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Subject: Caricatures....Not a repeat.......Very good
These are great. Especially the ones toward the end.
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The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
Oldest Mayan calendar found, and it goes way beyond Dec. 12, 2012 (+video)
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyEw3gWB1vE&feature=player_embedded#t=0s )
by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience.com
posted May 11, 2012 at 9:27 am EDT
A Mayan calendar was found deep in the Guatemalan rainforest. But this ancient Mayan calender refutes claims that the world will end Dec. 21, 2012
The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.
The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn't a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.
"The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future," said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. "Numbers we can't even wrap our heads around." [End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears]
A brilliant surprise
The newly discovered calendar is complex indeed, featuring stacked bars and dots representing fives and ones and recording lunar cycles in six-month chunks of time. But it wasn't these mathematical notations that first caught the archeologists' eye. William Saturno, an archaeologist from Boston University, was mapping the ancient Maya city of Xultun in northeast Guatemala in 2010 when one of his undergraduate students peered into an old trench dug by looters and reported seeing traces of ancient paint.
The discovery was "certainly nothing to write home about," Saturno told reporters on Thursday (May 10), in advance of releasing details of the murals in this week's issue of the journal Science. Paint doesn't preserve well in the rain forest climate of Guatemala, and Saturno figured that the faint red and black lines his student had found weren't going to yield much information. But he felt he had a responsibility to excavate the room the looters had tried to reach, if only to be able to report the size of the structure along with the paint finding.
As Saturno continued along the old trench to the back wall, he was shocked to run into a brilliantly painted portrait: a Mayan king, sitting on his throne, wearing a red crown with blue feathers flowing out behind him. Another figure peeks out from behind him. On an adjoining wall, three loincloth-clad figures sit, wearing feathered headdresses. One is captioned "Older Brother Obsidian," or "Senior Obsidian," a still-mysterious title. Next to the king, a man painted in brilliant orange wearing jade bracelets reaches out with a stylus, likely identifying him as a scribe. He is labeled as "Younger Brother Obsidian," or perhaps "Junior Obsidian." [See Photos of the Mayan murals]
It's not the end of the world
These paintings — covering the west and north walls of the small, 6-foot-by-6-foot room — weren't the only surprise Xultun had to offer. On the east wall, someone had painted a series of small, complex hieroglyphics. This, the researchers soon realized, was a calendar.
The calendar seemed to have been added after the murals were completed, as some of the numbers cover up painted figures on the wall. It's almost as if an ancient scribe got sick of flipping through a document to find his timekeeping chart and decided to put it on the wall for at-a-glance reference, Stuart said.
"It's kind of like having a whiteboard in your office where you're writing down formulas that you want to remember," he said.
The Maya recorded time in a series of cycles, including 400-year chunks called baktuns. It's these baktuns that have led to rumors of an end-of-the-world catastrophe on Dec. 21, 2012 — on that date, a cycle of 13 baktuns will be complete. But the idea that this means the end of the world is a misconception, Stuart said. In fact, Maya experts have known for a long time that the calendar doesn't end after the 13th baktun. It simply begins a new cycle. And the calendar encompasses much larger units than the baktun.
"There were 24 units of time they actually could have incorporated into their calendar," Stuart said. "Here, we're only seeing five units and they're still really big."
In one column, the ancient scribe even worked out a cycle of time recording 17 baktuns, the researchers found. In another spot, someone etched a "ring number" into the wall. These notations were used to record time in a previous cycle, thousands of years into the past. The calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus, the researchers said. Symbols of gods head the top of each lunar cycle, suggesting that each cycle had its own patron deity.
"There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns," Stuart said.
Scratching the surface
This ancient "wall calendar" is a major find, because the first known calendar and astronomical tables before this time came from the Dresden Codex, a book that dates to the 11th or 12th centuries. Most likely, Saturno said, the wall calendar and the Dresden Codex both arose from earlier books that long ago rotted away. [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]
The mural room gives an unprecedented glimpse into the work lives of Mayan scientists, Stuart said. The mural room is in a compound with several other rooms, which were collapsed and built over in later years. The murals only survived, because, instead of collapsing the room, Mayan engineers filled it with rubble and then built on top of it.
"This is clearly a space where someone important was living, this important household of the noble class, and here you also have a mathematician working in that space," Stuart said. "It's a great illustration of how closely those roles were connected in Mayan society."
Kings would have been extremely interested in timekeeping, Stuart said, because part of their job was to conduct rituals of renewal at certain times. Unfortunately, the name of the king pictured in the mural room has been lost.
