Archives for October 2011

Today is a day of weirdness. The kind of day you just sit back and go “Really?” Because there are some things you can’t make up and, thanks to the internet, the rest you don’t have to. To give you an idea of the kind of day I’m having allow me to share a little vignette with you. I like to go to the library. It’s quiet, I can get stuff done and then check out a book or two if I want. They even have free Wi Fi for my laptop. I occasionally run into this one gentleman there. Nice guy, easy to talk to. He uses the complimentary computers the library provides. When he gets off them he comes over to me to talk about the multi-million dollar deals he’s working on. Because, as you well know, multi-millionaires are clamoring to their local libraries to do major business deals. Of course, when I noted that he doesn’t own a computer, lives in a friend’s living room and has worn the same outfit (albeit kept very clean) for almost a year, and that he may, just may, wish to rethink some of the things he tells people, he got horribly offended.

Darn, now I’ll never be a millionaire.

So, it is in that spirit that we trundle forward today. Imagine, if you will, that you’re cold sober in the middle of London and suddenly are accosted by 60 Elvi (that being the plural for Elvis). Well, that’s what happened recently to a group of people at a Holiday Inn in the U.K.

A group of panicked Elvises were left all shook up when they had to flee a hotel with the fire alarm ringing.

Around 60 Kings were rocking when a smoke machine went wrong and they had to get out fast.

Bewildered hotel guests, dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, were even more surprised when they were confronted by a sea of rhinestones in the car park.

One guest said: “I was in a bit of a state getting out of my room. But I was more confused when I got outside to see all these people dressed as Elvis.

“There were people in the full Elvis jumpsuits and wigs standing by a roundabout, looking a bit the worse for wear.”

The Elvis impersonators were at the Holiday Inn in Rochester, Kent, for a charity fundraiser in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support when the alarms sounded on Saturday night.

Kevin Coombes, hotel manager, said: “A smoke machine set off the fire alarm and at no point was anyone in any danger, but yes, Elvis did leave the building.”

Silly English, can’t even speak the language right. I already told them that the proper plural was Elvi.

That being said, how can you possibly tell anyone about this unless you have pics of you and the Elvi? Otherwise I would think that people would treat your credibility the same way I treat the nice man at the library’s.

Of course not everyone can be accosted by Elvi. Some people need to be accosted by UFOs. And, of course, the local Air Force loves getting calls about them (call twice, that makes them happy). They get even happier when the people calling are reporting the sighting of a B -2 Stealth Bomber.

People in Missouri have been scratching their heads this month over a rash of UFO sightings that has them wondering if it’s alien visitors, small plane experimental flying teams, the B-2 stealth bomber or all of the above.

So far, eyewitnesses in the “Show Me” state have been entertained by aerial displays of lights or orbs in the night sky, with the majority of sightings centered around the Kansas City area.

“With all the sightings, we’ve had a description of a triangle-shaped craft with multicolored lights surrounding it,” said Debbie Ziegelmeyer, state director for Missouri MUFON, a chapter of the International Mutual UFO Network.

“We have information that the nearby Whiteman Air Force Base, 50 miles east of Kansas City, is under a yellow alert with training mission activities of the B-2 stealth bombers around the area.”

But, according to Ziegelmeyer, it wasn’t just the B-2 craft that may be responsible for many of the nearly 60 UFO sightings since the beginning of the month.

“We learned about an EAA flight team (Experimental Aircraft Association), based in Lee’s Summit, Mo., that was doing some stunt flying on Oct. 4,” Ziegelmeyer told The Huffington Post.

“They practiced for an audition to do a night aerial formation flight for the Kansas City Chiefs. Their team leader told me it was a group of six small planes that fly in groups, and they flew together in a delta or triangular formation, circling over Lee’s Summit before heading to Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Chiefs, where they circled the stadium and then returned to the Lee’s Summit Municipal Airport.”

“If you look at the first 12 seconds of the video, you can see them aligned with another smaller dot in the sky,” Ziegelmeyer said. “Around half way through the video, the lights try to group up and you can make out a light strobing effect on one of them as they’re turning.

