I have begun to have my doubts that the Constitution will stop some of the idiots who get elected to public office.

I do wonder if some POTUS with the stroke of a pen made a law (for our children of course) and said turn them in how many law abiding citizens would not want the hassle of becoming a felon. Talk is cheap and chest beating certainly is preferable to the real thing of having to think this is the last day I will be free to hunt or go to the gun range... and now I have become a criminal if I do not do what they say....

Supposedly the military can not be used as law enforcement regardless of what happened in New Orleans and Katrina (or the Bonus army) ... So the answer is to arm and equip the police like a light infantry brigade. Killer Robots and probably Killer drones to follow... Yep nothing to see here .... I just hope many have closed their ears to the stupidity that comes out of some of our politician's mouths... I do believe there are states that would tell the feds screw you...

Funny I live in a country that we could purchase and own a fire arm.. Never felt a need for one here even though way down south the religion of peace likes to blow stuff up and shoot people on a monthly basis..

In the states I have had a CHL for a very long time and when I return to the states I never leave where we are staying without a 9mm or 45 that I keep there.. I do not walk in the shadow of fear nor do I usually walk in the lane of stupid either. A life's choice that has served me well.

Again I just wonder how many law abiding gun owners would honestly say "No" and mean it and be ready to use force for their beliefs ?

Okay, this is kind of fascinating.  At first glance I would think this is a hoax. It's wings look like tree leaves, but in the video an x-ray shows the creature's insides and it has a spine, ribs, and all the things a creature should have. 
Look at it's tiny hands. If this is a hoax, someone really went to a lot of trouble!

Quote:Richard Shaw and L. A. Marzulli travel to Mexico where Jaime Mausson reveals a creature that blows both men out of the room! This video is a sneak preview of what we have sat on since June of 2013. We reveal our findings in Watchers 10! I'll tell you this, both Richard and I believe the creature is real and you will too once you examine all of the evidence in our cutting edge film, Watchers 10-DNA as well as my new book Nephilim Hybrids. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction What you are about to see if what people refer to as a fairy. We examined the x-rays of this fairy. We also tried to get some dna from samples we took to the US. This fairy was being stored in a jar with formaldehyde. You'll have to see it to believe it ( via helenastales.weebly.com )! Could this be what comes out of the Abyss, that we read about in Revelation 9? "Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 4 They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months."

Hope you have the best day ever Gordi !!!


I was out in the forest and found some of those mushrooms that you carve...


And I was like...WOW....


They seemed to have become alive...


A little too much?


Perhaps?


And now...


I just wonder...







What the hell are they smoking ???



In any case,






To many happy returns !!!!

This e-book just came out last week after the printed version sold out in 2004, and it's available at a discount price this week at Amazon.com for Kindle readers, or B&N for those who have a Nook reader.

Here is the short synopsis:

Quote:This book is a biography of Etta's life from her birth in 1897 until her death in 1994, which includes her ancestral history dating back to 1812. Details of the hardships the Appalachian Mountain people suffered to survive are shared throughout her story.
Etta's caring nature and gentle hands would eventually touch over 2,000 souls who she would help bring into the world as a midwife, never charging more than $15.00.
This same community gained fame in Catherine Marshall’s book, Christy, but in 1930 another star was in the making: Etta’s career choice brought her much media attention beginning in the 1970's due to the fact that the old-time midwives were quickly becoming a "dying breed".
She appeared in many local newspaper articles in surrounding counties, and later her fame spread to NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokow, People Magazine, Star Magazine, AARP Magazine, National Geographic, The Heartland Series, and she was mentioned in several books. She was a kind and loving person, and a faithful Christian who believed in helping others. Her story offers inspiration to all as your heart is warmed by the unselfish ways she showed love and caring to everyone whose life she touched.

fortune teller or a profit you decide

Five people are taken to hospital and several others are treated at the scene for burns
to their feet and lower extremities.


