There is no poop fairy - "There is no magic that is going to wipe away that poop. You have to pick it up.” -

There is no poop fairy - "There is no magic that is going to wipe away that poop. You have to pick it up.” - 




We hate to disappoint and destroy your childlike sense of wonder, but the truth must be told: There is no poop fairy.


So says a new billboard in Greenville County, South Carolina, as part of a campaign by the Greenville County Soil and Water Conservation District to get people to pick up after their dogs’ messes. Fox Carolina first reported on the campaign.


“There is no poop fairy,” J.C. Ward of the Greenville County Soil and Water Conservation District told Fox Carolina. “You are responsible. There is no magic that is going to wipe away that poop. You have to pick it up.”


The agency is calling it a “public health issue.”


According to materials on the group’s website, Greenville boasts 125 dogs per square mile, with each of those dogs excreting about two pounds of poop per day, or 250 pounds per square mile, all of which can be washed into local waterways, breeding bacteria and polluting the water, creating health problems for humans.


The billboard is part of an aggressive campaign that also includes signs in the park reminding residents to clean up after their pets, along with plastic bags to help them do so.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/06/greenville-sc-there-is-no-poop-fairy/

British child hunting for Easter eggs finds hand grenade -

British child hunting for Easter eggs finds hand grenade - 


A child on an Easter egg hunt organized by a pre-school group in an English village stumbled upon an unexpected surprise -- a hand grenade.
The hunt was taking place in a field near the town of Holford, Somerset, on Saturday, This Is Somerset reported.
The area was cordoned off and the bomb disposal squad destroyed the grenade in a controlled explosion, police said. It also resulted in the closure of a highway for a few of hours.
"We were beginning to count up the eggs at the end of the hunt and I saw a boy of three standing on an object," Stuart Moffatt, who was attending the hunt with his three children, told the Daily Mail.
"It was brown and about four inches high. It looked like an Easter egg, but it was a hand grenade.
"I was shocked. The boy who was standing on it thought it was a rock. The leaders did a great job keeping the children calm."
The grenade was believed to have been a relic from World War II, according to the Mail.




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/04/08/british-child-hunting-for-easter-eggs-finds-hand-grenade/?test=latestnews

Florida police pose as giant bunnies to catch illegal drivers -

Florida police pose as giant bunnies to catch illegal drivers - 



West Palm Beach, Florida, police are going undercover as giant Easter bunnies. As morning commuter traffic slowed to a crawl earlier this week, motorists saw a bunny with a sign reading “Have a safe, hoppy holiday. Buckle up!” And through the large, netted eyes of the bunny costume’s large head, the cop was watching them right back, making note of who had a seatbelt on and who didn’t, so nearby officers could ticket them as part of the state’s “Click it or ticket!” campaign. A similar program in Glendale, Calif. was shut down in 2010 for being “breathtakingly dangerous,” but in Florida, it has been pretty successful so far: In just two hours, 50 motorists were cited.


Read more -
http://now.msn.com/now/0329-easter-cops.aspx

The Genetically Modified Food You Eat Every Day - You’ve been eating it for a long time and no one has told you -

The Genetically Modified Food You Eat Every Day - You’ve been eating it for a long time and no one has told you - 

Genetically modified food is in a store near you today. In fact, it’s been there for years. You may not know it, but in all the fracas over genetically modified food, one point is often left out: You’ve been eating it for a long time and no one has told you. This infographic from Nature’s Path--which makes organic cereals, bars, and waffles that contain no GMO ingredients, they’d like you to know--shows where you’re getting your genetically modified treats, and why no one has told you:
Many crops are genetically modified so frequently, it’s nearly impossible to find non-GMO versions. These modifications usually involve either a seed manufacturer making their seeds genetically resistant to a certain type of weed-killer (that the seed company also conveniently sells--synergy!) or to make plants resistant to certain pests naturally.
You may not know that you’re eating these crops--despite the fact that they appear in 80% of all packaged food sold in the country--because the U.S. is one of the few places in the developed world that doesn’t require food producers to disclose whether or not their ingredients have any modifications.
If something is labeled "organic" by the USDA, that means it has no GMO crops. The Non-GMO Project is also working on a system for labeling products that aren’t genetically enhanced. To be fair, there isn’t any science that proves that GMO crops are at all bad for consumption; there also aren’t any that confirm that they’re safe. For now, we’re in the dark. And more and more GMO products--like Monsanto’s sneaky, unlabeled sweet corn, the first direct-to-consumer GMO food--are coming to market every day. The full infographic is here:



