Wednesday Morning Reads: Egypt, Lego and 1.6 Trillion Suns
Posted: December 5, 2012 Filed under: Bailout Blues, Banksters, Big Pharma, Corporate Crime, corporate greed, Department of Homeland Security, Domestic Policy, Egypt, FBI raids, Foreign Affairs, Gaza, home foreclosure fraud, Israel, morning reads, science, Violence against women | Tags: Bank of America, Bryan Moynihan, domestic violence, Jovan Belcher, Kasandra Perkins, Merck, Milky Way, Voyager 1 33 Comments »
Morning Y’all!
After spending last night watching Lost in America...it made me think about Skippy, the manager at the Der Wienerschnitzel and those frozen fries, you know, the importance of details that make you great at your job. (If you forgot the scene I am talking about, the manager of the hot dog joint tells Albert Brooks just how wonderful his wife, Julie Hagerty, is…because of her attention to details, she noticed he had served “frozen” fries…with bits of ice inside of them.)
I wonder if Bank of America’s Bryan Moynihan, had such an attention to detail, but according to this article by Matt Taibbi, it looks like attention to detail is obviously not essential to a CEO…snark. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan Apparently Can’t Remember Anything | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
Thank God for Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. If you’re a court junkie, or have the misfortune (as some of us poor reporters do) of being forced professionally to spend a lot of time reading legal documents, the just-released Moynihan deposition in MBIA v. Bank of America, Countrywide, and a Buttload of Other Shameless Mortgage Fraudsters will go down as one of the great Nixonian-stonewalling efforts ever, and one of the more entertaining reads of the year.
In this long-awaited interrogation – Bank of America has been fighting to keep Moynihan from being deposed in this case for some time – Moynihan does a full Star Trek special, boldly going where no deponent has ever gone before, breaking out the “I don’t recall” line more often and perhaps more ridiculously than was previously thought possible. Moynihan seems to remember his own name, and perhaps his current job title, but beyond that, he’ll have to get back to you.
Egyptian police battled thousands of protesters outside President Mohamed Mursi’s palace in Cairo on Tuesday, prompting the Islamist leader to leave the building, presidency sources said.
Officers fired teargas at up to 10,000 demonstrators angered by Mursi’s drive to hold a referendum on a new constitution on December 15. Some broke through police lines around his palace and protested next to the perimeter wall.
The crowds had gathered nearby in what organizers had dubbed “last warning” protests against Mursi, who infuriated opponents with a November 22 decree that expanded his powers. “The people want the downfall of the regime,” the demonstrators chanted.
“The president left the palace,” a presidential source, who declined to be named, told Reuters. A security source at the presidency also said the president had departed.
Building Lego towers is a competitive business – this one in Prague, at 32.5m, may be the tallest to dateIt’s not just children who like to build towers with Lego – the internet is alive with discussion on how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take to destroy the bottom brick. So what’s the answer?
There has been a burning debate on the social news website Reddit.
It’s a trivial question you might think, but one the Open University’s engineering department has – at the request of the BBC’s More or Less programme – fired up its labs to try to answer.
“It’s an exciting thing to do because it’s an entirely new question and new questions are always interesting,” says Dr Ian Johnston, an applied mathematician and lecturer in engineering.
The average maximum force the bricks can stand is 4,240N. That’s equivalent to a mass of 432kg (950lbs). If you divide that by the mass of a single brick, which is 1.152g, then you get the grand total of bricks a single piece of Lego could support: 375,000.
So, 375,000 bricks towering 3.5km (2.17 miles) high is what it would take to break a Lego brick.
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a “magnetic highway” at the edge of the solar system, a surprising discovery 35 years after its launch, the experts behind the pioneering craft said Monday.
Earlier this year a surge in a key indicator fueled hopes that the craft was nearing the so-called heliopause, which marks the boundary between our solar system and outer space.
But instead of slipping away from the bubble of charged particles the Sun blows around itself, Voyager encountered something completely unexpected.
