Sunday, November 3, 2013
Racism linked to gun ownership.
A new study finds higher levels of racism in white Americans is associated with having a gun in the home and greater opposition to gun control policies.
After accounting for numerous other factors such as income, education, and political ideology, the researchers found that for each one point increase (on a scale from one to five) in symbolic racism there was a 50 percent increase in the odds of having a gun in the home and a 28 percent increase in support for policies allowing people to carry concealed guns.
Each one point increase in symbolic racism (a modern measure of anti-black racism) was also associated with a 27 percent increase in the odds of opposing bans on hand guns in the home. After accounting for those who already had a gun in the home, the odds were reduced to a non-significant 17 percent increase. However, the authors note that this reduction is unsurprising as opposition to bans on guns equates to self interest on behalf of those who already own a gun and do not wish to give it up.
And racism was already strongly associated with having a gun in the home.
Cannot say I am surprised by this one.
Considering this is it any wonder that gun sales spiked as soon as an African American moved into the White House?
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The Scientifically Best Time to Drink Your Coffee
Many coffee drinkers roll out of bed and get their daily dose of java as soon as possible. Because of the way coffee affects our bodies, though, there may be more ideal times to drink it.
Neuroscience PhD student Steven Miller explains that in the mornings (between the hours of 8 am and 9 am) our cortisol levels are at their highest. Cortisol isn't just the "stress hormone"—it's also correlated with our alertness levels.
So if we drink coffee at the same time our alertness is already at its peak, we're wasting the potential alertness boost we get from the caffeine:
One of the key principles of pharmacology is use a drug when it is needed (although I’m sure some scientists might argue that caffeine is always needed). Otherwise, we can develop tolerance to a drug administered at the same dose. In other words, the same cup of morning coffee will become less effective
The most effective time to have a cup of joe, Miller says, is between 9:30 am and 11:30 am. (Between noon and 1 pm and between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm are other times cortisol levels rise, so you might want to avoid drinking coffee during those hours.)
If you're going to drink more than one cup of coffee, though, a cup or less every hourwill also give you the best bang for your caffeinated buck.
Author: MELANIE PINOLA
Nice way to look at it.
Oh well, time favors the water, not the rock.
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Google's mystery barges revealed as luxury showrooms
Mysterious structure built on floating barge is seen in San Francisco Bay
The structures will feature a top-floor "party deck," complete with "bars, lanais and other comforts," according to the report, which cited unnamed sources.
SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc's mysterious barges, which prompted fevered speculation about everything from offshore data centers to floating research labs, may serve a more prosaic role as upscale party venues and showrooms.
The multi-story vessels made out of stacked shipping containers, one moored in the San Francisco Bay and the other at the Portland, Maine harbor, are invitation-only luxury showrooms for Google's Glass wearable computers and other gadgets, according to local San Francisco TV station KPIX.
The structures will feature a top-floor "party deck," complete with "bars, lanais and other comforts," according to the report, which cited unnamed sources.
The existence of the floating barges surfaced last week, when technology website CNET theorized that the San Francisco vessel might be a floating data center that would house banks of computers. Google was granted a patent for a water-based data center in 2009.
Google has declined to comment on the matter, refusing even to acknowledge its affiliation with the vessels. But the executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, Larry Goldzband, told Reuters his agency has had several meetings with Google officials about the barge in recent months.
Read Full Article Source here
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By Alexei Oreskovic of Reuters
Apple launches the iPad Air
Eager technology fans braved lines at Apple stores around the world to snag the company's latest iPad tablet.
The iPad Air launched in 42 countries including the U.S. on Friday, the latest gadget to enter an increasingly heated tablet market.
Videos from several store launches including Sydney, Tokyo and Amsterdam have been popping up on YouTube, as CNN notes.
According to Apple's website, it appears consumers will have little trouble securing an iPad Air. Both the silver and space gray models in all storage sizes are available to ship by Monday.
The 9.7-inch iPad Air is 20% thinner than the previous model, and weighs only one pound. It features the zippier A7 processing chip as well as the M7 coprocessor, both of which are found in Apple's iPhone 5s.
Stakes are high for Apple, as the company continues to lose market share in the crowded tablet space. During the third quarter, Apple commanded a 29.6% market share for global tablet shipments, down from more than 40% last year, says IDC. Meanwhile, rival Samsung is gaining ground, boosting its share in the third quarter from 12% to 20%.