Your Cell Phone Makes You A Prisoner Of A Digital World Where Virtually Anyone Can Hack You And Track You -

Your Cell Phone Makes You A Prisoner Of A Digital World Where Virtually Anyone Can Hack You And Track You - 


If you own a cell phone, you might as well kiss your privacy goodbye.  Cell phone companies know more about us than most of us would ever dare to imagine.  Your cell phone company is tracking everywhere that you go and it is making a record of everything that you do with your phone.  Much worse, there is a good chance that your cell phone company has been selling this information to anyone that is willing to pay the price – including local law enforcement.  In addition, it is an open secret that the federal government monitors and records all cell phone calls.  The “private conversation” that you are having with a friend today will be kept in federal government databanks for many years to come.  The truth is that by using a cell phone, you willingly make yourself a prisoner of a digital world where every move that you make and every conversation that you have is permanently recorded.  But it is not just cell phone companies and government agencies that you have to worry about.  As you will see at the end of this article, it is incredibly easy for any would-be stalker to hack you and track your every movement using your cell phone.  In fact, many spyware programs allow hackers to listen to you through your cell phone even when your cell phone is turned off.  Sadly, most cell phone users have absolutely no idea about any of this stuff.


The next time that you get a notice from your cell phone company about “changes” to the privacy policy, you might want to play close attention.  Your cell phone company might be about to sell off your most personal information to anyone that is willing to write a big enough check.  The following is from a recent CNN article….


Your phone company knows where you live, what websites you visit, what apps you download, what videos you like to watch, and even where you are. Now, some have begun selling that valuable information to the highest bidder.


In mid-October, Verizon Wireless changed its privacy policy to allow the company to record customers’ location data and Web browsing history, combine it with other personal information like age and gender, aggregate it with millions of other customers’ data, and sell it on an anonymous basis.


So who is buying this information?


We just don’t know.


But we do know that local law enforcement agencies all over the country are increasingly using cell phone data to nail suspects, and often it is the cell phone companies that are the ones selling them the cell phone data that they need.


According to a recent New York Times article, many local police departments are doing this without getting a warrant first….


“Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight.”


That same article says that cell phone companies have standard prices that they charge to local law enforcement officials for information that they request….


“Cell carriers, staffed with special law enforcement liaison teams, charge police departments from a few hundred dollars for locating a phone to more than $2,200 for a full-scale wiretap of a suspect.”


So if you are breaking the law, your cell phone may be used to gather evidence and to track you down.  In the United States, cell phone companies are required by law to be able to pinpoint the locations of their customers to within 100 meters.  So if you are a criminal, your cell phone could be leading the police right to you even as you are reading this article.


Sometimes the police don’t even use the cell phone companies.  Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran an article that discussed the capabilities of the “stingray devices” that many local law enforcement agencies are using now.


A “stingray device” acts like a cell phone tower and it can gather any information that a normal cell phone tower can.  The following is how a recent Wired article described these “stingrays”….


You make a call on your cellphone thinking the only thing standing between you and the recipient of your call is your carrier’s cellphone tower. In fact, that tower your phone is connecting to just might be a boobytrap set up by law enforcement to ensnare your phone signals and maybe even the content of your calls.


So-called stingrays are one of the new high-tech tools that authorities are using to track and identify you. The devices, about the size of a suitcase, spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower.