Although Xultun was first discovered in 1915, less than 0.1 percent has been explored, Saturno said. Looters damaged much of the ancient city in the 1970s, meaning much of historical significance has been lost. But archaeologists still don't even know how far the boundaries of the town extend.
"[That] investigations can begin and in a house like this we can find something we've never seen before only speaks to the great wealth of scientific material that remains in Guatemala in the Maya area for us to discover," Saturno said.
The excavations of the mural room were funded by the National Geographic Society.
You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
- Oops! 11 Failed Doomsday Predictions
- Supernatural Powers? Tales of 10 Historical Predictions
- History's Most Overlooked Mysteries
Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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TSA Tenth Anniversary of a National Nightmare
by James Bovard, Posted May 11, 2012
Less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush promised Americans, "We will not surrender our freedom to travel." In hindsight, he may have been referring to himself and other high-ranking government officials. Because for all other Americans, airline travel has become more arduous and more perilous in the past ten years.
The Bush administration and Congress responded to the 9/11 hijackers with the usual Washington panacea creating a new federal agency. The Federal Aviation Administration was widely perceived as inept, if not incorrigible. Instead of razing the failed bureaucracy and attempting to remedy the profound flaws in the federal approach to aviation, Congress and Bush "solved" the problem of airline safety by creating a new federal agency and vesting it with sweeping power and near-zero responsibility.
Last November marked the tenth anniversary of the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA has done wonders for the sale of latex gloves and 3-ounce plastic containers, but that is probably the extent of its positive impact.
The TSA has made U.S. air travel more uncertain. Shortly after it was created, the Transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, proclaimed a goal that passengers would not have to wait more than ten minutes to clear TSA checkpoints. He hyped the slogan "No weapons, no waiting." That was the air-travel equivalent of offering to sell people the Brooklyn Bridge. But for anyone who doubted whether the TSA would perform as promised, Bush warned, "If we get impatient, the terrorists win."
When the TSA began hiring screeners, Mineta announced that the agency would "hire the best and the brightest" for the new jobs. But not all TSA hiring processes have been biased in favor of intelligence.
"Training"
TSA screener applicants in New York were not required to show any ability to detect weapons and were given tests that were surprisingly easy. Clark Kent Ervin, the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department, complained that some of the test questions "are simply inane." The test asked would-be screeners why they should bother looking for smuggled bombs:
- Question: Why is it important to screen bags for IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]?
- a. The IED batteries could leak and damage other passenger bags.
- b. The wires in the IED could cause a short to the aircraft wires.
- c. IEDs can cause loss of lives, property, and aircraft.
- d. The ticking timer could worry other passengers.
- a. The IED batteries could leak and damage other passenger bags.
In 2003, Newsday reported pervasive cheating on TSA tests by screeners hired at LaGuardia Airport and elsewhere across the nation. Class instructors read the tests to students beforehand, made sure students understood the correct answers, and then gave the tests. One screener commented, "They knew that they would need us to fill these positions, so we were not allowed to fail." One St. Louis screener said she received "only about 40 minutes of hands-on training on two explosives-detection machines, instead of the day and a half pre-scribed by the TSA. One machine, which produces computer images of each bag's interior, was not working, so instructors 'just said if it was running, this is what would happen.'" Several people hired to teach airport screeners also reported having been given test answers before taking the tests to become certified instructors.
The TSA provided abysmal training to many of the new bomb catchers. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on August 25, 2002, that "dozens of members of an elite team of federal airport screeners received as little as 15 minutes' training before starting to inspect baggage for bombs." The screeners were members of the TSA's Mobile Screening Force, which moved around the country to lead the way in federalizing airport security. One disgruntled new "expert" screener complained, "They handed us a swab and told us to wipe the bags this way and put us to work. The whole thing took 10, 15 minutes tops." The law Congress enacted in late 2001 required "security screeners" to receive at least 100 hours of training. The Chronicle noted that the new screeners said their "requests for proper training have been ignored."
The TSA admitted in mid 2003 that it had grossly failed to screen its own screeners. Once hired, more than 1,200 TSA employees were fired after failing criminal background checks or other internal investigations. A 2004 inspector general report revealed that the raw numbers were only the tip of the iceberg. At a time when TSA officials were assuring the American public of the agency's savvy, 500 boxes of documents representing the background checks for 20,000 TSA screeners were piled away and went unexamined for months.
The TSA used lower standards for security clearances than the FAA required for private screeners hired before 9/11. The inspector general found that at one airport, the TSA hired 13 screeners with serious criminal convictions (rape, burglary, manslaughter, et cetera). It allowed a dozen of the felons to continue working for months even after the agency discovered that they had failed their criminal-background checks.