This is amazing…think about how far Voyager has gone.
The craft’s daily radio reports sent back evidence that the Sun’s magnetic field lines was connected to interstellar magnetic fields. Lower-energy charged particles were zooming out and higher-energy particles from outside were streaming in.
They called it a magnetic highway because charged particles outside this region bounced around in all directions, as if trapped on local roads inside the bubble, or heliosphere.
“Although Voyager 1 still is inside the Sun’s environment, we now can taste what it’s like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway,” said Edward Stone, a Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
We got ourselves all excited for NASA’s Mars press conference today, even though we already knew it wasn’t about life on the red planet, but what we should have been paying attention to was happening nearly 11.5 billion miles away in the heliosphere. The Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a new region of our solar system. What’s even more exciting is that NASA scientists believe this region is the final barrier between Voyager and interstellar space. That’s so much more impressive than chlorine on Mars.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is now so far out into space that light from the Sun takes over 34 hours to reach it. NASA debated whether this new region should still be considered part of our solar system, but project scientist Edward Stone makes the call by saying, “Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun’s environment, we now can taste what it’s like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway.”
The scientists believe that Voyager will pass out of the solar system within the next two months or so. I’ve got one more space link for you this morning, it is about our Galaxy the Milky Way, New estimate suggests Milky Way mass of 1.6 trillion suns
Panorama of Milky Way from the inside: a mosaic of multiple shots on large-format film, comprising all 360 degrees of the galaxy from our vantage point. More about this image here. Image Credit: Digital Sky LLC via Wikimedia Commons
Our home galaxy the Milky Way is thought to be approximately 100,000 light-years wide and about 1,000 light-years thick. You often hear the estimate that the mass of our galaxy is equal to several billion suns, but some estimates have ranged up to twice that high, or even higher. Now some astronomers are suggesting a mass for the Milky Way of 1.6 trillion suns. The estimate isn’t just for stars but also includes the mass of our Milky Way’s invisible dark halo. It’s based on the first-ever measurement of the proper motion, or sideways motion along our line of sight, of a small galaxy satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. Ken Croswell reported on the role of this small galaxy – called Leo I – yesterday (December 3, 2012) in Scientific American.
There is a lot of information in that article, be sure to go and read the whole thing.
The rest of today’s post will be in link dump fashion…
An Amazing New Use for Ecstasy- Helping women deal with PTSD after rape.
Big Pharma Company Mocked Patients Who Got “Jawbone Death” from Drug: “Ma Toot Hurts So Bad” – Merck couldn’t care less about the patients…as long as they could make more money.
Noam Chomsky: What the American Media Won’t Tell You About Israel -Decades of hell in Gaza.
New research shows corrosion may accelerate failures at Fukushima Daiichi- Great…and guess what? There is nothing that can be done about it.
Be sure you read these couple of links on the NFL murder suicide this past weekend:
Jovan Belcher: Murder is Domestic Violence [by @QuadCityPat] | Angry Black Lady Chronicles
If you only read one thing about the Kasandra Perkins murder- Feministe
Regarding privacy in America…Laptop seizures by US government highlight 9/11-era climate of fear | Glenn Greenwald
And lastly, a bit of history…. Disability history month: Was Tamerlane disabled?
Tamerlane – derived from his nickname Timur the Lame – rose from obscurity to become a 14th Century conqueror of nations, who piled high the skulls of his enemies. It was quite a feat at a time when physical prowess was prized, writes Justin Marozzi.
Think of the greatest conquerors of all time and chances are you’ll quickly list Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. It is rather less likely, unless you come from Central Asia or the Muslim world more widely, that you’d spare a thought for Tamerlane.
Yet in many ways this Tartar warlord, born near Samarkand in 1336 in what is now Uzbekistan, outshone both the Macedonian king and the Mongol warlord.
