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| White Mountains (Image via Boston.com) |
Love those rugged White Mountains? You probably don't know it, but you have a 100-year-old law to thank for their enduring quiet beauty.The forests of the Appalachian Mountains wouldn't look the same if it weren't for the Weeks Act, signed into law March 1, 1911.
Welcome to disruption. 26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling 'indie' writer on the Kindle store, meaning she doesn't have a publishing deal, Novelr says.Young adult urban fantasy and paranormal romance aren't exactly up my alley, but I love this story.
And she shouldn't. She gets to keep 70% of her book sales -- and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. By comparison, it's usually thought that it takes a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the first week to be a New York Times bestselling writer.
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| Use link in the right column to access. Good thru March 1, 2011. |
When questioned by authorities, Mr. Jones stated he had taken his Glock .40 handgun from the glove compartment of his truck. He was walking to the house when he tripped and fell, then accidentally shot himself in the leg just above the knee.
Jones yelled to his wife for help. Aleisha was upstairs bathing their young son when she heard her husband's call for help. When she arrived on the screened porch, she tried to secure the gun but her son beat her to the gun.
After attempting to take the gun from the child, a round was fired. Aleisha was hit in the left side of her neck.Every damned day it's another accidental shooting somewhere. At least nobody died in this one.
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| Image via WRAL |
Fremont, N.C. — For the second time in a week, a youngster in the Triangle has been killed in a pellet gun accident.I saw, but didn't comment on the first accident because, while tragic, it didn't involve a real firearm. But, how does this happen within a week of the last accident? It happened nearby and has been all over the news! What kind of parent continues to allow his or her 7-year-old kid to play with these things?! I imagine a conversation something like this: "Hon, isn't the pellet gun we bought the kids the same type as killed that little boy the other day? Should we reconsider if that is an age appropriate toy?" "Naw, this is the best way to learn'em safety so's they can have real gun soon! Besides, that was a freak accident, I played with pellet guns my whole childhood and look at me, I'm fine!"
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| Image via Utne Reader |
At a Lewd Acts on Child crime scene, Martinez’s partner, Brown, writes, “The Victim sustained multiple injuries.” Martinez would tell us, “The baby was bleeding from three orifices.” There’s a world of difference here. Brown gives us a victim; Martinez gives us a baby. Brown offers a fact; Martinez paints a picture.Yes, an interesting article, but did it need to be spread over five separate pages? Let me tell you how irritating it was to read about the scintillating reports Mr. Martinez reports without actually getting an example of what makes them stand out of until the 4th of 5 pages ... extremely.
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| Frank W. Buckles (Image via Washington Post) |
Frank W. Buckles died early Sunday, sadly yet not unexpectedly at age 110, having achieved a singular feat of longevity that left him proud and a bit bemused.I will not be cordial with people today if they start in with some Corey Haim nonsense before at least acknowledging the passing of Mr. Buckles. Doughboy before Lost Boy, please.
In 1917 and 1918, close to 5 million Americans served in World War I, and Mr. Buckles, a cordial fellow of gentle humor, was the last known survivor. 'I knew there'd be only one someday,' he said a few years back. 'I didn't think it would be me.'
“We tried several times to talk him out and then we had to put the tear gas in. Once the tear gas was in, he came out with his hands up. (He) did not give us any trouble whatsoever,” Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison said.
GOLDSBORO, N.C. — Goldsboro police are investigating the shooting of a 3-year-child at an apartment complex Sunday. Mayor Alfonzo King told WRAL News that the child died.
After pursuing her doctorate at Oxford, she was working at a coffee joint in Northampton, Mass., when she applied for a morning-zoo gig—on a dare—and a radio career beckoned. After Maddow joined the liberal radio network Air America in 2004, conservative Tucker Carlson tapped her as a contributor for his MSNBC show. “She was completely fun to talk to, doesn’t take political differences personally, but more than that, she’s fast—really fast,” says Carlson, now with Fox.She is the face of MSNBC now. And they're better off with her as the flagship than they were before. Liberals are better off, too.
