July 2, 2012

Guys who like My Little Pony gather for 'BronyCon'

SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) — Dale Fjordbotten is a proud "My Little Pony" fan, with the shiny blue body suit and yellow lightning bolt, blue wings and blue tail to prove it.

Like many "Bronies" — boys and men who like the cartoon "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic"— the 25-year-old college student turned out over the weekend for "BronyCon Summer 2012" at the Meadowlands Exposition Center, which drew 4,000 men, women, boys and girls, many in colorful wigs and costumes.

"I thought about what people would say. 'It's creepy. It's weird. It's a ... show for little girls,'" said Fjordbotten, from Staten Island, N.Y. "It's just a great show ... the story line, the plot, the beautiful animation."

Bronies say they're a misunderstood lot who've gotten a bad rap from the media. They're all about the show, friendship, love and tolerance, and they have no bad intentions, they say.
<snip>
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iBmO7n5UW54HTRflV_8J9Wbz_FRQ?docId=bb344bc85ae745ac80214f1743093083

Alrighty then....

July 2, 2012

Supreme Court Springs A Leak; Leaks To Conservative Pundits May Have Started More Than A Month Ago

CBS News’ Jan Crawford confirms widespread rumors that Chief Justice John Roberts initially voted to strike down the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, but decided midway through the opinion drafting process that he could not support this constitutionally unjustifiable result. In what may be the biggest revelation of her piece, Crawford also reports that pseudo-moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy led the internal lobbying effort to bring Roberts back into the right-wing fold:

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy – believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law – led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.
<snip>
Moreover, as Linda Greenhouse points out, it is possible that the Court started springing leaks more than a month before Roberts handed down his opinion:

Around Memorial Day, a number of conservative columnists and bloggers suddenly began accusing the “liberal media” of putting “the squeeze to Justice Roberts,” as George Will expressed the thought in his Washington Post column. “They are waging an embarrassingly obvious campaign, hoping he will buckle beneath the pressure of their disapproval and declare Obamacare constitutional,” Mr. Will wrote. Although the court has been famously leakproof, Mr. Will and some of the others are well connected at the court, and I wondered at the time whether they had picked up signals that the chief justice, thought reliable after the oral argument two months earlier, was now wavering, and whether their message was really intended for him.

To be clear, at this point only two facts are confirmed: 1) According to Crawford, Roberts flipped his vote midstream; and 2) someone within the Court must have leaked her this information. It is perfectly appropriate for Justice Kennedy, or any other justice, for that matter, to internally lobby Roberts to try to obtain his vote in an important case. If a member of the Court has turned to conservative columnists like Will or reporters like Crawford in order to pressure and then embarrass Roberts, however, that would be a significant and unusual escalation from the justices’ regular tactics.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/01/509359/supreme-court-springs-a-leak-leaks-to-conservative-pundits-may-have-started-more-than-a-month-ago/

Snakes and scorpions they are!

July 1, 2012

Wooo! Severe Thunderstorm warning here with possible 70mph winds. (I'm baaa-aaaaack! 8pm)

NE South Carolina

Well that was fun. The power went out, and the wind blowed and blowed. That was some nasty shite.
I have no idea about damage.
My cats decided this was the perfect time to practice posing and draped themselves all over me.

I pretended I was a sloooow baking potato. I'm glad I only got through the rare stage.
😱⚡⚡💦💦💦💦 👀

July 1, 2012

Joan Rivers comments on the Gay Pride Oreo controversy: (LOL)

@Joan_Rivers:
Any moron offended by the gay pride rainbow Oreo cookie would die if they knew what the Keebler elves were doing inside the Hollow Tree.

Heh!

July 1, 2012

Western wildfires are getting worse. Why?

