Wednesday, August 27th, 2014
DOUGLAS PRESTON, - Smithsonian Magazine
Stephan: SR has been covering the fascinating story of Kennewick Man since the story broke in 1996. Here is the latest. It is a tale about a small group of scientists who would not be stopped in their quest for knowledge for all of us and their enemy, the benighted, Kafkaesque Army Corp of Engineers which lied and cheated to block them -- the same agency and people that brought you the failed levies in New Orleans, and a host of other ill-advised schemes.
(StudioEIS)
In the summer of 1996, two college students in Kennewick, Washington, stumbled on a human skull while wading in the shallows along the Columbia River. They called the police. The police brought in the Benton County coroner, Floyd Johnson, who was puzzled by the skull, and he in turn contacted James Chatters, a local archaeologist. Chatters and the coroner returned to the site and, in the dying light of evening, plucked almost an entire skeleton from the mud and sand. They carried the bones back to Chatters’ lab and spread them out on a table.
The skull, while clearly old, did not look Native American. At first glance, Chatters thought it might belong to an early pioneer or trapper. But the teeth were cavity-free (signaling a diet low in sugar and starch) and worn down to the roots-a combination characteristic of prehistoric teeth. Chatters then noted something embedded in the hipbone. It proved to be a stone spearpoint, which seemed to clinch that the remains were prehistoric. He sent a bone sample off for […]
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Wednesday, August 27th, 2014
ERIC W. DOLAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: There is a major trend going on in this country and it is essentially taboo to talk about it. One sees lots of individual stories about morons and nutjobs that win their primary or election. But no one seems to be willing or able to link the datapoints into the trend they actually comprise. Something has happened to the Republican Party. These marginal people are almost invariably Republicans. Here is the latest example I've seen, but I could do a story like this every day.
A democracy doesn't work when a large percentage of the population chooses to vote for people like Klingenschmitt, and yet it happens over and over in Red value states. We seem to have reached some sort of critical mass of craziness, hate, and incompetence. Whether it is that very few people in the country have any respect for the Congress, which they see as incompetent and hopelessly gridlocked, so who cares who gets elected, or whether these bizarre candidates accurately represent the level of hate, and stupidity of the general public I can't say. What I can say is that the Republican Party has become a dangerous toxic force on the political landscape. Not because they are Republicans, but because of the positions and policies they hold and promote. This is not about politics really, it is about social policies and their outcomes.
Click through to see the actual video of Klingenschmitt, who has just won his primary. People actually voted for this man. QED.
A Republican nominee for a seat in Colorado’s statehouse accused Democrats of lacking a sense of humor after he said a gay U.S. congressman would soon start beheading Christians.
‘This weekend I sent out an email alert to my constituents in which I used hyperbole,” Gordon Klingenschmitt said in a video uploaded to YouTube on Monday. ‘You know what hyperbole is. It’s a literary device where you exaggerate to make a point. Well, apparently some Democrats do not have a sense of humor and they were offended by some of the things I said using hyperbole this weekend.”
An email alert sent out by Klingenschmitt over the weekend stated that Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) wanted to execute Christians, reported Right Wing Watch.
‘The openly homosexual Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) introduced a revised bill to force Christian employers and business owners to hire and promote homosexuals with ZERO RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS for Christians who want to opt out.”
‘Polis ‘wants sexual orientation and gender identity treated the same way as race, religion, sex, and national origin, when it comes to employment protections,’ claims the Advocate, under the headline […]
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Wednesday, August 27th, 2014
TARYN HILLIN, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: The marijuana research studies so long suppressed are now coming almost weekly, sometimes daily. Here is the latest.
Past research has indicated that couples who abuse substances are at a greater risk for divorce, in part because substance abuse often leads to an increase in domestic violence.
However, new research has found that when it comes to marijuana use, the opposite effect occurs: couples who frequently use marijuana are actually at a lower risk of partner violence.
Researchers from Yale University, University of Buffalo and Rutgers recruited 634 couples from 1996 to 1999 while they were applying for a marriage license in New York State. After an initial interview, the researchers followed the couples over the course of nine years using mail-in surveys to measure the effects of marijuana use on intimate partner violence (IPV).
The study defines IPV as acts of physical aggression, such as slapping, hitting, beating and choking, and it was measured by asking couples to report violence committed by them or toward them in the last year.
At the end of the first year, 37.1 percent of husbands had committed acts of domestic violence.
Marijuana use was measured by asking participants how often they used marijuana or hashish (defined as […]
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Wednesday, August 27th, 2014
Stephan: Here is some more good news about developments in solar technology. One can only wonder how fast these developments might go if solar got the kind of special tax breaks and subsidies given to carbon energy sources.
Researchers at Michigan State University have created a fully transparent solar concentrator, which could turn any window or sheet of glass (like your smartphone’s screen) into a photovoltaic solar cell. Unlike other ‘transparent” solar cells that we’ve reported on in the past, this one really is transparent, as you can see in the photos throughout this story. According to Richard Lunt, who led the research, the team are confident that the transparent solar panels can be efficiently deployed in a wide range of settings, from ‘tall buildings with lots of windows or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e-reader.”
Scientifically, a transparent solar panel is something of an oxymoron. Solar cells, specifically the photovoltaic kind, make energy by absorbing photons (sunlight) and converting them into electrons (electricity). If a material is transparent, however, by definition it means that all of the light passes through the medium to strike the back of your eye. This is why previous transparent solar cells have actually only been partially transparent – and, to add insult to injury, they […]
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Wednesday, August 27th, 2014
Stephan: For more than a decade I have been writing about what I see as the greatest geopolitical trend in the 21st century, the rise of the Virtual Corporate state, large multinational corporations which function essentially as states, without geographical sovereignty borders. States which no longer consider themselves to have any allegiance to a nation state. One of the aspects of this trend is Tax Inversion, corporations moving their legal residency to nations with more advantageous tax structures. Here is the latest example -- Burger King.
It is my recommendation that the citizen response to this trend is simply to stop buying the products or services of those corporations. Don't patronize Burger King, it is as simple as that.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Burger King’s plans to buy a Canadian coffee and doughnut chain and shift its tax base there have been met with boycott threats among some US customers.
While investors in both Burger King and Tim Hortons showed great appetite for the deal – with shares in both firms rising more than 20% on Monday – some of the burger chain’s US customers found the so-called tax inversion aspect – the shifting of a firm’s tax base to another country – hard to swallow.
While a tie-up would create the world’s third-largest fast food restaurant firm with 18,000 restaurants in 100 countries and about $22bn in sales, it would also significantly cut Burger King’s tax burden.
A recent report by KPMG found that total tax costs in Canada are 46.4% lower than in the United States.
President Barack Obama and Congress have criticised inversions because they mean a loss of tax revenue for the US government.
Burger King Facebook Page Facebook users took to Burger King’s page to vent their fury
White House spokesman Josh Earnest wouldn’t […]
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