Lots of links, I know…but it is a busy time of the year, and if you can’t take it all in one shot…come back during the day when you have the time. And be sure to share the things you are reading about today…
Sima
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
fiscalliberal
grayslady
JJ Lopez Minkoff
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Egypt update: Egypt’s Mursi back at palace after night of protests | Reuters
Lost in America–I just love that movie! Great roundup, JJ.
Thanks BB, love that movie too.
Had Belcher not been some idolized football player those deaths would be just another statistic so common throughout the nation on a daily basis. If a woman is not killed outright she is abused and threatened by some idiot waving a gun demanding “respect”.
Belcher was in possession of not one but two guns when he decided to “show her a lesson”.
The difference is that he had enough insight into his own behavior that he ended his own life in the process. A 3 month old baby has been orphaned and Bob Costas has been taken to task for daring to raise the issue of the proliferation of guns that flood this country and used for revenge as opposed to the “need for protection”. Who protected this woman when her partner acted upon his impulses?
Whatever his motivation, whatever it was that triggered his response, the simple fact is that this man was armed to the teeth allowing him to reach for a weapon(s) that ended her life.
What more is there to say?
Exactly.
From the Feministe link above:
Oh, and a guy with a temper problem, drunk every night, firearms loose in the house, is a good father? That poor little kid (may it have no memory of the horror of how mother died) was lucky not to get gunned down by its own father too.
One more time. Our society is sick and should change unless we want to become utter barbarians. The culture that put that useless violent jock on some kind of pedestal is corrupt.
O/T but there seems to be a growing concensus forming out there that the majority of the voters are urging Hillary to seek the nomination in 2016.
This will prove most interesting to see how those “former Hillary supporters” who fled to the Right over the past few years reconcile their hatred of all things Democrat that found them embracing the GOP, the Fruit Loopers, and Romney all at once.
Hillary by far is more liberal on social issues than even Obama, certainly far more so then the Radical Right, and has established her creds as a fierce feminist who has stood up for women throughout her career, something the GOP with its own “war on woman” has never done.
So to watch this “group” go from “we love Hillary” the liberal, to “we love Mittens” the whatever it was he stood for, to “we love Hillary” all over again should prove amusing.
These are the same pinheads who wished for a Hillary/Palin ticket by the way. Two utterly diverse people – one with an enormous I.Q. and a preparedness that was scary, and the other a superficial twit unable to read a map.
Let the contortions begin!
I will be most interested to see reactions. After the 2012 campaign/election I became convinced that many of the Hillary acolytes from ’08 were really Republicans in disguise. I also realized that the most rabid Obots from 2008 were very likely Republicans in disguise once again. Their purpose was to create division in the Democratic party pitting Clinton supporters against Obama supporters and it was very effective in 2008. Fast forward to 2012, and where are all the fanatical Obots who would flame websites at the very mention of Clinton? I honestly believe that part of the reason the Republicans have been so shocked by Obama’s 2012 victory is because most of the swooning and fanatical support for Obama we saw in 2008 was created by ratf@ckers who were in place to stir up division among the Democrats.
I think it was most telling when the immediate embrace of the GOP began to filter through. You would be hard pressed to find any similarities between the divergency that brought forth the Tea Partiers no matter how hard you tried.
These same groups found nothing wrong in supporting voter suppression, the abandonment of women’s rights, the attack on social safety nets, and the loss of collectivization of unions. The numerous lies coming out of Mittens did nothing to deter them from defending him and the attacks against Sandra Fluke should have been challenged but were not.
It was and is an all out assault against Obama regardless of the obstructionism and the insanity put forth by the lunatic fringe that was most illustrative of the fact that perhaps the ratf*cking had hit its mark in directing supposed Dems to the other side. The contrast was too diverse to ignore.
I may not be a big Obama fan but the alternative was offering destructive policies that just seemed to be conveniently overlooked while at the same time every effort was made to destroy the Dems by those who at one time claimed affiliation.
Except for the claim of “ratf*cking” nothing else made any sense.
janicen, I looked for those Obots and they were completely MIA. Thus I came to the same conclusion as you. They were just another form of ratf*ckers.
