Costa Rica’s alligator bug, Fulgora laternaria, bears a protuberance that looks remarkably like a caiman’s head — a feature that may make a hungry bird think twice.
The leaf insects of Southeast Asia, below, so convincingly mimic living leaves that they even bear “bite marks.” This fooled Magellan’s companion Antonio Pigafetta, who encountered them in the Philippines in 1521:
In this island are also found certain trees, the leaves of which, when they fall, are animated, and walk. They are like the leaves of the mulberry tree, but not so long; they have the leaf stalk short and pointed, and near the leaf stalk they have on each side two feet. If they are touched they escape, but if crushed they do not give out blood. I kept one for nine days in a box. When I opened it the leaf went round the box. I believe they live upon air.
Yesterday AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told employees during a company-wide conference call that AOL would be scaling back its 401(k) program and employer match. According to Joe Pompeo at Capital New York, Armstrong explained:
“Two things that happened in 2012,” he said, according to a transcript provided by an AOL employee. “We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general. And those are the things that add up into our benefits cost. So when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased healthcare costs, we made the decision, and I made the decision, to basically change the 401(k) plan.”
For at least some employees, Armstrong’s effort to show how much care the company takes for the health and wellbeing of its staff failed to land. Though he did not name the employees he referred to, “people were just shocked that two particular women would be singled out on a company-wide call,” a person who was on the call told Capital.
The singling out of the two women who “had distressed babies” was immediately picked up by other media outlets. There are legitimate reasons for why a company would need to scale back benefits—AOL has been struggling and recently unloaded it’s money-losing local news service. But singling out employees for things they have no control over? Terrible.
After his remarks hit the news cycle, Armstrong followed up with his employees to try to clarify his statement:
As we discussed at the town hall, we care about you and the company – a lot. This morning, I discussed the increases we and many other companies are seeing in healthcare costs. In that context, I mentioned high-risk pregnancy as just one of many examples of how our company supports families when they are in need. We will continue supporting members of the AOL family.
Catholics pick and choose which of their church's tenets to follow, according to surveys in Germany and Switzerland. Though respondents considered their religion to be important to them, they also thought some of its tenants -- particularly regarding sex before marriage, birth control, homosexuality and divorce -- were "unrealistic" and "virtually never accepted."
The survey was commissioned by Pope Francis and sent to bishops worldwide with the request to share it with as many parishes as possible to get the most accurate sense of how churchgoers feel. While some bishops have chosen not to make results public -- Philadelphia's archdiocese, for example, will not, according to the AP -- Germany and Switzerland readily posted theirs today.
According to the German survey, between 90 and 100 percent of couples live together before marriage, and about a third of marriages end in divorce. While marriage for same sex couples was "largely rejected," civil unions was seen as a "commandment of justice." As for birth control, "prohibition of [artificial means] is rejected by the great majority of Catholics as incomprehensible, and is not adhered to in practice." It is also not seen as sinful.
The Swiss survey results were similar: 90 percent thought marriages between divorced people should be blessed; 75 percent were in favor of pre-marital co-habitation, 70 percent preferred artificial birth control and 60 percent said the church should recognize and bless same sex marriages.
Though the results show that Catholics disagree with some of the church's teachings and live their lives according to what they think is best, it doesn't mean the Pope -- who has said the church focuses too much on some of these issues -- will turn around and change the rules to be more in step with his congregants. The survey will be used to inform an October synod about "the pastoral challenges for the family in the context of evangelization." And based on the survey, it won't matter what the Pope says -- his congregants will make their own interpretations anyway.
This is the Elephant Rock in Iceland! This incredible rock formation is found on Heimaey, which is the largest island in the Vestmannaeyjar chain at 13.2 square kilometers (5.2 square miles).
Fabiana Santos, the pilot of the Brazilian women's bobsleigh team, poses with the Olympic mascots during a welcome ceremony at the Mountain Olympic Village prior to the 2014 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014, in Krasnaya Polyana, Russia. (AP PHOTO/JAE C. HONG)
As reporters begin to arrive in Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics, they are noting firsthand the city's much-anticipated idiosyncrasies. And there are a lot of them.
New York Times reporter David Segal calls Sochi a "Soviet-style dystopia," and makes the city sound like a scene from the fever dream of SNL club-tipster Stefon. Segal describes a Sochi hotel bloc:
The exteriors are monolithic and nearly identical, except for sections of paint, in shades of yellow, taupe and mauve. None of the buildings have names. Instead, they are identified by numbers, and as of last weekend, many of the numbers had not yet arrived. Or they had arrived and had yet to be affixed to the buildings. Instead, they were printed on a piece of paper and taped to a wall. Breakfast is available in Building 10. But not only is Building 10 hard to find, there is no evidence that it houses a restaurant.