“Then, near the end of the video, they start to form a triangle-shape formation.”

Over in Independence, Mo., MUFON assistant state director Margie Kay is busy trying to unravel the mystery of several UFO reports that don’t appear to be either the stealth bomber or a squadron of stunt flyers.

One video, taken from inside a car, appears to show two glowing spheres or orbs chasing each other around in the night sky.

“The strangest thing about this and other events that happened over several days are these spheres, some of which were reported very close to people — as close as 30 feet away and in or behind their backyards,” Kay told HuffPost. “We don’t have an explanation for it yet.”

When the Missouri UFO reports started coming in, Kay contacted Whiteman Air Force Base.

“They can’t tell us very much, but they did say that they’re running B-2 training missions during October. So we think that some of the sightings that were from a distance may have been this,” Kay explained.

She added that they’re most interested in investigating the still-unexplained sightings, like the one of a large craft reported hovering 30 feet above a water tower in Raytown, Mo., on Oct. 4.

“It was round in shape with lights all over the entire bottom of it, and then it raised up a little bit, turned 90 degrees on its side, flew for a little while and then shot off at what the witness said was light speed — it was instantly gone.

“There may be some experimental aircraft that can do this, but we’re not being told about it. For them to do this in a metropolitan area is a little odd.”

Clifford W. Clift Jr., MUFON’s international director, told HuffPost he was surprised when their typical national monthly average of 500 UFO reports jumped to over 1,000 in August.

“We found there was no computer problem or duplication of reports. Then we discovered that over 50 percent of the number over the 500 average were old cases from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.”

MUFON tried to evaluate why people were now reporting old cases and, according to Clift, “This past summer and into the fall, there were so many UFO documentary shows being run that included MUFON’s name that people finally learned where they could report a UFO event.

“I think that’s why we’ve had such a significant increase.”

And as we’ve seen in Missouri, a variety of things could account for UFO sightings. The only thing left to say about that is “Show me!”

If you watch the video (linked above) you’ll note three things; (1) the camera person is shooting directly over a street light; (2) the camera moves far more than any of the objects and (3) the objects behave exactly like military planes aligning into a night time formation.

But other than that it’s a perfect video of UFOs.

Not all weird things involve aliens however. Some involve beer. Although I would wager that the number of tiems both were involved is a very large one. Nevertheless police in Brazil are trying to figure out how over 100 cases of beer were delivered to a jail.

Brazilian police say they are trying to find out why 2,600 cans of beer were delivered to a jail holding police officers charged with crimes.

The Rio de Janeiro radio station BandNews FM reports the beer was delivered Sunday to the prison in a northern suburb of the city.

Police inspector Waldyr Soares Filho tells the O Globo newspaper that officials are investigating the person who allowed the alcohol into the facility. He says he does not believe it was meant to be used for a party, but doesn’t offer an alternative explanation.

Local newspapers last month published photos of a party at the same jail thrown by an officer charged with 16 murders. The man later escaped.

Have they ruled out aliens? I know I haven’t.

Speaking of aliens, let’s finish today off with a jaunt down to Florida. Everyone’s favorite Martian, Rep. Rich Workman, is being forced to defend his “pro dwarf tossing” position.

He also defends another one, but I’m saving that until you’ve read this.

Rep. Ritch Workman is a regulation-chopping Republican lawmaker who says yes to liberty, personal freedom and “dwarf-tossing,” but no to gay marriage, medical marijuana and other libertarian causes.

The Florida state representative is battling Big Brother in some, but not all of its forms. In his quest to eliminate what he describes as unnecessary Sunshine State laws, Workman has exposed himself to controversy this month by pushing to legalize “dwarf-tossing.”

Make no mistake, Workman is no fan of the banned bar competition in which little people are literally turned into human shot puts.

“It’s a barbaric activity,” said Workman, first elected to the statehouse in 2008 to represent Melbourne, a city of 78,000 residents east of Orlando.

“But they [little people] don’t need government to decide for them,” he added. “This is insulting. Their actions aren’t endangering anybody else. For every law that’s on the books a little piece of your liberty and freedom is lost.”

