Month: January 2016

Suspended Missouri professor reaches assault case deal

The suspended University of Missouri assistant professor who was charged with misdemeanor assault stemming from a confrontation with two student journalists during November’s campus protests reached a deal Friday with prosecutors, getting community service but no jail time or fines if she stays out of trouble for a year. Columbia city prosecutor Steve Richey said he decided to forego pursuing the misdemeanor assault case against assistant communications professor Melissa Click, who has pledged no further illegal behavior for a year and to complete 20 hours of community service, he said in a statement. If Click fails to comply, “prosecution of the case will resume at that point,” Richey said, adding that he believes “this disposition to be appropriate.” Click was charged Monday, and could have faced up to 15 days in jail. Click, who seeking tenure with the university, did not respond to an email seeking comment Friday. Her university voicemail was full, and her home number was disconnected. The university system’s governing board of curators suspended Click on Wednesday and ordered an investigation by its general counsel to determine whether additional discipline “is appropriate,” board chairwoman Pam Henrickson said in a statement. A message regarding whether Friday’s action would affect the suspension was left with Hendrickson’s law office. Click had a confrontation with a student photographer and a student videographer during the Nov. 9 protests at the Columbia campus over what some saw as university leadership’s indifference to racial issues. Click called out to recruit “some muscle” from protesters to help remove the videographer, Mark Schierbecker. That same day, the president of the four-campus University of Missouri system and the Columbia campus’ chancellor resigned over the unrest. Click later said publicly she regretted her actions. She also apologized to Schierbecker, all journalists and the university community for detracting from the students’ efforts to improve the racial climate on the Columbia campus. A message left Friday on Schierbecker’s cellphone was not immediately returned.

This is a follow up to this story we posted a while ago.   Ms. Click should still be fired from Mizzou..

Cheese So Amazing It Might Cure Cancer, Study Says – As if you needed more proof that cheese is awesome

It’s a miracle that cheese, which is essentially tasty mold, somehow entered the general culture as a foodstuff, and not something to be avoided. But we are so grateful for it, because cheese is a delicious and amazing thing—especially a gluey brie slathered on a cracker or a buttery havarti served with apple slices or grapes. Or a sharp, tangy Vermont cheddar. Or a funky blue cheese … anyway, you get the picture. Now, according to a study from the University of Wisconsin, cheese is not only delicious, it may hold the key to kicking cancer’s ass. This is because cheese contains nisin, a “naturally occurring food preservative that grows on dairy products” has been shown to combat cancer and lethal bacterias in an experiment where mice were fed a “nicin milkshake” which resulted in slowed growth of cancerous tumors in the little rodents. This is very early yet, but the studies look promising. Just add this to the long list of reasons to love cheese in all its forms—just don’t get addicted.