Meh. So many other more interesting things in the world. Why pay any attention to those rat-effin’ Mitt-lovers who might once have recognized a decent politician.
Don’t want to pay too much attention to them but they are an interesting group in a decidedly sick way.
LOL. You’re right. Horridly fascinating!
Oh, I remember having many ‘discussions’ with so-called Hillary supporters, who insisted that voting for women, any and all, was the important thing, the single factor that would change the political dynamic. In this equation Sarah Palin = Hillary Clinton because they both have vaginas and breasts and as we all know that makes everything hunky-dory, regardless of said woman’s policy stands, intelligence [or lack there of] and experience.
Round and round these arguments went. Of course, pointing out that voting strictly on gender lines made no more sense than voting on racial lines [something these same people were in an absolute tiff over] only produced accusations of my failing to appreciate feminism or that I had some self-loathing as a woman.
Nonsense! All of it.
Future contortions if Hillary does indeed run in 2016 should be a true spectacle. Although at various hard-line Obama hating sites, Hillary has been forever tainted by serving as SOS for the Marxist/Socialist/Muslim traitor and Bill will never be forgiven for his spectacular performance at the Democratic Convention as the Secretary of ‘Splaining Shit, making the GOP look as lame and backwards as it really is.
Should be fun!
Luna, you have to see this clip from Colbert…on Big Pharma, and low-t: Colbert: Science says old people are more gullible, which explains Fox News | The Raw Story
Unbelievable that this stuff is even available!
Every time I see those low testosterone commercials with their lists of symptoms of this “syndrome”, I say to the teevee, “It’s called “getting older”, guys. Yes, it happens, even to you! Learn to live with it.”
I bet Hugh Hefner ( who is about 135 years old now ) uses a ton of AndroGel. His latest almost jailbait bride-to-be must be so thrilled about that. Of course, she loves him for himself and not for his fame or money. I’m sure they will live happily ever after. /s
I always wonder why we need more testosterone-laced men wandering the planet. It seems like that’s been the source of many of our problems.
Aluminum siding salesmen also know old people are the most gullible
Can’t wait to hear his explanation as to the low sperm count of frenchmen………….it falls by a third, according to study of 126,000 men between 1989- 2005……….the jury is out as to WHY.
I think that’s true world-wide. Maybe Frenchmen just whine about it more.
Not that it’s related to the BPAs, PVCs, and synthetic pseudo-estrogens and etc in the environment — Nah. Go away; no story here. (snark of course)
Yeah — one of the “side effects” is cancer. From MicroMedex drug database:
Get this — testosterone is classified as a controlled substance by the DEA. Estrogen is not. Both require a prescription; there are just tighter regs on CSs.
There is a small, small % of males who legitimately have abnormally low testosterone for their age. But no legitimate medical clinician would prescribe it to a man on demand. It normally decreases as people get older — in men as well as women. Women have testosterone at a lower % than do men, and men have estrogen at a lower % than women. So it’s not that one is a “male” hormone and the other “female.” It’s the difference in ratio that is gender-specific.
Sorry to not respond earlier — I’ve been at work and dealing with piles of paperwork from health insurance co’s that makes it hard for patients to get the meds or therapies they need. They are not in healthcare out of the goodness of their corporate hearts, ya know.
Thank you for responding Luna, listening to those side effects and precautions it seemed like something that could be used in a terrorist attack…
Well just to be TOTALLY off topic – here’s another awesome picture of our galaxy from NASA with interactive links that let you zoom in and explore the various features! I think ya’ll had this here when it came out last year:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110520.html
APOD is always awesome for any fellow space-geeks out there.
That really cool. Thanks.
