Archives for September 2015

Ah, the never ending joys of click bait. Those links that you HAVE to click to find out the WHOLE story that no one else wants you to know. Because you’re the only human on earth who has the internet what they’re sending you is a big secret. Usually a secret that comes with one of three requirements; (1) send money now, (2) try this useless product (often by sending money now), and (3) share this with your friends before something horrible happens to you and them. The latter ones usually appeal to your religious beliefs as well. Look, all of them are scams of one form or another. Simply put, God isn’t checking Facebook to find out whether you prayed or not. That’s not how prayer works. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell you to post your prayers on the walls of anything, digital or otherwise.

In fact it does just the opposite. If you don’t believe me, ask Him. “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:5-6). Secrets are kind of antithetical to Facebook.

As to the rest, most of them prey on the basic paranoia we all have. All you have to do is ask one simple question, how does ___________ benefit from keeping this a secret? Because, in the case of the FDA, for example, allowing people to die in large numbers causes many more problems than it solves. The same with the hysterically named Big Pharma. A couple of weeks back I dealt with that fallacy and won’t belabor it here other than to say those companies couldn’t put together a softball team, forget about collaborating on an international conspiracy.

The same basic rule applies to the government. They are either wildly incompetent and shouldn’t be trusted with sharp objects or they know how to hide aliens under the Pentagon. You can’t have both. Since we have members of Congress who don’t believe that science exists it should be an easy choice for you.

Just a side note on that snark. Government, when it’s functioning, does some incredible things that benefit us all. It does, to paraphrase Green Arrow, what people can not do for themselves. It builds highways and bridges and trains, it provides hospitals and education and so on. All stuff we need. If you want a useful government there is only one solution; vote for it.

Okay, off my soapbox.

By the way, no, you did not win a lottery you’ve never heard of and, no, no one is giving you a fucking $50 gift card for anything. Those are all click bait to make you take a survey and then give you a $1 coupon for shit you don’t need.

Another meme rearing its ugly head again is that President Obama isn’t the first black president. The meme attributes that honor to a man named John Hansen. Just for giggles, let’s break this one down. First off, the person they are referring to was the president of the Continental Congress, not the U.S., and his name was John Hanson. Also, he was very, very, white. The black man pictured in the meme is also named John Hanson. He was a senator from Liberia (which is in Africa, not the U.S.) who fought to have American slaves, and any other willing blacks, repatriated to Africa as citizens. His efforts led to Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Liner movement at the beginning of the 20th century. While all three men are very important to American history none was our president.

There are two other memes making the rounds concerning President Obama as well. These claim to show ALL THE FACTS about government spending since he was elected. One says that he’s spent more than the previous 43 presidents combined and the other says that he’s spent less than any president in history. This may come as a shock to you but they’re both wrong. If the former were true we would be bankrupt. If the latter were true we’d have trillions to toss at education and infrastructure. Neither is happening. It is true that he’s spent a ton of dough, but it’s still less than Bush did in his eight years and, let’s be honest, he inherited a couple of wars and three major industries, banking, auto and real estate, on the verge of bankruptcy. Motives aside, had he not spent that money we’d all be in bread lines that would have made the Great Depression look like a garden party.

Speaking of politicians, while the president does get a salary for life it’s only $195,000 per year, not $450,000. In fact the president makes less than that last amount while in office. No Congressperson gets paid after they leave office unless they qualify for pension benefits and that amount varies and is based on years of service. So please stop sending people that email your angry Uncle Elmo sent you.

As to comparing those figures against what soldiers make, they are misleading. The Department of Defense provides the base salaries, correctly listed around $30,000 per year, but soldiers also get free housing, medical, food, and many other perks that would greatly increase their pay if they were factored in. It is only after they leave the military that those things become their responsibility. Which sucks if you think about it. They’re willing to take a bullet for us and we can’t come up with some way for them to get eye glasses and such when they need them? That’s embarrassing to our country.