Duke Snider, the Hall of Fame center fielder renowned for his home run drives and superb defensive play in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ glory years, died Sunday in Escondido, Calif. He was 84.
This “mosh pit” is near. “We are never more than a hair’s length away from the symptoms of medievalism: economic chaos, social unrest, depraved morals, wild expenditures, debauchery and religious hysteria all lie just under the surface of our many veneers of sophistication.” But Khanna also views this muddle as “a good thing,” an opportunity to get “all hands on deck to manage challenges that no government or organization can tackle alone.”If he's really looking for Bill Gates, George Soros, and the big oil companies to put the screws to corrupt nations, I doubt his "next Renaissance" is coming any time soon.
In May 1974, Ebony told the story of the man who lost $2 million in casinos — and survived. “Instead of gambling, Fats says he now spends most of his spare hours between shows in his hotel suite reading the Bible and praying in order to cope.”
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| Image via WRAL |
CARY, N.C. — The Cary homeowner who expressed his displeasure with the town in crude fashion across his facade updated that message Friday.Well, probably without knowing it, the Screwed by the Town of Cary Guy took my advice and put up a banner. Much better.
David Bowden wants the town to buy his property because he blames a road-widening project funneling rain water into his home at 305 SW Maynard Road. He first painted the phrase on his house in July 2009.
GARNER, N.C. — Scotty McCreery's road on 'American Idol' has been rocky, but it isn't over yet. The 17-year-old from Garner was named to the top 24 on Thursday night.This area is proving to be rich in reality TV contestants.
The cryptozoologist Oll Lewis speculates that the lonely whale might be 'a deformed hybrid between two different species of whale,' or even 'the last surviving member of an unknown species.'Because let's ask a cryptozoologist about ... anything.
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| Wari relics unearthed in Peru. Via HeraldSun.com. |
The tombs belonging to the Wari culture were found on the jungle-covered eastern slope of the Andes in Cuzco department at a long-abandoned city thought to be the last redoubt of Inca resistance to Spanish colonial rule.
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| Walter Williams, though quite possibly a liar, may have the last living veteran of the Civil War. |
LIFE first visited Williams in 1953 in Franklin, Texas, where he lived in a frame shack with his 79-year-old second wife Ella Mae (pictured). At the time, Williams claimed, he was 110 years old — though records later revealed his year of birth to be 1854, which would have made him 8 years old when he said he enlisted, and about 99 at the time of this photo.
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| Oh, *that* Yankee swap! |
According to the New York Post, Affleck is running into trouble when it comes to 'The Trade,' a movie he's writing with his brother, Casey. The film centers on the memorable 'life swap' scandal that New York Yankees pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson staged in 1973. The teammates made controversial headlines everywhere by deciding to trade everything — wives, children, even their dogs.
“Maddow lied!” she shouted, mocking those at Politifact claiming she had never addressed the budget shortfall in Wisconsin, immediately before playing a clip of herself saying “there is a budget shortfall in Wisconsin.” It wasn’t the only time she had addressed it and she had the video to prove it, later mocking Politifact for being “wrong on the facts, and bluntly.” “Putting the word ‘fact’ in your name does not grant you automatic mastery of the facts,” she joked. She also noted that her program had reached out to Politifact (that correspondence here), but they notified the program they were not going to run a correction, which, to Maddow, completely negated the point of the organization.Much respect.
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| via Clusterflock |
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| Image via ProJo.com |
Earlier Thursday, Smith called the terminations “an attack on labor and an attack on collective bargaining.”
“This is a back-door Wisconsin,” Smith said, referring to the weeklong protests in Madison by labor unions. “We don’t know why we’re being fired. The mayor says he needs flexibility. Can you buy that? I don’t know of any other district that has done this.”
Thursday night, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the possible dismissals “shocking,” and said the move will “disrupt the education of all students and the entire community.”