The TSA has recently been harshly criticized for its Body Imaging X-ray machines that not only destroy privacy but also emit dangerous levels of radiation. But many people are unaware that the TSA is renowned for blundering with technology.
The Aviation and Transportation Security Act of November 2001 required that by December 31, 2002, all airline baggage be run through bomb-detection machinery or checked with hand-held bomb detectors. The TSA spent billions of dollars buying minivan-sized machines and hand-held detectors to protect travelers from bombs. Unfortunately, the machines that it rushed to buy are very unreliable, giving false positives for almost a third of all luggage. After a machine signals a false alert, the bag has to be searched by hand. Such searches have spurred more than 10,000 complaints to the TSA about luggage lost, stolen, or damaged while under TSA jurisdiction. A TSA screener who was caught stealing $5,000 worth of jewelry from someone's luggage was fired and sentenced in April 2004 to five years' probation and six months' home detention, and was fined $2,000.
False alarms
False explosives alarms have disrupted many airports. On November 12, 2003, hundreds of people were evacuated from Indianapolis International airport after an explosives trace-detection test gave a positive reading. The bag was held at the checkpoint while the owner left and caught his flight. A bomb squad later determined that the explosives alarm was triggered by an electric toothbrush and a hair-care product. On April 16, 2004, a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport was evacuated and flights were delayed after the TSA agents summoned the bomb squad over luggage containing a stack of poker chips and a Palm Pilot.
Heart patients have often been wrongly tagged by the TSA as would-be terrorists. Much of the Portland airport was shut down on January 5, 2004, in large part because screeners were spooked by an elderly man who tested positive for nitroglycerin. TSA spokeswoman Jennifer Marty told the Portland Oregonian that the shutdown could have been avoided if the passenger "had promptly disclosed that he was taking heart medication containing nitroglycerin."
The New York Daily News reported in 2004 that "many common brands of hand lotions set off the explosives trace detection machines at U.S. airports' new screening stations. Dozens if not hundreds of times a day, someone's bag or shoe tests positive for glycerin a substance widely used to smooth skin but which is also found in nitroglycerin, a main component of dynamite." One TSA screener working at a Midwestern airport commented, "This happens five or six times during an eight-hour shift." TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis explained why hand-lotion false alarms are another success story: "Passengers should be confident that [detection] machines are finding even a trace of this substance. It shows the system is working as it should."
Even false alarms that do not shut down airport corridors can disrupt a traveler's plans. On October 25, 2003, TSA agents at Norfolk International Airport were alarmed, as Airport Security Report gravely noted, after
- a novelty dog toy, which breaks wind as it bends over, set off an explosives detector. The life-size mechanical terrier alerted screeners and armed law enforcement officers after it registered as TNT on an explosives trace machine. FBI agents grilled the man in possession of the toy, a 31-year-old male from England. A series of swabs were taken from the replica animal's rear end. Officers were convinced an explosive was inside the dog. Officers eventually returned the dog but stopped the passenger from taking his planned flight to Charlotte, N.C., and rerouted him via Philadelphia.
The TSA has always been profoundly irresponsible and dishonest. Rather than making Americans safe from terrorists, it has made them prey to federal agents. There is no reason to expect the agency to turn over a new leaf. The TSA has no liability to any American citizen it abuses or delays. It offers proof after proof of the fraudulent nature of the federal security blanket. Its follies are a warning to Americans not to expect safety from mindless, arbitrary power.
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1202c.asp
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Subject: New AIM Video Mashup: MSNBC Primetime Bullies Mitt Romney
To:
The primetime MSNBC lineup found the story it had been waiting for on Romney last night; too bad that the facts are not holding up today. Let's all compare last night's performance with their spin this evening.
Embed: http://youtu.be/nJ2230babjc
Logan C. Churchwell
Director of Public Relations & Online Development
Accuracy in Media
4455 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 330
Washington, DC 20008
Phone: 202-364-4401 x 107
Mobile: 432-935-3840
Logan.Churchwell@aim.org
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[NOTE: This was copied from Greg Aharonian's recent newsletter for Internet Patent News Service http://www.bustpatents.com/ ]
Mark Twain - Roughing It
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3177/3177-h/3177-h.htm
I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we call a
jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most
wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and
all men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not
deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out,
and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned
precisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America:
"Have you heard of this homicide?"
"Yes."
"Have you held conversations upon the subject?"
"Yes."
"Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?"