Nice!!   🙂

Babylonians tracked Jupiter with fancy math, tablet reveals

For a text that may rewrite the history of mathematics, it looks rather sloppy. The brown clay tablet, which could fit in the palm of your hand, is scrawled with hasty, highly abbreviated cuneiform characters. And, according to science historian Mathieu Ossendrijver, it proves that the ancient Babylonians used a complex geometrical model that looks like a rudimentary form of integral calculus to calculate the path of Jupiter. Scientists previously thought this mathematical technique was invented in medieval Europe. “It sounds minute for a layperson, but this geometry is of a very special kind that is not found anywhere else, for instance, in ancient Greek astronomy,” Ossendrijver said. “It is an application in astronomy that was totally new. Thus far everybody thought Babylonian scholars only computed with numbers.” A sophisticated invention: The tablet has long been in the collection at the British Museum in London, and it was likely created in Babylon (located in modern-day Iraq) between 350 and 50 B.C. Ossendrijver recently deciphered the text, and he described his discovery in an article that’s featured on the cover of the journal Science this week. From his office at Humboldt University here in Berlin, which is decorated with posters of both the Ishtar Gate and the Antikythera mechanism (thought to be the world’s oldest known computer), he explained that the tablet plots the apparent decreasing velocity of Jupiter from the planet’s first appearance along the horizon, to 60 days later, and then 120 days later. If drawn on a graph, this relationship is represented in the shape of two conjoined trapezoids. The area of each trapezoid describes Jupiter’s total displacement (measured in degrees) along the ecliptic, or the path of the sun. “It’s not an actual trapezoid that describes the shape of a field, or some configuration of the planets in space,” Ossendrijver told Live Science. “It’s a configuration in a mathematical space. It’s a highly abstract application.” Ancient Greek mathematicians and astronomers were using geometry around the same time, but only to make calculations involving real, 3D space, such as using circles torepresent the orbits of planets around Earth. Students of math might take it for granted today, but the abstract use of geometry was, until now, unheard of at the time. “Anyone who has studied physics or a little bit of math is familiar with making graphs — plotting one quantity against time — but actually this had to be invented once,” Ossendrijver said. Current textbooks on the history of math say this invention took place around A.D. 1350. In the mid-14th century, mathematicians at Merton College in England who were referred to as the “Oxford Calculators,” and another scholar collaborating with them in Paris, were interested in understanding the velocity and displacement of an object over time. They came up with the Merton mean speed theorem, which holds that the distance a uniformly accelerating body travels in a given interval of time is the same distance it would travel if it were moving at a constant velocity (with that constant velocity being the average of the accelerating body’s initial and final velocity). But the mean speed theorem now seems to be a reinvention of a lost model; about 1,400 years earlier, it seems the Babylonians had their own technique to make calculations based on this principle. “When I looked at the text, I was immediately convinced,” said Jens Høyrup, an expert in Babylonian mathematics at Roskilde University in Denmark, who was not involved in the new study. “There are words that indisputably point to geometric understanding — not a geometric model of how the planets move, but a geometric technique to make some arithmetic calculations.”

Fascinating!!  To see a photo of this clay tablet, and read the rest of this article, click on the text above.    🙂

San Francisco park debuts open-air urinal

San Francisco’s iconic Dolores Park is now home to the city’s first open-air urinal, the latest move to combat the destructive scourge of public urination in the City by the Bay. The concrete circular urinal is out in the open, through plants and a screen offer some privacy. It’s a welcome addition for the park that had just three toilets, which led many to relieve themselves in bushes and on buildings. “Honestly, we were ready to go pee anywhere,” San Francisco resident Aaron Cutler told news station KNTV. “So any facility is better than none.” The park now features 27 toilets, including the outdoor urinal, thanks to more than $20 million in renovations. They were the park’s first upgrades in 60 years. San Francisco Recreation and Park Department spokeswoman Sarah Madland said she wasn’t aware of any other cities with a public urinal. San Francisco has a long, sometimes creative, history of dealing with public urination. In 2002, the city increased the possible fine for the crime up to $500, but that did little to deter it. Last summer, the city painted nearly 30 walls with a repellant paint that makes urine spray back on the offender, San Francisco Public Works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon said. Solar-powered toilets roll through city streets several afternoons a week. And city crews have inspected 10,000 light posts to make sure they won’t fall over from erosion. That comes after a three-story-tall light post corroded by a likely mix of human and dog urine, and weighed down by a large banner, toppled. “Dolores Park has seen an exponential increase in the number of visitors: On a sunny Saturday, it can host between 7,000 and 10,000 people,” Madland said. “One of the goals of the renovation was to address the littering and public urination issues that were rampant at the park.” Along with the open-air urinal, attendants are manning 10 public toilets to encourage people to use them. They clean and restock supplies and make sure people don’t use drugs or sleep inside the restrooms. “The more options we can give them to relieve themselves, the better for the parkgoers,” San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener said. “The better it is for neighbors.”

Umm…  Why can’t they just build a restroom facility like every other park in America does?  Oh wait..  It’s San Francisco.. This is what out-of-control liberalism has created.  A city like San Fran which has been under Dem control for generations, and has more regulations and higher taxes than you can possibly imagine…and yet they can’t solve a public urination problem in a park.  That’s how bad it is there..

