The 20 Weirdest Religious Beliefs: Test your knowledge of which strange belief belongs to which religion

                   Good Day World!

 We find it easy to dismiss the fantastical beliefs of people in other times and places, but those that we’ve been exposed to since childhood seem not so far out.

 Virgin birth? Water turning into wine? A fig tree shriveling on the spot? Dead people getting up out of their graves and walking around?

 All of the following beliefs are found in respected religions today. They have been long taught by religions that either are considered part of the American mainstream or are home grown, made in the U.S.A., produced here and exported. Some of these beliefs are ensconced in sacred texts. Others are simply traditional. All, at one time or another, have had the sanction of the highest church authorities, and many still do.

How many of them can you match up with a familiar religious tradition? (The answers are at the bottom.)

1.      The foreskin of [a holy one] may lie safeguarded in reliquaries made of gold and crystal and inlayed with gems--or it may have ascended into the heavens all by itself. ( 2)

2.      A race of giants once roamed the earth, the result of women and demi-gods interbreeding. (1, 6). They lived at the same time as fire breathing dragons. ( 1)

3.      Evil spirits can take control of pigs. ( 1)

4.      A talking donkey scolded a prophet. ( 1, 3 )

5.      A righteous man can control his wife’s access to eternal paradise. ( 6)

6.      Brown skin is a punishment for disobeying God. ( 6)

7.      A prophet once traveled between two cities on a miniature flying horse with the face of a woman and the tail of a peacock. ( 4)

8.      [The Holy One] forbids a cat or dog receiving a blood transfusion and forbids blood meal being used as garden fertilizer. ( 7)

9.      Sacred underwear protects believers from spiritual contamination and, according to some adherents, from fire and speeding bullets ( 6)

10.  When certain rites are performed beforehand, bread turns into human flesh after it is chewed and swallowed. ( 2)

11.  Invisible supernatural beings reveal themselves in mundane objects like oozing paint or cooking food. ( 2)

12.  In the end times, [the Holy One’s] chosen people will be gathered together in Jackson County, Missouri. ( 6)

13.  Believers can drink poison or get bit by snakes without being harmed. ( 1)

14.  Sprinkling water on a newborn, if done correctly, can keep the baby from eons of suffering should he or she die prematurely. ( 2)

15.  Waving a chicken over your head can take away your sins. ( 3)

16.  [A holy one] climbed a mountain and could see the whole earth from the mountain peak. ( 1, 2 )

17.  Putting a dirty milk glass and a plate from a roast beef sandwich in the same dishwasher can contaminate your soul. ( 3)

18.  There will be an afterlife in which exactly 144,000 people get to live eternally in Paradise. ( 8)

19.  Each human being contains many alien spirits that were trapped in volcanos by hydrogen bombs. ( 5)

20.  [A supernatural being] cares tremendously what you do with your penis. 1,2,3,4,6,7,8.

Key:  1-Evangelical or “Bible Believing” Christianity, 2-Catholic Christianity, 3-Judaism, 4-Islam, 5-Scientology, 6-Mormonism 7-Christian Science 8-Jehovah’s Witness

Each of these beliefs is remarkable in its own way. But the composite goes beyond remarkable to revealing. What it reveals is an underlying belief that is something like this:

The process that produced this world and human life is best unveiled not by the scientific method but by the musings of iron age herdsmen (1,2,3,4,7,8) or science fiction writers (5), or con artists (6) whose theories are best judged by examining only assertions that cannot be falsified.

Underlying that belief is a sort of rational swiss cheese that is going to keep cognitive scientists investigating and  arguing for decades.

We humans are astoundingly  susceptible to handed down nonsense. Human children are dependent on their parents for a decade or even two, which is why nature made children credulous. When parents say,  eat your peas, they’re good for you,  kids may argue about the  eat your peas part but they don’t usually question the factual assertion about nutrition. When parents say Noah put all of the animals into the ark,  it is the rare child who asks,  Why didn’t the lion eat the guinea pigs?

Even as adults, we simply can’t afford to research everything we hear and read, and so, unless something isn’t working for us, we tend to accept what we are told by trusted authority figures. We go with the flow. Religion exploits this tendency by, among other things, establishing hierarchy and by ensuring that believers are in a certain mindset when they encounter religious ideas. A friend once gave me a button that said,  Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church . I didn’t really want to wear a button that said “I’m an arrogant jerk,” but the reality is that even the best of churches aren’t optimized for critical thinking. Quite the opposite. The pacing, the music, the lighting—all are designed for assent and emotion, for a right brain aesthetic experience, for the dominance of what Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman  has called System 1 thinking, meaning intuition and gut feel rather than rational, slow, linear analysis.

Some of our ancestors were doing the best they could to understand the world around them but had a very limited set of tools at their disposal. It would appear that others were simply making stuff up. Mormonism and Scientology appear to fall in the latter camp.  But when it comes to religious credulity, the difference matters surprisingly little. For example, Mormonism is more easily debunked than most other religions, both because of its recency and because it makes so many historically or  scientifically wild claims , and yet it is also one of the fastest growing religions in the world proportional to its membership. Wild claims matter less than whether a religion has  certain viral characteristics .  (Story source)

- Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington and the founder of Wisdom Commons. She is the author of "Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light" and "Deas and Other Imaginings." Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

Meet the Eleven Main Enemies of Marijuana Legalization

In 1990, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates told a Senate committee that people who smoked pot occasionally “ought to be taken out and shot.” That kind of fanaticism, which dominated the debate on drugs 20 years ago, seems to have faded. Today’s politicians are more likely to dismiss cannabis concerns as “not serious” than to rail against the demons of dope—but the powers that be are still bent on keeping pot illegal. U.S. cops bust an average of almost 100 people every hour for pot, and an array of think tanks and nonprofit groups continues to pump out prohibitionist propaganda.