The mall’s doors are open, though the individual stores are not, and someone in a bear costume is dancing on the first floor to some piped-in music. But the ambience is less celebratory than anxious. Shoppers are vastly outnumbered by men wheeling pallets up ramps, or peeling plastic off glass displays, or unboxing products.
And the bizarre experience of riding a bus:
Like much of this city, the bus has the Sochi Olympics slogan emblazoned on its side: “Hot. Cool. Yours.” ... The drive takes you past the odd insta-metropolis that this area has become, a hodgepodge of old churches, sleek industrial office buildings and freshly paved highways. You also pass a lot of dirt fields, dotted with newly planted trees, kept upright with twine.
On the more mundane side of Sochi dysfunction, he says, is a deluge of half-finished projects, including unopened hotels and some where workers have yet to install heaters and air conditioners. There's a mall where the only operating store is a Cinnabon. And some projects are completed but shoddily done. Segal says he accidentally pulled the handles off two doors in the Bolshoy Ice Dome, and said stray dogs were able to enter the heavily guarded media center.
Other journalists have weighed in on the state of Sochi. Ha'aretz reporter Daniel Bar-On said he has fond memories of the beach resort from when he visited as a child in 1988, but that today's Sochi is much different:
Despite the squeaky-clean streets, the modern hotels and malls and the state-of-the-art train station that one would expect to find in Tokyo or New York – the sadness and cynicism are evident everywhere.
Sports Illustrated's Brian Cazeneuv writes that accommodations in the Olympic city are less than ideal:
Three of nine hotel centers in the mountain cluster remain unfinished and several people who have paid for single rooms are arriving to find other strangers -- in at least one case of the opposite gender -- already in their rooms. The three percent of officially unfinished rooms Felli mentioned are all located in the mountains, where one hotel guest arrived to find stray dogs in his room, and others discovered sewage dripping from their faucets.
According to Cazeneuve, even hotels that are technically fully open are missing essential items, like clocks and shower curtains. This photo of one hotel's tap water is not reassuring.
It's perhaps not surprising that Sochi is not particularly welcoming to visitors, as it seems most of the government's attention has been (rightly) focused on securing the location. Terrorist attacks throughout Russia have increased ahead of the games, prompting President Vladimir Putin to crack down on insurgents and send roughly 50,000 law enforcement officials to help protect the area. But, per Cazeneuve, this doesn't make for a very welcoming environment:
Sochi looks like a giant fortress. Because of concerns about terrorism, fences are everywhere, keeping people in or out of whatever is finished or unfinished. Signs warning people not to enter certain areas sit side-by side with welcome signs featuring smiling misha bear mascots.
A handful of buildings are complete, and Segal says that the road to the mountains is well-paved. So patrons staying in unfinished, sloppily put-together rooms can at least enjoy a pleasant ride up a mountain on an inappropriately balmy day.
Is Bruno Mars a secret member of the Illuminati? Let's look at the evidence.
In the "yes, he is" column, we have the fact that Mr. Mars headlined the 2014 Super Bowl Halftime show, which as everyone knows is a showcase for Illuminati members and their teachings, i.e. most of the celebrities. That's convincing enough, so we're not even going to bother to look at the arguments against the obvious conclusion that Mars's performance was full of proof.
The performance, as Mark Dice explained on Infowars, was "one big sex magic promotion." Sex magic (or "magik"), of course, refers to the Illuminati practice of harnessing the magic(k!) of sexual arousal to ascend to a different plane of reality, where you can then alter how you experience the world. And Mars was full of Magic(k) last night. Double goes for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who released an entire album called Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Plus, former Chili Pepper Dave Navarro also has a bunch of suspicious tattoos, which proves that he's at least a Freemason. (The two groups are distinct, but basically serve as the basis for the same conspiracy theories at this point, including ideas about lizard-like humanoids running our government. Maybe that's why he left the band.)
Dice, and other conspiracy theorists, believe that pretty much every Super Bowl halftime show is a big Illuminati showcase/mass mind control event, but described this year as "a little more subtle" than, say, Beyoncé's or Madonna and Nicki Minaj's (whom Dice calls "Niki Gar-bage"). This might be because Dice seems to have particularly strong words when it comes to female performers — his nicknames for Madonna are not very pleasant — making their performances more jarring for America's lead Illuminati watcher.