The government maintains that the stingrays don’t violate Fourth Amendment rights, since Americans don’t have a legitimate expectation of privacy for data sent from their mobile phones and other wireless devices to a cell tower.


Isn’t that just great?


The attitude that law enforcement agencies seem to have is that once we use a cell phone we are essentially willingly throwing our Fourth Amendment rights out the window.


In some areas of the United States, police are physically extracting data from cell phones any time they want as well.  According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan have been using “extraction devices” to download data from the cell phones of motorists that they pull over.  This is taking place even if the motorists that are pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.  The following is how an article posted on CNET News describes the capabilities of these “extraction devices”….


The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.


Fortunately these “extraction devices” are being challenged in court.  Let us hope that they will be banned.


But what local law enforcement officials are doing pales in comparison to what federal agencies are doing.


For example, the FBI claims that it can demand to see your cell phone data whenever it would like to.


Not only that, the FBI has also been remotely activating the microphones on the cell phones of suspects that they want to listen to.  This can be done even when the cell phone is turned off….


The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.


The technique is called a “roving bug,” and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.


Could the FBI be listening to you right now?


If there is a cell phone in the room they could be.


But some other federal agencies listen to a lot more cell phone calls than the FBI does.


It has been an open secret for a long time that the federal government monitors and records all cell phone calls that are made for national security reasons.


In fact, the federal government is even trying to collect records for calls that have been made in the distant past.  Accordingto USA Today, the goal is “to create a database of every call ever made”….


The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.


In addition, the federal government has been constructing the largest data center in the history of the world out in the Utah desert.  This data center will be used to house an almost unimaginable amount of digital data (including your cell phone calls).  The following is how a recent Wired article described this new facility….


Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”


But isn’t it illegal for the federal government to intercept our phone calls?


Well, the cold, hard reality of the matter is that they use all kinds of loopholes and legal technicalities to get around that.


For example, if a call is “intercepted” outside of the United States and then routed to a government building inside the United States that is considered to be okay.


Of course that is a bunch of nonsense, but that is how they think.


And it is very frightening thing for governments around the world to be able to monitor and track us like this.


Increasingly, governments around the world are using cell phones to hunt down people that they do not like and haul them off to prison.  For example, a recent Bloomberg article detailed how the Iranian government is aggressively using cell phones to crack down on dissidents….


The Iranian officers who knocked out Saeid Pourheydar’s four front teeth also enlightened the opposition journalist. Held in Evin Prison for weeks following his arrest early last year for protesting, he says, he learned that he was not only fighting the regime, but also companies that armed Tehran with technology to monitor dissidents like him.


Pourheydar, 30, says the power of this enemy became clear as intelligence officers brandished transcripts of his mobile phone calls, e-mails and text messages during his detention. About half the political prisoners he met in jail told him police had tracked their communications and movements through their cell phones, he says.


Christians in Iran have learned that they must take the batteries entirely out of their cell phones before they gather for home church meetings.  If they don’t take the batteries out of their cell phones, there is a good chance that the secret police will show up and drag them off to prison.


Read more -
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Your_Cell_Phone_Makes_You_A_Prisoner_Of_A_Digital_World_Where_Virtually_Anyone_Can_Hack_You_And_Track_You_/18828/0/0/0/Y/M.html

Another Black Eye for Newt Gingrich, "Newt, Inc.," has filed for Bankruptcy -

Another Black Eye for Newt Gingrich, "Newt, Inc.," has filed for Bankruptcy - 


In a Chapter 7 filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Georgia, The Gingrich Group LLC, doing business as the Center for Health Transformation, filed for bankruptcy Wednesday. (Chapter 7 is "the chapter of the Bankruptcy Code providing for 'liquidation,' that is, the sale of a debtor's nonexempt property and the distribution of the proceeds to creditors," as defined by the federal courts.)
The vast majority of Gingrich's net worth is tied up in the Gingrich Group. Gingrich is worth overall between $7.1 million and $31 million, according to his financial disclosure. He lists a promissory note from Gingrich Group as being worth between $5 million and $25 million.