Here are 11 of the worst—the most powerful and the most vehement.

                     1. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart

A holdover from the Bush administration, Leonhart was formally appointed to head the Drug Enforcement Administration by Barack Obama in 2010. The antiprohibitionist movement strongly opposed her, citing the DEA’s raids on medical-marijuana growers in California—including one on a 69-year-old woman who had been the first grower to register with the Mendocino County Sheriff. 

As the DEA’s acting director in January 2009, she overruled a DEA administrative-law judge’s recommendation and denied the University of Massachusetts a license to cultivate marijuana for FDA-approved research. “This single act has blocked privately funded medical marijuana research in this country,” NORML head Allen St. Pierre said in July 2010.

Leonhart often carries hardline views to absurd extremes. In 2011, asked about the drug-cartel carnage in Mexico, she told the Washington Post that “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” because the cartels were fighting each other “like caged animals.” In June 2012, asked by Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) if crack, heroin and methamphetamine were worse for your health than marijuana, she repeatedly answered, “I believe all illegal drugs are bad.” Asked if opioid painkillers like OxyContin were more addictive than marijuana, she answered, “All illegal drugs in Schedule I are addictive.” GO HERE TO READ THE REST

Ocelots, pro baseball pitcher and pipeline builder tangled up in lawsuit

       Good Day Humboldt County!

How did a pro baseball pitcher (Josh Beckett of the L.A. Dodgers), ocelots and a natural gas pipeline builder make it into the same news headline?

They’re all part of a lawsuit filed by Beckett after the company used eminent domain to clear land on his 7,000-acre hunting ranch in south Texas.

Beckett alleges the company, Eagle Ford Midstream, violated the Endangered Species Act by clearing land that was habitat for the ocelot, of which only 100 are thought to be left in the wild in the U.S.On Wednesday, two Beckett companies filed a restraining order against Eagle Ford from continuing work inside the ranch. That followed a lawsuit filed Tuesday that states "multiple big cat tracks" were photographed there as recently as June and that Beckett saw ocelots as recently as last November, MySanAntonio.com reported.

Eagle Ford engaged in "willful destruction" by clearing land after a notice of intent to sue was filed in August, according to the lawsuit by Beckett Ventures Inc and Hall of Fame Land Ventures LP. Beckett also claimed Eagle Ford was urged to choose a shorter, direct path rather than the diagonal swath that was cleared. Ocelots are protected in Texas and at the federal level. A company found to have destroyed habitat could face fines and be forced to do mitigation work.

Eagle Ford did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment, but it filed a response with the court Wednesday, arguing that hunting on the ranch posed a greater threat than their pipeline. Beckett owns the Herradura Ranch in LaSalle County and runs a hunting lodge out of the premises. "The Herradura has offered superb dove, quail and trophy whitetail (deer) for over a decade," its website states.

Eagle Ford, in its court response, alleged that "the protection of the ocelot was merely a sham to leverage additional money from (Eagle Ford) in exchange for an easement." A state court earlier this month denied Beckett's similar request to halt the project, the company added.

It also noted that e-mails it received from Beckett's lawyers in April made no mention of ocelots and instead requested an alternative route because of the impact on an irrigation system and the ranch's hunting business.

Eagle Ford's environmental consultant earlier determined the land "does not exhibit the necessary density, coverage or structure generally described for potential ocelot habitat," adding that the nearest known population of ocelots was 120 miles away in Kennedy County.

Based on that information, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined no further action was required. Nocturnal wild cats that can weigh up to 30 pounds, ocelots prefer dense shrub habitat. While abundant in Central and South America, ocelots in the U.S. have been reduced to an estimated 100 in Texas and Arizona.

A key ocelot habitat in Texas has been the Lower Rio Grande Valley, but "more than 95 percent of the dense thorn scrub habitat (there) ... has been converted to agriculture, rangelands, or urban land uses," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted in its plan to help the species recover.

Other problems facing the Texas and Arizona population, the service added, include inbreeding, border fences separating the natural range that goes into Mexico, and ocelots becoming roadkill. (source)

Wasteful spending of your tax dollars: Martian menus, the “non-profit” NFL, and a $132 million do-nothing Congress

Think Congress does not have much to show for itself this year? Think again. A new report from Senator Tom Coburn's office highlights dozens of examples of government waste in 2012. Included for the first time on this list: Congress. The very people looking into government waste find they themselves are wasteful. Coburn's report estimates $132 million of taxpayers' money was wasted on "the most unproductive and unpopular Congress in modern history."

"The waste is unbelievable," says Coburn. "We're bankrupt, this country is bankrupt, and people just don't want to admit it."

Loopholes are part of the problem. The National Football League, for example, pulled in more than $9 billion last year, yet is technically a "non-profit" organization, costing the federal government tens of millions of dollars every year in lost revenue.