<snip>
This raises a question: Are wildfires in the Western United States getting bigger and more severe? There’s a fair bit of evidence that yes, they have been. And, ecologists and fire experts say, that’s not a fluke. Thanks to both climate change and shifting forestry practices, humans may bear some responsibility here.
First, the numbers: A 2009 report (pdf) from the U.S. Global Change Research Program describes how “both the frequency of large wildfires and the length of the fire season have increased substantially in recent decades.” Here’s a chart showing the sharp uptick since the 1980s:


1) Global warming. Huge wildfires are, of course, more likely during droughts, when the forests are dried out and filled with kindling. And many parts of the West are facing “severe” or “extreme” droughts right now. But, Allen notes, data from tree-ring studies suggest that there have often been large droughts in the West. “What’s different today,” he says, “is that it’s also getting warmer, which can amplify the fire severity in the West.”
<snip>
2) Sprawl has pushed more people into forest areas, increasing the odds of fires. Many forest fires are caused by lightning. But others are caused by human activities. And as more and more people push deep into forested regions, that increases the risk of accidents. “More smokers, more ignition from motorized vehicles… even more arson,” says Allen. He offers up one salient example: The record-setting Las Conchas fire in New Mexico last year, which consumed 40,000 acres, began when an aspen tree toppled onto a power line that was serving just six homes in a remote area.
3) Changing forestry practices have made wildfires more destructive. Any look at tree-ring data shows that the Southwest has seen massive fires going back for centuries. But, in the past, many of these fires were low-intensity “surface” fires that mostly cleared out underbrush and prevented forests from building up too thickly.
<snip>
More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/06/30/western-wildfires-are-getting-worse-why-is-that/

The Francis Marion National Forest in SC is going to up in a huge fire at some point. I'm surprised it's lasted this long. Hurricane Hugo and then pine beetles ruined a lot of it. The debris on the forest floor just keeps building up.

I remember my relatives doing controlled burns in some areas. They weren't huge, but they cleared the crap out of forested land near the houses that were off the beaten path.

July 1, 2012

Researchers use spoofing to 'hack' into a flying drone

American researchers took control of a flying drone by "hacking" into its GPS system - acting on a $1,000 (£640) dare from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

A University of Texas at Austin team used "spoofing" - a technique where the drone mistakes the signal from hackers for the one sent from GPS satellites.

The same method may have been used to bring down a US drone in Iran in 2011.

Analysts say that the demo shows the potential danger of using drones.
<snip>
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18643134

What could possibly go wrong they said?
I feel soooo reassured.

July 1, 2012

Tea Party t-shirt for July 4th:

Items with this slogan could become a major seller in certain places.

July 1, 2012

David Jones: Joe Paterno fans must accept that he was flawed

(the author covered Paterno for 21 yers)
<snip>
Today, we begin to deal with the man’s dark side. As it was the time then to extol some of Paterno’s virtues, now it is time to examine his liabilities.

We all have both. Our culture seems more and more addicted to the concept of white hats and black hats, to taking sides, to painting the world and its inhabitants as either “good” or “evil.” It’s an infantile way to look at life and people, in my opinion.

And there is a certain sizable segment of the populace in this region who seems desperate to cling to the belief that Paterno was this saintly grandfather of all that’s noble and good about not only college athletics but higher education. That he could not possibly have been involved in the cover-up of a pedophile’s hideous deeds.

Those people will never believe what I have to say here because they are zealots in need of a hero, even if it’s someone they never knew.
<snip>
How many times do we instill intrinsic goodness in those we don’t even know? Have the Roman Catholic priest scandals in Boston and Philadelphia taught us nothing?

It does not have to be a lesson of bitter disillusionment, only one of caution. Trust those few you personally know.

The vast majority of you have never known these men at Penn State. You only knew of their station atop your chosen club buttressed by the trappings of their fame.

The most famous of them all was the head football coach. His fame did not make him a saint.
Read the entire piece:
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/06/david_jones_joe_paterno_fans_m.html

There are no saints.
You really don't know anybody 100%. You know little about those you view and hear from afar. You know their image. That's why it's so important to watch what people do. Even then, some actions can still fool us because the reason behind them may hide a negative actin.