They were attending Tony Robbins' four-day seminar, Unleash the Power Within, at the
Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Texas.
SOURCE:

I love this bit!
'...More than 20 people were treated for foot burns after a fire walk at a Robbins seminar
in San Jose, California, in 2012.

One participant, Jacqueline Luxemberg, told WFAA that some people were not concentrating
because they were taking selfies.'

I have no idea why people still fall for this bullsh*t.
I understand how it works and how you can trick yourself into believing that 'the sky is the limit'
-and all that, but come on... walk on hot coals 'cos someone convinces you to?
That's a cult-thing!

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There are conflicting reports of casualties at the club, with one witness being reported as
saying that 30 shots were fired.

Two people have been killed and 13 others wounded in a mass shooting at a Florida nightclub,
according to US media reports.

There are conflicting reports about casualties. Another unconfirmed report said up to 17 people
had been shot. The shooting took place at Club Blu in the early hours of Monday morning, according
to Lt. Jim Mulligan of the Lee County Sheriff's Office.

The incident is thought to have taken place during a 'teen night' at the club, with some of the people
at the event as young as 13.

One witness says that she heard around 30 gunshots from the scene and believes that these came
from a number of weapons. At least 20 police officers are at the scene and roads in the area have
been sealed off. 
SOURCE:
NBC News:

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On and on it goes with another attack on mainland Europe.

Three people have been seriously injured after a man carrying a backpack "deliberately"
detonated a device in a city centre.

A suspected suicide bomber has killed himself and injured 12 others in an explosion outside
a wine bar in the German city of Ansbach. Detectives have said the suspected attacker was a
27-year-old Syrian man who had been denied asylum in Germany.

SOURCE:

This is becoming a daily event in Europe now and it doesn't show any signs of stopping.

Syrian Refugee Wielding Machete Kills Woman.
A Syrian refugee wielding a machete has killed a woman and injured two other people
in the German city of Reutlingen.

The 21-year-old man has been arrested and was apparently acting alone, police said,
with the DPA news agency reporting authorities are working on the assumption that it
was a "crime of passion".

Footage from the scene shows a man running away before cutting to him lying on the ground,
his face bloodied and his hands cuffed by police.
SOURCE:

How a guy from a Montana trailer park who almost never went to college proved a 150-year-old idea in biology wrong

Quote:[img=480x0]http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/57923d754321f1362f8b98f8-1417/lichens.jpg[/img]At first glance, Lichens look messy and undeserving of attention. On closer inspection, they are astonishingly beautiful. theilr/ Flickr

In 1995, if you had told Toby Spribille that he’d eventually overthrow a scientific idea that’s been the stuff of textbooks for 150 years, he would have laughed at you. Back then, his life seemed constrained to a very different path. He was raised in a Montana trailer park, and home-schooled by what he now describes as a “fundamentalist cult.” At a young age, he fell in love with science, but had no way of feeding that love. He longed to break away from his roots and get a proper education.

At 19, he got a job at a local forestry service. Within a few years, he had earned enough to leave home. His meager savings and non-existent grades meant that no American university would take him, so Spribille looked to Europe.

Thanks to his family background, he could speak German, and he had heard that many universities there charged no tuition fees. His missing qualifications were still a problem, but one that the University of Gottingen decided to overlook. “They said that under exceptional circumstances, they could enroll a few people every year without transcripts,” says Sprirbille. “That was the bottleneck of my life.”

Throughout his undergraduate and postgraduate work, Spribille became an expert on the organisms that had grabbed his attention during his time in the Montana forests—lichens.

You’ve seen lichens before, but unlike Spribille, you may have ignored them. They grow on logs, cling to bark, smother stones. At first glance, they look messy and undeserving of attention. On closer inspection, they are astonishingly beautiful. They can look like flecks of peeling paint, or coralline branches, or dustings of powder, or lettuce-like fronds, or wriggling worms, or cups that a pixie might drink from. They’re also extremely tough. They grow in the most inhospitable parts of the planet, where no plant or animal can survive.