"We have some of the biggest corporations in America paying no taxes whatsoever, you know something is wrong with the code," says the Republican senator. Millions of dollars have also been spent on questionable items, like $325,000 on a squirrel robot, realistic enough to fool a rattlesnake, and developed with a National Science Foundation grant; $40,000 to produce a video game where players can virtually enjoy a pond in Massachusetts; and $516,000 to create a video game called "Prom Week," which simulates the interaction of teenagers surrounding the biggest social night in high school.

The spending approaches intergalactic proportions -- sort of. NASA has no plans for a manned mission to Mars, but is spending nearly a $1 million a year researching what kind of food astronauts could eat if they ever get there. "What was once a great country has been mortgaged and bankrupted by the egos and ethics of career politicians," says Coburn, who adds the only way to change the system is to vote out all the incumbents.

"If you want to change the trajectory of our country, if you want to get rid of the hundreds of billions of dollars of waste every year, you have to change who is there." For more examples of government waste, including another highly-subsidized, yet rarely-used airport, check out this week's Spinners and Winners. (source)

As It Stands presents Stupid Laws in Swing States – today we’ll visit Ohio

      Good Day Humboldt County!

Just for fun, let’s look at some stupid laws in Ohio as it’s in the news a lot this week.

President Obama and Gov. Romney are busy kissing babies and shaking hands in the state right now hoping to get undecided voters to vote for them.

Everyone is talking about how important the Swing States are in this year’s presidential election, but I’m taking the opportunity to share some stupid laws from these states…just because:

In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the speaker’s stand, you can be fined $25. Full text of the law.

It is illegal for more than five women to live in a house. Full text of the law.

No one may be arrested on Sunday or on the Fourth of July. Full text of the law.

                                                                  CITY LAWS IN OHIO

In Akron - No person shall solicit sex from another of the same gender if it offends the second person. Full text of the law.

In Bexley - Ordinance number 223, of 09/09/19 prohibits the installation and usage of in outhouses.

In Canton - If one loses their pet tiger, they must notify the authorities within one hour.  Full text of the law. and, Power Wheels cars may not be driven down the street. Full text of the law.     

In Cleveland - Women are forbidden from wearing patent leather shoes, lest men see reflections of their underwear and, It’s illegal to catch mice without a hunting license!

There’s more stupid laws in Ohio here

Time for me to walk on down the road…

'The Simpsons,' make list of 25 most powerful TV shows of the last 25 years

Television fans, there's a great new list out that gives props to the medium for having the power to sway elections, create catchphrases and change the way we think.

Mental Floss' list of "25 Most Powerful TV Shows of the Last 25 Years" makes the claim that more than the Bible or Shakespeare, "The Simpsons" has changed the way we speak. D'oh!

The long-running cartoon takes the No. 3 spot on the list, which cites University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman, who credited the show in research in 2005 by saying, "'The Simpsons' has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture’s greatest source of idioms, catchphrases, and sundry other textual allusions."and sundry other textual allusions." The list gives "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" (No. 11) credit for spawning an entire academic discipline, Buffy Studies; "Sex and the City" (No. 15) boosted the pregnancy rate, according to a RAND Institute study that reported girls between 12 and 17 who watched that and other shows with "high sexual content" were more than twice as likely to become pregnant. And the show that "rewired kids' brains"? That goes to No. 8 on the list, "SpongeBob SquarePants." Rest of the story here

Taking a BLOG BREAK…death in the family

I’ll be back at a future date.

My Mother passed away today.

Follow tonight’s Presidential Debate with Dave at Learnist

Join me at Learnist from 6:00 p.m. PST - (9:00 p.m. ET) to watch/ listen to the Presidential Debate LIVE tonight.

Click the above link and scroll down to the last (#9) “Learning” on the Board, and you’ll find the ALL the resources you need to keep track of the first of four debates between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney.

Shocking Bipartisan Senate Report: Homeland Security 'Fusion' Centers Spy on Citizens, Produce 'Shoddy' Work

                          Good Day Humboldt County!

                  Here’s something to think about today: 

 The Department of Homeland Security has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a network of 77 so-called “fusion” intelligence centers that have collected personal information on some U.S. citizens — including detailing the “reading habits” of American Muslims — while producing “shoddy” reports and making no contribution to thwarting any terrorist plots,  a new Senate report states.

The “ fusion centers,” created under President George W. Bush and expanded under President Barack Obama, consist of  special   teams of  federal , state and local officials collecting and analyzing  intelligence on suspicious activities throughout the country.  They have been hailed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as “one of the centerpieces”  of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts. But a bipartisan report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released Tuesday concludes that the centers “often produced irrelevant” and "useless” intelligence reports. “There were times when it was, ‘What a bunch of crap is coming through,’” one senior Homeland Security official is quoted as saying .

A spokesman for Napolitano immediately blasted the report as “out of date, inaccurate and misleading.” Another Homeland Security official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the department has made improvements to the fusion centers and that the skills of officials working in them are “evolving and maturing.”