TSA identifies officer slain in LAX ‘chaos’
A rifle-wielding gunman killed a Transportation Security Administration officer, injured two others and fired a barrage of shots Friday morning inside a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport before police shot him and took him into custody.
The shooting caused chaos in the world’s sixth-busiest airport, interrupted air traffic and gave the nation yet another burst of gun-fueled violence in a place where people least expected it. It came less than a year after the mass shootings at a school in Newtown, Conn., and a month and a half after the shootings at the Washington Navy Yard.
The officer who died was the first TSA employee to perish in the line of the duty. The TSA identified him late Friday as Gerardo I. Hernandez, 39.
Two other TSA employees were wounded, Administrator John Pistole wrote in a note to workers, while some of the other victims possibly suffered “evasion injuries, where they may have injured themselves trying to get away,” FBI agent David Bowdich told reporters during a news conference as parts of the airport began to reopen.
Bowdich confirmed that the suspect is 23-year-old Los Angeles resident Paul Anthony Ciancia, whom The Associated Press described as a “man from New Jersey who wrote a rant about killing Transportation Safety Administration workers.” The news service said he wore fatigues and had a bag containing a hand-written note that said he “wanted to kill TSA and pigs,” and had talked about suicide in a text to a relative.
Authorities offered no details about the gunman’s motives, including whether he may have hoped to get on board a plane.
“We are still trying to determine how he got here,” Bowdich said after a reporter asked whether Ciancia had driven himself to the airport. The FBI agent said he didn’t know the suspect’s medical condition but that he was receiving treatment in a hospital.
Ciancia had earlier sent a text message to a sibling “in reference to him taking his own life,” Pennsville, N.J., police Chief Allen Cummings told the AP. The chief said Ciancia’s father called him early Friday afternoon asking for help locating his son. Cummings said he called Los Angeles police, who sent a patrol car to Ciancia’s apartment, where two roommates said they had seen him Thursday and that he was fine.
Read Full Article Source here
Author: By KEVIN ROBILLARD
The 60 Minutes "expose" on Benghazi may destroy the last of CBS's journalistic credibility.
The Benghazi "witness" featured in a CBS 60 Minutes report that galvanized new discussion of the administration's response to the attack previously said he never got near the diplomatic compound on the night of the attack, according to a report from The Washington Post.
The revelation comes just days after Fox News reported that they had previously been using the same man as a source, but broke contact after he asked the network for money. Two days after the CBS report aired, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon and Schuster that "specializes in conservative non-fiction," published the supposed witness' book, The Embassy House: The Explosive Eyewitness Account of the Libyan Embassy Siege by the Soldier Who Was There. According to the Post, the book "largely comports with the 60 Minutes account."
Together, these details paint a damning picture of the credibility of the supposed eyewitness -- and that of the CBS report which promoted his story.
During the October 27 report, which was based on a year-long investigation by correspondent Lara Logan and producer Max McCellan, Logan described the man, identified as "Morgan Jones, a pseuodonym he's using for his own safety," as "a security officer who witnessed the attack." She explained that during the attack, "Jones scaled the twelve-foot high wall of the compound that was still overrun with al Qaeda fighters"; during an interview, he told her he had personally struck one of those terrorists in the face with his rifle butt. After the attack, "Jones" claimed in the report that he went to the Benghazi hospital and saw Ambassador Chris Stevens' body.
"Jones" also told CBS' audience that he had been worried about the compound coming under attack, and that Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, who died in the assault, had shared similar concerns with him.
But according to the Post, "Jones," whose real name was confirmed as Dylan Davies, revealed none of those details in the incident report to his security contractor employer that he wrote following the attack. Instead, he wrote that he never got near the compound that night and learned of Stevens' death from a colleague. From the Post:
In Davies's 21 / 2-page incident report to Blue Mountain, the Britain-based contractor hired by the State Department to handle perimeter security at the compound, he wrote that he spent most of that night at his Benghazi beach-side villa. Although he attempted to get to the compound, he wrote in the report, "we could not get anywhere near . . . as roadblocks had been set up." He learned of Stevens's death, Davies wrote, when a Libyan colleague who had been at the hospital came to the villa to show him a cellphone picture of the ambassador's blackened corpse. Davies wrote that he visited the still-smoking compound the next day to view and photograph the destruction.
Okay can we finally be done with this Benghazi thing now?
I mean even the most ardent Right Wingers must be smelling the decaying of the dead horse's corpse by now, don't you think?
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