As to all those wonderful emails and posts that tell me to click and share so that Facebook, CNN, Bill Gates, some guy you met at Wal-Mart, can donate money to this or that charity, help this or that dying baby, feed the hungry in Syria or Arkansas, or whatever, they’re all lies. No one does that. If you want to help a certain charity your only options are to volunteer your time or give them money. If you can do both, God bless you.

As to the meme claiming more Americans have died by gun violence, since the laws were loosened in the 80’s, than the total number of American soldiers killed in combat since the country began, sadly, that one’s true.

I’ve dealt with the whole history of gun ownership in the U.S. before. If you want to know how we got here, click there.

So there you have it for today. Clip and save this in case someone you know sends you more useless shit.

Lies :: Astroglider :: Music Video from Astroglider on Vimeo.

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When people think of cavemen they usually think of people who lived in caves. That would seem to make sense with the term. But, in reality, very few lived in caves. They worshiped in them, buried their dead in them and used them for storage but, otherwise, lived outside. In huts. We also tend to think of them as scared, cretinous, savages. That is a hold over from 18th and 19th century scientists who imposed a very Euro-centric view on our ancestors. If people weren’t blue eyed and white how could they be smart? Those racist treatises still get trotted out from time to time by idiots who don’t know anything about actual science. Another trope is that the early humans stayed in one place. Common sense proves that wrong otherwise why are there people all over the world? We didn’t sprout like flowers. We came from somewhere. And that somewhere was Africa. The big question has always been how did our ancestors travel? Did they just walk all over the world? In some cases that answer is yes. A variety of factors could make them do that; searching for food, new mates, better land, almost any reason you could think to move today would have come up then. But they also had boats. Crude ones, to be sure, but they worked. As Thor Heyerdahl proved in 1947, you could take a raft across an ocean as long as you didn’t hit storms.

All of this brings us to the tale of the Olmecs.

This is a statue featuring an Olmec face.

If your first thought is that the features look African, you’d be right. If your second thought is that it’s no big deal since there are lots of Africans in Africa, you’d be half right. While there certainly are, the Olmecs lived in South America and predated the Incans and the Mayans by centuries.

Stone tools and charcoal from the site in Brazil show evidence of human habitation as long ago as 50,000 years.

Archeologists agree that the Mayan and Aztec civilizations – which began thousands of years after the Olmec civilization ended, definitely inherited the bulk of ancient pyramids and advanced pre-columbian art and artifacts previously called ‘Mayan’ or ‘Aztec.” The Aztecs and Mayans used the pyramids for blood-letting and human sacrafice, but the Olmec people they inherited the pyramids and giant stone heads from did not.

Walter Neves is the first Scientist to Make a Connection

The site is at Serra Da Capivara in remote northeast Brazil. This area is now inhabited by the descendants of European settlers and African slaves who arrived just 500 years ago. But cave paintings found here provided the first clue to the African looking people who we now call Olmec. Dr. Walter Neves has measured hundreds of skulls, the next step was to reconstruct a face from Lucia’s skull (the name scientists gave this 20 year old, African looking woman who died 11,000+ years ago in South America.) First, a CAT scan of the skull was done, to allow an accurate working model to be made. Then a forensic artist, Richard Neave from the University of Manchester, UK, created a face for Lucia. The result was surprising: “It has all the features of a negroid face,” says Dr Neave.

According to studies and research conducted by Clyde Winters, the Olmecs were Africans from the Mandinka region of West Africa. They used the Mende script to write and they spoke the Mende language, the same language spoken by Cinque in the movie ‘Amistad’.

The Mende script found on monuments at Monte Alban in Mexico, has been deciphered and it was found to be identical to the Mende script used in West Africa. Afterwards, the language was found to be the very same language spoken by the Mende of West Africa.

Getting from Africa to Central America isn’t as crazy as it sounds. There are thousands of islands dotting almost any path they could have taken. They may have even settled on some and intermarried with natives along the way.