While dismissing the value of much of the fusion centers’ work, the Senate panel  found  evidence of what  it called  “troubling” reports by some  centers that may have violated the civil liberties and privacy of U.S. citizens.  The evidence cited in the report could fuel a continuing controversy over claims that the FBI and some local police departments, notably New York City’s, have spied on American Muslims without a justifiable law enforcement reason for doing so. Among the examples in the report:

• One fusion center drafted a report on a list of reading suggestions prepared by a Muslim community group, titled “Ten Book Recommendations for Every Muslim.” The report noted that four of the authors were listed in a terrorism database, but a Homeland Security reviewer in Washington chastised the fusion center,  saying, “We cannot report on books and other writings” simply because the authors are  in a terrorism database. “The writings themselves are protected by the First Amendment unless you can establish that something in the writing indicates planning or advocates violent or other criminal activity.”
• 
• A fusion center in California prepared a report about a speaker at a Muslim center in Santa Cruz who was giving a daylong motivational talk—and a lecture on “positive parenting.” No link to terrorism was alleged. 
• Another fusion center drafted a  report on a U.S. citizen speaking at a local mosque that speculated that --  since the speaker had been listed in a terrorism data base — he may have been  attempting “to conduct fundraising and recruiting” for a foreign terrorist group.

“The number of things that scare me about this report are almost too many to write into this (form),” a Homeland Security reviewer wrote after analyzing the report. The reviewer noted that “the nature of this event is constitutionally protected activity (public speaking, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion.)”

The Senate panel found 40 reports -- including the three listed above -- that were drafted at fusion centers by Homeland Security officials, then later “nixed” by officials in Washington after reviewers “raised concerns the documents potentially endangered the civil liberties or legal privacy protections of the U.S. persons they mentioned.”

Despite being scrapped, however, the Senate report concluded that “these reports should not have been drafted at all.” It also noted that the reports were stored at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C., for  a year or more after they had been  canceled —a potential violation of the U.S. Privacy Act, which prohibits federal agencies from storing information on U.S. citizens’ First Amendment-protected activities if there is no valid reason to do so.

The report said the retention of these reports also appears to contradict Homeland Security’s own guidelines, which state that once a determination is made that a document should not be retained, “The U.S  person identifying information is to be destroyed immediately.”

The investigation was led by the Republican staff of the subcommittee but the 107-page report was approved by chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich and ranking minority Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.  It stated that much basic information about the fusion centers – including exactly how much they cost the federal government — was difficult to obtain. Although the fusion centers are overseen by Homeland Security, they are funded primarily through grants to local governments by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Although Homeland Security “was unable to provide an accurate tally,” the panel estimated the federal dollars spent on the centers between 2003 and 2011 at between $289 million and $1.4 billion.

The panel’s criticism of the fusion centers was shared in part by Michael Leiter, the former director of the National National Counter-Terrorism Center and now an NBC analyst. “Since 9/11, the growth of state and local fusion centers has been exponential and regrettably in many instances it has produced an ill-planned mishmash rather than a true national system that is well-integrated with existing organizations like the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces,” Leiter wrote in an email when asked about the report. 

In its response to the Senate panel , Homeland Security said that the canceled reports could still be retained “for administrative purposes such as audit and oversight.” The report cited multiple examples of what it called fusion center reports that had little if any value to counterterrorism efforts.

One fusion center report cited described how a certain model car had folding rear seats to the trunk, a feature that it said could be useful to human traffickers. This prompted a Homeland Security reviewer to note that such folding rear seats are “featured on MANY different  makes and model of vehicles” and “there is nothing of any intelligence value in this report.” (Read the rest of the story here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Future Technology: 3-D printed gun project derailed by legal woes

             Good Day Humboldt County!

This rapidly developing “printing technology” would have left Flash Gordon in shock.

It sure blows my mind. Actually printing solid objects. This new story points out this technology is going to bring a lot of legal challenges…soon.

It kinda creeps me out thinking about untold thousands of people printing up guns for themselves. I foresee a big problem with that. See what you think.

“After raising thousands of dollars to develop a free, 3-D-printable handgun, a group calling itself Defense Distributed has had to put its plans on hold, after the company providing their printing hardware refused to do business with them. It's an early episode in what is likely to be a long controversy.

Defense Distributed is a loosely organized group that intends to explore the possibility of creating weapons entirely using 3-D printed parts — and providing the files to do so freely online. They are unrelated to another recent project that partially built an assault rifle that way, but the concept is similar.

The group originally tried to raise money to develop the Wiki Weapon, as they call it, on the crowd-funding website IndieGoGo. The site pulled the plug, however, before the $20,000 the group was hoping to collect was pledged. Undeterred, Defense Distributed solicited donations in the Bitcoin virtual currency, and soon achieved their funding goal.

With the money, they leased a powerful 3-D printer from a company called Stratasys. But before they even had a chance to take the device out of its box, Stratasys caught wind of what its hardware was going to be used for and canceled the contract, sending someone to pick up the printer immediately.

Defense Distributed's Cody Wilson had expected some controversy, but the cancellation by Stratasys caught him by surprise. Speaking to Wired's Danger Room blog, he emphasized that what the group is doing is legal, since manufacture of weapons is not prohibited as long as they are not for sale or trade. This permits enthusiasts and artisans to create such things freely, but for anything more than personal use a license is required — a license Wilson doesn't have.

Stratasys may have erred on the side of caution (it commented to Wired that the company would not "knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes"), but it may also have been motivated by the equally understandable desire not to be associated with a potentially controversial project.