But don’t ask Workman to advocate for gay marriage, medical marijuana or prostitution.

“I’m not a libertarian,” Workman said. “Prostitution and drug abuse are not situations that don’t affect anyone else. Prostitution spreads communicable diseases. Medical marijuana is just a way to legalize marijuana and we don’t need to give our kids other things to get high on.”

“I understand the almost-irony of me fighting to remove this ban [on dwarf-tossing] and my not wanting to legalize drugs and prostitution,” Workman said. “I don’t see them as parallels.”

Workman, who says he is a Christian, said he wasn’t interested in writing a state constitutional amendment allowing same-sex marriages either. He does, however, favor legalizing adultery among heterosexual couples.

There are other prohibitions and illicit activities that Workman said he sees as pointless intrusions on personal freedom. He’s introduced bills this term that would repeal the statutes banning beer bottle collections and requiring bicyclists to ride with at least one hand on the handlebars at all times. Another Workman number would allow unmarried men and women to legally live together.

The chances of scrapping these allegedly inane measures are not promising. Workman said he doesn’t expect a sponsor to emerge in the state Senate for the bills, because there’s little to be gained politically by tackling the obscure topics.

Nothing’s whipped up more controversy than his bill to lift the 22-year-old ban on “dwarf-tossing,” an activity that took root in some bars around the state in the 1980s.

Complaints and criticism have flooded his office, he said, especially from little people around the country. The Little People of America launched an Internet petition to voice disapproval of his idea.

“The issue with dwarf-tossing is it objectifies the entire little person community,” said Jennifer Arnold, the 3-foot-2-inch co-star of the reality show “The Little Couple.” Arnold, who has dwarfism, is now a Texas pediatrician, but grew up in Florida when “dwarf-tossing” was legal.

“My biggest concern is to feel that we’re going backwards,” she said. “It seems okay today to still make fun of little people. It’s not okay to do that for races, religions and other disabled people.”

Yeah, the second part kind of skips by. He wants to legalize adultery. But only for straight people. Something tells me his wife’s ears perked up on that little tid bit. But, as to the concerns espoused by Dr. Arnold in the last couple of paragraphs, I wouldn’t worry. When people like Mr. Workman get done, you’ll be able to make fun of anyone with any handicap as well as anyone who isn’t just like him.

So, hang in there, you’re about to be joined by some very august company.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7movKfyTBII&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

I was having a hard time finding anything to write about today. Oh, I ran across the story of the big bad Obama Zombies, a/k/a Secret Service, who decided to terrorize a sweet, and very white, 78 year old grandmother at a Denny’s. After all, all she was trying to do was help her sick grandchild …… by selling $1,400,000 worth of stolen government property. But that was about it. Then I found the story of the pinhead who bet his friends he could fit in a child’s swing (you know the ones, with the leg holes cut into hard plastic) and then did. Of course, to no one’s surprise, he got stuck and his friends (wisely I assure you) left him hanging there until the fire department got around to rescuing him ….. 9 hours later. But that’s pretty much the whole story there. Then there were the humorous comments made by New Jersey state senate candidate Phil Mitsch who showed off his tender side by giving women all over America useful relationship advice via Twitter.

you increase your odds of keeping your men by being faithful, a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom.

Man oh man, as you might have guessed, women all over the country said “Damn! Thanks Phil! We never could have saved our marriages if it weren’t for you!”

Okay, they didn’t actually say that. And, to the credit of women everywhere, not one called for him to be bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer. But, beyond that, the response wasn’t nearly as positive as Mr. Mitsch might have hoped.

And, let us now forget the caring and professional Crisis Pregnancy Centers in North Carolina that recently advised a Jewish woman that “in order to avoid eternal damnation she should keep her baby and think about accepting Jesus as her lord and savior.” This is while they’re asking for government funding.

Yeah, that’s going well.

Then I ran into the spate of stories I’m going to feature today. The TSA, which has been accused of being racist, morally bereft and staffed by the egregiously incompetent has been making a sincere effort of late to shore up its public image. And, gosh, aren’t they doing a skippy job of it?

