XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 06/14/13

Friday 14 June 2013

Stunning Images From China: Ten Thousand People Waiting In Line To Buy Gold -

Sometimes one must see to believe, in this case believe just how massive the raw demand for the shiny, barbarous relic is in China during times of relative monetary stability (in this case the Dragon Boat Festival). Now assume runaway inflation as we saw in 2011 China, which may be unleashed by something as catalytic as the PBOC once again deciding to inject liquidity in its suffocating banking system and to revive growth in the stalling economy.

June 11, ten thousand people line up in front of a gold shop to buy gold. The buyers lined up during the three day Dragon Boat Festival.

Baldness drug curbs men's interest in alcohol -

Some men who take the drug finasteride (Propecia) to slow a receding hair line may also find it reduces their interest in drinking alcohol, new research reveals.
Almost two-thirds of the men in the study noticed they were drinking less alcohol than before taking Propecia, said study researcher Dr. Michael Irwig, an endocrinologist and assistant professor of medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine.
But the decrease in drinking seen in the study may not be found in all men who use the popular hair-loss treatment. (A higher dose of finasteride is also prescribed to men for an enlarged prostate, and is sold as Proscar.)
The study, which was aimed at better understanding the drug's sexual side effects, looked at only younger men, ages 46 and under, who had quit taking the medication for male-pattern hair loss for at least three months, yet continued to experience effects such as a reduced sex drive and erectile dysfunction.
Although the exact mechanism for reduced alcohol consumption is not known, Irwig said he suspects that Propecia interferes with the brain's ability to make certain hormones, known as neurosteroids, which are likely linked to drinking alcohol.
The findings are the first to link finasteride use in men with changes in alcohol consumption, an effect previously shown in male mice, the researchers said in their study, published online June 13 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Read more: -

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/13/baldness-drug-curbs-men-interest-in-alcohol-study-suggests/?test=latestnews

Researchers Solve Mystery of X-ray Light Coming From Black Holes -

Researchers Solve Mystery of X-ray Light Coming From Black Holes -

It is a mystery that has stymied astrophysicists for decades: how do black holes produce so many high-power X-rays?
In a new study, astrophysicists from The Johns Hopkins University, NASA and the Rochester Institute of Technology conducted research that bridges the gap between theory and observation by demonstrating that gas spiraling toward a black hole inevitably results in X-ray emissions.
The paper states that as gas spirals toward a black hole through a formation called an accretion disk, it heats up to roughly 10 million degrees Celsius. The temperature in the main body of the disk is roughly 2,000 times hotter than the sun and emits low-energy or “soft” X-rays. However, observations also detect “hard” X-rays which produce up to 100 times higher energy levels.
Julian Krolik, professor of physics and astronomy in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and his fellow scientists used a combination of supercomputer simulations and traditional hand-written calculations to uncover their findings. Supported by 40 years of theoretical progress, the team showed for the first time that high-energy light emission is not only possible, but is an inevitable outcome of gas being drawn into a black hole.
“Black holes are truly exotic, with extraordinarily high temperatures, incredibly rapid motions and gravity exhibiting the full weirdness of general relativity,” Krolik said. “But our calculations show we can understand a lot about them using only standard physics principles.”
The team’s work was recently published in the print edition of Astrophysical Journal. His collaborators on the study include Jeremy Schnittman, a research astrophysicist from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Scott Noble, an associate research scientist from the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation at RIT. Schnittman was lead author.
As the quality and quantity of the high-energy light observations improved over the years, evidence mounted showing that photons must be created in a hot, tenuous region called the corona. This corona, boiling violently above the comparatively cool disk, is similar to the corona surrounding the sun, which is responsible for much of the ultra-violet and X-ray luminosity seen in the solar spectrum.
While the team’s study of black holes and high-energy light confirms a widely-held belief, the role of advancing modern technology should not be overlooked. A grant from the National Science Foundation enabled the team to access Ranger, a supercomputing system at the Texas Advanced Computing Center located at the University of Texas in Austin. Ranger worked over the course of about 27 days, over 600 hours, to solve the equations.
Noble developed the computer simulation solving all of the equations governing the complex motion of inflowing gas and its associated magnetic fields near an accreting black hole. The rising temperature, density and speed of the inflowing gas dramatically amplify magnetic fields threading through the disk, which then exert additional influence on the gas.
The result is a turbulent froth orbiting the black hole at speeds approaching the speed of light. The calculations simultaneously tracked the fluid, electrical and magnetic properties of the gas while also taking into account Einstein’s theory of relativity.
“In some ways, we had to wait for technology to catch up with us,” Krolik said. “It’s the numerical simulations going on at this level of quality and resolution that make the results credible.”

