Ichingcarpenter
Ichingcarpenter's JournalTo Avoid Prosecution Ratzinger to hide out in Vatican
Reuters) - Pope Benedict's decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.
"His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless. He wouldn't have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else," said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-pope-resignation-immunity-idUSBRE91E0ZI20130215
Why Russians have Dashcams on their cars
In Russia, everyone should have a camera on their dashboard. It’s better than keeping a lead pipe under your seat for protection (but you might still want that lead pipe).
These fights happen all the time and you can’t really press charges. Point to your broken nose or smashed windows all you want. The Russian courts don’t like verbal claims. They do, however, like to send people to jail for battery and property destruction if there’s definite video proof. That is why there’s a new, growing crop of dash-cam videos featuring would-be face-beaters backing away to the shouts of “You’re on camera, fucker! I’m calling the cops!”
Dash-cam footage is the only real way to substantiate your claims in the court of law. Forget witnesses. Hit and runs are very common and insurance companies notoriously specialize in denying claims. Two-way insurance coverage is very expensive and almost completely unavailable for vehicles over ten years old–the drivers can only get basic liability. Get into a minor or major accident and expect the other party to lie to the police or better yet, flee after rear-ending you. Since your insurance won’t pay unless the offender is found and sued, you’ll see dash-cam videos of post hit and run pursuits for plate numbers.
Russian websites go for the uncut, the horrible accidents–trucks flipping over, people being smashed into pieces and sedans flying up in the air and exploding. Given that television programing is mostly vacuous and heavily censored, dash-cam videos are very popular in Russia. It’s uncensored–drama, comedy, tragedy, horror, thriller and educational genres fused into one super-genre of “dash-cam.” Who needs Klitschko when you can watch two tough guys box in the street?
http://www.animalnewyork.com/2012/russian-dashcam/
Russia Calls for International Anti-Asteroid System after Meteor
Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has called for leading powers to work together to develop a system to intercept objects falling from space, after a meteor that exploded over Russia's Ural mountains injured about 1,000 on the ground below.
"Neither we nor the Americans have such technologies," Rogozin told Interfax news agency.
His remarks echoed concerns raised by his boss Dmitry Medvedev, who said the meteor that exploded in the skies over sparesly populated parts of Russia showed how "the whole planet is vulnerable".
The interior ministry raised its initial injury count from 250 to 985 people, including 204 children. They were hurt by falling space debris and sonic blasts shattering windows and damaging buildings in the Chelyabinsk region 1,500km east of Moscow.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin said he thanked god no large fragments of the meteor fell in populated areas.
More: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/435811/20130215/russia-meteor-putin.htm
Also
California Scientists Propose System to Vaporize Asteroids That Threaten Earth February 14, 2013
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– As an asteroid roughly half as large as a football field –– and with energy equal to a large hydrogen bomb –– readies for a fly-by of Earth on Friday, two California scientists are unveiling their proposal for a system that could eliminate a threat of this size in an hour. The same system could destroy asteroids 10 times larger than the one known as 2012 DA14 in about a year, with evaporation starting at a distance as far away as the Sun.
UC Santa Barbara physicist and professor Philip M. Lubin, and Gary B. Hughes, a researcher and professor from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, conceived DE-STAR, or Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids an exploRation, as a realistic means of mitigating potential threats posed to the Earth by asteroids and comets.
"We have to come to grips with discussing these issues in a logical and rational way," said Lubin, who began work on DE-STAR a year ago. "We need to be proactive rather than reactive in dealing with threats. Duck and cover is not an option. We can actually do something about it and it's credible to do something. So let's begin along this path. Let's start small and work our way up. There is no need to break the bank to start."
Described as a "directed energy orbital defense system," DE-STAR is designed to harness some of the power of the sun and convert it into a massive phased array of laser beams that can destroy, or evaporate, asteroids posing a potential threat to Earth. It is equally capable of changing an asteroid's orbit –– deflecting it away from Earth, or into the Sun –– and may also prove to be a valuable tool for assessing an asteroid's composition, enabling lucrative, rare-element mining. And it's entirely based on current essential technology.
"This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek," Hughes said. "All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we'd need –– scaling up would be the challenge –– but the basic elements are all there and ready to go. We just need to put them into a larger system to be effective, and once the system is there, it can do so many things."
More:http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2943
Maybe a 'war on space' vs war on drugs will kick start
the space program.
The blast was bigger than the north Korean nuke.
California Scientists Propose System to Vaporize Asteroids That Threaten Earth February 14, 2013
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– As an asteroid roughly half as large as a football field –– and with energy equal to a large hydrogen bomb –– readies for a fly-by of Earth on Friday, two California scientists are unveiling their proposal for a system that could eliminate a threat of this size in an hour. The same system could destroy asteroids 10 times larger than the one known as 2012 DA14 in about a year, with evaporation starting at a distance as far away as the Sun.
UC Santa Barbara physicist and professor Philip M. Lubin, and Gary B. Hughes, a researcher and professor from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, conceived DE-STAR, or Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids an exploRation, as a realistic means of mitigating potential threats posed to the Earth by asteroids and comets.
"We have to come to grips with discussing these issues in a logical and rational way," said Lubin, who began work on DE-STAR a year ago. "We need to be proactive rather than reactive in dealing with threats. Duck and cover is not an option. We can actually do something about it and it's credible to do something. So let's begin along this path. Let's start small and work our way up. There is no need to break the bank to start."