But as Wilson points out, the cat is out of the bag: The design and testing of a 3-D printed gun is inevitable given that the cost of doing it has dropped, and there is almost certainly a market for such devices. Defense Distributed is doing it openly and, they believe, legitimately — but others could easily do the same without bothering about the red tape. In the meantime, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is investigating, though they told Wilson they consider printed weapons a grey area at present.

The question of creating weapons at home, especially sophisticated and deadly ones like an automatic handgun, is bound to be a controversial one. The ability to bypass firearms regulations, not to mention the social and civil implications of cheap, ubiquitous and anonymous guns, will be a serious issue in the coming years, and Defense Distributed intends to be at the center of it.

More information about the Wiki Weapon and Defense Distributed's plans and rationale can be found at their website. Readers concerned with the legality and justification of producing printable weapons may find some answers in the FAQ. Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Another study that has to make you wonder: ‘Can You Tell A Woman's Politics By Looking At Her Face?’

                 Good Day Humboldt County!

Here’s an interesting study about perceptions of people based upon their appearance. Women are apparently very good at guessing who belongs to which party. But how do they do it?

            Scientists call it the “Michelle Bachmann Effect.”

                             Test yourself below.

Can you guess which of the US Representatives below is a Republican, and which is a Democrat, just based on their faces? (Answers are at the bottom, no peeking — unless you already recognize all these congresswomen, in which case you can scroll right down to the science.)

                                    

                                  1.                                                                         2.

                                3.                                                            4.

              

                              5.                                                                                  6.

        

                                7.                                                                                             8.

 

Answers:

1. Martha Roby, R-Alabama
2. Lois Capps, D-California
3. Grace Napolitano, D-California
4. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut
5. Judy Biggert, R-Illinois
6. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kansas
7. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine
8. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Missouri

That's a shorter version of the test psychologists Colleen Carpinella and Kerri Johnson gave undergraduates at UCLA for a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The undergrads were significantly better at guessing than would be expected by chance, and they were especially accurate with women. The likely reason, according to the study: Republican women are more likely than Democratic ones to have stereotypically feminine facial features.

In another experiment, Carpinella and Johnson used a computer program to measure how "sex-typical" the faces of male and female Representatives were, looking at characteristics like jaw shape, lip fullness, and cheekbone placement (they discounted things like hair, makeup, and jewelry). They found that Republican women were more likely to have stereotypically feminine faces — and the effect was more pronounced the more conservative their voting records were. The reverse was true for Democrats — the more liberal their voting records, the less traditionally feminine their faces. The study authors call this "the Michele Bachmann effect."

The study authors think that because the Republican platform advocates for traditional gender roles, women with more traditionally feminine appearances may gravitate toward the GOP. Interestingly, however, they found that Republican men actually had more feminine faces than Democratic men. This surprised Carpinella and Johnson, but they speculate that since governing is still seen as masculine in general, a slightly feminized appearance might not be an impediment to a Republican politician — he's already showing his masculinity by running for office in the first place. And Republicans may have an easier time getting away with slightly feminine faces than Democrats, since their political views are often seen as more masculine (cf. Arnold Schwarzenegger's claim that Democratic legislators were "girlie-men").

It's not clear if less-feminine women have a harder time making it in the Republican party (or if more-feminine women have difficulty being accepted by Democrats), or if people's physical appearances actually influence their political beliefs. Someresearch has found that political leanings can have genetic underpinnings — maybe the genes that affect liberalism or conservatism affect appearance as well. Or maybe the way women look as they grow up, and the way people respond to their appearance, influence how they vote later on. The less-principled in both parties are likely to spin this research in their favor — Democratic women are manly! Republican men are secret sissies! — but the reality is almost certainly more interesting.

Update: Asked what might be behind her findings, Carpinella said voter preference probably played a bigger role than genetics: "We have no evidence to support a biological interpretation of our effects — and that evidence favoring that would require a very different study. Instead, we believe this reveals more about the voters themselves. [...] Specifically, it appears that conservative voters insist that their policy preferences are reflected in the physical appearance of the political candidates who they ultimately put in office. Here, valuing traditional gender norms is apparent in the faces of successful politicians."

It would be interesting to look at the faces of ordinary Republican and Democratic voters, rather than elected officials, to see if the same appearance differences hold true.    (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

AS IT STANDS: Milestone Medical Marijuana case goes to court

                                          
            By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
 A rare opportunity for medical marijuana patients is coming on October 16th at 9:30 a.m. in the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Science will be pitted against politically-motivated decisions for the first time. It’s a match-up the Feds have avoided for years.  
 Ten years after the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) filed its petition, the courts will finally review the scientific evidence regarding the therapeutic value of marijuana.
The D.C. Circuit Court agreed to hear oral arguments in Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration.
"Medical marijuana patients are finally getting their day in court," said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel with Americans for Safe Access, the country's leading medical marijuana advocacy group.
"What's at stake in this case is nothing less than our country's scientific integrity and the imminent needs of millions of patients," Elford said in a press release.
  This is a case that could have major implications for taking marijuana out of Schedule I, a category that also includes heroin and LSD.