Read more -

http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/06/14/johns-hopkins-researcher-colleagues-solve-mystery-of-x-ray-light-coming-from-black-holes/

Is Obama Starting A War With Syria Just To Distract Us From All The Scandals? -

Well, isn’t that convenient? At the moment when the Obama administration is feeling more heat then ever before, it starts another war. Suddenly everyone in the mainstream media is talking all about Syria and not about the IRS scandal, Benghazi,NSA snoopingor any of the other political scandals that have popped up in recent weeks. As if on cue, Obama made headlines all over the globe on Thursday by claiming that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the rebels “multiple times”, and that the U.S. was now ready to do more to assist the rebels. That assistance is reportedly going to include “military support” for the rebels and a no-fly zone over at least part of Syria is being discussed. Without a doubt, these are acts of war, and this conflict is not going to end until Assad has been ousted. But Assad will not go quietly. And all it would take is for Assad to fire a couple of missiles at Tel Aviv for a huge regional war to erupt in the Middle East. And what happens if Russia or China decides to get involved in the conflict in Syria? Obama is playing with fire, but he has shown again and again that he is willing to do virtually anything if it will benefit him politically.

As far as the Obama administration is concerned, there is no such thing as a coincidence. The timing of this announcement regarding Syria was not an accident. If Obama wanted to use chemical weapons as an excuse to go after Syria he could have done it weeks ago, or he could have waited several more months before taking action. He chose to do it right now for a reason, and hopefully the American people will be able to see right through this.

So exactly what are we going to be doing for the Syrian rebels? Well, we will definitely be arming them and training them. And it is probably reasonable to assume that there will be American “advisers” on the ground inside Syria helping to organize the Syrian resistance. In fact, according to Debka, a large U.S. Marine force has already been deployed to the Jordanian border with Syria.

In addition, according to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. aircraft may be involved in enforcing a no-fly zone inside Syria…

A U.S. military proposal for arming Syrian rebels also calls for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who would train there, according to U.S. officials.

Asked by the White House to develop options for Syria, military planners have said that creating an area to train and equip rebel forces would require keeping Syrian aircraft well away from the Jordanian border.

To do that, the military envisages creating a no-fly zone stretching up to 25 miles into Syria which would be enforced using aircraft flown from Jordanian bases and flying inside the kingdom, according to U.S. officials.

No matter how you slice it, the United States is now in a state of war with Syria. The only question is how “involved” we are going to get.

And several prominent Republicans are already rushing forward to applaud Barack Obama on this latest move. The following comes from aCBS News report…

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who met with the rebels last month and has been a vocal critic of the president’s Syria policy said in a joint statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.: “We appreciate the President’s finding that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on several occasions. We also agree with the President that this fact must affect U.S. policy toward Syria. The President’s red line has been crossed. U.S. credibility is on the line. Now is not the time to merely take the next incremental step. Now is the time for more decisive actions.”

But you know what? Many of these Syrian rebels have actually pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The whole point of the “war on terror” was to supposedly fight al-Qaeda, but now the U.S. military is allied with them.

Why in the world would we want to help the people who are supposed to be our greatest global enemy?…

A Syrian rebel group’s pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda’s replacement for Osama bin Laden suggests that the terrorist group’s influence is not waning and that it may take a greater role in the Western-backed fight to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The pledge of allegiance by Syrian Jabhat al Nusra Front chief Abou Mohamad al-Joulani to al-Qaeda leader Sheik Ayman al-Zawahri was coupled with an announcement by the al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq, that it would work with al Nusra as well.