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| Image via Esquire. |
Most bourbon is made by a handful of large, old distilleries in Kentucky. Because their start-up costs were decades in the past and they do things on a massive scale, they can sell fully aged whiskeys for a fraction of what the microdistillers are charging for a white dog. Consider Jim Beam Black, which retails for about $20 a bottle. For that you get a bold, complex whiskey that's a full eight years old. That time in the barrel has burned off the fumy, kerosene notes you find in a white dog, darkened the bright floral notes, and turned the light, creamy body thick and mellow. There's still some of the original graininess, but now it's a contributing factor, not a defining one. If $20 is too much and you happen to be in the Southeast, you can pick up a bottle of Ancient Ancient Age 10 Star, a 90-proof whiskey that's six years old, for a mere $13. It's clean and sharp and minty, and it laughs at ice.I'm no connoisseur, I barely touch the stuff, but I saw the way the Woodford was getting taken down at the neighborhood holiday party. People seem to like it.
'We just don't know' how many cuts were made at IBM’s campus in RTP or elsewhere, said Alliance spokesperson Lee Conrad. 'What we do know is several units in IBM had job cuts yesterday.'
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| My vote, but not my prediction. |
And who will be the last face we see? Patricia Neal will likely take precedence over Clayburgh; she won an Oscar, Clayburgh was only nominated. But neither has the iconic stature to close the montage.I think they've got it right, Hopper will almost certainly close the reel. I think the question is whether we'll see a clip of him in Waterworld. If it were up to me though, I would choose Nielsen. Yes, and don't call me Shirley.
You could make a case for Leslie Nielsen: People really loved him. But he was never nominated for an Oscar. Maybe he'll open the tribute.
Curtis? Hopper? Both had nominations, and long careers.
But Hopper has the visuals -- motorcycling down the endless sunny highways of 'Easy Rider.' We're not film editors, but it feels like the perfect clip.
(Newser) – After two years of being walloped by the global financial crisis, Irish voters are expected to boot out the ruling Fianna Fáil party in elections today, replacing it with the more conservative Fine Gael. Analysts—and bookies—believe Fine Gael will not get enough votes for an outright majority, and will form a coalition with the left-wing Labour Party, reports the Guardian.They're pissed, understandably, about the terms of the debt repayment from the bailout. Still not clear to me why investors didn't take their losses and taxpayers get stuck footing the bill.
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| Image via Frugal Cafe. |
Overfishing large predators such as shark, tuna and cod in the past 40 years has left the oceans out of balance, and could result in the disappearance of these fishes by 2050, according to Villy Christensen of the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Center.
The still-addicted intent is to avoid a complete retirement. Neilalien still enjoys doing this website, and he will still require an online self-expression outlet. Barring circumstances, there will be no blogging in March (March Madness has usually had a negative impact on blog content anyway), and the planned next post will be an annual Favorites of MoCCA post after the festival in April. MoCCA usually refills the gas tank, but beyond that, no one can say. The Doctor Strange Info Pages will get some much-needed brushing-up and be maintained. It may be 1-2 braindumps a month. Like the Ancient One to Doctor Strange, he may occasionally appear to again bolster Doc fandom through its greatest challenges. Maybe the Neilalien brand will be completely repurposed. Maybe this is the last post ever. He will still be around, knock on wood- but regardless of what continues, near-daily linkblogging must end.Excelsior! Whatever the future holds, from here in the Cryptonaut's Lair, I wish Neilalien well-deserved peace of mind, congratulate him on a streak of excellence, and look forward to whatever does come next.
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| Jennifer Aniston found working with a urine-soaked monkey ... oddly intriguing? |
A new study shows that the brains of female tufted capuchins become more active when they smell the urine of sexually mature adult males.
Loggerhead sea turtles appear to be able to determine their longitude using two sets of magnetic cues.