Boko Haram Jihadis Burn Children Alive, Slay Over 100 Villagers in Nigeria Massacre

In one of their most heinous massacres to date, militants from the radical Islamist Boko Haram group slaughtered over a hundred victims in a village in northeast Nigeria Saturday night, including a number of children whom they burned alive. The latest atrocity from the jihadi group allied to the Islamic State took place in the village of Dalori, some three miles from Maiduguri, Nigeria. Vice Chairman of a civilian joint task force in Dalori, Modu Kaka, said that at least 100 dead bodies were taken away but that hundreds are still missing. Witnesses spoke of “scores of bodies” burned and riddled with bullets lying in the streets after the attack Saturday night. One man, who managed to escape by hiding in a tree, said that he could hear the wails of children screaming in the flames. Residents of the community said the militants stormed into town around 6:20 pm and began their killing spree, which lasted for several hours. During the assault, the jihadis demolished houses and burned livestock once they had pillaged and carried away foodstuffs. Several of the villagers were burnt beyond recognition. Witnesses reported that the fighters ravaged the settlement for four hours, and that three female suicide bombers blew themselves up among people who were fleeing. Students at nearby University of Maiduguri heard explosions and gunfire, and many fled the area as the conflict raged. One political science student named Hauwa Ba’na said: “We are crying in our hostel because the explosions are loud and everyone is panicking.” A Dalori resident, Mallam Buka, decried the lack of protection from the Nigerian military. “We were helpless. Could you believe that there was no military presence in Dalori? The government didn’t provide security to protect us. I lost 11 people, and 5 of our children are nowhere to be found,” she said. Another resident by the name of Ibrahim Muhammad said that the Boko Haram insurgents had dressed up as military personnel and began opening fire on everybody. “All our wives and children were brutally killed while they looted and destroyed our livestock,” he said. Boko Haram terrorists began their Islamist insurgency in Maiduguri in 2009, and during their 6-year uprising have killed some 20,000 people and driven another 2.5 million from their homes.

Another shining example of those who follow the “peaceful” religion that is Islam.  Yesterday, our racial and religious divider-in-chief, Obama, went to some Muslim mosque in Baltimore to show “solidarity” with the local Muslim community there (something, btw, he would NEVER do with some local Christian community…but I digress)….and talk about how evil, an unAmerican, Donald Trump and other GOP candidates are for suggesting that we put a moratorium on new Muslim immigrants from the middle east and Africa.  Take a good hard look at these evil monsters here (Boko Haram) in Nigeria who justify their unspeakable atrocities to Islam.  They’re doing the same thing that ISIS/ISIL, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, and scores of other radical Islamic groups do; killing everyone that doesn’t agree or quickly convert to their evil cult.  They are committing genocide against Christians in Iraq and Syria…. and it’s not stopping there by any means.  Their cancerous belief system (and yes, it’s Islam, so let’s please cut the pc crap) is spreading globally.  Because of that, some of the GOP presidential candidates are having the audacity to say.. “Hey..  Let’s stop immigration of these Muslim so-called “refugees” for the time being.  After all, we wouldn’t want to inadvertently allow a sleeper cell of these nutcases here, would we?”  Sounds like basic common sense to me, and millions of Americans, that we stop immigration of Muslims from these countries for the time being.

NAACP leader uses F-word to apologize for using T-word after N-word meeting

The NAACP’s mission of political correctness and equality careened off the rails this week when a local president complimented a TV reporters breasts during an interview. Don Harris, the president of the Maricopa County Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had just finished an event at Tempe Union High School District to discuss an incident at the school in which several girls wore black t-shirts bearing the letters “N-I-*-*-E-R” on them. The outrage was instantaneous. “The six students in question pulled ranks to spell out NI**ER on their own, smiling gleefully to pose for an Instagram picture. Their punishment was 5-days suspension,” a petition demanding their expulsion reads, EAGnews reports. “This hurtful use of a racial slur is a complete disregard for the dignity of the black community in Arizona and across the nation and the punishment does not fit the total ignorance and cruelty of the crime.” Harris was on hand to accept apologizes and demand action. But after the meeting, while participants were speaking with the media, he was caught on camera saying Channel 12 reporter Monique Griego had “nice tits.” “I can’t believe that someone in his position would not understand how inappropriate that comment was at the time that he made it,” says Ray Stern, a reporter for the Phoenix New Times, who was talking to Griego at the time. “Here’s the leader of the NAACP talking about the N-word and then making this comment, that was more inappropriate than I could even believe,” he tells ABC 15. The news station reports Harris doesn’t believe Griego heard him at the time and says he feels like he let down the NAACP. He calls his comment “ugly” and says it just slipped out “guy to guy.” After the reaction, Harris now says he feels “down in the dumps.” The New Times contacted Harris after that incident and reports the NAACP leader said, “I apologize if anyone was offended. I could have said nothing . . . I’m really f*cking sorry.” He argued that the meeting was over when he complimented the reporter’s rack and then really blew a gasket (edited for a family audience): “I’m going to slash my wrists,” he spews. “Better yet, I’m going to throw myself out of a f*cking window, except I’m on the first floor . . . I’m one of the best g*dd*mned people in the state.” People criticized him when he first took over the NAACP chief post from the Reverend Oscar Tillman, who retired in 2014 after 22 years in the position, he says, because “I was the wrong flavor. “They’ve seen me now, they’ve seen what I’ve done. I’ve given up my law practice. I’m down here six, seven days a week. That’s what my commitment is. I support NOW, the women’s organization — g*dd*mn! — are you sh*tting me? Are you going to write this up?” Griego didn’t comment on the situation but Harris insists he wants to apologize face-to-face. (Of course he does.) Last June, when white NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal was exposed for pretending to be black, Harris appeared on CNN and claimed “credibility” is one of the most important assets the organization has. “This is a race-based organization — the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. And being a race-based organization, when you have a leader in any capacity, you’ve got to have credibility. “Once you lose that credibility, the efficacy of your leadership fails,” Harris said. There are now calls for Harris’s resignation and at least one minister seeking his ouster blames not Harris’s sexism, but his “white privilege.” “Don can be a bit of a character, but I think he’s also a well-to-do, older, white male and he exhibited some of the signs of what we’ve called ‘white privilege,’ Rev. Jarrett Maupin says, according to KTAR. “He should know better than anyone, as the NAACP, to do what he did.”