We do know that Stone Age people were a hardy lot. And we also know that their descendants, members of the iron age and so on, traveled extensively. What happened to the Olmecs is a bit of a mystery but it doesn’t involve aliens. Most likely they intermarried with the Asian and Indian explorers who came afterward. Since it’s doubtful they had a huge population they would have needed new genetic stock to keep their families alive.

So why bring all of this up now? Because the Stone Age is happening again.

As Eric March reports, another species has started taking steps towards sentience and climbing the evolutionary ladder.

According to a fascinating report from Collin Barras of the BBC, archeologists in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, have been digging up crude stone tools that date back thousands of years — tools that were fashioned by non-human primates.

Which means something kind of extraordinary:

“The tools are crude. A chimpanzee or monkey stone hammer is hardly a work of art to rival the beauty of an ancient human hand axe. But that’s not the point. These primates have developed a culture that makes routine use of a stone-based technology. That means they have entered the Stone Age.”

That’s right: We now how pretty solid evidence to suggest that at least some chimps are now firmly in the Stone Age.

For reference, here are a few of the things humans did during the Stone Age:

Learned to control fire.

And then learned to tiptoe away slowly when it got … a little out of hand.

Domesticated the dog.

We made this from a wolf.

Started making pottery.

And selling it at our craft stores in Mendocino.

And while Chimpanzees aren’t close to doing any of those things…

At least as far as we know.

It’s possible these creatures are a lot more like us than most of us give them credit for. And who knows where they might be in the next few thousand years?

…it might be time to reassess how we treat our primate cousins.

Many countries like New Zealand and the U.K. have banned experiments on chimpanzees and other apes, and some others, like Spain, have gone as far as to grant them limited human rights.

Here in the U.S. we haven’t gotten quite so far, but calls for change are growing. A lawsuit pending in New York courts alleges that chimpanzees deserve full personhood and the protections that accompany it.

Even if we’re not willing to go quite that far just yet, the more empathy and kindness we can extend to chimps and other apes, the better.

Otherwise, we might be in for a rude awakening sooner than we think.

As noted above Chimps are already making stone tools. Thus the term “Stone Age.” This is a relatively new development. Primates have used plant based tools, twigs for example, for as long as they’ve been around. They could use them to pull ants and termites out of mounds and then eat them. But that isn’t what we’re talking about here. These primates are manufacturing tools. And manufacturing them for specific purposes.

That is a level of self awareness we’ve never seen.

So how about the rest of the list?

Well, we do know they haven’t tamed fire, but that came later for our ancestors as well.

How about domesticating animals?

Yep.

New Scientist reports that some herds are doing just that.

In the alpine grasslands of eastern Africa, Ethiopian wolves and gelada monkeys are giving peace a chance. The geladas – a type of baboon – tolerate wolves wandering right through the middle of their herds, while the wolves ignore potential meals of baby geladas in favour of rodents, which they can catch more easily when the monkeys are present.

The unusual pact echoes the way dogs began to be domesticated by humans, and was spotted by primatologist Vivek Venkataraman, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, during fieldwork at Guassa plateau in the highlands of north-central Ethiopia.

Even though the wolves occasionally prey on young sheep and goats, which are as big as young geladas, they do not normally attack the monkeys – and the geladas seem to know that, because they do not run away from the wolves.

“You can have a wolf and a gelada within a metre or two of each other and virtually ignoring each other for up to 2 hours at a time,” says Venkataraman. In contrast, the geladas flee immediately to cliffs for safety when they spot feral dogs, which approach aggressively and often prey on them.

When walking through a herd – which comprises many bands of monkeys grazing together in groups of 600 to 700 individuals – the wolves seem to take care to behave in a non-threatening way. They move slowly and calmly as they forage for rodents and avoid the zigzag running they use elsewhere, Venkataraman observed.