But Bruno Mars clearly belongs to the Illuminati because he did an episode of The Cleveland Show where he sang with other well-known Illuminati artists about being in the Illuminati. This was definitely not a joke. Plus, "Locked out of Heaven" is apparently about Satan (whom, of course, the Illuminati worship as part of the Occult), and Mars displayed a bunch of triangles on stage. All in the name of the coming New World Order.
But Illuminati theory wasn't the only big idea on display last night. There were truthers! Or, rather, one truther. An "independent journalist" rushed the stage of a post-game press conference talk about September 11. Matthew Mills, 30, said he "just saw my opportunity to get my word out there and I took it," grabbing the mic and declaring that the 9/11 attacks were "perpetrated by people in our own government."
The biggest events always bring out the best in the demonic overlords who control our planet's destiny, as well as the people who are on their game.
"Don't have a cow about class warfare, man." -- Tom Perkins, probably. (AP)
The House and Senate Agriculture committees announced a long-in-the-works compromise Farm Bill Monday evening — at the exact same time Tom "Kristallnacht" Perkins was defending the mega-rich on television.
On Bloomberg TV, billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins sort-of apologized for invoking the Holocaust when denouncing the war on San Francisco's impossibly-rich in a Wall Street Journal letter to the editor over the weekend. Perkins apologized for using the word "Kristallnacht," but otherwise didn't retract any of his implications about an impending war on the rich. Oh: This man also paid a $10,000 fine for killing a man with his yacht. Here's video:
Later, Perkins said "I could buy a six-pack of rolexes" while on a live microphone.
At the exact same time he was on Bloomberg, politicians in Washington announced $800 million in annual cuts as part of the two-year negotiations on a Farm Bill compromise. The money slashed from the bill is a relatively puny number compared to what Congress originally had planned, so somehow this is a victory.
A Farm Bill draft passed the House in September, cutting roughly five times as much. The Democratic Senate passed a version with only $400 million in cuts. The compromise, which extends for five years, will cost $950 billion, and save about $23 million over ten years compared to measures in place today. The bill also legalized industrial hemp production on college and university campuses.
But this is seen as a victory for most farmers and Americans who receive food stamp benefits, both of whom will continue to receive aid from the government, provided the draft passes. It has already been endorsed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. The House will likely vote on the bill on Wednesday.
Not everything in this bill was a win for Democrats hoping to prevent deep cuts to the program, though. One of the bill's major concessions is raising the level at which people can "qualify for nutrition assistance by virtue of receiving home heating aid," the Hill reported earlier today. Bloomberg goes deeper into those numbers:
Republicans successfully sought to lift the “heat and eat” threshold to $20, while Democrats proposed $10. The higher level creates almost $9 billion in savings, some of would be plowed back into a $200 million pilot program that lets 10 states toughen work requirements and boosts spending for food banks by about $200 million for 10 years, said the congressional aide who requested anonymity to discuss internal talks.
How old is he? I remember the media having a heyday with this. Jay Leno still makes weekly jokes about it.
AP
On Meet the Press this morning, Sen. Rand Paul decided it was time to finally set the record straight about the 16-year-old scandal involving former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. When asked by David Gregory about comments made by his wife Kelley during an interview with Vogue last year, the junior senator from Kentucky offered the Lewinsky affair would be fair political game if Hillary Clinton gears up for another White House run in 2016.
"I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office. There is no excuse for that, and that is predatory behavior."
Paul sought to frame the criticism of Clinton's infamous misdeeds as a note of hypocrisy as Democrats continue to charge that Republicans are engaged in a "war on women." When pushed, Paul clarified that he didn't believe "Monicagate" should play a factor in how Hillary Clinton is judged, only how history judges her husband.
Undercutting that point, he suggested that "sometimes it's hard to separate one [Clinton] from the other" and added that in Kentucky, people would "disassociate" from someone like Bill Clinton. (This wasn't the first time that Paul took Clinton to task over the affair.)
Coming quickly to the Clintons' defense was Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who responded in a later segment: "Hillary Clinton has established her own reputation and her own name and her own basis for running for president should she choose to do it. The issues that were raised by my colleague Sen. Paul have been litigated in the public square for over a decade. For goodness sakes, let’s judge Hillary Clinton based on her talents and her vision of America should she choose to run for president."
Other yet might contend that President Clinton is hardly the recipient of a free pass with regard to l'affaire Lewinsky, even all these years later. During the 2012 Democratic National Convention, the Associated Press controversially incorporated the affair in a fact-check it conducted of Bill Clinton's convention speech. And, as we mentioned, when Bill Clinton was named "Father of the Year" by the National Father's Day Council just a few weeks back, radio silence was hard to come by.
Hahahaha this is what I'm talking about. Keep talking, Mike.