Wow..  This is SO rich.  So, where to even begin?  For starters, this disgusting piece of garbage, Don Harris, is white.  How crazy is that?!?  Not that any of us cares..  But, how exactly is it that a white guy is the head of any NAACP chapter/organization?  So, for him to show up with his self-righteous, sanctimonious, entitlement-mined attitude looking to accept apologies for this epic transgression is just so breathtakingly hypocritical, it’s unreal.  Then, he says that he is one of the “best goddamned people in the state” (of Arizona).  Wow!  He certainly thinks a lot about himself…and is using that inflated view of himself to justify is crass behavior.  What a loser!  As for the girls who took that photo..  Yeah, it was dumb.  According to reports, they were part of a sign that said, “BEST*YOU’VE*EVER*SEEN*CLASS*OF*2016”..  and then a few of them peeled away after that and put their shirts together privately and put their shirts together to essentially spell the word “nigger.”  But, the two GGs were just asterisks (**).  Anyway, it wasn’t a school-related thing; just a dumb teen thing.  So, the suspension was more than enough.  And, for these pc police feigning being all offended need to get over it and move on.  Besides, black youth call each other that word all day long, and those same pc police and speech nazis don’t say a thing…while they, along with those same black youth call whites who use the word “racist” and offensive.  So, again, more hypocrisy and double standards from the race hustlers.

Outrageous wing recipes for Super Bowl 50

Some like ’em hot and spicy. Others go sweet and smokey. But either way, who doesn’t love a great chicken wing? From spicy Cajun to sweet and savory honey chipotle, it’s time to get messy for Game Day. Don’t forget about the dipping sauces- bring on the ranch and blue cheese. These wings are sure to go fast so whip up enough to keep the party going all night long. However you eat ’em, just don’t forget the wet naps.

Click on the text above to see a dozen options for game day.  Enjoy!    🙂

Turkey says Russian jet violated its airspace again, warns of consequences

Turkey warned of consequences on Saturday after saying a Russian SU-34 jet had violated its airspace despite warnings, once more stoking tensions between two countries involved in Syria’s war, but Russia denied that there had been any incursion. In a similar incident in November, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane flying a sortie over Syria that it said had violated its airspace, triggering a diplomatic rupture in which Russia imposed economic sanctions. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov denied that any Russian plane had entered Turkish airspace, and called the Turkish allegation “pure propaganda”. He said Turkish radar installations were not capable of identifying a particular aircraft or its type or nationality, and that no verbal warning had been issued in either English or Russian. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said in its statement that the Russian ambassador had been summoned late on Friday, and that the violation was a clear sign that Russia wanted issues between the two countries to escalate. “We are making a clear call to the Russian Federation not to violate Turkish airspace, which is also NATO airspace,” the statement said. “We are emphasizing once again that the unwanted consequences of such irresponsible behavior will belong fully to the Russian Federation.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the violation had taken place, and urged Russia to “take all necessary measures” to ensure NATO airspace was not violated again. “Previous incidents have shown how dangerous such behavior is,” his statement said. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he wanted to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin after the incident. “I told our Foreign Ministry to convey my desire to meet Mr Putin personally. There has been no answer on this yet,” Erdogan told reporters at the airport before departing for a visit to Latin America. The downing of the Russian warplane in November left relations between the two countries in tatters. Russia responded with economic sanctions that have hit Turkish exports and tourism revenues.