Deliberate association
This suggested that they were deliberately associating with the geladas. Since the wolves usually entered gelada groups during the middle of the day, when rodents are most active, he wondered whether the geladas made it easier for the wolves to catch the rodents – their primary prey.

Venkataraman and his colleagues followed individual wolves for 17 days, recording each attempted capture of a rodent, and whether it worked. The wolves succeeded in 67 per cent of attempts when within a gelada herd, but only 25 per cent of the time when on their own.

It’s not yet clear what makes the wolves more successful when they hunt within gelada groups. It could be that the grazing monkeys flush out the rodents from their burrows or vegetation, Venkataraman suggests.

Another possibility is that the monkeys, which are about the same size and colour as the wolves, distract the rodents and make it easier for the wolves to approach undetected. “I like to think of it as a mobile hide,” says Claudio Sillero, a conservation biologist at the University of Oxford who studies the critically endangered Ethiopian wolves. “The wolves benefit from hiding in the herd.”

Whatever the mechanism, the boost to the wolves’ foraging appears to be significant enough that the wolves almost never give in to the temptation to grab a quick gelada snack. Only once has Venkataraman seen a wolf seize a young gelada, and other monkeys quickly attacked it and forced it to drop the infant, then drove the offending wolf away and prevented it from returning later.

The wolves may benefit from associating with other species as well. For example, Sillero has noted that they also tend to forage in the vicinity of herds of cattle, which may help them catch rodents. Other predators might also be doing this without anyone noticing, says Colin Chapman, a primatologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. “I don’t think we’ve looked at it very much, because the predators are usually scared off by people. I think it could be pretty common,” he says.

Here, they were even kind enough to share Jeff Kirby’s amazing shot of the monkeys and the wolves working together. Click on it to see the full sized shot.

Also, if you’ve seen the Facebook video about baboons kidnapping puppies to be their pets, please be skeptical. As Hal Herzog, from Psychology Today, points out that video raises more questions than it answers and, just FYI, it was filmed at a garbage dump which attracts numerous species.

Unless we get footage of the baboons feeding and housing the dogs, one of which has a collar in the video (a big no-no in a Muslim country and clearly not a wild animal), then we can assume they’re just eating and tolerating each other’s company due to the abundance of food.

It’s that kind of shoddy work that demeans the legitimate science being done by Dr. Venkataraman and his colleagues.

How about pottery? They’re on their way. As I noted back on June 20th, chimps are already using leaves and bark to create vessels to hold liquid and transport it. The first step to making a jar is realizing you need one. And they have crossed that threshold.

Another thing to keep in mind is that stone tools were first used by proto-humans to sharpen sticks to make them better spears for hunting. Primates all over the world now do that.

Oh, and once you learn to work stone, chipping flints to make fire is just a stone’s throw away.

Sorry about that.

Evolution from Mehdi Alibeygi on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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While I will discuss emails on our weekly radio show on The Big Wake Up Call, I never do it here. The reason is simple, while listeners to the show may be asking questions that I can answer on air, readers of the blog are usually just offering commentary. In other words printing them would be kind of needy. Oh look, someone read me. Will you read me too? It’s the main reason we got rid of the comments’ section years ago. You just are sharing a mix of fawning fluff and trolls. There are sites where the readers are insightful, and I think this is one of them, but forcing readers to take the extra step of mailing me has eliminated the idiots. So that’s what’s working for us.

All that being said an email came in this week that I have to share, with the authors’ permission. Yes, authors, plural.

Hi Bill:

Jen and I have been fans of yours for a few years now. We first heard one of your Valentine’s shows and have been hooked ever since. You have a fun, yet unusual, look on life. Last year she and I came out to our, Tea Party loving, parents. Suffice it to say things have been stressful. That’s not your fault, you seem very LGBT friendly, but I am hoping you can help us a little.