Let’s ask masectomy survivor, Lori Dorn, what she thinks.

Now that she’s calmed down from being almost strip searched in public.

You can rest easy next time you fly, because TSA screeners are ensuring our safety by thoroughly inspecting the chests of breast cancer survivors, and dismissing their pleas for basic human sensitivity.

The Associated Press reports that last week, Lori Dorn was flying from New York to San Francisco when she set off a full-body scanner. After being diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, Dorn underwent a bilateral masectomy and chemotherapy. The scanner detected tissue expanders that were implanted as part of her breast reconstruction. Though Dorn has a medical device ID card, a TSA agent and her supervisor refused to allow her to get the card from her bag, and told her she’s have to undergo a pat-down. Dorn writes on her blog:

She then said, “And if we don’t clear you, you don’t fly” loud enough for other passengers to hear. And they did. And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA Supervisor.

Dorn says she didn’t object to undergoing a pat down, but didn’t want to have a TSA agent touch her breasts in full view of other passengers without allowing her to explain her medical condition. She adds:

I just didn’t understand why these agents were so insensitive to the situation. I would have been happy to show her which bag was mine and have her retrieve the card, but she did not allow even that. I have been through emotional and physical hell this past year due to breast cancer. The way I was treated by these TSA agents added a shitload of insult to injury and caused me a great deal of humiliation.

Now after reviewing the situation, the TSA has issued a public apology. The agency stated on its blog:

We do our best to treat passengers with the dignity and respect they deserve, but in Lori Dorn’s case, it looks like we missed our mark. We sincerely regret and apologize for the experience Mrs. Dorn had at JFK. The Federal Security Director for JFK has personally reached out to learn more about what happened so he can help ensure that she and others will have better travel experiences in the future.

It goes on to explain that she should have been allowed to retrieve her medical card. This wouldn’t make her exempt from a pat down, but agents were supposed to offer to take her to a private screening room. The post also says:

TSA has just rolled out an in-service technical training course focused on screening prosthetics. This curriculum focuses on all types of prosthetics and the requirements of the standard operating procedures related to the screening of Persons with Disabilities and Medical Conditions

Dorn has accepted the TSA’s apology, and it’s good to hear that the agency is acknowledging that agents behaved inappropriately and trying to do something about it. However, it’s staggering that incidents like this are still happening on a regular basis. There are bound to be a few disgruntled asshats in any organization, and working for airport security is definitely stressful. However, it’s not like we’ve only seen a handful of these incidents. Why didn’t the agency start emphasizing treating flyers with dignity and respect after the first several dozen complaints? Not that TSA employees should need specific instructions on dialing down the dickishness when dealing with a woman who’s recovering from breast cancer.

I have one of those medical cards for my left leg which has two steel rods in it. I have yet to be allowed to show it to anyone, ever. I have, however, learned to only wear shorts when I travel so I can point to the scars. It’s just easier that way.

As to charges that they are racist, the TSA has responded by singling out African American women who don’t try to make themselves look white.

What could possibly go wrong?

“My hair is called an Afro,” says Isis Brantley in the video. The Dallas hairdresser hasn’t cut her hair since she was 12 years old. She says it was that hair that led her to be chased down by a TSA guard and subjected to an extra patdown. The TSA claims she left before the full inspection was completed.

Last month, the New York Times travel columnist Joe Sharkey reported on the experiences of two African-American women who felt they had been unfairly singled out for patdowns because of their natural hairstyles.

Separately, at least one woman said she was being targeted by black TSA employees, which she attributed to prejudices within the black community against unstraightened hair.

Brantley was at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, she told Dallas’ KXAS-TV, when she went through security and then “I just heard these voices saying, ‘Hey, you! Hey, you! Ma’am, stop! Stop! The lady with the hair! You!'”

The TSA responded that it has a responsibility to search for hazardous items anywhere they might be hidden. But a supervisor in Atlanta did apologize to Brantley, who said, “I was outraged. I was humiliated. I was confused.”