Lebanese Sheik Omar Bakri, a Salafist who says states must be governed by Muslim religious law, says al-Qaeda has assisted al Nusra for some time.

“They provided them early on with technical, military and financial support , especially when it came to setting up networks of foreign jihadis who were brought into Syria,” Bakri says. “There will certainly be greater coordination between the two groups.”

This group of jihadists has been responsible for car and suicide bombings all over Syria, and they are the ones that have been doing the heaviest fighting on the front lines…

When the group Jabhat al Nusra first claimed responsibility for car and suicide bombings in Damascus that killed dozens last January, many of Syria’s revolutionaries claimed that the organization was a creation of the Syrian government, designed to discredit those who opposed the regime of President Bashar Assad and to hide the regime’s own brutal tactics.

Nearly a year later, however, Jabhat al Nusra, which U.S. officials believe has links to al Qaida, has become essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad.

Not only does the group still conduct suicide bombings that have killed hundreds, but they’ve proved to be critical to the rebels’ military advance. In battle after battle across the country, Nusra and similar groups do the heaviest frontline fighting. Groups who call themselves the Free Syrian Army and report to military councils led by defected Syrian army officers move into the captured territory afterward.

The prominence of Nusra in the rebel cause worries U.S. and other Western officials, who say its operations rely on the same people and tactics that fueled al Qaida in Iraq – an assertion that is borne out by interviews with Nusra members in Syria.

These are no “freedom fighters”. In fact, if these guys take over they will be much worse than Assad. These “rebels” recently massacred an entire villages of Christians, and just two days ago they slaughtered a 14-year-old boy for supposedly insulting Mohammed…

The rebels, according to ABC News’ reconstruction of the Syrian groups’ reports, appear to have whipped Qatta. When they brought him back to where they’d taken him, his head was wrapped by a shirt.

The rebels waited for a crowd to gather; Qatta’s parents were among them. Speaking in classical Arabic, they announced that Qatta had committed blasphemy and that anyone else who dared insult the Prophet Mohammed would share his fate. Then, the shirt still wrapped around the boy’s head, the rebels shot him in the mouth and neck.

Is this really who the U.S. government wants to be allies with?

Are we that stupid?

And guess what? According to the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration is considering plans to bring all of the poor “refugees” that are allied with these “rebels” to the United States…

Two years into a civil war that shows no signs of ending, the Obama administration is considering resettling refugees who have fled Syria, part of an international effort that could bring thousands of Syrians to American cities and towns.

A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families.

But now we are committed to this conflict thanks to Obama.

There will be no backing down until Assad is gone.

Of course this could create a huge regional war in the Middle East or even eventually lead to World War III, but Obama doesn’t seem to care.

Read more -

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/is-obama-starting-a-war-with-syria-just-to-distract-us-from-all-the-scandals

Families spend 9 days with wrong dog after groomer mix-up -

Families spend 9 days with wrong dog after groomer mix-up -

It's one of every dog owner's worst nightmares: You bring your pet to the groomers, and pick up an entirely different dog.

Two families who brought their dogs to Debbie's Tidy Dog grooming service in Florence, Ala., were given each other's dogs instead of their own upon pickup last week, according to WHNT-TV.

Tami Rudolph, owner of Bailey, immediately knew she was given the wrong Maltese when she got home. But the other family had been out of town for several days and didn't realize they had Rudolph's dog.

Finally, after nine days of being with the wrong owner, Bailey was reunited with Ms. Rudolph, who cried tears of joy.

"I can finally be happy again. And sleep," said Rudolph.

Read more -

http://www.pawnation.com/2013/06/14/family-dogs-returned-after-groomer-mix-up/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl10%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D329372?test=latestnews

REPORT: Pakistan hates gays but leads world in GOOGLE searches for gay porn... -

Pakistan -- a global leader in intolerance towards homosexuals -- leads the world in Google searches for gay pornography, according to an analysis of search terms published by Mother Jones.

The study found the Islamic republic is the world leader by volume of searches form the terms "shemale sex," "teen anal sex," and "man f***ing man," while it ranks second in searches for the term "gay sex pics."

The term "shemale sex" was most-searched for in the city of Peshwar, a conservative Islamic stronghold that has become a frontline in the war on terror.