You recently have posted several blogs about how the human race is going to die in short order. Unfortunately you write well so Jen and I had nightmares for days. It probably has to do with all the stress because we know you’ve tackled stuff like this before and it scared us but not like this. Can you mark your columns with a rating or somehow note that they won’t send us screaming from the room?

Thanks.

Your fans,
Cathy & Jen

Since they clearly read this blog, and I was nice enough to ask before I did anything, I’ll put the answer here.

Dear Ladies:

The short answer is no. Because this blog gets translated all over the world a ratings system would do more to confuse than clarify. That said, others have hinted that they wouldn’t mind a radio specific blog and that I can do. Just look for posts with the word “radio” in the title from now on and you should be good to go.

As to the rest, live, love, laugh. Those who wish to join you will make your life better by their presence and those that don’t will enrich your world with their absence. My best to you both.

Send vodka,

Bill

So, with that caveat in mind I figured I’d mix things up today so everyone could play along without fear of ending up in therapy. We’ll start with something that will tie this all together nicely.

I happened to be out with some friends when the Supergirl commercial came on CBS. Three of the ladies who were with us suddenly said “Oh, she’s so hot!”, “Damn, those boots!”, and, of course, “I’m straight and I’d do her.”

There’s one in every crowd.

That aside, the creators of Supergirl announced that they have some new super villains and fans and newbies alike are digging the fact that Red Tornado is coming to the screen.

Besides being a longtime member of the Justice League, Red Tornado served as a mentor to Young Justice when that team first assembled under the pen of longtime Supergirl writer Peter David.

In addition to Red Tornado and the previously-announced Livewire and Reactron, the Supergirl Twitter account confirmed that General Sam Lane will appear on the series, along with the Kryptonian villain Non.

The presence of both Non and General Lane will likely lead many fans to the conclusion that Lucy Lane, recently cast in the series, will indeed take up the mantle of Superwoman. In the comics, she was briefly given artificial “Kryptonian” powers by one of her father’s military projects.

It’s likely also worth noting that the Earth-2 version of Red Tornado, who has had a significant presence in The New 52: Futures End and Earth 2: Society, houses the personality of Lois Lane, Lucy’s sister and Sam’s daughter.

Non was a brilliant scientific mind and soldier on Krypton before he was lobotomized to make him a more perfect weapon. He first appeared in Richard Donner’s Superman II before being adapted by Donner and DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns into the comics during their short-lived Action Comics run. That same run, collected as Superman: Last Son, featured the Kryptonian Phantom Zone prison which will be introduced in the series’ pilot.

There are more comic book references in that little post than you’ll find in most comic book stores. That said you’ll also note that the female super-villains listed above are all smart. Even the bad girls are good role models.

Speaking of female superheroes, Isis Wenger became the unwitting target for assholes when her company used her face as part of a recruitment drive to attract female engineering students. Most of the comments were along the lines of how she “didn’t look like an engineer.”

This pic was her response.

Not all heroes wear capes. I’m just saying.

Speaking of superheroes who don’t wear capes, Warner Bothers Films and DC Comics have announced that they will be making a new Booster Gold / Blue Beetle movie.

It appears that time travel is in the DCEU’s future. The Tracking Board has revealed that Warner Bros. is currently developing a live-action Booster Gold/Blue Beetle film. The project that will team-up Michael Jon Carter & Jamie Reyes is just another film joining the already massively diverse DCEU line-up which includes films such as Aquaman, Suicide Squad, Cyborg and Wonder Woman. The film will be helmed by Greg Berlanti and is being pitched as a “superhero buddy-cop movie” which is something quite different than we’ve seen before and offering up the opportunity for tons of fun.

Berlanti’s a big name when it comes to Warner Bros. DC properties, having both worked on both Arrow, The Flash and 2011’s Green Lantern, as well as being behind the upcoming Legends Of Tomorrow and Supergirl series. The director, producer, and writer is even such a big fan of the character that he even scripted the pilot for a Booster Gold series over at Syfy.