If you ever get the chance, pick up The Autobiography of Malcolm X since there is a great rant in there about his having to “conk” his hair so he could date white women. For whatever it’s worth, I happen to think Afros look nice. Not on me, that would be silly, but for people whose hair naturally flows like that then have at it I say.

Just plan on taking the train in the future.

But the one story I had to save for last is one that, I know, will be the one of most interest to all the female Nude Hippo staffers. This passes creepy about five miles back so have your hand sanitizer ready. The TSA wrapped an encouraging note around a woman’s vibrator.

When blogger Jill Filipovic unpacked after her most recent trip, she noticed that TSA screeners had found her vibrator. And they’d left her (a note which read “Get your freak on girl).

Filipovic told BoingBoing that she’d been traveling with a “Silver Bullet” vibrator from Babeland. Screeners apparently discovered it and decided to add a helpful comment. Filipovic’s reaction, which she posted on Feministe:

Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not ok, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room.

It’s nice that Filipovic has a sense of humor about this, but she’s right that the note is not okay — especially for an organization that’s already come under fire for its invasive search practices. Given that “groping” leaps to many people’s minds the minute the TSA is mentioned, it might behoove agents to exercise a little discretion when going through people’s stuff. At least agents didn’t take the vibe, but Filipovic says “I’m unsure if they handled it. Given that uncertainty, it’s definitely being retired.” Wise move — but it’s pretty sad that an agency that’s supposed to keep us safe from terror is instead forcing people to throw out their sex toys.

There is sympathetic sobbing coming from the break room right now as the women of Nude Hippo mourn the loss of another, high quality, silver bullet. And, because I care so much, you can order one by clicking that link.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs5_jB46xQE&w=500&h=317]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Done a pure Sunday science blog in a while I have not. But yank one out of my butt I you look bored so I figured would. Since I recently read the Hominid trilogyI thought, find something related to Neanderthals to write about, would I. To my surprise I found something much. In fact, of cool I actually found something kind. Made an astounding, scientists have been reverse engineering the history of language and have, and interesting, discovery. Let them tell you all about it but it comes down to this, will I; like Yoda at one point every single living humanoid on the planet spoke.

Thanks to Yoda Speak for helping me with that paragraph.

Don’t worry, I’m done now.

Really, no, mean it I do.

Nevertheless, everything has to have come from somewhere so Natalie Wolchover has an in-depth look at why we speak the way we speak.

Many linguists believe all human languages derived from a single tongue spoken in East Africa around 50,000 years ago. They’ve found clues scattered throughout the vocabularies and grammars of the world as to how that original “proto-human language” might have sounded. New research suggests that it sounded somewhat like the speech of Yoda, the tiny green Jedi from “Star Wars.”

There are various word orders used in the languages of the world. Some, like English, use subject-verb-object (SVO) ordering, as in the sentence “I like you.” Others, such as Latin, use subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, as in “I you like.” In rare cases, OSV, OVS, VOS and VSO are used. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Merritt Ruhlen and Murray Gell-Mann, co-directors of the Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages, argue that the original language used SOV ordering (“I you like”).

“This language would have been spoken by a small East African population who seemingly invented fully modern language and then spread around the world, replacing everyone else,” Ruhlen told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

The researchers came to their conclusion after creating a language family tree, which shows the historical relationships between all the languages of the world. For example, all the Romance languages (Italian, Rumanian, French, Spanish) derive from Latin, which was spoken in Rome 2,000 years ago; that Latin family is itself a branch of an even larger tree, whose other branches include Germanic, Slavic, Greek, Indic and others. Together, all those languages make up the Indo-European language family, which fits like a puzzle piece with all the other language families in the world.

“These families — all families — are identified by finding words in a set of languages that are similar to each other but not found elsewhere,” Ruhlen explained in an email.

In the language family tree, Ruhlen and Gell-Mann discovered a distinct pattern in how word orders change as languages branch off from their mother tongues. “What we found was that the distribution of the six possible word orders did not vary randomly. … Rather, the distribution of these six types was highly structured, and the paths of linguistic change in word order were clear,” Ruhlen said.