Huckabee said Democrats try to win women voters by promising birth control, telling them they can't control "their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government."
Aaron works at a web design and development company in Houston where he the water cooler is chronically empty. Writes Aaron: “Other notes have been written in the past, but this time I feel the javascript developers are being specifically targeted.”
Tabitha G. ordered a Mario cake for her five-year-old's birthday party.
You know Mario, right?
Yeah. This guy.
And that's when things went horribly, hilariously wrong:
"Did-a somebody call-a a plumber?" [eyebrow waggle]
No, no, take a moment. Soak it alllll in. The leather biker hat. The earring. The collar. The nipple and gratuitous chest hair. Oh yeah, and the fact that his lower half is on backwards. (Why? WHY??)
How did this happen? Why does this art even exist? And seriously, what the heck is going on with that front butt?
The world may never know.
We DO know the bakery replaced The Village Mario here with a free Spongebob cake, though.
So Tabitha, just one question:
Was SpongeBob wearing a gimp suit? :D
*****
Do you shop Amazon? Then how about clicking through my affiliate link to shop? Visiting Amazon through that link will help support the site, and costs you nothing. Thanks, guys!
Sometimes it’s just like food media outlets in other countries are playing a kind of flavor Mad Libs: [Ingredient not usually in American snacks] + [Another ingredient not usually in American snacks] + [Brand name] = snack concoction the American will inevitably buzz about. Oh, hello, Shrimp Mayonnaise Doritos. Because we live in the U.S. it’s not like we’ll even come into contact with items like the S.M. Doritos or Mountain Dew Cheetos, but that won’t stop our stomachs from imagining what it would be like to eat them.
And our stomachs (and minds, sure, whatever) are often boggled.
The Shrimp Mayonnaise flavor is part of Frito-Lay’s gourmet line in Japan, and will only be available until March 17, reports UPI. That’s when leprechaun-and-sriracha-flavored chips hit the shelves. We’re kidding… OR ARE WE?
If seafood isn’t quite what you’re seeking in a chip, consider other entrants in the gourmet line: Corn potage, camembert cheese or mushrooms with butter and soy sauce. Dinner is served!
And since most of you reading this won’t actually go to Japan to eat any of those, just pick whichever one makes your stomach flip the most and tell everyone about it, because that’s about all we can do with these wacky flavors stateside.
I would make a shitty Amish person. harvesting ice. Gah.
It's still done in Wisconsin, primarily by the Amish, as reported in the Wisconsin State Journal:
The 1,500 blocks cut Saturday will be used to keep food cold year-round and helps make ice cream in the summer. A few blocks in a deep freeze box, which sometimes are old, non-working chest freezers, can last four to five days. There is no central ice warehouse. Instead, each Amish family has its own icehouse that can hold 200 to 250 blocks of ice. Built with well-insulated walls more than a foot thick, ice has been known to keep for two or even three years in an icehouse...
The ice harvest is efficient and free but requires those that receive ice to help with the work.
A 90-foot-by-50-foot section of the pond was shoveled off on Christmas Eve. On Saturday, Miller ran the main 3-foot-in-diameter power saw for making long cuts into the ice while another power saw, similar to a chain saw, was used to cross-cut the section into blocks. A worker then used a 4-foot-long, 5-inch-wide chisel to break the ice from the main ice section because Miller’s saw didn’t cut all the way through the ice.
The blocks were then pushed with 10-foot poles into a main channel and guided with pitchforks toward a wooden ramp positioned under a raised barbwire fence and onto a flatbed trailer. Six to eight blocks at a time were then slid up the 36-foot-long ramp. This was done with the help of Diamond, a cross between a draft and drive horse, who was attached to a rope and a bracket that was stabilized at the end of the row of ice blocks.
A single layer of 100 to 200 blocks of ice can cover the floor of a flatbed, depending on its size. Blocks are off-loaded by hand at the icehouse.
“Your arms get long after you pick these buggers up for a while,” Martin said.
I'm old enough to remember iceboxes. Not at home, but when our family used to go "up north" to go fishing, some of the resort cabins in the 1950s still provided iceboxes for food storage.
The fact that guns will never be taken away is the truth especially when people all across the country hunt for their food with guns if the United States took the guns away people would starve and most likely die.
Getting a cleaning product for free when you buy a broom or mop is a pretty good deal, and so is getting one for half off. The problem at this Target is that they can’t decide what deal they want to give you.
“50% isn’t the same as free…” wrote reader Jim when he sent us this picture. No. no, it isn’t.
We wrote to Target to ask whether the promotion is for a free cleaner or a cleaner at 50% off. Apparently Target isn’t sure either, or maybe they’re a little preoccupied.