Lichens have an important place in biology. In the 18 60s, scientists thought that they were plants. But in 1868, a Swiss botanist named Simon Schwendener revealed that they’re composite organisms, consisting of fungi that live in partnership with microscopic algae. This “dual hypothesis” was met with indignation: it went against the impetus to put living things in clear and discrete buckets. The backlash only collapsed when Schwendener and others, with good microscopes and careful hands, managed to tease the two partners apart.
[img=800x0]http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/57923c364321f1e2008ba1f3-2304/2185022271_e21c950b91_o.jpg[/img]
A Montana trailer park. Bradley Gordon/ Flickr
Schwendener wrongly thought that the fungus had “enslaved” the alga, but others showed that the two cooperate. The alga uses sunlight to make nutrients for the fungus, while the fungus provides minerals, water, and shelter. This kind of mutually beneficial relationship was unheard of, and required a new word. Two Germans, Albert Frank and Anton de Bary, provided the perfect one—symbiosis, from the Greek for ‘together’ and ‘living’.

“That was the eureka moment. That’s when I leaned back in my chair.”

When we think about the microbes that influence the health of humans and other animals, the algae that provide coral reefs with energy, the mitochondria that power our cells, the gut bacteria that allow cows to digest their food, or the probiotic products that line supermarket shelves—all of that can be traced to the birth of the symbiosis as a concept. And symbiosis, in turn, began with lichens.

In the 150 years since Schwendener, biologists have tried in vain to grow lichens in laboratories. Whenever they artificially united the fungus and the alga, the two partners would never fully recreate their natural structures. It was as if something was missing—and Spribille might have discovered it.

He has shown that largest and most species-rich group of lichens are not alliances between two organisms, as every scientist since Schwendener has claimed. Instead, they’re alliances between three. All this time, a second type of fungus has been hiding in plain view.

“There’s been over 140 years of microscopy,” says Spribille. “The idea that there’s something so fundamental that people have been missing is stunning.”

The path to this discovery began in 2011, when Spribille, now armed with a doctorate, returned to Montana. He joined the lab of symbiosis specialist John McCutcheon, who convinced him to supplement his formidable natural history skills with some know-how in modern genetics.
[img=800x0]http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/57923adf88e4a7fd018ba18b-2000/lichens.jpg[/img]Lichen grows on sandstone in Irvine, California. David McNew/ Getty Images

The duo started studying two local lichens that are common in local forests and hang from branches like unruly wigs. One is yellow because it makes a strong poison called vulpinic acid; the other lacks this toxin and is dark brown. They clearly look different, and had been classified as separate species for almost a century. But recent studies had suggested that they’re actually the same fungus, partnered with the same alga. So why are they different?

To find out, Spribille analyzed which genes the two lichens were activating. He found no differences. Then, he realized that he was searching too narrowly. Lichenologists all thought that the fungi in the partnership belonged to a group called the ascomycetes—so Spribille had only searched for ascomycete genes. Almost on a whim, he broadened his search to the entire fungal kingdom, and found something bizarre. A lot of the genes that were activated in the lichens belonged to a fungus from an entirely different group—the basidiomycetes. “That didn’t look right,” says McCutcheon. “It took a lot of time to figure out.”

At first, the duo figured that a basidiomycete fungus was growing on the lichens. Perhaps it was just a contaminant, a speck of microbial fluff that had landed on the specimens. Or it might have been a pathogen, a fungus that was infecting the lichens and causing disease. It might simply have been a false alarm. (Such things happen: genetic algorithms have misidentified plague bacteria on the New York subway, platypuses in Virginia tomato fields, and seals in Vietnamese forests.)