Turkish Pres. Erdogan is fascist bully.  But, hey..  He’s one of our bullies.  And, he sure is a thorn in Vlad’s backside.  Not a lot of world leaders have the stones to do that; certainly not our wimp-in-chief.  So, the best thing we can do is let him have at it with Vlad…and just sit back and watch.    🙂

 

 

Real-life ‘X-Files’? CIA posts trove of UFO documents

The truth is out there – the CIA is offering a peek into its ‘X-files,’ shining a spotlight on a series of once-classified UFO documents. “To help navigate the vast amount of data contained in our FOIA UFO collection, we’ve decided to highlight a few documents both skeptics and believers will find interesting,” explained the agency, in a blog post. The UFO documents, which date primarily from the 1940s and 1950s, are among hundreds that the CIA declassified in 1978. In a nod to Fox’s new “X-Files” series, the agency highlights “five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity.” “We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings,” it added. The “Mulder” documents include 1952 reports of flying saucers over the then-East Germany, Spain and North Africa, as well as a survey of UFO reports from the same year. The agency also posted a 1952 report of “two fiery disks” flying over a uranium mine in the then-Belgian Congo and the minutes of a CIA branch chief’s meeting discussing UFOs. The report from East Germany details “an object ‘resembling a huge frying pan’ and having a diameter of about 15 meters [49 feet].” The object landed in a forest clearing in Germany’s Soviet Zone, according to the report. “A smoke-trailing object over Barcelona” and an unusual object “emitting a pale green light” over the Tunisian city of Sousse are described in the report from Spain and North Africa. Photos posted on the CIA website include an unexplained sighting above Minneapolis in 1960 and another above Sheffield, U.K. two years later. It also posted an image of a UFO investigation in Socorro, N.M. The “Mulder” documents include an office memo from 1949, a 1952 memo to the Director of Central Intelligence and a ‘Memorandum for the Record on Flying Saucers,’ also from 1952. The agency also posted a 1953 document detailing the suggestions of a scientific advisory panel on UFOs and the minutes of an Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) UFO advisory group from the same year.

Things that make ya go, “hmmmm..”   Of course most of this stuff is from the 1940s and 1950…with a few items from the ’60s; over 50 years ago!!  So..BIG yawn..  I’m sure MUFON and other similar groups, including the folks at “Ancient Aliens” will find this “significant.”  But, it’s really not.  You’d get a lot more simply from Leslie Kean’s book “UFOs.”  Now, when they start declassifying stuff from the 1980s, ’90s, and especially within the last 10-15 years, THAT might be worth delving into.  But, hey..  Glad to see the CIA is finally getting around to declassifying some of this stuff that should have been declassifyed…a half century ago.

Obama to visit Baltimore mosque to show support for Muslims

Alarmed by anti-Muslim rhetoric from some of the Republican presidential candidates, President Obama will visit a mosque for the first time in his presidency Wednesday to show support for American Muslims. A White House official said Saturday that Mr. Obama visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore mosque “to celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.” “The president will hold a roundtable with community members and deliver remarks, where he will reiterate the importance of staying true to our core values — welcoming our fellow Americans, speaking out against bigotry, rejecting indifference, and protecting our nation’s tradition of religious freedom,” the White House aide said. The president has criticized GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump for advocating a ban on Muslim immigrants, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for opposing his program to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees to come to the U.S. this year. Mr. Obama has said anti-Muslim comments make it more difficult for the U.S. to get the cooperation of allies in the Middle East to fight the Islamic State, and such rhetoric discourages American Muslims from cooperating with law enforcement authorities. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 12, Mr. Obama called on Americans “to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion.” “When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer,” the president said. “That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong.”

I think I’m gonna vomit..