  Schedule I drugs are described as substances that “have a high potential for abuse, have no current accepted medical use in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for the use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.”
  Perhaps it was no coincidence that the announcement of oral arguments comes weeks after a study by Dr. Igor Grant was published in The Open Neurology Journal. He is one of the leading U.S. medical marijuana researchers, and claims marijuana's Schedule I classification is "not tenable."
  For years now, advocates for medical marijuana have submitted reports and studies showing the medicinal effects of marijuana but have been unable to crack the Fed’s wall of blind resistance to them. Dr. Grant and his associates have concluded it’s not true that marijuana has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking. The study urged additional research, and stated that marijuana's federal classification and its political controversy are "obstacles to medical progress in this area." 
  The Obama Justice Department has been escalating its attacks in medical marijuana states, with dozens of new federal indictments and prosecutions. Though U.S. Attorneys often claim the accused have violated state law in some way, defendants are prevented from using any medical evidence or a state law defense in federal court.
Hopefully we’ll see sanity and logic prevail, and marijuana will be reclassified, allowing federal defendants to use a medical necessity defense in future cases.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have adopted medical marijuana laws that not only recognize the medical efficacy of marijuana, but also provide safe and legal access to it.
The DEA’s aggressive campaign against marijuana has escalated under the Obama administration and it’s more important now than ever for patients to get their rights back. The trend has to be stopped.
 How unreasonable have the Feds been? During congressional testimony earlier this year, DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart refused to say whether crack or heroin posed bigger health risks than marijuana.
Really? I don’t know how Leonhart can look in the mirror after displaying that kind of stubborn ignorance. From day one, making marijuana illegal was a political ploy, based upon racism and ignorance.
  Now there’s a chance to reverse decades of a failed policy that should never have developed. Imagine how much more can be discovered about the medical properties of marijuana when legitimate research is funded instead of the bogus Fed-funded farces that have been the rule thus far?
  Millions of people will benefit. Millions of dollars can be diverted from the Lost War on Drugs if marijuana is rescheduled. The door will be open to legalization, something that fifty percent of Americans want according to national polls.
  As It Stands, this is a milestone case because it’s the first time the real merits of marijuana will be considered by a federal court that could change it’s legal status.

Mayan Calender Doesn’t Predict Coming Apocalypse Experts Claim

As the clock winds down to Dec. 21, experts on the Mayan calendar have been racing to convince people that the Mayas didn't predict an apocalypse for the end of this year.

Some experts are now saying the Mayas may indeed have made prophecies, just not about the end of the world. Archaeologists, anthropologists and other experts met Friday in the southern Mexico city of Merida to discuss the implications of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which is made up of 394-year periods called baktuns.

Experts estimate the system starts counting at 3114 B.C., and will have run through 13 baktuns, or 5,125 years, around Dec. 21. Experts say 13 was a significant number for the Mayans, and the end of that cycle would be a milestone — but not an end.

Fears that the calendar does point to the end have circulated in recent years. People in that camp believe the Maya may have been privy to impending astronomical disasters that would coincide with 2012, ranging from explosive storms on the surface of the sun that could knock out power grids to a galactic alignment that could trigger a reversal in Earth's magnetic field.

Mexican government archaeologist Alfredo Barrera said Friday that the Mayas did prophesize, but perhaps about more humdrum events like droughts or disease outbreaks. Experts stressed that the ancient Mayas, whose "classic" culture of writing, astronomy and temple complexes flourished from A.D. 300 to 900, were extremely interested in future events, far beyond Dec. 21.

"There are many ancient Maya monuments that discuss events far into the future from now," wroteGeoffrey Braswell, an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego. "The ancient Maya clearly believed things would happen far into the future from now."

"The king of Palenque, K'inich Hanaab Pakal, believed he would return to the Earth a couple of thousand years from now in the future," Braswell wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "Moreover, other monuments discuss events even before the creation in 3114 B.C."

Only a couple of references to the 2012 date equivalency have been found carved in stone at Mayan sites, and neither refers to an apocalypse, experts say. Such apocalyptic visions have been common for more than 1,000 years in Western, Christian thinking, and are not native to Mayan thought.

"This is thinking that, in truth, has nothing to do with Mayan culture," said Alexander Voss, an anthropologist at the University Of Quintana Roo, a state on Mexico's Caribbean coast. "This thing about looking for end-times is not something that comes from Mayan culture."

Braswell compared the Mayan calendar, with its system of cycles within cycles, to the series of synchronized wheels contained in old, analogue car odometers. "The Maya long count system is like a car odometer," Braswell wrote.

"My first car (odometer) only had six wheels so it went up to 99,999.9 miles. That didn't mean the car would explode after reaching 100,000 miles." source

A country song about PTSD: 'All you've got left are these pieces'

Even well publically raising awareness about PTSD for the VA, Stephen Cochran was losing his own battle with the condition.

 Good Day Humboldt County!

As a combat veteran with PTSD, I really appreciate the efforts from fellow warriors like Stephen Cochran – who has been there, and done that.

His story is the new reality for thousands of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home physically…but not mentally.

 

Please, take a moment and read Stephen’s story, and if you have time listen to his song “Pieces.”

“Everything you see in the music video happened to Marine-turned-country-singer Stephen Cochran: Pushing the girl away, boozing into oblivion, the gun on the blanket. It all went down last year. Even the actor who portrays Cochran is, himself, a former Marine and Iraq veteran who knows of post-traumatic stress, who has wrangled with identical demons. The actor was not acting.