The site also added:

“The dynamic duo are also members of the Justice League and are being planted now to appear in a future JL film.”

DC has wanted to push both of the characters on-screen for quite some time with them both appearing in Smallville and plans for each to receive their own series at one point. Could Booster end up being Warner Bros. equivalent of Tony Stark? Will these characters be involved in the upcoming Justice League in any capacity? This news raises a lot of questions.

These two characters have a very unusual relationship. Many consider them to be the Laurel and Hardy of superheroes. Given the dark nature of most of the DC Universe (HI BATMAN!) this could be a nice respite.

Some superheroes don’t wear uniforms at all. Get your mind out of the gutter, I’m not talking about super porn. I’m talking about regular Joe’s and Jane’s who wear hard hats and coveralls and, in this case, deliver entire school systems in a pick up truck.

Disassembled, each Solar Classroom in a Box can fit in the bed of a pickup truck. According to Aleutia’s website, the cinder block, and steel structures take about a day to contstuct—no cranes necessary—and another day to fully wire. But it’s not simply the structure that makes the Solar Classrooms in a Box so impressive. Each comes complete with 11 desktop computers designed specifically to operate in the dusty heat of rural Africa, as well as a server, a projector and monitor, and 3G and Satellite connectivity, all powered by the classroom’s pre-installed rooftop solar panels. The only things missing are the students. Each Solar Classroom in a Box runs $20,000, with half of that accounting for the structural costs, and the other half for the included technology.

Aleutia, which focuses on bringing computers and health care technology to developing communities, announced recently that they would be shipping a Classroom in a Box to each of Kenya’s 47 counties, servicing an estimated 20,000 children, as a result. While it isn’t the company’s first batch of classrooms delivered to African nations, this latest initiative is being called Kenya’s largest solar classroom project to date. As FastCo points out, Aleutia’s classrooms have been optimized for this particular rollout, with company founder Mike Rosenberg explaining:

Usually when we install solar, there are issues with the panels pointing the wrong way or at the wrong angle. Here, because it’s all pre-installed and optimized, there’s no need for a site survey and other retrofitting costs.

As long as you’ve come this far, allow me to share a few more things you might be interested in;

The Space Tiara: It cures migraines and looks just like you think it would. That said, it works, so get on your fabulous glitter, bust out the crinoline and feel better.

Elvira is getting her own animated series. You either pushed up your boobs in anticipation or you probably shouldn’t be reading this stuff in the first place.

In, seemingly, related news, the Chinese have built an automatic sperm extractor. The instructions, literally, say “just plug it in and it works.”

Okay, back to capes and leather, Warner Television appears to have greenlighted a new version of Justice League Unlimited. Since that show was able to tackle some adult themes without losing its younger audience, and since the people who control it now are the ones who controlled it then, fans are understandably stoked.

Speaking of stoked, Lexus just made every single person who saw the Back to the Future movies start tingling in all their fun places; they have unveiled a functioning hoverboard.

Speaking of tingling, have you ever had a memory of a previous life? Many people have. Now, science may have figured out why. Aaron Kase has a great article showing how primal, and possibly subtle – yet related, memories can be handed down from generation to generation without anyone from any generation actually meeting.

Lastly, you know how your parents used to tell you “TURN THAT SHIT DOWN! YOUR SCARING THE COCKROACHES!” Well, now, you can simply tell them, “It’s okay mumsy and daddums, I’m just curing Alzheimer’s.”

Science Alert reports that scientists have used pulsed ultra-sound waves to break up the plaque that surrounds neurons in the brain when Alzheimer’s sets in. The result is a return of lost memories an functions. Human trials will start soon.

Still not in a good mood? Okay, you’ve left me no choice. Turn up your speakers really loud, strip down to your skivvies and try not to dance when you play the video below.

blur – girls and boys (hq).mp4 from Ruben Arlote on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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