Out of the 2,000 modern languages that fit in the family tree, the researchers found that more than half are SOV languages. The ones that are SVO, OVS and OSV all derive directly from SOV languages — never the other way around. For example, French, which is SVO, derives from Latin, which is SOV.

Furthermore, languages that are VSO and VOS always derive from SVO languages. Thus, all languages descend from an original SOV word order – “which leads to the conclusion that the word order in the language from which all modern languages derive must have been SOV,” Ruhlen wrote.

Was it just an accident that the mother of all mother tongues was probably SOV, rather than one of the other five possibilities? The researchers think not. Predating Ruhlen’s and Gell-Mann’s work, Tom Givon, a linguist at the University of Oregon, argued that SOV had to have been the first word order, based on how children learn language. He found that the SOV word ordering seems to come most naturally to humans.

And if that’s the case, it seems strange that languages switch word orders as they evolve. Indeed, no one really knows why word orders would switch. “We have found that word changes in very precise ways,” Ruhlen said. “But the fact remains that half of the world’s languages still have SOV word order because, in Murray’s and my opinion, they have not changed word order at all. [Our data] shows how word order changes … but it is unpredictable if word order will change, and I really don’t know why.”

I know that can seem a touch confusing. Think of it this way, when you’re first learning to speak you learn the subject, since that’s most important to you (I, Me, Mommy, Daddy, etc), then the object you’re talking about (you, dog, cat, particle physics) and then what you want to say about that (like, hate, love, am ambivalent, etc). It is only later that you are taught the rules of grammar.

And then, only much later, that you grasp the nuances of simile, metaphor, allegory and so on since those concepts require socially specific verbiage.

And once you get it all straight in your head you spend big bucks to buy a GPS that talks like Yoda.

Not to worry, good it all is.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxaFhHCMMuc&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

I hope everyone had a happy Rapture yesterday. I know I did. Before we get to anything resembling a salient point I have to get the important stuff out of the way since I don’t want you to be distracted later. You’ll all be pleased to note that Elizabeth Olsen, the sane Olsen sister, had no problems doing the nude scenes for her new movie “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” You’re welcome. In unrelated nude news, a woman in India developed an insatiable sex drive and then died four days later. As it turns out rabies causes that particular symptom and by the time you notice it you’re too late. So, no, getting bitten by a squirrel isn’t worth it. In other news, completely non-nude, it turns out that if you cook your own feces on an apartment heater you will not create gold. A nice man in Northern Ireland found this out the hard way and is now in jail for all sorts of hilarious charges.

Okay, now to the point.

We have all heard recently about how the only way to save the American economy is to deregulate businesses and let capitalism decide what works and what doesn’t. Given that every major financial collapse has happened within 10 years of the banking or insurance industries being deregulated you would think that history isn’t on their side. But, hey, that’s what keeps this country great.

Nevertheless, ironically enough, students at the University of Texas have a prime testing ground in their home state to study the effects of deregulation. Texas has the fewest business restrictions in the country. Also the lowest wages but I’m told that’s just a coincidence and I should shut up about that and quit bothering people.

Anyway, to make this study work they went to the one place that has been living under similar regulations as Texas, China, to see what the long term effects could be. What the nice students found was that environmental deregulation did increase business, did add jobs and only caused a 450% increase in birth defects.

Pesticides and pollutants are related to an alarming 450 percent increase in the risk of spina bifida and anencephaly in rural China, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Peking University.

Two of the pesticides found in high concentrations in the placentas of affected newborns and stillborn fetuses were endosulfan and lindane. Endosulfan is only now being phased out in the United States for treatment of cotton, potatoes, tomatoes and apples. Lindane was only recently banned in the United States for treatment of barley, corn, oats, rye, sorghum and wheat seeds.

Strong associations were also found between spina bifida and anencephaly and high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are byproducts of burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Spina bifida is a defect in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close before birth. Anencephaly is the absence of a large part of the brain and skull.