In a survey of 39 countries worldwide, the Pew Research Center asked the question, "Should society accept homosexuality?"

In the United States and Western Europe the answer was a resounding "yes," but wallowing at the bottom of the countries surveyed was Pakistan where only 2% of those surveyed answered in the affirmative making the predominantly Muslim nation one of the least tolerant countries on Earth, according to Mother Jones.

"Religious extremism is at a height today," said Farahnaz Ispahan, an expert in Pakistani minorities at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former member of Pakistan's parliament.

"Hindus are being forced to convert, Christians are being burned alive—there's very little personal safety for those seen as 'the other.'" Ispahan said while trying to explain Pakistan's odd relationship with homosexuality and gay porn.

"So what do [gay Pakistanis] do? They turn to pornography because they can't live their lives openly."

Part of the reason why gay Pakistanis can't live openly is because gay sex is illegal and can be punished with a lengthy jail sentence.

Read more -

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/pakistan_hates_gays_porn_loves_shemale_1nLWiA802cZVRAbXc43w4O?utm_source=SFnewyorkpost&utm_medium=SFnewyorkpost

Men are to blame for women’s menopause -

Theories abound as to why women go into menopause, but the latest hypothesis being put forward suggests it may be men — or specifically their preference for younger mates —that has led to women’s loss of fertility at a certain age.
Researchers at McMaster University believe that over tens of thousands of years, a lack of reproduction among older women has given rise to menopause as an unintended result of evolutionary natural selection.
Using computer modelling, the researchers found that over time, competition among men of all ages for younger mates left older females with much less chance of reproducing.
“We are saying somewhere along the line, men began to change their preference in mating,” said evolutionary biologist Rama Singh, co-author of the study published in this week’s issue of the journal PLOS Computational Biology.
“What we’re saying is that menopause will occur if there is a preferential mating with younger women and older women are not reproducing,” he said Thursday from Hamilton.
Singh said women would have had children when they were younger — from 15 to 30, based on the computer model.
Any genetic mutations that caused an end to fertility later in life would be passed down from generation to generation, he said.
And over time, an accumulation of such mutations harmful to female fertility ended up producing a menopausal period that became part of the overall human female genome, the hypothesis suggests.
“It’s a very simple theory. What it does is it demystifies menopause. . . . It becomes a simple age-related disease, if you can call it that,” said Singh.
“That’s just like all the mutations that affect our aging — white hair, weak muscles, this and that. These are mutations which affect fertility.”
The researchers’ hypothesis runs counter to prevailing theories about menopause, including the widely held “grandmother theory.”
That theory suggests that women evolved to become infertile after a certain age to allow them to assist with rearing grandchildren, thus helping to promote survival of their children’s offspring.
Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, is among the leading proponents of the grandmother theory.
Other primates, such as chimpanzees, do not live as long as humans, but females of the species have a loss of fertility, or parturition, at similar ages to their human counterparts, she said. Female chimps rarely live beyond their child-bearing years, usually dying in their 30s or sometimes their 40s.
“The preference men have for young partners is a striking contrast with other primates,” Hawkes said by email, noting that it’s been well-documented that male chimpanzees prefer older females as mates.
“My guess about that has been it’s a consequence of our life history — something selection would favour after — not before — our grandmothering life history evolved . . . when women continue to be healthy and competent beyond their fertility.”
Singh, however, doesn’t believe the grandmother theory holds up from an evolutionary perspective.
“How do you evolve infertility? It is contrary to the whole notion of natural selection. Natural selection selects for fertility, for reproduction — not for stopping it,” he said.
“This theory says if women were reproducing all along, and there were no preference against older women, women would be reproducing like men are for their whole lives.”
Besides ending reproduction, menopause also affects a woman’s health as hormonal changes increase the risk for such conditions as cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis, said Singh.
He hopes the new theory might spawn research into ways to prevent menopause, which would lengthen a woman’s reproductive life while also helping to maintain better health as she ages.
“Until now, it has been something that you could not do anything about except (deal with) the symptoms.”

Read more -

http://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2013/06/14/why_men_are_to_blame_for_womens_menopause.html