Stephen Colbert was too late to get on the ballot in South Carolina, so he asked his supporters to vote for Herman Cain to show support for him. Was the potential candidate able to move the needle? With 99% of precincts reporting, Cain has 6274 votes to 2430 for Rick Perry, 1130 for Jon Huntsman, and 485 for Michele Bachmann.  Cain’s performance, with the backing of Colbert, is decisive- he has won a majority of the votes received by candidates who have dropped out. With this performance, we believe Colbert and Cain can proceed to Dropped Out-Republican Convention and compete for the non-nomination. Looking forward to seeing the Colbert campaign capitalize on this victory and move on to Florida.

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Aidan Dwyer’s eureka moment came on a wintry Catskill hike- why not shape solar arrays like tree branches rather than flat panels?  His early results looked promising. Indeed, they won him a prestigious award for young scientists.  Then the press began, and with it, the news that his methodology had been flawed.  Dwyer, undaunted, began a new set of tests, still uncompleted, aimed at proving his hypothesis.  But then, a strange thing happened.

Aidan began being attacked in internet forums, by those whom he calls “the haters”.  Somehow ignoring the remarkable achievement by thus 13 year old, even should he be proven wrong, there was an inappropriate and offensive vitriol. Aidan remains unfazed.

Says the Wall Street Journal

Dr. Kleissl praised Aidan’s work, but added that even if Aidan had measured the right variables, “I’m certain that he will not find that his arrangement is better,” he said. “I think it’s a romantic ideal that nature has many lessons for us, and there are a few cases where this is true, but in the majority of cases we could teach nature, in a way, how to be better, faster.”

On a recent afternoon, Aidan showed a visitor his newest model, tweaked to respond to his critics: a towering seven-foot tree form adorned with solar panels and painted green. He is now measuring current and power. So far, he said, the tree continues to outperform the traditional panel. “I’m thinking that it could actually change the world.”

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• Aidan Dwyer : A Big Mistake? He’s Still Cool. (willsmath.wordpress.com)
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We like our science fiction old school. Give us E.E. “Doc” Smith or A.E. Van Vogt any day, over whatever the modern hack de jour is churning out.  The crowning achievement of the genre, in our opinion, is Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. If you

haven’t read it, well, what are you waiting for?  Either way, go and listen to BBC Radio drama version available at archive.org for free. Thanks to Open Culture for bringing this to our attention:

Eventually, the BBC decided to adapt Asimov’s trilogy to the radio, dramatizing the series in eight one-hour episodes that aired between May and June 1973. Years later, you can buy the radio drama on iTunesfor $9.99. But we’re going to suggest that you pocket that hard-earned money and download the radio drama for free from the Internet Archive.

Click the links below to stream the individual episodes. Or download the full program as a zip file. The Internet Archive gives you more download options here.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3| Part 7 |MP3| Part 8 |MP3|

Related articles

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A site near St. Louis once thought to be home to a small seasonal settlement is now thought to have been the largest native city north of the Rio Grande

The latest excavations uncovered evidence of more than 500 thatched houses. At its peak the city would have been home to 100,000 Native Americans.

But Cahokia lacked the density of Mayan or European settlements – instead appearing to have organised itself along the lines of ‘modern American urban sprawl’.

The remains of the ancient city can be seen at the 2,000 acre Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, which lies just across the Mississippi River from St Louis.

The city, the most sophisticated Native civilisation north of Mexico, was inhabited from 700AD to 1400 and known for its large, man-made earthen structures.

Its original population was thought to have been in the hundreds, but in the 11th century swelled to tens of thousands.

 

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18 year old Sarah McKinley’s husband died of lung cancer on Christmas day, leaving behind the grieving widow to care for their 3 month old son. Days later, Justin Martin and Dustin Stewart, high on drugs, broke into her house and attempted to rob her, hoping to score painkillers they hoped her late husband name behind.

It was a bad plan

Much of her ordeal was captured in a recording of the 911 call in which she asked for help — and also asked for permission to shoot if necessary.

“There’s a guy at my door and I’m here by myself with my infant baby. Can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately?” McKinley asks in a voice that is both steady, but tinged with emotion. Grady County dispatcher Diane Graham asks McKinley whether her doors are locked. Her steely answer: “Yes. I’ve got two guns in my hand. Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in my door?”

“I can’t tell you that you can do that,” Graham answers, “but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.”

Justin Shane Martin, 24, of Blanchard, died clutching a knife in his gloved left hand, according to court records filed in Grady County district court. His alleged accomplice, Dustin Louis Stewart, 29, also of Blanchard, shown above, later turned himself in to police.