“Our advanced industrialized societies have unleashed upon us a lot of pollutants,” says Richard Finnell, professor of nutritional sciences and director of genomic research at the Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas. “We’ve suspected for a while that some of these pollutants are related to an increase in birth defects, but we haven’t always had the evidence to show it. Here we quite clearly showed that the concentration of compounds from pesticides and coal-burning are much higher in the placentas of cases with neural tube defects than in controls.”

The study, which was published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the result of a more than decadelong collaboration between Finnell and a team of researchers in Shanxi, a province in northern China.
Finnell sought collaborators in China because the prevalence of neural tube defects is much greater there than it is in the United States. Also, because of its population policies, China is good at tracking births.

“It’s an extraordinary natural experiment,” says Finnell, who was recently recruited to the university to help anchor the Dell Pediatric Research Institute. “It would be much harder to do this study in the United States, where neural tube defects are more rare. It’s also an opportunity to assist the Chinese government in their efforts to lower their birth defect rates.”

Working with public health officials in four rural counties in Shanxi, researchers collected placentas from 80 newborn or stillborn fetuses that suffered from spina bifida or anencephaly. Once a fetus or a newborn with such defects was identified as a case, the placenta of a healthy newborn with no congenital malformations born in the same hospital was selected as a control.

Finnell and his colleagues screened these placentas for the presence of a class of substances known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Common POPs include agricultural pesticides, industrial solvents and the byproducts of burning fuels such as oil and coal.

They found strong associations between the birth defects and high levels of a number of compounds present in commonly used pesticides. They also found elevated placental concentrations of PAHs.

“This is a region where they mine and burn a lot of coal,” says Finnell. “Many people cook with coal in their homes. The air is often black. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to say that maybe there’s something in there that isn’t good for babies.”

Finnell says although the environmental conditions in Shanxi are dramatically worse than they are in most areas of the United States, they are comparable to what the United States was like a century ago, and the neural tube defects are not solely a Chinese problem.

Every year approximately 3,000 pregnancies in the United States are complicated by neural tube defects. Many other congenital conditions, including autism, may one day prove to be related to environmental pollutants.

“Ultimately you need enough cells to make a proper, healthy baby,” says Finnell, “and these are the types of compounds that cause cell death. At the most basic level, we’re learning that environmental things kill cells, and if that occurs in a critical progenitor population at a crucial time, you’re going to have problems.”

So there you have it. In 10 or 20 years, when Texas catches up to China, there’ll be lots and lots babies who look like something from a low budget horror movie. So, while I do think that government has become too intrusive – damn it I want to smoke in my local bar! – there are times where a little regulation isn’t such a bad idea.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/3609548 w=400&h=300]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Less than one week after the world was blown up by the rouge planet Niribu we are faced with Rapture. Some people, the descendants of those who read entrails and bones for omens, view various aspects of popular media mixed with distorted science to see the true date for the End of Times. One such portent, I’m sure you’ll all admit, was me getting mentioned on the Ellen Degeneres show. The bonus of that, of course, was that she used my recent FB pic so I’m naked in a bathtub, smoking a cigarette, demanding that she dress as a toaster. God truly does work in mysterious ways. Others see the End of Times writ large in weather patters since, as you all know, there was no weather prior to the birth of their Lord and Savior. I’m reluctant to use the phrase “my Lord….” since their interpretation of the Bible requires me to lose far too many brain cells to follow along. I already lived through the 80’s, I see no need to increase the damage.

As I noted in my article about Niribu, these people don’t really think about the effect they have on those around them. From children calling NASA asking for suicide advice to people selling all their possessions for dirt cheap, since they won’t be needing them, the aftermath for these people can be devastating. Both emotionally and fiscally. Nevertheless, celebrated whack job, Harold Camping says today’s the day.

Maybe.

Today might be the end of the world, but Family Radio Network preacher Harold Camping, whose last Doomsday prediction in May fizzled, doesn’t want to make a big fuss of it this time.

Camping’s home phone has been disconnected and a visitor to the radio station in Alameda, Calif., is gently turned away with “no comment,” Inside Bay Area reports.