Somebody ought to bust that Merck spokeswoman’s jaw with a sledge hammer. My cousin not only got destroyed by Foxomax, she had the added good luck of being misdiagnosed and never had osteoporosis to begin with, but she didn’t find that out till the damage was done. And the woman had impeccible teeth and hardly fell into the category of someone who never went to the dentist and walked around with mouth infections. My cousin is still suffering the jaw effects of that shitty Fosomax. And if you ask me, osteoporosis is this decades HRT. Suddenly the whole world needs Fosomax so Big Pharma can have a nice supply of Guinea pigs to give them data on who who suffers or dies–and make a nice profit in the process.
I am sorry to hear about your cousin, it is disgusting how much profit is put before the health of human beings.
They use women as guinea pigs. We all saw what happened with HRT. I remember a doctor asking me if I wanted it because it helped prevent heart attacks.. My answer was that my address book had lines through it of good women I know who died, and not one of them died of a heart attack. Some of them did die of breast cancer, though, so how is it they can pimp something that contributes to breast cancer in order to save a woman from an unlikely heart attack.
I think this Fosomax thing is another guinea pig deal. What happened to my cousin was the test they used on her is not all that accurate. So they pumped her up with Fosomax, making her think her bones could break before she even made it home. This woman is in great shape, and finally went and got an opinion of another specialist. I think the thing that set me off about that Merck spokesperson is her assumption that people are just crap and who cares, and that obviously if their jaws fell apart it was their fault. I call bullshit, and I hope they get reamed on the class actions pointing at them. Enough is enough from these pharma companies shoving it to women, debugging their chemicals in the field.
There are also many women who take the aromatase-inhibitor class of drugs for breast cancer, (such as Femara, and Armidex), then they get osteoporosis as a side effect of those drugs, which they then need Fosamax (or similar drugs) to treat. What a mess.
BTW, nice to see you more often around here, UW.
And fantastic links &post, JJ. I always love the astronomical ones! And the rest.
What a racket they have going. Let’s give women cancer with HRT. Then let’s give them Fosomax for the osteoporosis the treatments cause. Isn’t that rich? Do we think they would do this if guys’ balls were involved?
And thanks for being glad to see me. I don’t comment on other blogs much, because you know how time consuming it is to run a blog. You lose sght of all the fun you could have online if you didn’t have a blog. I wish I had more front pagers who had the time to post regularly, but alas, nobody wants to write for an Uppity Blogger. lol
I’m sure that’s true. I occasionally try to write something for a post and days later I’m still working on it to perfect it — silly. Meanwhile the topicality of it has passed by and I wake up and say “screw it.” I used to write a lot for my job, and then for school, and now I find I’m exhausted. I hope to maybe recover. and write for fun.
Osteopenia is a made-up disease. It was arbitrarily defined in the first place, without really any evidence. Now, the best recommendations for osteopenia are weight-bearing exercise, and healthy diet. Guidelines do NOT recommend Fosamax or any meds for it — only for osteoporosis. But too many prescribers start a med instead of counseling patients on non-med things they could do. Unethical in my opinion. I won’t prescribe a med if there’s something else we can try first.
#10, bottom of page, http://www.dslrf.org/mwh/content.asp?CATID=0&L2=1&L3=9&L4=0&PID=&sid=389&cid=1514&d=nn#exp
Interesting, as I was diagnosed with Osteopenia as according to the experts I had lost 27% of my bone density. Of course, that was predicated on the assumption that I had the same bone density as their scales.. I was also advised I absolutely had to have HRT treatment – I caved and went on it for 6 weeks – it was a horror show. I’m highly sensitive to most drugs – don’t even take acetominophin cause it doesn’t relive pain, just gives me headaches. And Fosamex which was prescribed for the Osteopenia – a nightmare and I can’t remember the replacement drug but it was even worse.
I can relate to Uppity’s relative. I just do not take drugs well at all. Demoral made me stupid, Morphine caused me to die on the operating table, Eldavil made me catatonic, lidocaine was ineffective and novacaine is ineffective unless I have three times the dosage that other people get. I don’t understand with all the money going to research that there is still no understanding of how they affect everyone – well perhaps I do – money, money, money.