…

McKinley told NewsOK that she tried to hold off as long as she could, waiting for police to arrive, while Martin kept pounding on the front door. At one point, she gave her son a bottle to keep him from crying too loud — and possibly alerting the intruders to her specific location.

“I didn’t want to give away my position in the house, I wanted to see him first,” she said of the intruders during this video interview with NewsOK.

But about 21 minutes later, with no law enforcement officer in sight, Martin pushed his way in the door.

“I was standing in the bedroom doorway with a shotgun in my hand … when he did come in the door … I told 911 I was going to shoot and I did. And he just kind of fell over the couch.”

She said she feels bad — but has no regrets.

“I felt like what I did was the best decision for my son and I. Obviously when someone breaks into your house with a deadly weapon, they’re not here for anything good. But I am very sorry and it’s not something I ever wanted to do.”

McKinley will not be charged as she acted in self-defense.  We wish her and her child only happiness and success from now on.

Related articles

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It’s been a tough several years for the reputation of Johnson & Johnson. Over two dozen recalls affecting its most popular products including Tylenol, Benadryl and Motrin have created questions about quality processes at the venerable

company. The Huffington Post notes

The number of recalls and the company’s handling of them – including a 2008 “stealth recall” in which J&J paid another company to secretly buy up defective Motrin packets from stores – have generated investigations by Congress and the Food and Drug Administration. They also forced the shutdown and gutting of the Fort Washington, Pa., factory operated by J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit that made many of the recalled over-the-counter medicines

The family of 2 year old River Moore who died after taking Tylenol from a batch that was later recalled has now sued Johnson & Johnson alleging that the medicine contained a fatal dose of its active ingredient, acetaminophen. The lawsuit

accuses them of “willful and reckless conduct which needlessly caused the death of (the boy) simply to preserve the continuation of their billion-dollar revenue streams of pediatric medicines.”

The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, interest and legal expenses.

“We are sympathetic to the pain and hardships suffered by the Moore family,” J&J said in the statement. “We are deeply concerned about all matters related to our medicines and we remain committed to providing safe and effective pediatric medicines.”

From the public statements, there seems to be reasonable evidence to conclude that it is likely that defective medicine was the cause of the child’s death.  We don’t know what else might come out through the legal process, but we hope that all involved will make drug safety their primary concern in reaching a resolution in this case.

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Workers at the San Francsico Zoo were surprised on Friday morning when they discovered breaches in a perimeter fence and in the meshing around the squirrel monkey habitat.  They were worried when they discovered that Banana-Sam, a much-beloved monkey, was missing.  A day later, on Saturday evening, a man walking through a park noticed movement in the bushes, and recognized it was the missing monkey.  For some reason we can’t fathom, he coaxed the monkey into his backpack and called the authorities. Banana-Sam was soon returned to the zoo, where he is recovering from his ordeal.

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Wilfredo Rodena has had a lot of quiet time to think.  22 years into a 25 year sentence for armed kidnapping he thinks he may have found a way to make “one houndred dollarys”.  Rodena recently filed suit alleging his civil rights were violated by his defense attorney, “I don’t know my lawyer’s name”, who did ““not fight for me at all. He did not said one word in my behelf.” Also included in the suit were the Bronx District Attorney, and

“the stenographer is envoled to. But I don’t no her name.”

The unidentified court reporter is to blame, Rodena contends, because she refused to record testimony where Rodena’s victim said he wasn’t the kidnapper.

Instead of typing, Rodena said, “All she did was Smirk at me. And kept her fingers over the machine, and never typed one key.”

When Dr. Fred Ravens of Reading, MA purchased the house next to his office from the family of an elderly woman, he knew the walls were filled with memories. He didn’t know that they were also filled with cash.  When the crew he hired began to knock down walls, cash began flying out- $2500 in all. Dr. Ravens promptly gave the money to the family of the deceased former resident.  A lovely gesture.

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One would think it would be rather simple to count the toes on an elephant.  For many years the answer has been 5.  But recently John Hutchinson published a paper declaring the answer to be 6. What we learned reading How The Elephant Got Its Sixth Toe:

1. Elephants have a sixth toe which is hidden and tiny
2. Elephants react poorly to anaesthesia
3. Elephant feet are impervious to x-rays and ultrasound at safe intensities
4. John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in London has “dubious distinction of having perhaps the world’s largest collection of frozen elephant feet… He now has more than 60 stored in various freezers”
5. It took Hutchinson’s team 3 years of study to discover this sixth toe
6. “Gerald Weissengruber at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna says that the paper has “fundamental flaws”. He says that it is unclear if the sixth toe is a sesamoid bone at all, because it has no obvious muscles attached to it as do the panda’s thumb or a human sesamoid.”

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