Gingrich was chairman of the group until May of last year, when he announced he was running for president. Since focusing his efforts on his presidential run, the "Gingrich Group" has struggled to raise money, leading to its eventual collapse.
The bankruptcy comes at a time when Gingrich's campaign is struggling to regain any momentum. He has only won two states during his run for president -- South Carolina and Georgia, his home state -- and he lags far behind front runner Mitt Romney in the delegate count, in third place with just 137 out of the 1,144 needed to become the nominee.


Read more - 
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/05/11036798-gingrich-group-files-for-bankruptcy

Pilot turns back after snake pops out of dashboard - and slithered across his leg during a solo cargo flight -

Pilot turns back after snake pops out of dashboard - and slithered across his leg during a solo cargo flight - 


An Australian pilot said he was forced to make a harrowing landing reminiscent of a Hollywood thriller after a snake popped out from behind his dashboard and slithered across his leg during a solo cargo flight.


Braden Blennerhassett _ unsure whether the snake was venomous _ said Thursday that his heart raced as he tried to keep his hands still while maneuvering the plane back to the northern city of Darwin. The snake popped its head out from behind the instrument panel several times, Blennerhassett said, and then the ordeal worsened when the animal crawled across his leg during the approach to the airport.


"I've seen it on a movie once, but never in an airplane," Blennerhassett told Australian Broadcasting Corp., referring to the 2006 movie "Snakes on a Plane," in which deadly snakes are deliberately released in an airliner as part of a murder plot.


The 26-year-old Air Frontier pilot was alone in a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron G58 and had just left Darwin airport on a cargo run to a remote Outback Aboriginal settlement when he saw the snake on Tuesday.


Air Frontier director Geoff Hunt described Blennerhassett as a "cool character" who radioed air traffic control to report: "I'm going to have to return to Darwin. I've got a snake on board the plane."


But Blennerhassett admits he was shaken, telling Nine Network television that his blood pressure and hear rate were "a bit elevated."


"You're trying to be as still as you possibly can and when you've got your hands on the power levers," he told ABC. "You're kind of worried about the snake taking that as a threat and biting you."


Read more - 
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=681&sid=2815620

'Fish From Hell' Now a Prized Catch in Maryland - hardy enough to survive up to four days on land -

'Fish From Hell' Now a Prized Catch in Maryland - hardy enough to survive up to four days on land - 


Wildlife officials in Maryland have put a bounty on the snakehead, the so-called "fish from hell" that can migrate on land and devastates the eco-systems of lakes, ponds and streams.
The state will give out $200 gift cards for Bass Pro Shops as well as other prizes for catching and killing the fish, which is native to Africa and Asia but is believed to have made its way to America through Asian seafood merchants. 
“We do not want snakeheads in our waters," said Maryland Department of Natural Resources Inland Fisheries Director Don Cosden. "This initiative is a way to remind anglers that it is important to catch and remove this invasive species of fish.” 



The first time a snakehead was seen in Maryland was when an angler caught an 18-inch specimen in 2002 in Crofton Pond, 20 miles north of Washington, D.C. Since then, the population has grown and they've been caught in dozens of bodies of water, including the Potomac River and tributaries.
The fish are hardy enough to survive up to four days on land, and can migrate up to a quarter mile between bodies of water by wriggling on their fins. National Geographic has dubbed the snakehead "fishzilla," and it is also frequently referred to as the "fish from hell." They can grow to more than 2 feet long and have been found in at least seven states.
“We don’t expect that anglers will eradicate the snakehead population,” said Joe Love, the state's Department of Natural Resources Tidal Bass program manager. “We do believe this promotion and inspiration of anglers can help control the snakehead population. The information we gain from the Angler’s Log reports are also helpful in assessing the abundance, spread and impact of these feisty fish.”
The ravenous appetites that can destroy native populations actually works against the fish when humans go after them. One fisherman told Outdoor Life blogger Gayne C. Young they bite at any type of bait.