But when Spribille removed all the basidiomycete genes from his data, everything that related to the presence of vulpinic acid also disappeared. “That was the eureka moment,” he says. “That’s when I leaned back in my chair.” That’s when he began to suspect that the basidiomycete was actually part of the lichens—present in both types, but especially abundant in the yellow toxic one.
[img=800x0]http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/57923b9e88e4a7531b8b9f37-1775/5565237344_7a24f518e5_o.jpg[/img]Lichens. PROfdecomite/ Flickr
“Toby took huge risks for many years. And he changed the field.”

And not just in these two types, either. Throughout his career, Spribille had collected some 45,000 samples of lichens. He began screening these, from many different lineages and continents. And in almost all the macrolichens—the world’s most species-rich group—he found the genes of basidiomycete fungi. They were everywhere. Now, he needed to see them with his own eyes.

Down a microscope, a lichen looks like a loaf of ciabatta: it has a stiff, dense crust surrounding a spongy, loose interior. The alga is embedded in the thick crust. The familiar ascomycete fungus is there too, but it branches inwards, creating the spongy interior. And the basidiomycetes? They’re in the outermost part of the crust, surrounding the other two partners. “They’re everywhere in that outer layer,” says Spribille.

Despite their seemingly obvious location, it took around five years to find them. They’re embedded in a matrix of sugars, as if someone had plastered over them. To see them, Spribille bought laundry detergent from Wal-Mart and used it to very carefully strip that matrix away.

And even when the basidiomycetes were exposed, they weren’t easy to identify. They look exactly like a cross-section from one of the ascomycete branches. Unless you know what you’re looking for, there’s no reason why you’d think there are two fungi there, rather than one—which is why no one realized for 150 years. Spribille only worked out what was happening by labeling each of the three partners with different fluorescent molecules, which glowed red, green, and blue respectively. Only then did the trinity become clear.

“The findings overthrow the two-organism paradigm,” says Sarah Watkins on from the University of Oxford. “Textbook definitions of lichens may have to be revised.”
[img=800x0]http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/57923d044321f1e2008ba1fb-2400/6282180138_584615667b_o.jpg[/img]Brown-eyed sunshine lichen growing on Ponderosa pine twig in Florence, MT. Bob Danley/ Flickr
“It makes lichens all the more remarkable,” adds Nick Talbot from the University of Exeter. “We now see that they require two different kinds of fungi and an algal species. If the right combination meet together on a rock or twig, then a lichen will form, and this will result in the large and complex plant-like organisms that we see on trees and rocks very commonly. The mechanism by which this symbiotic association occurs is completely unknown and remains a real mystery.”

Based on the locations of the two fungi, it’s possible that the basidiomycete influences the growth of the other fungus, inducing it to create the lichen’s stiff crust. Perhaps by using all three partners, lichenologists will finally be able to grow these organisms in the lab.

In the Montana lichens that Spribille studied, the basidiomycete obviously goes hand-in-hand with vulpinic acid. But is it eating the acid, manufacturing it, or unlocking the ability to make it in the other fungus? If it’s the latter, “the implications go beyond lichenology,” says Watkins on. Lichens are alluring targets for ‘bio prospectors’, who scour nature for substances that might be medically useful to us. And new basidiomycetes are part of an entirely new group, separated from their closest known relatives by 200 million years ago. All kinds of beneficial chemicals might lie within their cells.

“But really, we don’t know what they do,” says McCutcheon. “And given their existence, we don’t really know what the ascomycetes do, either.” Everything that’s been attributed to them might actually be due to the other fungus. Many of the fundamentals of lichenology will need to be checked, and perhaps re-written. “Toby took huge risks for many years,” says McCutcheon. “And he changed the field.”

But he didn’t work alone, Watkins on notes. His discovery wouldn’t have been possible without the entire team, who combined their individual expertise in natural history, genomics, microscopy, and more. That’s a theme that resonates throughout the history of symbiosis research—it takes an alliance of researchers to uncover nature’s most intimate partnerships.

Read the original article on The Atlantic. Check out The Atlantic's Facebook, newsletters and feeds. Copyright 2016. Follow The Atlantic on Twitter.