The dessert, called Baby Gaga, is churned with donations from 15 women who responded to an advertisement on an online mothers' forum.OK, I admit, I blanched at the thought of it. But, wait ... I mean, the ice cream I normally eat is derived from a modified and enlarged exocrine gland of a cow. It's modified cow sweat for baby cows. And I eat it. So shouldn't the stuff from humans be less gross?
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| Tom Arnold: First time I did cocaine, it was awesome. |
Just when abortion rights supporters thought they had beaten a controversial bill they believe would legalize the killing of abortion providers, it has cropped up again—this time in a more expansive form that has drawn the concern of law enforcement officials.
SANDERS: What we have to understand is this is not just Wisconsin. This is part of the concerted attack on the middle class and working families of this country by the very wealthiest people in America, the Koch brothers and many others. And you're also right in suggesting that if you look at the end game, what are you talking about?We need to elect more Bernie Sanderses and fewer ... well, nearly every other Democrat falls into the "We Need Fewer Of You" category. It goes without saying that those stunted morally and intellectually by excess religious dogma, lack of effective public education, and a steady diet of uncritically digested corporate propaganda will continue to elect Republicans, that's going to be a long uphill battle, but on the progressive side, we can make faster progress electing people that are committed to preserving a civil society where everyone has a chance to make a meaningful life for themselves, not just the scions of wealth and privilege
You're talking about the end of Social Security, privatization of Social Security, massive cuts and privatization of Medicare, major cuts in Medicaid. You're talking about over a period of time, the end of unemployment compensation, the end of the minimum wage or lowering the minimum wage.
What these guys want is to return us to the 1920's when working people had virtually no rights to organize or to earn a decent living. Bottom line today is the top 1% earn more income than the bottom 50%. The top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%. That gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider.
And what the wealthiest people in the country are doing are using their resources to make the attack against the middle class even stronger. They want the destruction of the middle class and almost all wealth in this country to go to the people on top.
KRASNOOKTYABRSK, Russia — A year ago, a family living in this village in the middle of a marsh in the south of Russia revealed what they called a miracle: On the skin of their newborn boy, entire verses from the Koran were appearing, lingering for a few days, and then vanishing.When somebody, anybody, says: “I cannot even read or write ... I just pray five times a day,” that's just depressing. And, sadly, we can't take any claims they make about anything, except relating to the abject misery of their existence, seriously.
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| Image via Village Voice. |
Love or hate Lady Gaga, you have to admit that she’s done wonderful things for the gays. After inking a deal with Target—a store I would sadly spend most of my waking moments in—Gaga held a meeting with the execs and demanded they stop funding anti-gay groups. In the past, the store had donated $150,000 to a political group that supported a ban on gay marriage.
Bills have been filed to expand the number of places people can carry a concealed weapon — including to restaurants that serve alcohol — and to make sure business owners can't prohibit employees from keeping guns locked in their cars at work.Hey Small Timer, tired of smash and grabs netting nothing more than a car stereo and a few CDs? Soon it will be even more likely you can get your hands on that gun you've always wanted but were having a hard time buying because of your criminal record.
As anyone who's been on the Internet for the last week knows, Nathan Fillion and Firefly are still attached at the hip. And even though he's got a hit crime procedural on ABC, the once and future (if he has his way) Mal Reynolds can't help but sneak his love for Joss Whedon's cult hit into his new gig.
“If itʼs on the menu at Bull City Burger and Brewery, we most likely will have made it from scratch or bought it locally,” said Gross. “Weʼll grind the beef daily, make the buns, make the mustard, make the ketchup, pickle the pickles and stuff our all-beef hotdogs. No corn syrup, no added hormones, no antibiotics and, we will focus on making the best burger and hotdog we can produce.”