"Yes."
"Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?"
"Yes."
"We do not want you."
A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant of
high character and known probity; a mining superintendent of intelligence
and unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of excellent standing,
were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said the
public talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that
sworn testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enable
him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with the
facts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case.
Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice.
When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men
was impaneled -- a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked
about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle
in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones in the
streets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes,
two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could
not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out
afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were
the same thing.
The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one
expect?
The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium
upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must
continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years
ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence
and probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh,
with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, he
is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and
stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs.
Why could not the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and
honesty and equal chance with fools and miscreants? Is it right to show
the present favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability on
another, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free and
equal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to tamper with
the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence
and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and
people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated --
every effort I make to save the country "misses fire."
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You mean when faced with having their wealth extorted from them by the benevolent Infernal Revenue Service and the Government it serves as bagman ... people CHANGE their behavior? No way.
Facebook Co-Founder Gives Up U.S. Citizenship
By Danielle Kucera, Sanat Vallikappen and Christine Harper on May 11, 2012
Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB) ( FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.
Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin's stake is about 4 percent, according to the website Who Owns Facebook. At the high end of the IPO valuation, that would be worth about $3.84 billion. His holdings aren't listed in Facebook's regulatory filings.
Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship, a move that can trim their tax liabilities in that country. The Brazilian-born resident of Singapore is one of several people who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook in a Harvard University dorm and stand to reap billions of dollars after the world's largest social network holds its IPO.
"Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time," said Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, in an e-mailed statement.
Saverin's name is on a list of people who chose to renounce citizenship as of April 30, published by the Internal Revenue Service. Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship "around September" of last year, according to his spokesman.
Singapore doesn't have a capital gains tax. It does tax income earned in that nation, as well as "certain foreign- sourced income," according to a government website on tax policies there.
Exit Tax
Saverin won't escape all U.S. taxes. Americans who give up their citizenship owe what is effectively an exit tax on the capital gains from their stock holdings, even if they don't sell the shares, said Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, director of the international tax program at the University of Michigan's law school. For tax purposes, the IRS treats the stock as if it has been sold.
Renouncing your citizenship well in advance of an IPO is "a very smart idea," from a tax standpoint, said Avi-Yonah. "Once it's public you can't fool around with the value."
Saverin previously scuffled with Zuckerberg, his Harvard University classmate, over his ownership in Facebook. Saverin sued him and settled for an undisclosed amount.
The 2010 movie "The Social Network" added to Saverin's fame after it portrayed him as a scorned friend who provided the company's early financing and then was squeezed out. In the film, written by Aaron Sorkin, Saverin was portrayed by Andrew Garfield, who will play Spider-Man in "The Amazing Spider- Man."
Saverin's Investments
Saverin moved to the U.S. in 1992, and became a citizen in 1998, his spokesman said. He has invested in Asian, U.S. and European companies, according to his spokesman.
He plans to invest in Brazilian and in other global companies that have strong interests in entering the Asian markets. "Accordingly, it made the most sense for him to use Singapore as a home base," Goodman said in the statement.
His U.S. holdings include Jumio Inc., an online payments company, and ShopSavvy Inc., a price-comparison service.
Renouncing citizenship is an option chosen by increasing numbers of Americans. A record 1,780 gave up their U.S. passports last year compared with 235 in 2008, according to government records.
Income-tax rates for top U.S. earners will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent next year, and rates on capital gains and dividends also are scheduled to rise unless Congress blocks the increases.
'Tax Cost'
"It's a loss for the U.S. to have many well-educated people who actually have a great deal of affection for America make that choice," said Richard Weisman, an attorney at Baker & McKenzie in Hong Kong. "The tax cost, complexity and the traps for the unwary are among the considerations."
Some of the world's largest wealth-management firms have ramped up efforts to fight tax evasion ahead of Washington's implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as Fatca, which seeks to prevent tax evasion by Americans with offshore accounts. HSBC Holdings Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Singapore Ltd. and DBS Group Holdings Ltd. all say they have turned away business.
The 2010 law, to be phased in starting Jan. 1, 2013, requires financial institutions based outside the U.S. to obtain and report information about income and interest payments accrued to the accounts of American clients. That means additional compliance costs for banks and fewer investment options and advisers for all U.S. citizens living abroad, which may depress banks' returns.
Facebook plans to price its IPO on May 17, offering 337.4 million shares at $28 to $35 each. The shares will be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol FB. Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are leading the sale.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-11/facebook-co-founder-saverin-gives-up-u-dot-s-dot-citizenship-before-ipo
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