On Oscar day the idea of a terrible premise getting a sequel should come as no surprise. Meteorologists are starting to see signs of an impending Polar Vortex sequel that could send the country plunging into a deep freeze.
Currently a weakened Polar Vortex is sitting still over the Hudson Bay, just above Quebec, minding its own business and causing some mild snowstorms. But the Vortex will start moving south at the beginning of next week, and a combination of air systems will create the kind of cold air that bothered much of the U.S. at the beginning of January. Accuweather's Alex Sosnowski explains:
However, during the third and fourth weeks of January, some changes will take place. The high amplitude pattern is forecast to get more extreme. The polar vortex will move farther south and get stronger. The pattern will gradually change the current mixture of Pacific and Arctic air in the Canada Prairies and the North Central U.S. to all Arctic air. The air will get significantly colder over the Canada Prairies and the much of the eastern half of the nation as a result.
If the early forecasts are right the sequel will be even worse, just like at the movies. "Temperatures may get colder than they were during the initial polar vortex event," writes The Houston Chronicle's Alex Sosnowski. These frigid temperatures are not a sure thing just yet. Predicting the weather is not a perfect science, especially when guessing so far away. But we know that Tuesday will be very, very cold, and all of the patterns point towards another Polar Vortex-type deep freeze.
We still don't know how far south the Vortex will travel. For now, most expect the Vortex to affect the Mid-West and north eastern parts of the country.
What makes this Polar Vortex sequel even more fun dangerous than the last one is the increased possibility of snowstorms. "This is the most favorable pattern for snow that we’ve had all winter and it’s occurring right at the beginning of the period when snowstorms are most frequent climatologically," says the Post. "But it still is not a perfect pattern." Someone get a pot of boiling water ready.
On Dec. 19, Target was a victim of a data breach that initially affected a reported 40 million credit cards, but was later revised when investigators revealed that 70 million customers were affected. Neiman Marcus was also a victim of a cyber attack, and a new report by Reuters says that there are other retailers that were affected by smaller breaches, but those stores have remained unnamed:
Avivah Litan, a security analyst for Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner information technology research firm, said she learned about a separate set of breaches, dating back no more than a few months before the November 28 Thanksgiving Day start of the holiday shopping season, from a forensics investigator. She declined to provide his name.
“Target was not the only retailer who got hit, but they got hit the biggest,” Litan said.
Investigators believe that the early series of attacks on retailers staged before late November were mostly used as trial attacks to help the hackers perfect new techniques they then used against Target, stealing payment cards at unprecedented speed, Litan said.
My mother called me the other night to tell me about charges made to her credit card that she didn’t make, and asked me what she should do about it. I told her to call the customer service number on the back of the card, and after a 10-minute call she was able to get the charges removed. She said it wasn’t very much of a hassle to clear up. I’m sure customer service lines have been really busy lately. Have any of you been affected by the breach?
Hmm. I guess there must have been a big number of people who didn't buy because of this, if they are actually changing it.
When reigning two-time Worst Company In America champ Electronic Arts released the hugely anticipated SimCity game in April 2013, it unleashed a hornets’ nest of bad publicity by not only requiring that players be online in order to use the game but also grossly underestimating its ability to deal with all of those users trying to play the game at the same time. Many owners of the game were unable to play for weeks until EA resolved the issue, but the company stood by the ill-advised decision to require an Internet connection. Now, ten months and ten updates later, it’s finally relenting.
In a post on the SimCity blog, the company confirmed that the next update to the game will finally allow players to enjoy the game without going online.
“When we launch it, all of your previously downloaded content will be available to you anytime, anywhere, without the need for an internet connection,” reads the blog post. “We are in the late phases of wrapping up its development and while we want to get it into your hands as soon as possible, our priority is to make sure that it’s as polished as possible before we release it.”
No specific timeframe is given for the release of the update. A group of volunteer testers will be getting hands-on with the new offline mode to make sure it works correctly. Because the worst thing EA could do at this point is to release an offline mode that doesn’t work correctly.
Yesterday AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told employees during a company-wide conference call that AOL would be scaling back its 401(k) program and employer match. According to Joe Pompeo at 
AP 
AP 
AP 
Getting a cleaning product for free when you buy a broom or mop is a pretty good deal, and so is getting one for half off. The problem at this Target is that they can’t decide what deal they want to give you.
AP 
On Dec. 19, Target was a victim of a data breach that initially affected a reported 40 million credit cards, but was later revised when investigators revealed that 70 million customers were affected. Neiman Marcus was also a victim of a cyber attack, and 
