidential,” took matters into his own hands and released emails from Kavanaugh’s time serving in the White House counsel’s office. Booker gave the impression that this was a dramatic, defiant, and perhaps even dangerous step, saying: “This is about the closest I’ll probably ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment … [and] I’m knowingly violating the rules.”
Later in the day, Booker released more confidential documents. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has repeatedly invited senators simply to request public release of particular documents and proven that he’s willing to do so. Given that, Booker simply could have made a request rather than make this look more like a publicity stunt.
In the emails, Kavanaugh discussed racial profiling in airport security screening following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He wrote that he “generally favor[ed] effective security measures that are race-neutral.”
Booker made it sound like the emails might somehow expose Kavanaugh as a proponent of racial profiling. It turns out the opposite was true.
In another email chain, leaked to The New York Times, Kavanaugh had reviewed a draft op-ed supporting one of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees that stated “legal scholars across the board” agree that Roe v. Wade is “the settled law of the land.” Kavanaugh also wrote: “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level.”
At the hearing Thursday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked what he meant by that, and Kavanaugh explained that he suggested deleting a line from the draft op-ed since there are plenty of scholars who do not believe that Roe v. Wade is settled.
Far from being revelatory bombshells, these emails show Kavanaugh providing straightforward advice as an attorney working for the president. Addressing those issues in that role is not at all the same as a judge addressing those issues in the context of actual cases with real parties and specific facts.
2. Feinstein earned four Pinocchios.
Two of Feinstein’s exchanges with Kavanaugh from Day Two of the hearing included some obvious factual errors. First, she claimed that between 200,000 and 1.2 million women died from illegal abortions in the 1950s-60s, pointing to a report by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.
But those numbers actually refer to the estimated number of illegal abortions during those years, not the number of women who died from them. The death statistic was around 200-300 per year. That’s a pretty big discrepancy.
Second, in questioning Kavanaugh about the Second Amendment, Feinstein stated that there have been “hundreds of school shootings using assault weapons.” Once again, Feinstein got her numbers wrong. As Jacob Sullum at Reason explained (citing a Mother Jones database of mass shootings), only six attacks at schools involved “assault weapons.” That’s far short of the “hundreds” Feinstein claimed.
3. Senate approved other nominees over lunch.
When the committee broke for lunch Thursday, senators made a quick detour to the Senate floor to confirm eight nominees to the U.S. District Court. Only two required a formal recorded vote (the tallies were 60-35 and 79-12).
This brings President Donald Trump’s total number of confirmations to 68 judges (including Justice Neil Gorsuch). Yet during the same time, the...
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