The only on-screen tweak from reality was the type firearm shown. In his dimmest hour, behind a locked door in his Nashville home, exhausted, alone, and telling himself: “I’m done,” Cochran rested a loaded shotgun against his bed.

“I was just trying to get the nerve. I had it planned out,” Cochran told NBC News. “I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was tired of taking all these pills. I was going through a breakup. Couldn’t write anymore. Watching everything fall apart. I was ready to check out.”

Then: salvation, and a surreal rescue scene worthy of an epic ballad. His dog, Semper Fi, began scratching relentlessly at his door, bloodying her paws. Next, Cochran’s ex-fiancé unexpectedly entered the house, simply to retrieve a forgotten item, he said. She saw the anxious dog. She expected the worst. She barged into the bedroom, spotted the gun and physically restrained Cochran.

But from anguish came inspiration. Amid an existence long blurred by PTSD — the residue of Afghanistan firefights, Marine buddies lost in combat, and his own nearly fatal injury — one question blazed in Cochran's head. He jotted it down: “How do you paint a picture back in focus?”

“It was the only way I could describe trying to put your life back together, literally trying to do the impossible,” he said.

Around that single thought, Cochran penned an entire song, “Pieces,”an ode to the blackness from which he was aching to escape, a tale of reconnecting the scattered fragments of his shattered world, and a message of solidarity for his military brothers and sisters. The single — part of a CD with the same title — will be released in this country on Nov. 11. The song already has charted in Europe.

“It’s not just my story. So many of us think about (suicide) because you just get so tired, so tired of being the crazy guy. Or of hearing: ‘He’s weird.’ Or of hearing: ‘We can’t hire you because we really don’t know what post-traumatic stress is and you might come back and kill us all.’

“I really wrote it as my own healing, for what I was going through,” added Cochran, 33, who teamed with fellow musician Trevor Rosen to complete the song. It took them only 15 minutes.

But after playing it at several veterans’ benefits, Cochran heard from service members up and down the chain of command how they, too, connected with the lyrics. That feedback has turned “Pieces” into the soundtrack of the singer’s ongoing crusade.

“We have an epidemic of suicides in the military right now. At this point, we are physically losing both of these wars in the United States of America, not overseas.” (source)

Related: First opera about Iraq War reaches out to veteran suffering from PTSD

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Staten’s Island’s ‘Eiffel Tower’: New York To Get the World's Tallest Ferris Wheel

 Good Day Humboldt County!

New York! New York! Forget Broadway! Forget the skyscrapers!

People will soon know the city as a fun place with an extreme Ferris Wheel.

I wonder how New Yorkers feel about that?

“The world's tallest ever Ferris wheel is to be created in New York - at twice the height of the it will overlook. It will offer views of the Manhattan skyline (pic: New York Wheel LLC)

Unveiled by the city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, the planned tourist attraction in Staten Island will cost £142m ($230m) and measure up at 625ft (190m). The wheel will hold 1,440 passengers (pic: New York Wheel LLC) Offering views of the downtown Manhattan skyline, the New York Wheel will be significantly bigger than the 443ft (135m)-London Eye and the 541ft (165m) Signapore Flyer.

It is designed to carry 1,440 passengers at a time and expected to attract 4.5 million people a year to what has been described as New York's "forgotten borough".

Construction is due to begin in 2014 (pic: New York Wheel LLC) Mr Bloomberg said: "It will be an attraction unlike any other in New York City. In fact, it will be, we think, unlike any other on the planet." While the privately financed project faces various reviews, officials hope to have the wheel turning by the end of 2015.

It is hoped the scheme will create 1,100 jobs (pic: New York Wheel LLC) Senator Charles Schumer said: "It's going to be a real icon. The Ferris wheel will be Staten Island's Eiffel Tower."

The overall project will also feature the creation of a huge shopping center and a 200-room hotel and is expected to bring $500m (£308m) in private investment and 1,100 permanent jobs to the borough. (source)

Time to walk on down the road…

Stolen Buddhist Statue Carved From Meteorite

A mysterious 1,000-year-old Buddhist statue with a history that sounds like an Indiana Jones film plot was carved from a meteorite, researchers have discovered.

The 24cm-tall figure was stolen from Tibet in 1938 by a Nazi team who were looking for the origins of Adolf Hitler's Aryan race. A large swastika, which was carved on the chest of the figure, may have enticed the German expedition leaders.

The swastika symbolizes good fortune in Buddhism and the ancient symbol was adopted by the Nazis, who modified it into a mirror-image form. The expedition was supported by SS chief Heinrich Himmler who believed the roots of Aryanism - the notion of racial superiority that underpinned Nazism - could be found in Tibet.

The figure, called the Iron Man because of the high content of iron in its rock, was brought to Germany by a team headed by zoologist and ethnologist Ernst Schafer. It is not known exactly how the statue was found, but after being transported there it became part of a private collection in Munich. Scientists were only able to study it after an auction in 2007.

The statue weighs 10.6kg (23.3lb) and features the Buddhist god Vaisravana seated, with the palm of his right hand outstretched and pointing downwards. Experts led by Dr Elmar Buchner, from the University of Stuttgart, analysed samples of the figure and found it was made of a rare kind of meteorite called an ataxite, which has iron and high contents of nickel.