The Associated Press reports that Susan Espinoa, daughter of the 90-year-old Camping, responded by e-mail to one request for comment by saying: “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we at Family Radio have been directed to not talk to the media or the press.”

Camping, who suffered a stroke in the weeks after his May 21 for the End of the World failed to materialize, reset the date for Oct. 21, but has notably sprinkled his prediction with “probably” and “maybe.”

On the other hand, an earthquake rocked San Francisco on Thursday.

On his Family Radio Network website, Camping noted that Doomsday predicting is not easy.

“There’s a lot of things that we didn’t have quite right, and that’s God’s good provision,” he says. “I really am beginning to think, as I restudy these matters, that there’s going to be no big display of any kind. The end is going to come very, very quietly, probably within the next month. It will happen, that is, by Oct. 21.”

After May 21 came and went, Camping — who blamed a similar 1994 misfire on a math error — did readjust his assessment by saying “God’s judgment” was completed on that day, and the final sword would fall today.

“Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on Oct. 21,” he says.

In the leadup to May 21, the non-profit took in millions in donations, while thousands of followers spread the word in their hometowns or quit their jobs to set out on caravans that crisscrossed the country. The network also spent millions on 5,000 billboards around the world warning of the coming Apocaplypse.

This time, Family Radio Network apparently will let Doomsday speak for itself.

“Family Stations Inc. has no comment concerning Oct. 21,” spokesman Thomas Evans wrote in an e-mail, Inside Bay Area reports. “Our media response was made back in May.”

Here’s a question for you; what are the odds of a quarter landing head’s up?

Answer: 50%

What are the odds of a quarter landing head’s up after landing on tail’s fifteen times in a row?

Answer: 50%

I bring that up to remind you that numerology is the art of finding patterns where none exist. And it is that – ahem – discipline that Mr. Camping has applied to the Bible. You may as well grab random letters out of a Scrabble bag and use them to define your next grocery order for all the logic that’s involved.

Nevertheless, some people take this very seriously. And some, like NORAD, use their Santa trackers to keep the Rapture honest.

I have no idea who’s in charge at NORAD right now, but I want to buy them a beer.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command has today announced its intention to track the Rapture, as a curtain raiser to tracking the End of the World.

Commencing at 6pm on Saturday the 21st May, NORAD will use it’s highly acclaimed “SantaTracker” network of satellites and webcams to follow the Rapture from it’s beginning in Fiji and New Zealand and on, through the Far East, Asia, Europe and finally to the United States of America.

It is expected that the Rapture will change speed as it travels the world time zones. This may mean that the Rapture arrives a little earlier or later than expected in your local time zone, and so you should be prepared a little early, and not be too disappointed if you are still here a little later than you expect.

This is due to the logistics of transporting the various population densities of expected “rapturees” in various parts of the world.

Clearly, for example, the Rapture will move speedily through Europe, especially because the Catholics are not going, but slow down massively when it hits the East Coast of the USA, slowing almost to a crawl when it hits Tulsa, but then speeding considerably as it mops up California.

Travel arrangements have been made to accommodate the Southern Baptists, staging posts might be required.

NORAD has been told to expect that they will not be able to use the regular “World Daylight Map”, because it will be so bright everywhere that this map will, for this day, have little meaningful use.

Counselors and psychiatrists have been stationed at Post Offices all over the USA to deal with the disappointment of Atheists when they realize that so few American Christians qualify that the GOP will probably be able to maintain it’s majority in the House, although it’s unlikely they will take the Senate.

There could be an unexpected vacancy in the White House, housing as it does an actual Christian.

This has been a Public Service Announcement.

This may be the best use ever of a military unit.

I’m normally amused by people like Camping but, as I’ve noted, it’s become increasingly clear that these people run roughshod over other’s lives without even remotely considering the consequences. Hopefully, as I sit here writing this noting that the priest nearby is steadfastly NOT flying into the sun, people will finally come to realize that fear mongering a**holes like Camping are best ignored.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnhKPw2NXIw&w=500&h=317]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!