Pisces III: A dramatic underwater rescue

By Vanessa Barford
BBC News Magazine



Forty years ago two British sailors plunged almost 1,600ft into an abyss, 150 miles off Ireland, in a deep-sea submersible. Trapped in a 6ft-diameter steel ball for three days, the men had only 12 minutes of oxygen left when they were finally rescued.

The story of Pisces III, which made headlines at the time, is now largely forgotten.

But on Wednesday 29 August 1973 former Royal Navy submariner Roger Chapman, then 28, and engineer Roger Mallinson, then 35, plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean in an accident, sparking a 76-hour international rescue operation.

Here's how the incident and rescue effort unfolded:

more

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23862359

New Neighbor’s Agenda: White Power Takeover

By JOHN ELIGON

LEITH, N.D. — The bearded man with thinning, gray-and-bleach-blond hair flapping down his neck first appeared in this tiny agricultural town last year, quietly and inconspicuously roaming the crackly dirt roads.


Nettie Ketterling thought nothing of it when he came into her bar to charge his cellphone in an outlet beneath the mounted head of a mule deer. To Kenneth Zimmerman, the man was just another customer, bringing his blue Dodge Durango in for repairs. Bobby Harper did not blink when the man appeared in front of his house and asked him if he had any land to sell. And the mayor, Ryan Schock, was simply extending a civic courtesy when he swung by the man’s house to introduce himself.

Their new neighbor, they thought, was just another person looking to get closer to the lucrative oil fields in western North Dakota known as the Bakken.

But all that changed last week.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Bismarck Tribune revealed that the man, Paul Craig Cobb, 61, has been buying up property in this town of 24 people in an effort to transform it into a colony for white supremacists.


more

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/white-supremacists-plan-angers-a-north-dakota-town.html?=_r=6&_r=0

Friday TOON Roundup 4 - The Rest

Schools






King




Youth





Food





Msoft

Friday TOON Roundup 3 -Laboring Day

Friday TOON Roundup 2 -Meanwhile, in GOP-land

Friday TOON Roundup 1 -There is no Nobel War Prize

6000-year old tunic and other artifacts found in melting snow

By Melissa Hogenboom
Science reporter, BBC News


The well-worn tunic was incredibly well preserved and was made from wool

An Iron Age tunic is among the discoveries found under melting snow on Norwegian mountains.

Other findings include Neolithic arrows and bow fragments, thought to be about 6000 years old.

Snow on the Norwegian mountains, and elsewhere, is rapidly melting due to climate change, which is now unveiling a world of well preserved new discoveries.

The findings are published in two papers in the journal Antiquity.

"The new find is of great significance for dress and textile production and how these reflect the interplay between northern Europe and the Roman world," said Marianne Vedeler from the University of Oslo, Norway, who analysed the garment.


The tunic, found on the Norwegian Lendbreen glacier, was partly bleached from sun and wind exposure. It showed hard wear and tear and had been repaired with two patches.

more
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23849332

Even Senator Cornyn is not crazy enough for the TP'ers!

DANIEL STRAUSS AUGUST 29, 2013, 2:12 PM 14371
Tea Party groups have begun directing their fire in recent weeks at a counterintuitive target: Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

On paper, the Republican minority whip is an unusual target for Tea Party guns. Cornyn has been one of the most conservative members of the Senate since he was first elected to the chamber in 2002. National Journal ranks Cornyn the second most conservative member of the Senate. He has an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, has won multiple awards from the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, has a 0 percent rating from the pro-choice NARAL and a 100 percent rating from the National Right To Life Committee.

That’s not good enough for some Tea Partiers now.

Tea Party groups’ ire centers on Cornyn’s decision in late July to remove his signature from a letter by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) expressing strong support to defund Obamacare in any debt limit or government funding bill. Cornyn was one of a number of senators who had originally signed the letter a few days before he changed his mind and removed his signature.

At the time, Cornyn’s office said the senator supports defunding Obamacare but not at the risk of a government shutdown. Cornyn’s office maintains that he has been fighting “tooth and nail” against Obamacare. Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie noted that the senator was one of the original cosponsors of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) original bill to defund Obamacare.

But that’s not enough for the tea party crowd.

more

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/08/how-the-uber-conservative-john-cornyn-ticked-off-the-tea-party.php

Life Lessons from Bill Waterson

How Weed Saves Lives

Twenty states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana under the logic of helping patients manage chronic pain. This has also made it possible for many recreational users to score weed legally, and that may be a good thing for everyone - non-users and disapproving parents included. By substituting for alcohol, recreational marijuana use may reduce the prevalence of drunk driving and save lives.

Three researchers published evidence of this effect in a recent paper entitled “Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption.” The paper investigates the impact of medical marijuana laws. But given that most prescriptions are for self-reported pain symptoms, government monitoring is costly and difficult, and dispensaries and home cultivation make it easy to share with recreational users, they do not just look at medicinal use of pot.

(An earlier working paper is available here and the final paywalled article can be accessed here.)

The authors look at 3 states that legalized medicinal marijuana in the mid 2000s: Montana, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, they find that marijuana use increased in Montana - where 3% of the population is registered under medicinal marijuana laws - by 1.7%. That’s 0.9% more than in neighboring states that have not legalized marijuana. Rhode Island saw a more modest increase and Vermont, which did not allow dispensaries until 2011 and has under 500 registered patients, saw no significant increase.

Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of death among Americans ages 5-34, with alcohol impaired driving responsible for ⅓ of roughly 10,000 annual deaths. Both weed and alcohol slow reaction time and otherwise mess with driving abilities, but marijuana seems to be much less impairing:

Drivers under the influence of marijuana reduce their velocity, avoid risky maneuvers, and increase their “following distances,” suggesting compensatory behavior. In addition, there appears to be an important learning-by-doing component to driving under the influence of marijuana: experienced users show substantially less functional impairment than infrequent users.