No one is rooting harder for the democracy movements in the Arab world to succeed than I am. But even if things go well, this will be a long and rocky road. The smart thing for us to do right now is to impose a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax, to be phased in at 5 cents a month beginning in 2012, with all the money going to pay down the deficit. Legislating a higher energy price today that takes effect in the future, notes the Princeton economist Alan Blinder, would trigger a shift in buying and investment well before the tax kicks in. With one little gasoline tax, we can make ourselves more economically and strategically secure, help sell more Chevy Volts and free ourselves to openly push for democratic values in the Middle East without worrying anymore that it will harm our oil interests. Yes, it will mean higher gas prices, but prices are going up anyway, folks. Let’s capture some it for ourselves.There's no public transportation between my house and work, I can't afford a Volt now, nor likely will I be able to later, I can't telecommute, nor can I pack up and move or find work in my field closer to home. In my position, much as I understand the need for us all to ween ourselves off oil -- I wonder if there's not a sane way accomplish the goals that wouldn't put such a burden on folks like ... well, me. Maybe some kind of balance between smaller tax hikes in tandem with a reduction in subsidies to wildly profitable energy companies?
World’s Greatest Dad of the Day: Lake Tahoe dad sees your lame-o snowman, raises you a massive snowman slide he built for his kids with 80 hours worth of shoveled snow.
MADISON, Wisc. -- ... Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast claims to have posed as 'David Koch' and gotten 20 minutes on the phone with Gov. Scott Walker, goading him to take the hardest possible line against unions. (The Koch brothers got the #2 slot in the Beast's annual 'most loathsome Americans' list.)
Miraculously, Belyaev had compressed thousands of years of domestication into a few years. But he wasn't just looking to prove he could create friendly foxes. He had a hunch that he could use them to unlock domestication's molecular mysteries. Domesticated animals are known to share a common set of characteristics, a fact documented by Darwin in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. They tend to be smaller, with floppier ears and curlier tails than their untamed progenitors. Such traits tend to make animals appear appealingly juvenile to humans. Their coats are sometimes spotted—piebald, in scientific terminology—while their wild ancestors' coats are solid. These and other traits, sometimes referred to as the domestication phenotype, exist in varying degrees across a remarkably wide range of species, from dogs, pigs, and cows to some nonmammalians like chickens, and even a few fish.Related: You can order one. (I've not investigated and am not suggesting it's a good idea -- caveat emptor.)
Belyaev suspected that as the foxes became domesticated, they too might begin to show aspects of a domestication phenotype. He was right again: Selecting which foxes to breed based solely on how well they got along with humans seemed to alter their physical appearance along with their dispositions. After only nine generations, the researchers recorded fox kits born with floppier ears. Piebald patterns appeared on their coats. By this time the foxes were already whining and wagging their tails in response to a human presence, behaviors never seen in wild foxes.
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| Sharon Horgan via The Observer. |
It incorporates inspired moments of drunken slapstick. But it also operates as a fiercely insightful commentary on modern relationships; it presents a savagely unromantic view of sexual entanglements, but also of female friendships, which, in Pulling-world (as, let's face it, in the real world), are driven mainly by selfish and self-serving instincts, and an endless desire to binge drink. It's a taboo that no one else has touched until now. It's the anti-Friends, the anti-Sex and the City in this respect; there's no hugging and learning, no growing as people. Women who watch Pulling experience that sickening thud of recognition that men got when they first saw David Brent in The Office. Every character is you, to a greater or lesser degree - or someone you know really well. Every scene is terrifyingly familiar.They're right, I'd never heard of her. But Pulling is on Netfix streaming, so I'll be checking it out to see what I've missed.
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| WWRWD |
The tribunal has retired to consider Rustamova's claim for compensation, after hearing that her life was 'in ruins' because she became over-excited by the project's success. She told the hearing: 'I am an idiot but I had good intentions.' One parent had told her that the book was the first her 15-year-old son had read from beginning to end.
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| Nicolas Courtney (right) alongside Sylvester McCoy. Image via BBC. |
Veteran Doctor Who actor Nicholas Courtney, best known for playing Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart, has died in London at the age of 81.:(