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/05/maryland-puts-gift-card-bounty-on-fish-from-hell/

Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses - futuristic glasses that look like a prop from “Star Trek,” -

Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses - futuristic glasses that look like a prop from “Star Trek,”  - 





If you venture into a coffee shop in the coming months and see someone with a pair of futuristic glasses that look like a prop from “Star Trek,” don’t worry. It’s probably just a Google employee testing the company’s new augmented-reality glasses.


On Wednesday, Google gave people a clearer picture of its secret initiative called Project Glass. The glasses are the company’s first venture into wearable computing.


The glasses are not yet for sale. Google will, however, be testing them in public.


In a post shared on Google Plus, employees in the company laboratory known as Google X, including Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun, asked people for input about the prototype of Project Glass. Mr. Lee, a Google product manager and originally worked on Google mapping software Latitude, mobile maps and indoor maps, is responsible for the software component and the location-based aspects of the glasses.


“We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input,” the three employees wrote. “Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?”



The prototype version Google showed off on Wednesday looked like a very polished and well-designed pair of wrap-around glasses with a clear display that sits above the eye. The glasses can stream information to the lenses and allow the wearer to send and receive messages through voice commands. There is also a built-in camera to record video and take pictures.


The New York Times first wrote about the glasses in late February, describing an augmented-reality display that would sit over the eye and run on the Android mobile platform.


A video released by Google on Wednesday, which can be seen below, showed potential uses for Project Glass. A man wanders around the streets of New York City, communicating with friends, seeing maps and information, and snapping pictures. It concludes with him video-chatting with a girlfriend as the sun sets over the city. All of this is seen through the augmented-reality glasses.


Project Glass could hypothetically become Project Contact Lens. Mr. Parviz, who is also an associate professor at the University of Washington, specializes in bionanotechnology, which is the fusion of tiny technologies and biology. He most recently built a tiny contact lens that has embedded electronics and can display pixels to a person’s eye.


Early reports of the glasses said prototypes could look like a pair of Oakley Thumps — which are clunky and obtrusive sunglasses — but the version Google unveiled Wednesday looks more graceful. There are reportedly dozens of other shapes and variations of the glasses in the works, some of which can sit over a person’s normal eyeglasses.


People I have spoken with who have have seen Project Glass said there is a misconception that the glasses will interfere with people’s daily life too much, constantly streaming information to them and distracting from the real world. But these people said the glasses actually free people up from technology.


One person who had used the glasses said: “They let technology get out of your way. If I want to take a picture I don’t have to reach into my pocket and take out my phone; I just press a button at the top of the glasses and that’s it.”


Project Glass is one of many projects currently being built inside the Google X offices, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main Mountain View, Calif., campus where engineers and scientists are also working on robots and space elevators.






Read more -
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/google-begins-testing-its-augmented-reality-glasses/

Google Street View Takes a Virtual Tour of the White House - leisurely wander around the WH without being detained -

Google Street View Takes a Virtual Tour of the White House - leisurely wander around the WH without being detained - 

Fresh from a jaunt along the Rio Negro, Google is digitizing the interior of the First Family's mansion. Now you can leisurely wander around the White House without being detained by the Secret Service.

Google's employing the same 360-degree HD cameras as it uses to document museums and art galleries for the Google Art Project which launched last year. The virtual tour will follow the same route as the public walking tour you'd get if you actually visited the White House.

"Thousands of people have walked these halls and gazed at the artwork," the First Lady said in a statement, "They've examined the portraits of Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy. They have imagined the history that has unfolded her. And now you can do all of that without leaving your home." Head over to the Google Art Project's White House page to look around.

Read more - 

http://gizmodo.com/5898953/google-street-view-takes-a-virtual-tour-of-the-white-house