The rock survived a long trip through the Solar System and the destructive friction with the atmosphere when it collided with Earth. "The statue was chiselled from a fragment of the Chinga meteorite which crashed into the border areas between Mongolia and Siberia about 15,000 years ago," Dr Buchner said.

"While the first debris was officially discovered in 1913 by gold prospectors, we believe that this individual meteorite fragment was collected many centuries before." The exact dating of the carving cannot be established accurately, but its style links it to the pre-Buddhist Bon culture of the 11th century in Tibet, according to the study published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

Meteorites inspire worship from many ancient cultures, ranging from the Inuit of Greenland to Australian aborigines. (source)

Fans Rejoice: Are you ready for ‘real referees’ tonight on Thursday Night Football?

                   Good Day Humboldt County!

It looks like the NFL and the referees’ union came to an agreement in time for tonight’s game.

After what seemed the entire country – including presidential candidates and their sidekicks – calling for an end to the abysmal referees time on the professional gridiron, a deal was made. It was a short, and nasty, period of time that fans will look back at and call “ the three weeks of hell that practically destroyed the integrity of the game.” It’s all good now. Are you ready for “Thursday Night Football in America?”

“The NFL and the referees' union reached a tentative contract agreement at midnight Thursday, ending an impasse that began in June when the league locked out the officials and used replacements instead.

"Our officials will be back on the field starting tomorrow night" for the Cleveland-Baltimore game, Commissioner Roger Goodell said. "We appreciate the commitment of the NFLRA in working through the issues to reach this important agreement."

With Goodell at the table, the sides concluded two days of talks with the announcement of a tentative 8-year deal, which must be ratified by 51 percent of the union's 121 members. They plan to vote Friday.

"Our Board of Directors has unanimously approved taking this proposed CBA to the membership for a ratification vote," said Scott Green, president of the NFLRA. "We are glad to be getting back on the field for this week's games." (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Optimism is the Key to Protecting Heart Health Researchers Reveal

                 Good Day Humboldt County!

 Hi! My name is Dave and I’m a converted optimist. I started out being a pessimist. Being cynical and pessimistic was easier than being positive – which often required herculean efforts on my part.

  If you’re not naturally an optimistic person, it requires a conscious effort to see the positive side of things. The good news is, those efforts do pay off in time. The more you allow yourself the choice – half full or half empty – and chose the half full...the better you’ll start to feel.

It does feel good to be optimistic. Actually it feels great! As long as you understand there’s a difference between a starry-eyed optimist denying reality - and the optimist who understands bad situations - but remains positive anyway. Here’s what the researchers have to say about the subject of optimism:

“Harvard researchers suggest optimism, happiness and other positive emotions may help protect heart health and lower the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events.

It also appears that these psychological well-being factors slow the progress of cardiovascular disease.

The findings are the result of the first and largest systematic review of its kind, and are reported in the 16 April online issue of Psychological Bulletin, by lead author Julia Boehm, a research fellow, and senior author Laura Kubzansky, an associate professor, in the department of society, human development, and health, at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in Boston, Massachusetts.

According to the American Heart Association, one person dies from cardiovascular disease every 39 seconds in the United States.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Be the first on your street! Now you can pack a 950,000 volt punch with the ‘Knuckle Blaster Stun Gun’

Here you go Boys and Girls…be the first on your street to pack a wallop with either hand!

The Knuckle Blaster Stun Gun is intended as a self defense device for people who jog in dodgy areas (and if it’s a really really bad area you could always wear one of these on each hand as well as the defensive jacket).

Before shocking any potential muggers you should probably ask them if they have a pace maker, then again nah, just knee them and follow up with 950,000 volts to their face!

source

The Numbers Say You Probably Won't Believe The Numbers I’m About to Show You

             Good Day Humboldt County!

The following survey will probably come as no surprise to you. People have lost trust in the mass media.

The new “Lame Stream Media” makes no bones about supporting partisan causes. A flip of the dial and you have the Conservative excuse for reporting – FOX NEWS – or the Liberal excuse for news MSNBC – both party organs where the devoted can go to get sound bytes for ammunition.

All the credibility built up over years of news reporting from the likes of Edward R. Murrow to Walter Cronkite has been destroyed by greed. Yes, greed. Talking heads spewing party lines get more viewers than any attempt to just give the straight news.  A lot of Americans are fed up with the mass media for good reason.

“A new survey from Gallup suggests that six in ten Americans have little or no trust in the mass media to deliver the news "fully, accurately and fairly," a record number since the polling outfit began tracking the trend.

Here was the exact wording of the question: "In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media—such as newspapers, TV, and radio—when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly—a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?"

Sixty percent answered either "not very much" or "not at all," with the remaining 40 percent opting for either "a great deal" or at least "a fair amount." Just in case (or, we suppose, in the likely event) you don't believe us, here's the handy chart straight from Gallup:

According to the pollsters, this year's drop in media trust is being fueled largely by self-identified Republicans and independents.

Twenty-six percent of Republicans said they trusted the media either greatly or a fair amount, similar to the level of trust the GOP reported back in 2008, another election year. Independents, meanwhile, are much more negative about the media than they were in 2008, something that Gallup says suggests "the group that is most closely divided between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney is quite dissatisfied with its ability to get fair and accurate news coverage of this election."

Another Gallup chart (left).

Source

 

Time for me to walk on down the road…