Described as a "directed energy orbital defense system," DE-STAR is designed to harness some of the power of the sun and convert it into a massive phased array of laser beams that can destroy, or evaporate, asteroids posing a potential threat to Earth. It is equally capable of changing an asteroid's orbit –– deflecting it away from Earth, or into the Sun –– and may also prove to be a valuable tool for assessing an asteroid's composition, enabling lucrative, rare-element mining. And it's entirely based on current essential technology.
"This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek," Hughes said. "All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we'd need –– scaling up would be the challenge –– but the basic elements are all there and ready to go. We just need to put them into a larger system to be effective, and once the system is there, it can do so many things."
More:http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2943
Also
Russia Calls for International Anti-Asteroid System after Meteor
Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has called for leading powers to work together to develop a system to intercept objects falling from space, after a meteor that exploded over Russia's Ural mountains injured about 1,000 on the ground below.
"Neither we nor the Americans have such technologies," Rogozin told Interfax news agency.
His remarks echoed concerns raised by his boss Dmitry Medvedev, who said the meteor that exploded in the skies over sparesly populated parts of Russia showed how "the whole planet is vulnerable".
The interior ministry raised its initial injury count from 250 to 985 people, including 204 children. They were hurt by falling space debris and sonic blasts shattering windows and damaging buildings in the Chelyabinsk region 1,500km east of Moscow.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin said he thanked god no large fragments of the meteor fell in populated areas.
More: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/435811/20130215/russia-meteor-putin.htm
Journal of Nature: The meteor blast far larger than the NKorean nuke
A meteor that exploded over Russia this morning was the largest recorded object to strike the Earth in more than a century, scientists say. Infrasound data collected by a network designed to watch for nuclear weapons testing suggests that today's blast released hundreds of kilotonnes of energy. That would make it far more powerful than the nuclear weapon tested by North Korea just days ago and the largest rock crashing on the planet since a meteor broke up over Siberia's Tunguska river in 1908.
"It was a very, very powerful event," says Margaret Campbell-Brown, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, who has studied data from two infrasound stations near the impact site. Her calculations show that the meteoroid was approximately 15 metres across when it entered the atmosphere, and put its mass at around 40 tonnes. "That would make it the biggest object recorded to hit the Earth since Tunguska," she says.
http://www.nature.com/news/russian-meteor-largest-in-a-century-1.12438
Nature is the premiere science magazine.
And this meteor was just a tiny one.
Mexico finds fire-god figure at top of Pyramid of the Sun
Did the rulers of the ancient city of Teotihuacan dedicate their largest pyramid to the god of fire, the so-called old god with a signature beard and fire atop his head?
Mexican archaeologists announced this week that a figure of the god, called Huehueteotl, was found in a covered pit at the apex of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, a popular archaeological site north of Mexico City.
Excavations are ongoing, but the discovery suggests that a long-disappeared temple at the top of the pyramid was used to perform ritual offerings to the fire god, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said in a statement Monday.
Huehueteotl is known in the archaeology of various Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmecs and Aztecs, and the Aztecs' predecessors in the Valley of Mexico, the Teotihuacanos. He is commonly represented as a viejo, or old man, sitting in a cross-legged position, often with a beard and a beaked nose, and with a hearth-like source of fire balanced on his head. Huehueteotl is associated with wisdom and rulership.
Archaeologists found the Huehueteotl, along with two stone pillars, in a covered pit about 15 feet deep, at a height of about 214 feet from the ground. The pit is below the remnants of a platform at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun that probably served as the foundation for a temple.
The people of Teotihuacan finished building the pyramid around AD 100 and destroyed its apex temple themselves around the end of the 5th century or the beginning of the 6th century, INAH said.
Archaeologists did not know that a pit existed at the top of the stepped pyramid, renowned as one of the largest of its kind in the Americas. It is now thought that Leopoldo Batres, the pioneering archaeologist who restored the pyramid to the basic form seen today, covered the platform a century ago without properly excavating it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexico-firegod-pyramid-20130213,0,7555042.story
Asteroids ..Neil DeGrasse Tyson plus impact photos from Russia
From his facebook today
More videos, latestnews, pictures from Russia
Link: http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/
its in english
Fox Dubiously Claims Minimum Wage Increase Harms Small Businesses
Fox News misleadingly claimed that an increase in the minimum wage would harm small businesses. In fact, data show that small businesses in states with a higher minimum wage experience better economic performance and job growth.
However those are not the facts
Facts:
Center For American Progress: Data Show States With Increased Minimum Wage Had Higher Small Business Job Growth. A 2006 study by the Center for American Progress and Policy Matters Ohio compared small business performance between states using the federal minimum wage and states that had a higher minimum wage, and found that employment in small businesses grew more in states with a higher minimum wage. [Center for American Progress, May 2006]
Fiscal Policy Institute: "Indicators Of Economic Performance Were Consistently Better" In Higher Minimum Wage States For Small Business Job Growth. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute:
In examining state-level small business job growth, the best government data available permits a comparison of 1998 and 2003; the latter is the most recent year for which the data are available. For the 10 states and the District of Columbia that had set their minimum wages above the federal level for most of this period, indicators of economic performance were consistently better than for the other 40 states where the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour prevailed. [Fiscal Policy Institute, 3/30/06]
NYTimes: Small Business Owners In A State With Higher Minimum Wage "Have Prospered Far Beyond Their Expectations." According to The New York Times:
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/02/13/fox-dubiously-claims-minimum-wage-increase-harm/192650
I think some DUers were
promoting Faux this morning.
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